IT@Cork Conf: Broadband Panel

damien

Today was the annual IT@Cork conference.

IrelandOffline were on a discussion panel today. The discussion was "Unraveling the Broadband Maze"

On it were:
Oliver Coughlan, CTO, 02
Oisin Fanning, CEO, Smart Telecom
David Martin, Head of Strategic Planning, Eircom
George McGrath, COO E-Net
Damien Mulley, IrelandOffline

And boy was it fun.

Some news about future developments. It seems Smart are unbundling a total of 64 exchanges and have done some in Cork already.
They have wired up some apartment block in Smithfield with 100mb fibre. Mov

eircom's line failure rate is 21% now, down from 24% and it will be down further with new equipment coming online by Christmas. I have asked them for this officially. They think they can get it down to 10% after Christmas. (No date was given). They don't think it will drop below that.

O2 and Vodafone touted their wireless offerings too.

Anyway, the debate got nice and heated at times but was overall friendly. When I remember more I'll post here.

Mr_Man

Hi Damien,

any details on the wireless offerings from these two would be much appreciated. I have the feeling that they may make many GBS's redundant if they persue an aggressive rollout policy.

M.

Eurorunner

I have the feeling that they may make many GBS's redundant if they persue an aggressive rollout policy.

What impedes them from doing so if they have their infrastructure/network in place??

damien

384k/s max.

Vodafone details here:
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news4a.nv?storyid=single4102

02 is still not rolling out but a friend that works in there said they are almost there.

dahamsta

damien.m wrote:

Some news about future developments. It seems Smart are unbundling a total of 64 exchanges and have done some in Cork already.

Fair dues. Got an exchange list? Also, out of curiousity, did they get a grant to unbundle these exchanges?

adam

damien

dahamsta wrote:

Also, out of curiousity, did they get a grant to unbundle these exchanges?

Not that I know of.

Mr_Man

Hi Damien,

is there a seperate wireless offering from O2 which gives up to 600kbps? According to a recent thread on the Broadband board this is being trialled in a couple of places (Meath and Donegal). Given the cost of the 3G packages which I have seen it doesn't seem to be feasible to use them for broadband, espcially with the ultra low download limits. Any light you could shed on this would be appreciated.

Thanks
M.

spongebob

Mr_Man wrote:

is there a seperate wireless offering from O2 which gives up to 600kbps? According to a recent thread on the Broadband board this is being trialled in a couple of places (Meath and Donegal). Given the cost of the 3G packages which I have seen it doesn't seem to be feasible to use them for broadband, espcially with the ultra low download limits. Any light you could shed on this would be appreciated.

Yes there is but it is a limited trial of Wimax type alvarion stuff in the 5Ghz band in 2 or 3 Rural areas and will not be deployed in the 3G coverage zones . O2 initiated this limited trial themselves but dont ask me why !

The 3g stuff will be limited to 384k down where available, thats large towns and along the main roads between them for the next 3 years. Basically it will follow the dual carriageway and motorway builds .

The wimax type stuff is doing 3Mbits where it has been deployed, Donegal and Monaghan IIRC .

M