My Broadband Dilemna

Slaanesh

I've sat back in the shadows for many years. I come from a small-ish village in Meath called Kilmessan, situated in between 3 large towns, Navan, Dunshaughlin and Trim. Broadband is available in one form or another in all three towns. Kilmessan however has nothing.

At the moment I have Esat BT Anytime with 2 ISDN lines. This is in my Mum's house, where I am living now. Due to the terrible BT billing system I have an outstanding bill of about €900. Customer support emailed me telling me that I can ring the credit department and sort out a repayment scheme ... I could never get through to the credit department. Sent in another direct debit mandate because they never initiated the first one, so now I should be billed regularly (ha).

Now, the matter at hand. We go way over the 180 hours cap every month and this tends to cost quite a bit, 3 people playing WoW all the time will do this. I need broadband, it's a necessity. I researched the options available to me. One option was a community wireless initiative from http://www.tarawan.net. Nice lads but seems to be all talk no action, maybe they will prove me wrong. I then read up on the CGBS(Community Group Broadband Scheme) and from what I gather, someone(me) in the area takes the initiative and tries to generate interest in broadband. I have a petition with the guts of 150 names from people all around the area. Now my job is to approach a number of different broadband providers and state my case. If accepted in the next phase of the CGBS the council provides subsidies to the chosen company to setup in the area. I wonder who I should even consider approaching and who I shouldn't. I have a list of providers given to me by a man in Meath County Council. What approach should be taken ?

Today I was browsing the SMART site and did a check on my current line which is on the TARA exchange. This exchange has not been upgraded as I already knew. It then asked would I like to register interest in the trigger program. It then asked me for details like Eircom account number and loads of other stuff, it was like placing an order for the product itself. This is where a bit of a catch 22 comes in.

Kilmessan is a small village but is developing quite rapidly, with the huge new golf course being developed nearby it's only going to get bigger. I myself have bought a house in a new estate, probably about 100 houses going up. I know lots of locals who have bought the houses and quite a few are interested in broadband. The only reason a lot of these people would even consider getting a phoneline would be to avail of broadband. However without a phone line we can't even register our interest and reach the trigger level to get the exchange upgraded. That's the catch 22. I rang smart today and talked to one of their customer drones who tried to fob me off about bad cabling. I told her I was moving into a brand new estate, after that she didn't really know what to tell me but that she would pass on my query to higher management (wishful thinking).

I'm sure their are many other people in situations like this, have many people had success via lobbying for broadband ?

Dr. Nick

The EU vetrinary building in Kiltale surely MUST have b/band, and it would be on the Tara exchange?
Ask a local politician.

Slaanesh

Dr. Nick wrote:

The EU vetrinary building in Kiltale surely MUST have b/band, and it would be on the Tara exchange?
Ask a local politician.

Well I just put in the number of kiltale stores into the smart broadband line checker. It is on the TARA exchange but no broadband available.

kaizersoze

In your case, the Smart line checker is only useful for checking what exchange you're connected to. Smart will never bother offering BB in smaller exchanges, only the bigger lucrative ones.
On the plus side, have a look at this thread (http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=204426&page=3). It has a list of exchanges that will be upgraded in the next couple of months. Tara is on it.:)

dkane

Hi Lads,
Only came across this thread today. I am involved in TaraWAN. We currently have an access point near to Tara which covers much of Kilmessan. Unfortunately the village itself is not that well covered from this access point. We have the equipment in stock for a new access point in the village which will give almost 100% coverage in the village. There are a couple of masts in the village that would be suitable for the access point and we are talking with the owners of these masts currently. As soon as we get the go-ahead to put up our equipment we will have it in place in a matter of days.

I have to admit it did take us quite a while to get the first few customers connected to our first access point. However we now have a contractor doing our installs and we are providing a substantial number of home and business customers with broadband internet access from our Tara site.


Daniel Kane
daniel@tarawan.net

Slaanesh

Hey Daniel,

That does sound fantastic, it's all well and good doing all these things in the background. People sometimes like to know what's happening, the tarawan forums are dead, it would be nice to have a news page with latest developments and not keep people in the dark. You might not get a huge amount of subscribers if DSL hits the area next march, although tarawan could end up to be a cheaper alternative.

I still say best of luck to you and I hope it all goes well for you in the end.

Ronan.

dkane

Thanks Ronan,
The main reason the boards are so dead is that we have been concentrating on getting customers connected to our Tara AP so there has been very little news on expansion to the network etc.

Our focus has, however, now changed as we will not be handling near as many client installs ourselves. This means that we can focus on expanding our coverage while our installer will be able to get people connected much faster.

With regards to DSL coming to Kilmessan, I fear it is not just a matter of enabling the Tara exchange. The big problem is that the exchange is at Ross Cross so Kilmessan would be well outside the 3-5km range for DSL.

I will keep you posted as to when we get the go ahead for the new access point and as soon as it is active we will be advertising the service in and around the village.

Daniel
daniel@tarawan.net

niallb

Dr. Nick wrote:

The EU vetrinary building in Kiltale surely MUST have b/band, and it would be on the Tara exchange?
Ask a local politician.

Their phonelines may be on the exchange,
but I very much doubt if their net access is.
I recall hearing they have had a hefty leased line
for some years.

NiallB

niallb

dkane wrote:

With regards to DSL coming to Kilmessan, I fear it is not just a matter of enabling the Tara exchange. The big problem is that the exchange is at Ross Cross so Kilmessan would be well outside the 3-5km range for DSL.

Hmm, he's got ISDN though. So do I, and so do many people
on that exchange so it looks like the lines out this direction
anyway are pretty good. It also suggests he's not "well outside"
the range for DSL.

NiallB

dkane

There is fibre running to both the EU food and vetrinary offices and to Teagasc in Kiltale.

Skyuser

I sometimes wonder how my town got broadband. It aint that big and there is no big employment but we are squashed between two very large towns. Maybe it's because housing develepment is been thrown up like blocks are about to become extinct.

KeithMur

niallb wrote:

Hmm, he's got ISDN though. So do I, and so do many people
on that exchange so it looks like the lines out this direction
anyway are pretty good. It also suggests he's not "well outside"
the range for DSL.

NiallB

As far as I know ISDN is not distance related line so being close enough for isdn does not mean close enough for DSL

I know of plenty of places where eircrap have down-graded someones ISDN to connect up dsl only to find that their now analogue line has failed for dsl.

lucernarian

OT:
I think ISDN has a range in the region of 7 or possibly 8 km. Eircom's DSL will serve no further than 5. It's quite possible to downgrade from isdn and still fail but the chances of failing are smaller than with an ordinary phone line.

mahadyj

To_be_confirmed wrote:

OT:
I think ISDN has a range in the region of 7 or possibly 8 km. Eircom's DSL will serve no further than 5. It's quite possible to downgrade from isdn and still fail but the chances of failing are smaller than with an ordinary phone line.

Hi,
I know that ISDN lines can work on poor grade lines and have a further reaching distance then DSL. I live three houses down from Daniel and I can get ISDN but I'm 7km out from the exchange and I don't have a hope for broadband. I've been working and using TaraWAN since April and now that we've moved our installs over to our installer we can expand on what we have. We have ordered new equipment for three access points, this should arrive next week (or the following week at the latest). There are two definate sites (one of which is in Johnstown) the third is planned for Kilmessan for which we're stil trying to secure a site. Unfortunately with the amount of problems we've had I am unable to give dates, but we're pushing to have Johnstown live between 2-3weeks after we get equipment. In the meantime we'll be working on a site for Kilmessan.

regards,

Jonathan
jonathan@tarawan.net

mahadyj

I forgot to mention daniel's correct about the EU building, I remember when they laid that line, they have two fibres running on either side of the building, both go back to their servers in Luxemburg, at one stage we did look to gain access to one of these lines, but we we're told we didn't have a hope. Security reason you know:rolleyes:

jonathan
jonathan@tarawan.net

Sponge Bob

Tara now has DSL in the local exchange, announced last week.

Slaanesh

Sponge Bob wrote:

Tara now has DSL in the local exchange, announced last week.

Yeah I noticed this. A few mates around the area have failed the line test, even a friend very close to the exchange. Mine isn't eligible for testing at the moment, probably because I currently have ISDN. A friend in netsource tells me they can test even with an ISDN line.

It doesn't look good for Kilmessan anyway, I think it's out of range.