MAN's .What use are they???

Altreab

This in the letters page of the SBPost today from Charlie Ardagh Magnet Entertainment

Facts about broadband
25 June 2006
The MANs are not and never were designed to deliver services into individual homes. They were built as backbone networks to reach towns outside of Dublin on which independent operators like Magnet Entertainment could then build local consumer networks.

With access to the MANs as enabling infrastructure, we then invest in connecting individual customers over the local loop which we unbundle from Eircom. The MANs are thus single-handedly responsible for the range of operator choices currently available to Irish broadband consumers. Their success or otherwise must be assessed on that basis.

Without the MAN initiative, no operator, other than the incumbent one, could exist outside the capital without a heavy investment to build alternative backbone networks. The business case for companies like Magnet could never have been rationalised if faced with that requirement.

In addition to enabling connections and access, the MAN initiative already has a number of further positive returns. MAN project funding has been at least matched by private sector investment in new local networks in many of the towns. It has led to the introduction of broadband speeds many, many times faster than Eircom would have introduced (eg Magnet launched a 24MB service whereas Eircom’s fastest service is 5MB).

It has also meant the creation of hundreds of jobs and has significantly helped in bringing Ireland closer to the broadband-enabled country it should be.

Of course, there is much work still to do - specifically in achieving the correct regulatory environment to release the full potential of MANs. Minister for Communications Noel Dempsey must act to provide Comreg with appropriate competition powers as a matter of urgency.

In Britain, the regulator has the power to make the incumbent act rather than allow them to procrastinate and hold back the opportunity for other competitors, while denying consumers a choice. We should expect no less here.

A former monopoly will always act like a former monopoly, and it cannot be blamed for working to the best interests of its shareholders, but the government must legislate in the best interests of its people.

That means making laws to deconstruct monopolies and create the environment for competition to flourish.

Such action by the government would also demonstrate to the sceptics both the wisdom and foresight of the MAN initiative.

Charlie Ardagh
Magnet Entertainment
Dublin 17

zuma

This on the surface looked like a double post...but its not as you changed the location of the hot link.

Why did you post twice?

Altreab

zuma wrote:

This on the surface looked like a double post...but its not as you changed the location of the hot link.

Why did you post twice?

First Post didnt appear to have posted firat time around ......It has now been deleted.

netwhizkid

Altreab wrote:

Sorry about that ....... didnt appear to have posted first time so i reposted.

You can erase the other thread only click edit on it and then choose to deete the thread.

Altreab

netwhizkid wrote:

You can erase the other thread only click edit on it and then choose to deete the thread.

LOL Done .........Now what do you think of the MANs ?

damien

It is good to see Fianna Fail's Charlie Ardagh supportive of the 80m worth of taxpayers money that was provided to give broadband to a few thousand people.

Sponge Bob

I have said before that the combination of ESB fibre and Mans , both intertwined inextricably and funded initially around the same time, is the only other game in town.

Every alt.telecom uses them . Smart Magnet Digiweb and others simply would not be relevant without them

We would only have duopoly and the mobile cartel. Whether eNet itself is as relevant as it should be is another question altogether

Blaster99

If that x million euro MAN thing had been spent on availability instead, how many more exchanges would have been enabled?

Sponge Bob

Blaster99 wrote:

If that x million euro MAN thing had been spent on availability instead, how many more exchanges would have been enabled?

Are you mad blaster :eek:, that would have underpinned eircoms bitstream monopoly even more and allowed them to margin squeeze like crazy ...or more so than now ....in the unregulated mush that is the Irish telco sector under Comreg.

Smart could never have posed the serious challenge that got us decent speeds last year.

Blaster99

I guess the question is, how much has been spent on MAN's and GBS's? All else can be derived from that. It would also be interesting to know what the cost per MAN retail customer is to date. The same for GBS's.

I think you'll find that Smart etc have signed up the vast majority of their customers on exchanges not connected to a MAN and this competition is sufficient to cause eircom grief.

netwhizkid

Altreab wrote:

LOL Done .........Now what do you think of the MANs ?

My own opinion of the MANs is twofold. They are a good idea as they enable the alternate Telcos the freedom from Eircoms network. However they have cost X Millions, I don’t know much presumably €80million according to damien.m's post. The way I look at it is that €80million would have enabled alot of Eircom Exchanges if it were grant aided to Eircom. (Didn't the European Commission recently okay state intervention in Irelands Broadband Situation? IIRC Please correct me otherwise)

A Solution is Nationalisation, Eircoms Network becomes the property of the State, Line-rental pays for looking after it and every operator including Eircom gets fair and equal access to it, Whether it is the local lad working from his cellar or Multi Corp Global. But to be realistic these socialistic visions of mine will not happen under this Government or under Enda Kenny either, If Labour got a Majority perhaps but otherwise not. Eircom are rolling out Broadband at a snails pace as it unviable to do it (rip-off dialup anyone)

The situation is simply that the Government has made such a dogs dinner of things by selling Eircom in the first place that the buck rests with them to subsidise Eircom to roll out Broadband while facilitating the alternates with MAN's which are only duplicates of what are already there. It would be like two Train operators building tracks from Cork to Dublin instead of using the existing ones and improving them to suit the needs of both.

It is a issue that I have focused on at Fianna Fail meetings in the past, (I am not a member nor I do intend to be) but was invited by letter and went along and gave the pot a good stirring, my opponents were FF Councillors, who agreed with me and thus started the GBS in my Local Community, I part undertook a survey and am in the process of doing a report to be sent to the SWRA Co-ordinator in the hope of eventually getting Exchange Enablement. Here I think the money on MAN's was wasted, a few strokes of a pen in Dail Eireann would have forced Eircom to give fair access to the other operators and eliminated the need for MAN's, while giving Eircom the €80million as a sweetener to enable so many exchanges that are yet to be done.

eircomtribunal

Imagine where we would be if we:
1. had built Metropolitan Area Networks in the 10-20 bigger towns, establishing a significant alternative for business, business parks etc. to reliance on the incumbent and cartel-like priced other providers (who often, to be fair to them, had to rely on eircom priced services themselves),
2. had connected all the smaller towns to a national carrier-neutral MAN (if one can call it that), with connection to the incumbent's exchanges and provision for wireless masts, where appropriate

and

3. had established an empowered regulator, who had introduced (and not just said they had done so) working local loop unbundling, flat-rate dial-up Internet access and generally had stopped the incumbent's monopolistic behaviour in the tracks.

P.

Foxwood

netwhizkid wrote:

... while giving Eircom the €80million as a sweetener to enable so many exchanges that are yet to be done.

The Government already gives eircom the guts of €80million a year for "free" phones for pensioners and Social Welfare recipients.

If the Government had put in place a real regulator who had forced eircom to deliver LLU at an economic price, that €80million would mean that alternative operators could provide free line rental and free local and national calls instead of the one or two euros of "free" calls currently included in the package.

useruser

eircomtribunal wrote:

Imagine where we would be if we:
1. had built Metropolitan Area Networks in the 10-20 bigger towns, establishing a significant alternative for business, business parks etc. to reliance on the incumbent and cartel-like priced other providers (who often, to be fair to them, had to rely on eircom priced services themselves),
2. had connected all the smaller towns to a national carrier-neutral MAN (if one can call it that), with connection to the incumbent's exchanges and provision for wireless masts, where appropriate

and

3. had established an empowered regulator, who had introduced (and not just said they had done so) working local loop unbundling, flat-rate dial-up Internet access and generally had stopped the incumbent's monopolistic behaviour in the tracks.

P.

Excellent points. How many (home) broadband subscribers benefit from the MANs? 4000? 5000? How many broadband users are served by the Kiltimagh MAN?

eircomtribunal

useruser wrote:

How many broadband users are served by the Kiltimagh MAN?

While I would hope and be somewhat confident (trusting Spongebob's assessment), that the fibre rings in the Sligo+-sized MAN towns will get adequate use – but even that will take time, it seems – the smaller towns don't need the fibre underneath their footpaths. But. The MAN project is too big/complex and too far developed, and nobody would want or dare to make the sensible changes at this point.
It is a wasteful way, but at least the small towns will thus get connected to an all-Ireland ring,+wireless masts integrated into the new MAN's.
P.

Sponge Bob

useruser wrote:

Excellent points. How many (home) broadband subscribers benefit from the MANs? 4000? 5000? How many broadband users are served by the Kiltimagh MAN?

Taking the ESB/Mans as one entity . Probably as much as 25000 including wireless and dsl customers and maybe even some cable customers

Altreab

Sponge Bob wrote:

I have said before that the combination of ESB fibre and Mans , both intertwined inextricably and funded initially around the same time, is the only other game in town.

Every alt.telecom uses them . Smart Magnet Digiweb and others simply would not be relevant without them

We would only have duopoly and the mobile cartel. Whether eNet itself is as relevant as it should be is another question altogether

Are all of the Present MAN's connected to either the ESB or BT fibre now? We have a interesting situation in galway where Clifden will have its own MAN's within the next year (contracts have been signed)....HOWEVER ...... the powers that be have decided that a fibre line for backhaul from Galway to Clifden is too expensive at approx €9 Million. (They do have a point i have to conceed here) So they will use a radio link instead when they get the required 4 masts erected!!! This in an area where various groups complained that the fibre laid by Eircom along the main underground was causing a damaging effect on the envoirement!!

I have the awful sinking feeling that the Clifden MANs will be like a motor way around an island but only a currach connecting the island to the mainland.
Are there any other MANs with this bad a backhaul problem?
Waiting and hoping to be proved wrong

thegills

It is good to see Fianna Fail's Charlie Ardagh supportive of the 80m worth of taxpayers money that was provided to give broadband to a few thousand people.

Every Smart, Magnet, Digiweb and IBB customer outside of Dublin region is reliant on the MAN's / ESBT. This might only add up to a could of thousand people but to be fair the networks of the above are in their infancy; I personally know of about 200 people in Ballina / Killaloe that wouldn't have broadband if it wasn't for MAN's / ESBT.

In relation to business, if the MAN's weren't built there would still be a duopoly in operation in the business market. In fact eircom's high bandwidth pricing has dropped by 66% since the MAN's have been completed. eircom has also enabled probably 100+ exchanges on the back of MAN / GBS announcements.

It's early days lads.

There's no backhaul into Kiltimagh hence the question from useruser.

thegills

Sponge Bob

Altreab wrote:

Are all of the Present MAN's connected to either the ESB or BT fibre now? We have a interesting situation in galway where Clifden will have its own MAN's within the next year (contracts have been signed)....HOWEVER ...... the powers that be have decided that a fibre line for backhaul from Galway to Clifden is too expensive at approx €9 Million.

This is a fun fun MAN . Some civil servants _may_ be relocating to Clifden so Clifden gets a MAN. It is 48 miles of granite and bog from the nearest MAN/ESB point today.

(They do have a point i have to conceed here) So they will use a radio link instead when they get the required 4 masts erected!!!

except that there are no masts between Galway and Clifden either so they will have to do it via west Clare I hear The same Galway county council that issues MAN contracts refuses to permit carrier grade mast construction at present.

They want everyone to build silly monopole twigs with NO GUY WIRES TO STOP THEM SWAYING on the hilltops in the windy gushty windy wesht the dopey ****s . Thats because Galway county council do not give a damn about connemara , IE same as it always was. monopoles are fine around Loughrea or Portumna for localised cell masts but useless for long distance mountaintop jobbies further west. In comms one design does not fit all.

This in an area where various groups complained that the fibre laid by Eircom along the main underground was causing a damaging effect on the envoirement!!

You mean that eircom hacked through a SAC to bury the fibre and caused subsidence along the road afterwards in the Oughterard / Maam Cross / Screeb area. I trust the county council billed them for the repairs afterwards and will use the money to fund a mast or two

I have the awful sinking feeling that the Clifden MANs will be like a motor way around an island but only a currach connecting the island to the mainland.

Well there is a _possibility_ that a new ESB line will go half way out of Galway and can be fibre wrapped to there so the radio links will be about 35km not 75km. The Bord Pleanala kicked it out over the transformer station at its end so they should start on the pylons in the interim.

Are there any other MANs with this bad a backhaul problem?
Waiting and hoping to be proved wrong

Kiltimagh is damn famous, the MAN was laid years ago and is unconnected to anything and about 40km as a min from the nearest ESB fibre .

The Furbo MAN in Galway will also be stranded ....other civil servants are relocating there .

kaizersoze

Sponge, you might be able to shed some light on this. They started measuring for the Ballinasloe MAN last week but strangely they started measuring from the railway station, which is a bit off the beaten track.
Would they be getting their backhaul from CIE (or BT)? Would they have fibre along the track around these parts?

Sponge Bob

kaizersoze wrote:

Sponge, you might be able to shed some light on this. They started measuring for the Ballinasloe MAN last week but strangely they started measuring from the railway station, which is a bit off the beaten track.

Define both "strange" and "Ballinasloe" for me

There is fibre there indeed along that line, owned by BT and there is also the big fat fibre up the main street owned by BT (the western digital corridor ) so connecting them together is not a bad thing is it ???. You cannot get ESB but the western digital corridor is as good. see here

You guys , therefore, rely entirely on BT for decent priced backhaul , hopefully they will not take the piss.

The station is zoned industrial and may get distribution businesses in future .

kaizersoze

Define both "strange" and "Ballinasloe" for me

I think the same definition would suit both.:o
Thanks for the info.