Eircom to use WiMax for broadband

Dellas

Eircom has announced a number of initiatives which it says will improve broadband availability and increase take-up.

It says an extra 100 telephone exchanges will be enabled for broadband by next year, while the company is also committing to taking all broadband orders placed in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Galway. Eircom says 120,000 extra phone lines will be able to support broadband as a result.

Eircom will also use WiMax technology next year to overcome problems with broadband over some lines. WiMax, a wireless technology, will be used to supplement existing DSL services in the five major urban centres.


In a separate move, sports channel Setanta is to simulcast live and exclusively via broadband to Eircom customers.

Eircom chief executive Rex Comb said these initiatives completed the 'commercial and cost effective roll-out of broadband in Ireland'. He added that the company was 'looking forward' to an upcoming Government announcement to address 'the remaining customers'.

Villain

Any info on what exchanges are included?

uncle_sam_ie

Wow, the five major urban centres in Ireland will now avail of broadband. Rural Ireland couldn't be more happy.

pm.

uncle_sam_ie wrote:

Wow, the five major urban centres in Ireland will now avail of broadband. Rural Ireland couldn't be more happy.

it just goes to show the kind of idiots we have working in eircom:mad:

bk

uncle_sam_ie wrote:

Wow, the five major urban centres in Ireland will now avail of broadband. Rural Ireland couldn't be more happy.

Specially since all those fives areas are already happily serviced via Digiweb Metro wireless and so don't really need Eircom.

Mad Finn

Surely WiMAX, as a wireless technology, would be more suited to rural deployments than urban ones?

It has a long range (90km or so I believe) and will soon be able to offer mobile services, so you could surf the internet at broadband speeds from a moving train, for example.

Is this an eircom press release? Sounds a bit muddled to me.

oleras

bk wrote:

Specially since all those fives areas are already happily serviced via Digiweb Metro wireless and so don't really need Eircom.

Im only 7 miles from limerick, and im not served by Digiweb...... as are a lot of people in the county, it is Digiweb "metro" afterall

kaizersoze

irish1 wrote:

Any info on what exchanges are included?

Here ya go. Good luck.:)
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=52226517&postcount=8

kaizersoze

Mad Finn wrote:

Is this an eircom press release? Sounds a bit muddled to me.

Yes.
http://mmm.eircom.ie/press/PressRelease_Target.asp?id=452&y=2006

art

Mad Finn wrote:

Surely WiMAX, as a wireless technology, would be more suited to rural deployments than urban ones?

It has a long range (90km or so I believe) and will soon be able to offer mobile services, so you could surf the internet at broadband speeds from a moving train, for example.

Is this an eircom press release? Sounds a bit muddled to me.

I've been getting the impression lately that Dellas is indeed the conduit on here for Eircom press releases.

And, as you say, the technology would be better suited being aimed more towards non-urban areas, it's not a very progressive venture at all from Eircon.

Praetorian

It's all about making more money, and Eircom certainly will when they're in reach of every customer in the urban centres.

kaizersoze

art wrote:

I've been getting the impression lately that Dellas is indeed the conduit on here for Eircom press releases.

In fairness, this announcement has been discussed over in IOffL since earlier in the day, long before Dellas posted here.

art wrote:

And, as you say, the technology would be better suited being aimed more towards non-urban areas, it's not a very progressive venture at all from Eircon.

It's not progressive because of this part of the press release:

These initiatives will complete the commercial and cost effective rollout of broadband in Ireland. However, we look forward to the Government’s upcoming announcement to address the remaining customers without access to broadband.

They are waiting for the Gov to finance the rest of the roll out as they see it as not being commercially viable.

pm.

Mad Finn wrote:

Surely WiMAX, as a wireless technology, would be more suited to rural deployments than urban ones?

It has a long range (90km or so I believe) and will soon be able to offer mobile services, so you could surf the internet at broadband speeds from a moving train, for example.

Is this an eircom press release? Sounds a bit muddled to me.

if 90kms is the range surly 2 or 3 base stations in each county would cover them ?????????? or have i got it wrong???????

smellslikeshoes

pm. wrote:

if 90kms is the range surly 2 or 3 base stations in each county would cover them ?????????? or have i got it wrong???????

I dont think that figures like that really transfer over to the real world especially with Eircom.

dellsmore

oleras wrote:

Im only 7 miles from limerick, and im not served by Digiweb...... as are a lot of people in the county, it is Digiweb "metro" afterall

I'm 8.5 miles from Limerick City. Digiweb, Smart, etc. etc. all couldn't give two hoots about providing a service where it's needed.

I got fed up of waiting on Eircom to enable the local exchange and ended up going with a wireless broadband connection. Tried getting one off Irish Broadband who said they could provide a link (turned out they couldn't) and eventually found a provider that could. Had it since May and it's been very reliable. It's provided as part of the Group Broadband Scheme.

The funny part is that a few weeks after the wireless provider started making connections in the village Eircom were suddenly able to switch broadband on in the local exchange.......marvellous! I don't care now - I don't have to pay their stupid line rental and there's no cap on my broadband.

My only complaint is the house roof looks pretty crowded with TV, sat dish and broadband aerial up there.....but who cares if it does the job!

phog

dellsmore wrote:

I'm 8.5 miles from Limerick City. Digiweb, Smart, etc. etc. all couldn't give two hoots about providing a service where it's needed.

I got fed up of waiting on Eircom to enable the local exchange and ended up going with a wireless broadband connection. Tried getting one off Irish Broadband who said they could provide a link (turned out they couldn't) and eventually found a provider that could. Had it since May and it's been very reliable. It's provided as part of the Group Broadband Scheme.

The funny part is that a few weeks after the wireless provider started making connections in the village Eircom were suddenly able to switch broadband on in the local exchange.......marvellous! I don't care now - I don't have to pay their stupid line rental and there's no cap on my broadband.

My only complaint is the house roof looks pretty crowded with TV, sat dish and broadband aerial up there.....but who cares if it does the job!

3 Questions please...

- Who is the provider?
- How much per month?
- Any problem with lightning damage (for Sat Dish or BB aerial)

Foxwood

dellsmore wrote:

I'm 8.5 miles from Limerick City. Digiweb, Smart, etc. etc. all couldn't give two hoots about providing a service where it's needed.

You mean they figured they could get a better return on their investment by focusing their limited resources on more densely popluated areas.

What do you think they are, charities?

Dellas

art wrote:

I've been getting the impression lately that Dellas is indeed the conduit on here for Eircom press releases.

.

Yeah im the only one that posts stuff on Eircom because they promised me 20 MB for free if I only post their press releases !!!!:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

watty

pm. wrote:

if 90kms is the range surly 2 or 3 base stations in each county would cover them ?????????? or have i got it wrong???????

Divide range by 10 and multiply base stations x 100 and you have it right.

Anything that covered the whole country with 3 base stations / 90km rage would either be Medium Wave Radio and only 31bps or else airships (HAP) with 400GHz.

They haven't solved the problem about HAP (High Altitude Platform) and bad weather.

Mobile Wimax is still in testing phase and fixed Wimax offers no advantage over other successful fixed wireless due to cost and frequencies used. The existing national 3.5GHZ FWA that eircom has nationwide, but denies knowledge of, and if they were anyone elese they would have lost licence for lack of deployment IS very limited range and speed / number of users compared with other products. So it makes sense for eircom to upgrade to wimax. But there are are a couple of other products that would do as well.

If eircom are finally using their nationwide wireless licence on 3.5 that I suppose is more important than the fact that it is Wimax.

watty

Maybe next year some Wireless Internet suppliers will be expanding rural coverage more. But it can cost 10 times* as much and no-one is offering to subsidise it.

(*Provision of ESB, Mast, Backhaul, and much fewer customers per base).

On the positive side some rural areas may get better contention ratio than urban.

watty

I'm in Patrickswell. Just at the edge of coverage for Metro. However I can see no reason to keep my phone line and pay 50% to 100% more for a similar quality of service from eircom now that finally next year the exchange will be enabled.
If it had only been 8 years ago I could have been a lot more productive in my work and saved about €9,000 on dialup (or more) over the 8 years.

In the end eircom has suffered from the "short termism" of much of Irish government and commercial thinking. Make lots out of dialup now and don't worry about the broadband future. There should have been a USO for true FLAT RATE dialup of 28K and a 5 year block on line renatal increases as part of conditions to privatise Telecom Eirean, this would have focused their mind after privatisation on DSL and Wireless rollout so as to make more money than on the real flat rate USO 28K with low line rental. The lackof flat rate and the high line rental has made it too atractive to do as little as possible.

bk

oleras wrote:

Im only 7 miles from limerick, and im not served by Digiweb...... as are a lot of people in the county, it is Digiweb "metro" afterall

What and you think Eircom will be different? They will just end up serving Limerick city, same as Digiweb.

bk

watty wrote:

If eircom are finally using their nationwide wireless licence on 3.5 that I suppose is more important than the fact that it is Wimax.

I had assumed that this is what they are going to use, they don't have any other spectrum they can use and 3.5GHz is suitable for WiMax.

Sponge Bob

wrong BK, they not only have another (much larger) block of usable wimax spectrum than the block around 3.5ghz but can you imagine Comreg trying to stop them (cue bleating noises ) .

Comreg enforces nothing once eircom squats a national block of spectrum to ensure it is not used by competitors .

Comreg does not answer any questions on its policy of letting eircom do what it wants with spectrum for reasons of a 'commercial' nature , allegedly . Try emailing Tom Butler , the PR in Comreg, about 3.5ghz coverage by eircom in County Limerick if you wanna know what i mean .

And If you were actually providing a wireless service in Rural Limerick instead of resulutely doing nothing Comreg will happily LEAVE DUBLIN and come to YOUR HOUSEand shut you down because eircom told them to shut you down

They are simply there to provide a respectable front for a predatory monopoly and Comreg do that front very well.

art

Dellas wrote:

Yeah im the only one that posts stuff on Eircom because they promised me 20 MB for free if I only post their press releases !!!!:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

By uncritically posting an Eircon advert, not even stating that it is an advert, or using quote marks, you are by default using this forum to propagate ads for Eircon. If they are not rewarding you for that service that you are giving them then you are being a bit naive ...

Dellas

art wrote:

By uncritically posting an Eircon advert, not even stating that it is an advert, or using quote marks, you are by default using this forum to propagate ads for Eircon. If they are not rewarding you for that service that you are giving them then you are being a bit naive ...

I think most people on these boards including your good self are aware that it was from Eircom. And for the record I think Eircom are totally crap and its a joke that such a small Island cant get its finger out and provide a decent BB service. Sure they only have to do 3 quarters of the Island. Across the border in the UK they dont seem to have these problems!!!