Magnet will not push LLU broadband any more thanks to crap eircom lines

Sponge Bob

Magnet have gone triple play which means your line must support at least 5mbits. They wil not sign you up as a customer any more unless it does.

This means they will not advertise in the residential market at all any more.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single7773

the company would no longer promote or push the service. “We are downplaying the offering but we are not exiting the consumer local loop unbundling [LLU]: if you want it and we are in a position to give it to you we will.”

Kennedy told siliconrepublic.com that IPTV (television over the internet) will only work on DSL connections that exceed 5MB and therefore Magnet will only provide IPTV to fibre-to-the-home customers or DSL users whose connections excel beyond 5MB.

apparently thats as little as 18% of lines so they are out of the residential market, unless you ask nicely.

Oh and at the very end

The regulatory situation in Ireland today is very much like it was in the US in 1999.”

kaisersose77

are magnet available anywhere outside dublin? their site doesnt give much info at all

JNive

yes they are, i have it in cork and my line gets 5mb on their 4mb service, guess im one of those lucky 18% people :-)

watty

18% is closer to 9% of population, if you consider who will have available DSL and also pass for any DSL speed.

My thinking?
eircom's 85% translates to about 50% of all people can actually get Broadband via DSL. But of those that can get get DSL, 18% can get good enough for IPTV + Web etc.

That sounds like 9% to me. I've be saying to folk (inc some people in OECD) for over a year that that I thought less than 10% of people must be able to get real IPTV/VOD by DSL. That was an educated guess.

I think people need to stop fussing about IPTV / VOD / Joost etc and concentrate on geting some Universal Broadband or at least cheap always on (where no BB possible) for everyone and then we can worry about TV etc.

Anyway unless there is a true VOD catalogue of 10,000 films & most TV shows etc, TV by Cable, MMDS, DTT and Satellite makes more sense. Better use of resource and 10,000 to 100,000 cheaper in backhaul distribution costs.

SeaSide

watty wrote:

I think people need to stop fussing about IPTV / VOD / Joost etc and concentrate on geting some Universal Broadband or at least cheap always on (where no BB possible) for everyone and then we can worry about TV etc.

I dont agree - campaigns in Ireland have always been for "behind the curve" services. Around 2000 you could not get ISDN and when the campaign should have been ramping up to start DSL roll-out the campaign was for ISDN. Now when the lead runners are moving to FTTH or IPTV or other AFLAs our department is only looking at providing rolling out BB. We are five years behind.

watty

Read
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/10/iptv_vod_joost/
And
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/07/flexible_network_cores/

and then tell me again we should worry about having fast enough local loop for IPTV.

I'm yet to be convinced that REAL TIME VOD via IP Network will ever make commercial or technical sense.

Concentrate on BB for all and afforable cross platform PVRs that have space reserved as a local VOD server filled by "broadcast or multicast" content. VOD by live IP unicast is always going to be crazy. And if the economics are bad for ordinary TV what about HDTV?

FTTH / VDSL etc does not solve the infrastructure problems of IPTV.

I agree that if faster 10Mbps, 20Mbps or even 200Mbps services are possible in urban areas and people are willing to pay a true competitive environment will and should provide them. But never at expense of Rural Universal BB nor should higher speed services or Joost users or IPTV or torrents users be subsidised by ordinary users.

P2P IPTV by Sky, BBC and C4 is already here, before Joost and is insidious way of having even the lightest viewer of content pay for the bandwidth, rather than the provider paying for Server bandwidth. In that sense P2P IPTV providers should charge a flat rate for whatever amount you watch (as your system is uploading & downloading even it you arn't watching) and a percentage paid of IPTV P2P service charge to the ISP.

Otherwise the non-users of IPTV will be subsidising the IPTV users.

Patrickof

I agree with watty, IPTV is a solution looking for a problem. It doesn't solve or provide anything extra beyond whats available via over the air or satellite broadcast.

Single stream IPTV where channel changes need to go back to a server seem more like a step backwards to me.

Although a "return path" via broadband would be useful instead of via dialup, a la "press the red button"

watty

yes Hybrid solution like BT Vision. I bet Sky would love universial BB for interactive on Digibox

Oddly the Cable TV providers should be doing this and are not! It is due to fact that many cable networks are only partially BB enabled. The BandI TV on cable has to be turned off and all the amplifiers on cable network replaced with bidirectional ones for the 5MHz to 68Mhz upstream data.

So when cable is full broadband enabled, logically we should see hybrid PVR cable boxes using DVBc for live TV, hidden hard disk filled by hidden broadcast stream for Instant quality HD VOD and real interactive services. possibly some "request" for VOD catalogue not on disk which may run live or download depending on Network loading.

Almost all the Sky Interactive is faked by carosel multiple video/data loops, hence sometimes long delays on video start or text page (basically like teletext). Only votes and ordering uses the modem connection at present.

node

I signed up with magnet about 4 weeks ago with the intention of upgrading to the triple play package which would be available in the Rathmines area in February or March.

They are providing me 2meg broadband until I could get upgraded.

As it seems now I am gonna get stuck with just their broadband and won't be able to get TV through them.

Now I need to see what exactly they will do for me since I have thei agreement with them before this was decided.

Will keep you posted.

node

Just got told I can keep the broadband as it is and not have the possibility to upgrade anymore or leave and go **** myself basicaly.

Assholes.

That's gonna take me 4 more weeks of waiting time again before Eircom gets that line back.

gerryo

watty wrote:

I'm yet to be convinced that REAL TIME VOD via IP Network will ever make commercial or technical sense.

People don't watch TV the same way anymore.

In the 70's we sat around waiting for the programs to begin, more or less slaves to the program schedulers' whims.

In the 80's we used VCR's to record the shows & watched them later.
In the 00's, we use PVR's to timeshift the shows to suit our schedules & build
our own TV channels.

VOD is the next evolution, don't wait for the broadcasters to air the shows, watch it when it suits you.

There's too many channels on offer, why not just pick what you want to see & watch when you like, when it suits you.

kaisersose77

Do they intend to over there packages nationwide or just the big cities?

Blaster99

gerryo wrote:

People don't watch TV the same way anymore.

In the 70's we sat around waiting for the programs to begin, more or less slaves to the program schedulers' whims.

In the 80's we used VCR's to record the shows & watched them later.
In the 00's, we use PVR's to timeshift the shows to suit our schedules & build
our own TV channels.

VOD is the next evolution, don't wait for the broadcasters to air the shows, watch it when it suits you.

There's too many channels on offer, why not just pick what you want to see & watch when you like, when it suits you.

In '00 there's bittorrent. You don't need a TV anymore. You don't need a PVR either.

OfflerCrocGod

Blaster99 wrote:

In '00 there's bittorrent. You don't need a TV anymore. You don't need a PVR either.

That's a form of VOD but it's not a mass market easy to use legal VOD.

watty

It's not remotely VOD. You can't watch it until it is finished downloading. Sky, BBC, C4 and Joost is essentially bittorent technology. Joost you can watch as it downloading.

They are all unfair as those watching consume many more times bandwidth than a normal user watching/downloading without a P2P system and all consume 10,000 to 100,000 time more bandwidth than the seeding Comercial Providers actually pay for.

I doubt the majority of P2P users realise the potential imbalance between what the personally consume and the traffic on their connection. And if you pay for a higher Cap or speed than you would have used without these P2P services (legal or illegal content, there is legal stuff done by bittorrent), then you are subsidizing the content providers hugely and other P2P users who have throttled their torrents and/or not online much.

P2P content provision is greatest con perpetrated on people since snake oil.