Have I lost the plot completely??

crawler

November 2006

"Irish telecommunications operator Eircom is to invest up to €1bn on a three-year network upgrade which will deliver enhanced broadband services such as internet protocol television (IPTV) to households across the country.

Eircom's next generation network will be IP-based, delivering converged services via fibre optic connections to neighbourhoods. The so-called fibre to the curb (FTTC) architecture will provide broadband speeds of up to 25 Mbps, capable of supporting IPTV and video-on-demand (VOD)."

Eircom chairman Pierre Danon said: "This is an exciting day for Eircom. We will be making a substantial investment in Ireland's telecommunications infrastructure that will fundamentally enhance the communications services that we provide to customers in Ireland."



February 2007

"Faster broadband services will result from a major investment programme being undertaken by Eircom to upgrade its central telecommunications network.

Faster broadband services will result from a major investment programme being undertaken by Eircom to upgrade its central telecommunications network.

The €60 million investment, due to be announced shortly, will allow the delivery to advanced services such as internet TV to many homes, as well as much greater capacity for business users.

Responding to rapidly growing demand for broadband, with over 4,000 customers signing up each month, Eircom chief executive Rex Comb has opted to focus the company’s initial investment drive on its core telecommunications network, which runs from the telephone exchanges back to its main facilities, which handle voice and data traffic."


Do Pierre and Rex not talk??? Lads €60m is not €1bn - interestingly though, €60m per annum was the EXACT value of the Government contract per annum to eircom...hmmm.

Altreab

crawler wrote:

November 2006

"Irish telecommunications operator Eircom is to invest up to €1bn on a three-year network upgrade which will deliver enhanced broadband services such as internet protocol television (IPTV) to households across the country.

Eircom's next generation network will be IP-based, delivering converged services via fibre optic connections to neighbourhoods. The so-called fibre to the curb (FTTC) architecture will provide broadband speeds of up to 25 Mbps, capable of supporting IPTV and video-on-demand (VOD)."

Eircom chairman Pierre Danon said: "This is an exciting day for Eircom. We will be making a substantial investment in Ireland's telecommunications infrastructure that will fundamentally enhance the communications services that we provide to customers in Ireland."



February 2007

"Faster broadband services will result from a major investment programme being undertaken by Eircom to upgrade its central telecommunications network.

Faster broadband services will result from a major investment programme being undertaken by Eircom to upgrade its central telecommunications network.

The €60 million investment, due to be announced shortly, will allow the delivery to advanced services such as internet TV to many homes, as well as much greater capacity for business users.

Responding to rapidly growing demand for broadband, with over 4,000 customers signing up each month, Eircom chief executive Rex Comb has opted to focus the company’s initial investment drive on its core telecommunications network, which runs from the telephone exchanges back to its main facilities, which handle voice and data traffic."


Do Pierre and Rex not talk??? Lads €60m is not €1bn - interestingly though, €60m per annum was the EXACT value of the Government contract per annum to eircom...hmmm.

Yes and for that €60 Million we will get what? 8 megs to the home IF your in the usual towns. Nothing if you still cant get Broadband. and when will we have this feast? 2.5-3 Years time.
In a nutshell what Eircom is preposing is in 3 years time the cities of this country will be at the same level as the most rural parts of the Uk and Northern Ireland have been for over 2 years. Rural Ireland and pairgain Ireland will still be struggling with 28K dial-up
FFS what a bloody awful mess. That combined with the effectively neutered communications bill which is about to go to the Dail will keep us in a terrible situation for the next 10 years.

watty

Contention needs to be close to 2:1 on exchange and 5:1 on backhaul/Infrastructure if people really used IPTV/VOD in the living room rather than a novelty / geek toy. Rather than current approx 48:1 at exchange

Is 60M enough to do this and FTTC? Actually you don't need 25Mbps. Just about 8 to 10Mbps at 1:1 and good QOS for video streams. 25Mbps is pointless for IPTV if it drops to 3Mbps when everyone watches TV (8:1 contention).

Someone has lost the plot, but not Crawler, nor I think eircom.

OfflerCrocGod

According to this story BT will invest €113 million while Eircom will invest €60.........now those figures can't be right - €1billion sounds much more reasonable. 208,000 BB customers a year I presume that includes Bitstream; those figures seem quite impressive considering that's probably households. At this pace BB will be a mainstream technology by late 2008

crawler

Thank you! Yes....

I am so confused - why are people not questioning this? What is amazing is that all the news wires and PR is claiming this is a good thing and NOT ONE PERSON has asked where the €1bn investment had gone???

Both press releases are more or less identical except the €1bn has become €60m! That is a capex REDUCTION of €960m! (unless I have missed something and I am open to correction here)

what changed between press release 1 and press release 2? Simple, at the time of press release 1 the details of the 100% broadband project had not been announced - HOWEVER - at the time of press release 2 they had been and the level of funding is much lower than most people expected.

OfflerCrocGod

crawler wrote:

That is a capex REDUCTION of €960m! (unless I have missed something and I am open to correction here)

OK you asked for it, it's €940m actually

crawler wrote:

what changed between press release 1 and press release 2? Simple, at the time of press release 1 the details of the 100% broadband project had not been announced - HOWEVER - at the time of press release 2 they had been and the level of funding is much lower than most people expected.

€940m is quite a huge discrepancy I don't think Eircom could miscalculate by such a massive amount. This sounds like they are upgrading the exchanges which are suffering under increased traffic because of the growth in BB.

he spokesman said the upgrade will see 1GB of bandwidth provided to 240 telephone exchanges, 66 of which will be provided with 10GB of bandwidth. The investment will affect 1.3 million of Eircom's 1.6 million customers.

Nothing to do with 100% coverage.

watty

Obviously the 1B press release was a mistake. Unfortunately 60M won't add more rural customers the way they want to spend it.

damien

Cos it's totally unlike a telco to press release rehashed crap...

How many times did Dempsey and Ahern reannounce the MANs?

BendiBus

I'm pretty ignorant on these things but is FTTC not local loop technology and the "central telecommunications network" backhaul.

2 separate projects with 2 separate and very different budgets?

watty

Yes.

Altreab

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

OK you asked for it, it's €940m actually €940m is quite a huge discrepancy I don't think Eircom could miscalculate by such a massive amount. This sounds like they are upgrading the exchanges which are suffering under increased traffic because of the growth in BB.Nothing to do with 100% coverage.

they are upgrading the exchanges and the bcakhaul for the cities. outside of the city areas they dont give a damn as there isnt sufficent competition!!

jesus_thats_gre

crawler wrote:

by Eircom to upgrade its central telecommunications network.

Did ye miss this detail lads?



They are 2 seperate announcements for 2 seperate sets of improvements. It is possible that the 60 million is coming from that 1 billion but still...

lucernarian

€60 million could probably pay for those DSL aggregator things (RAS?) to be converted to Internet Protocol. Mabye the DSLAMs themselves aswell. Hard to know. And of course, the National Command Centre in Citywest will need a bit of overhauling too for IP.