"I have a dream !!!"

clohamon

Well known broadband evangelist Martin Luther Dempsey delivered a powerful vision to the faithful today.

http://www.businessworld.ie/livenews.htm?a=1659984

The future of Ireland's prosperity lies in having competitive and hi-speed broadband, communications minister Noel Dempsey said today.
Addressing the ComReg Next Generation Network (NGN) forum, he said, "this may require speeds of over 50/100 Mbts being delivered to every home, but today we need to plan for between 15-25 Mbts, as an interim goal."
The minister stressed that the migration to Next Generation Networks would be a challenge, but one which the Communications sector must make.


"We have many "bandwidth hungry" consumers out there and we cannot afford to delay the development of a fully competitive market in Next Generation Networks. We must ensure that we do not replicate the problems of the past. We must plan ahead and think logically while also thinking creatively. Not only do I believe in open access, I also believe in opening our minds to the possibilities this challenge offers us.
"We have made enormous progress over the past two years but we should not stop there. We should not settle for meeting a target set two years ago. My new challenge to the industry is to reach 700,000 broadband subscribers by the end of this year. This challenge, along with the Government's National Broadband Action Plan, will ensure that all reasonable requests for broadband are met," he said

(No sniggering at the back)

Altreab

clohamon wrote:

Well known broadband evangelist Martin Luther Dempsey delivered a powerful vision to the faithful today.

http://www.businessworld.ie/livenews.htm?a=1659984




(No sniggering at the back)

Does "all reasonable requests for broadband are met" equal if Eircom feels like supplying BB????
Sadly with his record to date i would say yes

damien

Yes, drop everything and move to the next new thing. He's talking less about wimax these days isn't he? Consumers in Ireland have once again been sold-out. Fix the system we have Noel.

rahtkennades

clohamon wrote:

....We should not settle for meeting a target set two years ago....

......we should ignore targets, they only distract us from progress.....

lucernarian

Noel Dempsey doesn't seem to have the mental capacity to talk about more than one issue. It's WiMax OR Next Gen Networks OR LLU. He doesn't have a coherent plan or strategy to deal with any of those. If LLU is a dying duck, then kill off the damn thing.

If the government wants competition, reward investment in other technologies. Allow sufficient wireless networks to be built (e.g provide backhaul and masts) and make it easy for cable providers to do their job.

Let eircom do what they want with their ****ty wannabe-modern network but make sure they don't screw everyone with line rental. Line rental is a regressive tax in effect, as it is still very prolific and residential customers who need it the most, are most affected by the price. Give them enough rope and they'll hang themselves.

Finally, drop all the pretences of pimping satellite, to get out of sticky situations. Aid the ESB to build a national fibre network, undercut eircom prices and the high quality, high availability broadband packages will follow.

Next Generation Networks is not the answer. Some cop-on would go a long way.

Liam Byrne

If LLU is a dying duck, then kill off the damn thing

Whoa! Don't jump the gun! LLU is the only reason I have BB, and if anyone is going to kill it off, they'd better make damn sure that (a) there's an alternative in place and (b) that alternative doesn't involve me having no choice but to pay over twice as much as I'm currently paying for less than a quarter of the service.

By all means, introduce improvements and better technology, but let's not kill off the donkeys and racehorses until the Ferrari and Lambourghini and Aston Martin dealerships are in place!

lucernarian

Well there's too much time and effort spent feeding the proverbial donkeys rather than building the new dealerships.

Btw, you seem to fit into a now extremely rare group of people, those who have working LLU yet cannot get eircom broadband. With eircom's now extended reach, does your line pass? (Can eircom's checker even look at LLU lines?)

For the likes of yourself, eircom can be forced to use ADSL2 (not plus) to provide broadband. I understand that their equipment can implement different modulation schemes for individual lines. Or they can just enable every line with ADSL2 and replace the oldest modems.

But LLU has no long term future, I'm still convinced of that.

Liam Byrne

To_be_confirmed wrote:

Btw, you seem to fit into a now extremely rare group of people, those who have working LLU yet cannot get eircom broadband. With eircom's now extended reach, does your line pass? (Can eircom's checker even look at LLU lines?)

To be honest, I count myself extremely lucky; apart from a brief liason with Irish BB's Ripwave rubbish, it wasn't long before Smart arrived, and because of the distance from the exchange, that was the only option.

Normally, when something is the only option, you pay through the nose, but in my case the only option also proved to be the cheapest and the best.

So I haven't even bothered to check whether I could have gotten eircom since. Why would I, when it's way more expensive, way slower and has way higher contention ?

For the likes of yourself, eircom can be forced to use ADSL2 (not plus) to provide broadband. I understand that their equipment can implement different modulation schemes for individual lines. Or they can just enable every line with ADSL2 and replace the oldest modems.

Again, there's no point in them doing that until they decrease/remove the 48:1 contention, increase their speed and lower their prices. I won't be interested. Last time I did the maths, eircom were getting about €9,000 a month for the same level of infrastructure that Smart were offering for €39...

In the (now unlikely) event that Smart do keel over at some unknown stage in the future, I'll have saved a fortune in the meantime - I've already saved over €240 from the time last October that everyone warned me to jump ship - and I'll happily switch to Chorus or some other provider - basically whoever offers the best service/price balance.

At the moment, though, that balance isn't an either/or - I've got the best of both worlds!

And if and when a newer technology offers me a better service at a better price, I'm all for it.....but 'til then, fair play to (and hands off!) Smart with their LLU and ADSL2+....... :notworthy:

cgarvey

Liam Byrne wrote:

Last time I did the maths, eircom were getting about €9,000 a month for the same level of infrastructure that Smart were offering for €39...

Can you elaborate on that? Are you multiplying eircom costs by 48 or something (even then I couldn't get anywhere near your figures).

Your point about contention is a bit misguided, I think. Smart only offer contention free DSLAM/exchange level connections (same as Magnet LLU). Now while this is a much better user experience than the BitStream experience, it is far from contentionless. The only reason you're experience near-contentionless connections is because Smart haven't been able to connect as many customers as they liked. Had they been able (or allowed to, depending on your point of view) to reach their targets, I'm convinced that you'd be experiencing contention. Still better than eircom/BitStream, but it'd be there.

So if you're multiplying some figure by 48, then that's not an accurate calculation. Far from it. Either way I couldn't get close to your figures.

.cg

Liam Byrne

cgarvey wrote:

Can you elaborate on that? Are you multiplying eircom costs by 48 or something (even then I couldn't get anywhere near your figures). So if you're multiplying some figure by 48, then that's not an accurate calculation. Far from it. Either way I couldn't get close to your figures.

€50 for 1mB incl line rental = €200 for 4mB = €9,600 for 4mB uncontended*; I was even allowing €600 for the extra staff required to service the extra customers
--- compared to ---
€39.99 for 4mB incl line rental

Yeah, there might be a debate as to what's contended, and how well the backbone works, or how well it might work if Smart had more customers, but the fact is that that is currently what we are paying for - even if it is as a direct result of eircom's lack of LLU and GLUMP and other things that Smart might require to expand.

If Smart did take on more people, there's no-one to say they wouldn't expand their backhaul capacity to match this; but the above is the situation at present.

watty

Those sums still don't quite work.
Also does Smart actually make profit?

cgarvey

Liam Byrne wrote:

€50 for 1mB incl line rental = €200 for 4mB = €9,600 for 4mB uncontended*;

Ta for explanation. I think you're unfairly exaggerating the difference (i.e. for less than half of what you're quoting you can get 6Mb using your multiple-lines calculations). Just exaggerating, though, your point still stands. Smart offers a superior service (in terms of topology and speed) for a lot less then eircom.

Simple economics is my counter argument to your "What's to say.." but it's all speculation, so there's no point in arguing with your further on that.

.cg

Liam Byrne

Don't get me wrong.....I'm open (as I've already partially pointed out via allowing some of the €9,600 for staff costs) that it's not a completely clean calculation; it may well be exaggerated, but at the same time (as cgarvey pointed out) it's not a million miles from reality; in addition, Smart aren't even getting €24 of the €40, so there's lots of variables.

But even if you halved that figure it's still a crazy amount of difference.

As for whether Smart are making a profit - not my concern as an end-user. As long as they're making enough of a profit to stay in business, I'm happy.

I'm not looking for an argument, by any means....I was just pointing out that while LLU may not be the answer to Ireland's broadband woes, it's still a very welcome interim solution in my book, ensuring that I have had broadband for a year now and have saved almost €500 in that period, with no caps or additional overheads.

clohamon

It would be interesting to know what the reaction was from the (non Eircom) telecoms industry to Noel Dempsey's address. (There is a fuller version of it here http://www.noeldempsey.ie/show_doc.php?releaseID=526)

For instance did they think the references to "we" in relation to the "problems of the past" were a way of co-opting them into a shared responsibility?

Do targets ("challenges") from government mean anything at all to the industry if there isn't, as yet, any government money on the table?

Does the NBS mean that industry plans for wireless and LLU must be shelved again until all the detail is known? (GBS III probably strangled local initiatives for rural broadband for nearly two years, because providers and local groups could not self-start while there was a promise of government money, if they waited.)

Is anyone in industry concerned about the proliferation of plans and forums?

NBS (1) National Broadband Scheme (MANS)
GBS Group Broadband Scheme
NBS (2) National Broadband Scheme (TBA)
NBAP National Broadband Action Plan
NAF National Advisory Forum (on NGN)


And then compare these two:-

"Ireland will only continue to prosper if we can leap-frog ahead of the best of our competitors internationally.This may require speeds of over 50/100 Mbts being delivered to every home, but today we need to plan for between 15-25 Mbts, as an interim goal."

"The migration to Next Generation Networks will not be made at the expense of our current broadband rollout."