Thank God Dempsey is nearly Gone

Sponge Bob

Dempsey is off with the fairies, whats new.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single8095

05.04.2007 - Communications Minister Noel Dempsey TD has warned that the construction of a next-generation network (NGN) serving Ireland is now a national priority and said the construction of an NGN as a strategic national asset by the State is one option being considered.

The state ALREADY has an NGN , its called ESB Fibre. All NGN really is 1000base ( Gigabit capable) fibre or 10GE which is 10 Gigabit Fibre.

The state owns this already through the ESB, Dempsey is the only shareholder on the ESB not that you could ever tell .

The state should consider EXPANDING this fibre by all means but somebody tell that moron Dempsey that he/us/thestate/fianna fail has an NGN already.

We haven’t the luxury of endless discussions, task forces or inter-departmental groups,” he warned.

But you will be gone from Comms and hopefully from cabinet in less than two months. Thank God for that . You are and have been simply awful

JNive

complete tool, he probably has totally forgotten about the ESB Fibre Ring, and jujst blurted out that rubbish cause it sounds like he has a plan for after the election, total waster, and really highlights that he isnt even aware of the current assets available to the state.

Cabaal

4 words......

what a bloody muppet!

JNive

They dont call it the Department of Fish, for nothing lol.

Seriously though, to have a single department to manage ALL forms of national and state resources is a joke.There should be Department of the Marine and Natural Resource, fine, then also a Department of Communications, completely bloody seperate.

Its like having Department of Education, Law, Reform and Health. imagine the inefficiency in that setup lol

Sponge Bob

You may recall that Dempsey has NEVER been photographed on a boat beyond a pier in all his time as minister for fish and fishy places , he totally refuses to go on any boat outside of a dock in case he gets seasick with cameras present . His press droids are very pointed about that and will not accept any invite that could leave Noel at sea ...even in a flat calm like today .

What a complete Wus

Neverthless his utter and complete failure in communications since day one exercises me more than his lack of seaworthiness does .

JNive

unbelievable isnt it, that the Minister responsible for looking after the Fishing & Sea industry and the Advancement of Irelands Technological Infrastructure a) gets seasick and cant go to sea and b) knows feck all about technology, computers, or what the bloody internet even is id imagine.

I bet he views internet use as 'being able to check your email every day and check google now and again' so 'whats the rush, just use dial up or something' lol

Dean820

What has the opposition parties promised in terms of Broadband if they get elected?

I'll make sure not to vote this waster back in anyway.

watty

JNive wrote:

They dont call it the Department of Fish, for nothing lol.

Seriously though, to have a single department to manage ALL forms of national and state resources is a joke.There should be Department of the Marine and Natural Resource, fine, then also a Department of Communications, completely bloody seperate.

Its like having Department of Education, Law, Reform and Health. imagine the inefficiency in that setup lol

So the Fish should be in with Mines, Oil/Gas wells and Peat Briquettes?

Three departments. They used to have the roads in with it too.

The Marine encompasses more than Fish. Originally the only training/trained radio operators where MARINE RADIO operators, also there are harbours, Coastguards etc. The Post Office originally controlled Telegraph. Hence prohibition to this day in UK & Ireland, that does not exist in USA, that various licenced radio services may not pass 3rd party messages.

However, JNive, I agree totally with your sentiments.

watty

Dean820 wrote:

What has the opposition parties promised in terms of Broadband if they get elected?

I'll make sure not to vote this waster back in anyway.

If they have a plan, it's well hidden.

Rattlehead_ie

The state ALREADY has an NGN , its called ESB Fibre. All NGN really is 1000base ( Gigabit capable) fibre or 10GE which is 10 Gigabit Fibre.

Although I fully agree with you Sponge that our beloved Mr Dempsey is nothing short of a bumbling idiot......NGN is not just fibre gig+ capable networking, its the infrastructure \ architecture that is behind it, the protocls \ encapsulation methods as well as the likes of for e.g. IPv6.

I dont know thought about the ESB Fibre network as far as I know it is just standard fibre across the country and doesn't use the above the defines NGN.......... that being said the state has a company or an "arm" in the ESB that is well capable of bringing Ireland straight to the forefront of Broadband and communication infrastucture in Europe, but heaven forbid someone in charge would make a decision to benifit not only the country in terms of attracting more global IT to us and away from cheap labour in asia, but also the irish consumer.

Sponge Bob

Rattlehead_ie wrote:

NGN is not just fibre gig+ capable networking, its the infrastructure \ architecture that is behind it, the protocls \ encapsulation methods as well as the likes of for e.g. IPv6.

Of course. It also converts and carries legacy traffic like fax for example , from exchange to exchange .

The state does not own any assets where fax or x.25 or other legacy standards need breaking out and therefore the ESB network is an NGN ....given the uses to which it will be put in the wild. Nor do other telcos who would use this NGN, they being pure IP like Magnet or Digiweb.

I dont know thought about the ESB Fibre network as far as I know it is just standard fibre across the country and doesn't use the above the defines NGN

DWDM fibre, not standard but ultra high capacity. It need never do full NGN and is perfectly adequate as a 10gE or GigE Ip only carrier. It is an NGN to all intents and purposes and is owned by the state.

I also note Dempsey has never extended this network beyond what was built a few years back , before his time.

Rattlehead_ie

I also note Dempsey has never extended this network beyond what was built a few years back , before his time.

Any to be honest, even if he had another 8 years in office I dont think he would either.... do you?

As for the ESB, I do know that its well capable,but I had been under the impression that it was not only the gig+ that qualified it as such ... i stand corrected

Sponge Bob

Rattlehead_ie wrote:

Any to be honest, even if he had another 8 years in office I dont think he would either.... do you?

"A Joined up Network requires Joined up Thinking" (sponge bob 2002 and 2003)

Make that 80 years

What I personally find Most Tragic is that one of his own civil servants wrote this codswallop for Dempsey . If that speech is indicative of the intellectual rigour prevalent in the Department of Communications then we ( thats Ireland collectively we ) are doomed as a knowledge economy or indeed as any viable form of economy with distributed economic activity .

An intelligent and understanding minister ( its a hypothetic possibility ) would be thwarted at every angle by that low class of thought and understanding within his own department.

I frankly despair now of the future , the imminent post Dempsey future .

As for the ESB, I do know that its well capable,but I had been under the impression that it was not only the gig+ that qualified it as such ... i stand corrected

You are quite right in that assertion for a legacy system operator such as eircom that need to carry fax traffic (for example) or x.25 or x.400 for transmission over an IP backbone. NGN converts to and from IP as necessary at the nearest feasible point ....or not if you are carrying DSL data around from exchange to core.

You may have noted that eircom will enable 240 NGN nodes ( acording to P Danon himself) but they have some 1200 exchanges. Thats max 20% of exchanges . NGN will not be ubituitous by any measure .

In the UK BT , OTOH, will convert EVERY SINGLE EXCHANGE to NGN . Only large exchanges will be NGN enabled here.

New market entrants and eircom competitors will not have exchanges with copper and fax lines and do not need to support these legacy systems and convert to IP nor will they .

Consequently we already have whats required in teh Big cities, a national GigE network.

damien

Sponge Bob wrote:

Only large exchanges will be NGN enabled here.

Or ones in prime development areas.

Sponge Bob

from

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single7928

Eircom’s chief operating officer Andy MacLeod said that the incumbent’s network will have nodes capable of carrying 1Gbps speeds at 174 sites and speeds of 10Gbps at 66 sites. “This will support DSL growth and growth in enterprise data services. As we go forward the new network will replace our Frame Relay and ATM networks. It will mean we can the new network for the cost of what we run the two current networks.”

The 1gb nodes will be along the national arterial routes or else they will be VDSL cabs ( although I heard VDSL nodes will be extra and are uncounted in the 240 figure ) and the 10gb nodes will be large city exchanges where VDSL gets rolled out and a few industrial parks like Airside and Citywest and Sandyford. Most 10gb nodes will be in the 5 big cities and the rest will be in Athlone and Portlaoise and Carlow and another few spots which happen to be schlap bang between 2 of the 5 big cities .

In Galway some small exchanges along the N6 and N18 will have the fibre running past the door and that may well explain why Kilrickle and Aughrim were on your list of 319 Damien.

Ardrahan was similarly given DSL 2 years back. Its tiny but on a main fibre along the N18 . Every exchange in Galway except the miniscule Maam Cross , and with fibre outside under the road outside , has been done or has been announced .

Kilcolgan and Craughwell were done with no official announcement , again they are near high capacity fibre .

Many of these existing arterial fibres are now being upgraded to support 10Ge / GigE instead of the current ATM and the ATM gear in these small exchanges will be redundant afterwards so the swap is necessary .

The NGN grade fibre will run along primary routes like Dublin Athlone Galway Shannon Limerick Portlaoise Dublin making it dead easy to enable certain exchanges or imperative to swap out ATM gear that is no longer supported in some cases .It will not run north of Galway or west of Longford and Cavan I hear.

All of Galway is prime development land, ' prime development land' is post modern culchie speak for "The Field" .

Finally you should always remember and acknowledge Damien that NGN is being forced upon eircom not only by traffic growth issues but also by Ericsson who supply their AXE10 switches. This is not vision stuff, its a threat to their bread and butter revenue.

Ericsson are withdrawing support for these TDM switches of theirs.

lucernarian

They're withdrawing support for what is probably the most widespread exchange switching equipment in the world???? Sounds like commercial suicide on first thoughts.

Is there going to be no location further north of the N6 corridor that will get these network upgrades? You mention Cavan, which is a bit confusing.

I also notice that Dublin 14/16 will be the first areas to benefit from Alfie Kane's buried ducting from the 90s. Nothing ever changes:rolleyes:

Dempsey's NGN and the older Project Dingle are as much pie in the sky as anything else. A commitment like that, with lots of money involved will always need a minister and/or cabinet who knows what they want to do with it, and who has the vision to see its potential. We are lacking technologically minded people in Irish Politics.

If only IrelandOffline had a sitting TD:)

Sponge Bob

To_be_confirmed wrote:

They're withdrawing support for what is probably the most widespread exchange switching equipment in the world???? Sounds like commercial suicide on first thoughts.

Not if you sell their IP Softswitch replacements to the telcos . Ericsson cannot dreally evelop the AXE any further given its tiny RAM and cannot sell an upgrade to TDM requiring a switch swap to another TDM switch with more RAM .

Is there going to be no location further north of the N6 corridor that will get these network upgrades? You mention Cavan, which is a bit confusing.

its going to Drogheda Cavan Dundalk Mullingar and Longford which are north of the N6 but to nowhere in Connacht north of the N6 or to Donegal...or to Kerry and Wexford either.

lucernarian

If they can bring it to Cavan and bring it to Waterford, they can bloody well bring it to Wexford too. It's very suprising to see the town left out. I also feel that the Govt. should lobby for access in Donegal, given the very tough time they have economically. They cannot really improve physical isolation, but they can certainly help remove technological isolation. Kerry is also isolated, but to a lesser degree.

It sounds like a lazy scheme, and I cannot see why the main area code exchange (the secondary exchange?) in every part of Ireland should not have its backhaul upgraded. These exchanges would already have some sort of fibre link, 155 Mbps or 34 Mbps perhaps. The ducting is already there.

Will the NGN have any influence on the further enabling of the small exchanges across as announced this week?

Sponge Bob

The plan is to put 10Ge fibre between the towns that will get VDSL and IPTV in 2008 . Wexford will still only have ADSL as will Donegal .

If there were eircom 1gb capable fibre into those counties then they might get 1gb . I believe there isn't but that there apparently is in Cavan and Longford and Dundalk and Drogheda and Mullingar .

eircom , as you probably know, utterly refuse to use any government fibre such as ESB and the eNet MANs . The government has paid to put 10Ge capable fibre into Donegal and Cavan already but cannot make eircom use it .

watty

Nor can owners of big fat MAN fibres "make" eircom supply backhaul at even close to a competitive Eu price.

DaBreno

Sponge Bob wrote:

In Galway some small exchanges along the N6 and N18 will have the fibre running past the door and that may well explain why Kilrickle and Aughrim were on your list of 319 Damien.

Spongebob, Im less than 10 miles off the N17. Do you think I'll ever see Fibre broadband?

Sponge Bob

DaBreno wrote:

Spongebob, Im less than 10 miles off the N17. Do you think I'll ever see Fibre broadband?

Never. The corofin exchange is the furthest that fibre will ever get off the N17 if it ever goes out the N17 .

Solair

Well both of eircom's switch manufacturers have started (several years ago) to move their products towards NGN.

Remember, there are billions of euro worth of these devices installed around Europe and the world generally, so they do have upgrade paths. They were designed to be highly modular and upgradable.

Eircom's network has two voice / ISDN switch types in use Ericsson AXE and Alcatel E10. Both of these are merged into NGN networks in France for example, so it's far from difficult.

Ericsson have an upgrade path for AXE to a softswitch with full IP support
and the next step for Alcatel E10 is similar, a multimedia softswitch gateway which is in the same E10 family.


None of these companies are abandoning TDM switching just yet, but you can be sure they're offering upgrade packages and will be very keen to get the likes of eircom to spend money on buying new gear to bring their exchanges up to the next level.

From what I understand of the process, most of the exchange remains exactly as is and from an end user's point of view it will still provide the same narrow band services. It just means that rather than routing the narrowband voice and ISDN traffic over the existing backbone networks, it will use IP.
Modules get added that give it an ability to provide a much wider range of services including very fast DSL and it gets connected to a very heavy fiber backhaul.

Bit by bit, they can start moving to higher speed services, delivering voice using VoIP rather than analogue lines etc etc.

It's not as dramatic a cut over to new technology as you'd think.

lucernarian

What implications will an NGN have for dialup modems? Will they be usable on such a network? I still haven't heard of any modem working over VoIP.

I'd say Alcatel are pushing especially for change. They supply eircom's DSLAMs already and it would be good for them for one piece of equipment which can supply everything. As it stands, the AXE10 has a greater presence in eircom's itenary than Alcatel.

But the big thing is, the voice system will have to be modified greatly aswell. Eircom planning to sell 37 sites will mean that they have no choice but to get new switching equipment.

Sponge Bob

Solair wrote:

It's not as dramatic a cut over to new technology as you'd think.

True. But it will not lead to higher speed BB except in the 5 big cities.

At heart NGN in Ireland is a monopolistic assault on a creaking and semi moribund LLU market and also on UPC who own the cable assets in the 5 big cities .

The key difference between Irish and UK NGN is that the UK will NGN existing exchanges with LLU gear .

In Ireland eircom intend to Cabinetise ( see page 31) their existing exchanges leaving nowhere for the LLU gear unless Comreg get their fingers out pronto and demand as a minimum that these cabinets be co-lo-ed along mans and along non MAN diverse fibre paths in Dublin .

This part of the strategy is based on the antics of Telecom NZ where LLU did not exist. As soon as there was a threat of LLU Telecom NZ said fine, we will abandon those exchanges and roll out cabinets instead .

NGN is technically an abandonment of ATM in the backbone and the adoption of Ethernet instead, GigE is 1990s technology , and obviously with higher capacity thereafter in some places .

NGN on the backbone in Ireland is extra capacity.

NGN in the cities and on the streets is a fundamental assault on competition under the nose of the weak and clueless Comreg , indeed quite probably with the connivance of Comreg under what now is the weakest leadership in the 10 year history of regulators in Ireland.

Even if Comreg do dither their way to something equitable for all there will be a 2 year hiatus in LLU deployment while they swing their mickeys at eircom , technically speaking that is. This hiatus has already started here with Magnet pulling back from LLU in many instances , picking only the customers closest to the exchanges since february this year .

I am not quite sure what happens to dialup but as it should convert to IP in the exchange meaning the dialup modem bank is IN each NGN enabled exchange.

Solair

To give you a little irish telecommunications history:

At a local level, about 50% of the exchanges are Alcatel, the rest being AXE. Eircom (or TE) seem to have used AXE for many of the higher end switching functions on the network as it was a more flexible system in its day than E10. So, things like international gateway switches etc are AXE.

But, for example, the entire 07 area's Alcatel E10, most of the 06 area, large areas of the midlands. All of the northeast, and big chunks of Dublin e.g. Ranelagh, Dun Laorighe, Tallaght, Clontarf, etc etc

Basically, when TE was upgrading from the old electromechanical switching systems in the early 1980s, Alcatel won the contract to provide the first raft of equipment that was installed. This initially went into areas that had the oldest electromechanical switches (step-by-step technology (1930s stuff!) (parts of Dublin etc) and rural areas which had no automatic phone service at all and had been dependent on operator service!

Ericsson already had large contract with P&T since the 1950s and had installed crossbar switching in the urban areas, particularly Dublin and Cork and galway city and other major business-centres. Upgrading this wasn't as high prority as it was actually quite modern, even in the 80s.
Ericsson had a fairly logical and standard upgrade path from their crossbar technology to AXE, so those areas that had older ericsson switches, generally ended up with AXE switching from the 80s onwards.


The Alcatel E10 switching system's actually pretty significant in telecommunications history terms. It's was the first digital switch to be used in a real public network, actually connected to end users, anywhere in the world!
The first prototype having gone into trial service in franace in 1970 and real commercial use starting in 1972 !
(Although the Americans claimed to have invented the world's first digital switching system 6 years later .. )

---

Anyway, to get back on topic, the Irish network was pretty cutting edge in the late 80s and early to mid 90s. It as one of the first all-digital neworks on the planet! It's fallen terribly behind the times since eircom was privatised. There's been very limited investment and they've practically missed the boat with broadband.

It's a terrible shame really.

However, the two switching platforms eircom have should allow easy movement to NGN.

BT's a bit more complex in the UK as they've some dead end technology from Marconi (inherited from the state owned days when they had to buy british)

---

The key in terms of competition in the NGN is to ensure that eircom are required to provide access for other players at all levels from the design stage!

We already have a situation where many lines are served by very small exchanges and remote concentrators (sub-exchanges connected to a parent by a fiber) that would be uneconomic for every operator to be present in. If they move towards even further distributed network, they'll really squeeze out the LLU !

The logical solution would be to force them to provide spare dark fiber capacity to these cabnets so that other operators can use them too.

It may also be a nice idea to ensure that any MAN networks can be connected to from any eircom box!

I'd like to see their network plans be submitted to a public forum and to the competition authority for approval.

Rattlehead_ie

eircom , as you probably know, utterly refuse to use any government fibre such as ESB and the eNet MANs . The government has paid to put 10Ge capable fibre into Donegal and Cavan already but cannot make eircom use it .

Sponge I'm guessing this includes all their bitstream customers aswell? As if Eircom arent using it their CORP customers arent

Sponge Bob

Rattlehead_ie wrote:

Sponge I'm guessing this includes all their bitstream customers aswell? As if Eircom arent using it their CORP customers arent

Well NGN is not about bitstream outside the 5 big cities.

In the 5 big cities bitstream will move from ADSL to VDSL2+ and 10-25mbit packages in those cities.

Outside we might get 8mbits. NGN is also about a communications apartheid for the 70% of the population who do not live in the 5 big cities.

Were eircom to supply VDSL2+ from all their DSL enabled exchanges it would be more equitable but as I understand it they will not .

VDSL is a short range super dsl but ADSL beats it beyond 3km ( 1.5 miles ) or maybe even less . To get universal 25mbit capability in the BIG CITIES eircom will need to push a cabinet (mini exchange) to within under a mile from each and every home and business . For universal 50mbit they will need to go to 1/3 of a mile max.

They have never come out and said what their precise provisioning plan is , surprise . I would guesstimate that their current exchanges do 2 mile loops so their new cabinets will do 1 mile loops max.

lucernarian

I wouldn't say it's that desperate SB. Eircom could not be seen to leave 70% of the country. They got enough flak for leaving out 20%. The other urban areas will be done in time, but rural folk can look to the wireless providers for such a service.

Blaster99

It's pretty normal to offer different services in different places. Right now eircom is primarily rolling out a service across the nation. They will roll out the next generation stuff in a similar fashion, ie in order of exchange size.

Now... should we wait for ComReg to grasp the concept or should we let eircom rip? I vote for the latter. At least then we'll get away from this 3Mbps crap that we're stuck with now.

watty

I bet they offer it only for 1st few years in areas with Magnet/Smart/BT LLU.

Sponge Bob

To_be_confirmed wrote:

The other urban areas will be done in time, but rural folk can look to the wireless providers for such a service.

Unlike with co-ax cable in the 5 big cities , widespread 25 mbit speeds on wireless for 90% of Ireland covering 70% of the population are a bit of a tall order if you thinks abouts it a tad , non ??!!

Blaster99

I'm sure we'll get a press release from Digiweb any day now.

watty

You can do 25Mbs on Wireless. But even with non-existant new flavours of Wimax, it would mean a base station sector for about 5 people.

JNive

and you can consider the revenue generated per base station, versus cost of operating such a network of base stations lol

Sponge Bob

I am delighted that faster speeds will soon come to the 5 main urban areas and that 30% of the population will be able to access services that are now available in advanced communucations environments such as Warsaw ....said city where an excellent presentation was recently made on what VDSL will eventually deliver to Dublin Cork Galway Limerick and Waterford....but not of course to the other 70% of the population and 90% of the state by area.

Basically you need 25mbits to do VDSL / IPTV and heavy duty streaming .

The rest of the state will probably get an incremental improvement to 8mbits while the 5 main urban centres go to 25 mbits but from now on the 5 main urban centres will henceforth start to rocket away from the rest of the state in terms of available services .

Of course the function of the state is to deliver equitable dispersal of access to all and not just to the 30% of the population in 5 big towns and to have a focused plan to so do or simply , as a matter of policy, to drive the government owned NGN to within something like 30-50km of every citizen from which the market can take over in most cases with an admixture of technologies .

None of that will happen on Dempseys watch . He should have kept his gob shut and not to publically reveal the depths of 'thinking ' within the moronic inferno that is our misnamed Dept of Communications .