Shane Ross Broadband Bill

rardagh

Just saw this on Shane Ross's website.

http://www.shane-ross.ie/archives/288/broadband-bill-to-be-published/

I admire his 'standing up' and making some noise.

dahamsta

There's two hopes of that bill passing: No and Bob.

Ross created a hoo-ha at an Eircom AGM half a decade or more ago, why didn't he introduce this bill then?

adam

crawler

Sadly I think Adam is probably right...

While I agree with Mr Ross in principle - I simply don't think 20Mbps is good enough and being sensible about it, if a copper line can do 20Mbps then it is probably short enough for VDSL offering 50Mbps...which in my opinion is still not good enough...a single HDTV stream will eat about 10Mbps alone so 20Mbps wont even support 2 of those for multi-room TV (no room left for actual broadband and Voip services)...yes I know compression will get better but equally we will find way to use more bandwidth.....

Verizon (FIOS) and Cox cable (DOCSIS 3.0) etc in the US are all running trials of 100Mbps to the home and even Virgin Media in the UK have several customers on 100Mbps services.

Most proper telcos are evaluating Active WDM solutions to the home to upgrade their PON technologies...

And while I am at it - can we not forget about upload speeds, latency, packet loss, jitter, service levels etc - it's about the overall quality as well as the speed...

So Yes Mr Ross, - it should be an ambition for universal high speed broadband but I don't think you are being ambitious enough

Sponge Bob

I feel that

1. Universal something useful should proceed in tandem with a selective something wonderful.

At this stage we need to legislate for Universal Service everywhere while getting some FTTH / GPON / Docsis 3 / VDSL deployments out there too.

Remember that even Universal 1mbit ( Shane wants 5mbit by next year) is better than the crummy 12k-20k dialup that many Irish households have to suffer.

2. Shane Ross is the sole member of the Oireachtas who has been consistent and consistently vociferous on the need for Universal Broadband availability .

Please email him your expressions of support along with your thanks, its shane.ross@oireachtas.ie

thebman

crawler wrote: »

Sadly I think Adam is probably right...

While I agree with Mr Ross in principle - I simply don't think 20Mbps is good enough and being sensible about it, if a copper line can do 20Mbps then it is probably short enough for VDSL offering 50Mbps...which in my opinion is still not good enough...a single HDTV stream will eat about 10Mbps alone so 20Mbps wont even support 2 of those for multi-room TV (no room left for actual broadband and Voip services)...yes I know compression will get better but equally we will find way to use more bandwidth.....

Verizon (FIOS) and Cox cable (DOCSIS 3.0) etc in the US are all running trials of 100Mbps to the home and even Virgin Media in the UK have several customers on 100Mbps services.

Most proper telcos are evaluating Active WDM solutions to the home to upgrade their PON technologies...

And while I am at it - can we not forget about upload speeds, latency, packet loss, jitter, service levels etc - it's about the overall quality as well as the speed...

So Yes Mr Ross, - it should be an ambition for universal high speed broadband but I don't think you are being ambitious enough

You are never going to get multiroom viewing over a line in rural Ireland. This is about basic services for the country, the cities will take care of themselves with proper regulation and competition which needs to be introduced.

Its illogical to claim that everyone in the country has the right to 100Mbps access at this time. That hasn't happened anywhere else. Most other countries have quite poor rural access and we should work to at least match that as currently we have virtually no service in rural areas and what services do exist are usually monopolies.

It is important to be realistic with expectations.

What some other person said about why didn't Shane introduce this earlier. Someone posted in broadband that he tried last year and it failed to pass. At least he is trying. Secondly he didn't do earlier than that because he was telling them to do it verbally and was hoping they would listen to him. This is a last resort to try to force our idiotic government into taking this matter seriously.

So, what have you all done that gives you the right to criticise Shane? While we are at it, who the hell did you vote for!

crawler

Not disagreeing with Shane at all (or what others are saying) and in fact, I would do anything to support him....

I just think if we are going to fix it, we need to fix it properly...

We are only a nation of 4.x m people and we are smaller than many US states - it is possible and would cost a lot less than that being spent on roads (yes, rardagh, to get 100% high speed availability)

With regards to phone lines and TV services for the rural community - I never suggested one technology would fix it all, I was just providing one example - in that example I would suggest DTT for TV and LTE broadband as devised by 3GPP2 or wimax or some other form of high speed wireless services. Naturally it has to be practical but there is no one technology that will fix it - we need an urban, semi urban and rural strategy all delivering very high speed services.

In all of this there is also the issue of state funded competition...the only way to overcome this is to provide an open network for all owned and operated outside of the main operators - this in the main has not worked with e-net so it needs a new bottom up approach.

We need to think bigger and fix this for once and for all otherwise we will be playing catch up every 5 years and that helps no one.

I spent nearly all my time - working and home trying to help people get broadband so anyone that does anything to help is making a positive contribution - well done Shane. My point is we should try to fix it properly.

thebman

Well this area constantly is moving forward and faster speeds are required all the time so there is no fixing it once and for all which is why the government have been ignoring the issue IMO.

If they did get high speed broadband nationwide, people would still complain about the speed not being as good as Japan's.

I don't think its feasible to have it in all areas but we should aim to have 20Mbps in rural area's and put systems in place so that competition ensures the main Cities and towns have enough competition to push speeds up to the same level as other EU countries.

Its clear the government doesn't want to be the leader in this area so the only other option is to request them to give us the same level of access as everyone else in Europe.

We are only a small country but with a very spread out population and young people are increasingly moving to towns and cities and they are the people that will use and need broadband the most.

I don't think its economically viable to have a line capable of carrying HD content for two tv's and broadband for anyone else in the house in every rural home in Ireland.

We should aim to support areas with reasonable size populations. Towns and Cities need first class access for business and because competition will allow this to be viable as they fight for services.

Villages will have second class services where they can do almost everything someone in a town or city can do but not quite and rural areas will have to live with basic services that will allow them to do the neccessities online like research, online banking etc... with ease and allow them to download large files in relatively short periods of time.

I think the above is more realistic, at least as a starting point.

watty

HDTV needs 18Mbps, or else you might as well upscale SD @ 5Mbps.
SD TV needs about 4Mbps peak, 2Mbps average. But you need to be able to handle the peaks with QOS that degrades the non-IPTV connection.

Satellite, DTT, MMDS (2.5 & higher) are much better for TV delivery than anykind of DSL, which is going to be limited to one setbox.

crawler

Brim - we are on the same sheet on this one - I just think the country deserves the best....we will all have different opinions but the important thing is we all agree that something needs to be done....

DecTenToo

Did anyone check his blog today ...

... I have learned that several telecoms operators intend to make major announcements in the coming days. It is thought that areas with speeds currently in the region of 2-3Mb broadband will soon have services offered in the region of 7-8Mb.

That would be nice, if true ... but I wonder how much it will cost ....

MrVostro

I would settle for making it mandatory for every phone line in the country being capable of over 1Mbs. Then lets go from there.

At the moment far too many people are on enabled exchanges and still cannot get BB. Its a laugh

watty

DecTenToo wrote: »

Did anyone check his blog today ...



That would be nice, if true ... but I wonder how much it will cost ....

People that can already get DSL can probably be upgraded to 8Mbps to 40Mbps depending on line and distance.

The problem is the people that can't get DSL, which could be as many as 40% on a DSL enabled exchange.

Also there is no real competition to eircom on DSL, as even with LLU, eircom makes most of the profit.

clohamon

The Bill is here:http://www.shane-ross.ie/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/bi-bill-2008.pdf

I have the following queries:

1. Can you mandate service level without also legislating the funds to provide it?
   
2. The composition of the Commission. - very little user representation
   
3. Who appoints the Chairman of the "Network" Board ?
   
4. Network CEO has to start-up a state infrastructure company from scratch.
   
5. What about enet ? Could it not be assumed into the "Network" to provide start-up management.
   
6. What is Comreg's relationship with the new structure apart from its board membership ?
   
7. Will this fly with Europe ? - State competition with the private sector in areas already served by the private sector.