Where do you see Broadband in 5 years time

NeVeR

What speeds do you think we will be able to get and at what price.

BlackWizard

No option for 8mb?

jor el

To be completely honest, I can't see the masses being able to avail of anything above about 8Mbps, and the price will probably be more than what we pay now.

For those lucky enough to be able to avail of cable, wireless and LLU alternatives (very few), I can't see it going much faster than what's currently available without new technologies (fibre?). I'm not aware of any major plan to roll out FTTH, so I can't see that happening in the next 5 years. Ryan's National Broadband Scheming will do nothing.

jor el

BlackWizard wrote: »

No option for 8mb?

Or less?

kmick

Hopefully fibre at 20-100Mb in urban areas.

BlackWizard

jor el wrote: »

Or less?

I guess I'm the optimistic type.

meditraitor

jor el wrote: »

Or less?

Well, with NTL doing 20mb already this would be odd to say the least

Unless you were trying to be witty, well done if so

watty

DSL is pretty much at the limit (in availability and speed), advances will be in Wireless, Cable/HFC, fibre.

Comreg needs to make more spectrum available and do national licences instead of circles for higher speed and more users in some areas. But they know that, presumably busy planning.

BlackWizard

Thing is, some of us can get insane speeds and others terrible. So on average, where will we be in 5 years time? Including those able to choose UPC or a fast BB provider.

I'd say on average, around 8mb. That's being optimistic though (imo).

edit: this was a reply to meditraitor

jor el

meditraitor wrote: »

Well, with NTL doing 20mb already this would be odd to say the least

Unless you were trying to be witty, well done if so

NTL is only available to a small percentage of the population. I take the question to be what speeds will be generally available to the masses, and not, what will 6 people who can afford to pay 300euro a month be getting. So, I can't see there being anything greater than 8Mbps being available to the great unwashed, for at least 5-10 years.

everdead.ie

I can see upc hitting speeds of between 40-50mb/s and dsl achieving average speeds of 12mb/s business' will be able to avail of much heftier speeds but the general masses are going to depend on the government providing significant tax incentives to eircom to lay fiber going to be a long time before that happens folks

foggy_lad

40/50mbps would be great but i think people will have the same issues with their 1-12mb broadband in 5 and 10 years time

BendiBus

jor el wrote: »

NTL is only available to a small percentage of the population.

Does anyone have a figure on what percentage of the population? I suspect it's more than small, although certainly a minority of households.

watty

Possibly their limit is about 1/3rd of households.

Not every part of cable does BB yet

Not sure of ratio of passed houses vs subscriptions.

They have about 470k TV subs, but that inculdes maybe 180k MMDS, who can't get BB from UPC/NTL as it is receive only.

barnicles

No option for dial-up

Moriarty

From this Irish Times article..

Irish Times wrote:

Separately, UPC, which operates the Chorus and NTL cable TV networks, will offer 20Mbit/sec broadband from July 1st at a cost of €40 a month. It will be available to 422,000 homes in Dublin, Galway, Waterford, Limerick, Cork and some other major towns.

How many homes in the state? ~1m?

jor el

Moriarty wrote: »

From this Irish Times article..

How many homes in the state? ~1m?

That's quite a lot now. I would imagine that there's between 1 and 1.5M homes in the country. Anyone know how many DSL capable lines there are?

http://www.cso.ie/statistics/numprivhseholds.htm
It's 1,469,521 households.

heyjude

jor el wrote: »

To be completely honest, I can't see the masses being able to avail of anything above about 8Mbps, and the price will probably be more than what we pay now.

Agreed.

Gonzo

In 5 years time i'd imagine things will have hardly changed from what we have today. The Citys and Large towns will have even greater choice of some extremely fast broadband at great prices (UPC Cable, Smart, Fibre etc) while us poor unfortunates outside the urban areas will still be left on Eircom and its resellers with 8meg on average and even if higher speeds are available many of the lines still in their current state will not be good enough to offer the higher speeds towards 24meg due to line quality and distance from exchange. Prices will be very similar to what we have today and there will still be download limits in place.

jimmycrackcorm

I think we will see the most significant advancements in wireless broadband with new technologies and micro-cells deployments taking a lead.

lmimmfn

In Ireland in 5 years time i see it completely unchanged apart from those living in cities, and also the situation that if you get the max broadband available to you but you have a crap line youre screwed

In more mature countries, 20Mb average, 50Mb in cities

I doubt we'll be seeing 20Mb wireless bb in the next 5 years, however in maybe 8 years i would see 30-40Mb wireless being available

Cmar-Ireland

I'd be happy with my 3mb connection if the bloody thing didn't go slow at peak times due to contention :mad:

vibe666

if you look at the history of copper communications technology over the last 10-15 years, they said ISDN was the best you could hope for way back when until someone came up with something better.

then DSL came along and that was the best thing possible, but then someone tweaked that to make it more effective with RADSL and ADSL2 etc.

who know's maybe in 5 years time ADSL4 will have come along and allowed 24mbps up to 15km from the exchange, or some new wifi technology or 4G mobile data rates will be rolling out to allow you 100mb wireless access or something clever like that.

who saw 3.6mbps broadband and wifi on your mobile phone coming?

Hank Scorpio

dsl the same 8 megs + - once eircon got the power

cable will probably double , hopefully by then the majority will be able to get cable or fibre , just a dream tho:)

delllat

An Australian researcher, who discovered a way to make ADSL broadband connections up to 100 times faster, has been offered a job in Silicon Valley in the US to continue his research.

Dr John Papandriopoulos, the 29-year-old research fellow of University of Melbourne, has developed an algorithm to reduce the electromagnetic interference that slows down ADSL connections.

The Channel Register has posted Dr Papandriopoulos’s explanation of his research:

“We formulate a (standard) model for how DSLs attain their data-rate, considering crosstalk interference effects. We exploit the fact that interference varies across the frequency spectrum, and that if we are clever about the way in which we allocate transmission power amongst the various frequency bands, we can manage the interference between (strongly) coupled lines. For example, one user that interferes strongly with others within a band may be “turned off” within that band to avoid damaging the other lines, consequently raising the overall network rate.”

Dr Papandriopoulos will be joining a Silicon Valley start-up company, ASSIA, which is developing ways to optimize the performance of DSL networks. Together with him is Stanford Professor John Cioffi, who developed the computer chips inside the first DSL modem.

According to SMH, Dr Papandriopoulos is in the process of assigning the intellectual property for his invention to the university, but he stands to receive significant royalties from any licensing agreements.

If this technology is successfully commercialized, the DSL broadband speed ceiling will be closer to 100Mbps. Dr Papandriopoulos expects that with licensed vendors, the technology could be implemented by internet providers around the world within two or three years.
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vibe666

AHA!

see, told ya.

watty

Over hyped. And the limit beyond 1.5km is the cable response, not cross talk. Only applies with 1km and realistically a x4 improvement. x100 is fantasy.

MrVestek

I still see broadband as being a hell of alot better in every other country accept our own.

I predict that even south africa's broadband structure will outshine our ageing DSL network...

John mac

i very much doubt that every one that wants it will be able to access 25Mb.
for a reasonable cost.

fifth

8Mb will be standard to the majority of us in the country.. there'll be better speeds in cities and major towns, don't think the price will drop too much either. Also, better wireless speeds.

smellslikeshoes

I would Imagine 24mbit available to most of the country and 75-100mbit in the cities. As it is magnet have started providing 50mbit in some limited parts of Dublin and UPC should be capable of doing similar speeds without too much trouble. Five years is a hell of a long time in broadband even in a country where things move as slow as Ireland. Remember that it is not much longer than 5 years ago that Eircom first started enabling exchanges for broadband.

vibe666

i know we're a long way behind a lot of the world when it comes to broadband, but historically speaking we're only about 5 years behind the UK, so it's easy enough to see where we could be.

i know everyone goes on about the eircom monopoly but i can't see the EU allowng that to continue for much longer and i've already seen stuff in the news about EU wide broadband legislation which would go a long way to re-dressing the balance somewhat.

godskitchen

There will come a point in the near future where the copper in the lines is worth more than rolling out fibre across the network. At that point we will see fibre rolled out everywhere.

Plus with emerging new tech like wireless fixed line BB will have to move to fibre to have any chance. BT are already planning to move the entire network over to fibre by 2020. Prob wont happen by then but they have started the ball moving at least.

smellslikeshoes

godskitchen wrote: »

There will come a point in the near future where the copper in the lines is worth more than rolling out fibre across the network. At that point we will see fibre rolled out everywhere.

Plus with emerging new tech like wireless fixed line BB will have to move to fibre to have any chance. BT are already planning to move the entire network over to fibre by 2020. Prob wont happen by then but they have started the ball moving at least.

I'm pretty sure that it is already cheaper to put fiber in than a normal phoneline because of the costs of the metal itself.

smellslikeshoes

vibe666 wrote: »

i know we're a long way behind a lot of the world when it comes to broadband, but historically speaking we're only about 5 years behind the UK, so it's easy enough to see where we could be.

i know everyone goes on about the eircom monopoly but i can't see the EU allowng that to continue for much longer and i've already seen stuff in the news about EU wide broadband legislation which would go a long way to re-dressing the balance somewhat.

Thats not right at all. We aren't that far behind the UK. BT in the UK only provide 8mbit now and have since mid 2006, granted Eircom are only now going up to 8mbit (a little less than 8). We are at worst estimate 2 years behind the UK in terms of speed and in the case of broadband in the cities not much behind them at all. I'm not saying that we aren't far behind the rest of the world but I'm sick of people using the UK as an example of how far we are behind without knowing the facts of broadband speeds there.

watty

Availabilty is better there, but due to contention many people get 1/4 to 1/3rd the DSL package they pay for. Speeds on DSL for the majority are similar or lower.

Bulmers

watty wrote: »

They have about 470k TV subs, but that inculdes maybe 180k MMDS, who can't get BB from UPC/NTL as it is receive only.

Hi Watty, i know you're a guru in these matters but just on the above comment, I have MMDS and had NTL out few weeks back and was asking them about MMDS as i've read comments, i think from you that it is going to be decom'd in the future?..anyway they said no way and that they were testing broadband 20Mb on it in Drogeheda, not an issue for me as have BT BB but was just asking out of curiosity. So is it not possible to get BB on MMDS?

Sorry for off topic slightly

vibe666

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

Thats not right at all. We aren't that far behind the UK. BT in the UK only provide 8mbit now and have since mid 2006, granted Eircom are only now going up to 8mbit (a little less than 8). We are at worst estimate 2 years behind the UK in terms of speed and in the case of broadband in the cities not much behind them at all. I'm not saying that we aren't far behind the rest of the world but I'm sick of people using the UK as an example of how far we are behind without knowing the facts of broadband speeds there.

lots of urban areas in the UK have 25mbit access and some are already trialling 100mbit connection and even BT has announced a £1.5 billion investment and plans to have 10 million homes connected to 100mbit in 4 years time.

trust me, we are plenty far behind the UK. :P

smellslikeshoes

vibe666 wrote: »

lots of urban areas in the UK have 25mbit access and some are already trialling 100mbit connection and even BT has announced a £1.5 billion investment and plans to have 10 million homes connected to 100mbit in 4 years time.

trust me, we are plenty far behind the UK. :P

24mbit is max I can find for residential in the UK which definitely isn't 5 years ahead of the 20mbit UPC provide here.

Trials mean sweet **** all really, if they aren't available to customers and they are not a product accessible to the public. If they aren't available to customers in the UK then how could we possibly be behind them because of it.

Same goes for announcements really, unless its available to customers we can't be behind them because of it. Lets not forget our beloved Eircom with this announcement in 2006 that was supposed to give half the country 25mbit in 2007 that completely evaporated into thin air.

watty wrote: »

Availabilty is better there, but due to contention many people get 1/4 to 1/3rd the DSL package they pay for. Speeds on DSL for the majority are similar or lower.

Thats very true Watty but generally the speeds are really not 5 years ahead of us like he was claiming.

watty

Bulmers wrote: »

Hi Watty, i know you're a guru in these matters but just on the above comment, I have MMDS and had NTL out few weeks back and was asking them about MMDS as i've read comments, i think from you that it is going to be decom'd in the future?..anyway they said no way and that they were testing broadband 20Mb on it in Drogeheda, not an issue for me as have BT BB but was just asking out of curiosity. So is it not possible to get BB on MMDS?

Sorry for off topic slightly

No. The BB would be via a separate wireless system. However you would get one bill. It may indeed be available in the future. However, Ireland unilaterally used 2.5GHz/2.6Ghz for MMDS and elsewhere in Europe it has a different assignment. Comreg already reduced the allocation partly because of this.

watty

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

Thats very true Watty but generally the speeds are really not 5 years ahead of us like he was claiming.

Indeed it's only availability, not speed. the 1/4 and 1/3rd refers to UK. Here on Fixed Broadband of 1Mbps to 20Mbps most users get close to the package speeds. On average, in Ireland if you can actually get broadband , the speeds are better than the UK.

If you are more than 2km from an exchange, the only ways you will 10Mbps or higher is Cable, Fibre or Metro. Obviously there is a UK Market especially outside cable areas for Metro as UK DSL while, widely available is not on average very fast at all.


But BT in UK now has a real plan for fibre deployment for users and we don't. We only have backhaul fibre plans & deployments apart from a small number of newer housing developments.