[3 appointed preferred bidder in NBS] The Country Is F***ed , Lets Emigrate Now

thebman

The only good that can come of this is people leaving eircom dial up for 3 which will give eircom an incentive to upgrade those exchanges to get some money back although even then it probably won't pay them to do this.

The most likely scenario is that users will move to 3 and the debt ridden eircom will lose the money from dial up users which is basically free money and probably go under which might allow the government to buy the network.

oscarBravo

Blaster99 wrote: »

Seeing as this forum tends to live on speculation most of the time, do we know for a fact that 3 is planning to use HSDPA for their service? Before we get too worked up about nothing, for instance.

What else would they use?

thebman

oscarBravo wrote: »

What else would they use?

GPRS

Our man in Havana

Sweet Jebus no! 256 kb/s if you are lucky.

drunkmonkey

Bond-007 wrote: »

Sweet Jebus no! 256 kb/s if you are lucky.

There's been an improvement latley, I seriously think they know what there doing this time....

Here's a 3 speed test now...

thebman

drunkmonkey wrote: »

There's been an improvement latley, I seriously think they know what there doing this time....

Here's a 3 speed test now...

By any chance do you work for 3? Most of your recent posts are showing this speed test or talking up 3 in complete contrast to the megathread about them.

Maybe your not but you wouldn't be the first employee from them to post here.

watty

brim4brim wrote: »

GPRS

They have no GSM.
So you get 3G (up to 350k) or HSDPA (up to 7.2Mbps) or nothing.

I presume also that part of the plan is to reduce the use of Vodaphone masts and improve voice call coverage too. I doubt they will prevent a mast being used for voice. The sum of all voice traffic is subtracted from available data bandwidth. The default 3GPP codec is AMR and is 4.75 kbps to 12.2kbps. Thus on a heavily loaded data sector, 15 voice calls would reduce your speed from 250kbps to maybe less than 200kbps.

One reason Mobile operators don't like VOIP apart from cost issues and poor user experience (Vodaphone's reason to disable E65 VOIP is poor user experience) is that typically it takes up to 10 times the bandwidth.

drunkmonkey

brim4brim wrote: »

By any chance do you work for 3? Most of your recent posts are showing this speed test or talking up 3 in complete contrast to the megathread about them.

Maybe your not but you wouldn't be the first employee from them to post here.

No I don't work for 3, I supply broadband from a host of providers to rural communities and 3 is the clear favourite due to cost, portability and ease of use. 3 have had there problems i'm not denying that but this move will be a positive step forward for their network, 3 would have had a very decent phone network by now only for the uptake of mobile broadband which screwed up everything.
There due a break, i'm really tired of this constant 3 bashing, it's not fair, they have helped more consumers in Rural areas in one year than Eircom has done in 30......

The 3 solution isn't for the boys in d4 to play their xbox games on, it's there to provide acces to people who can't get it by any other means. It no substitue for a wired connection but these people in the sticks can't wait any longer for Eircom to get the finger out....

Do you honestly think i'm making up these speedtest results?

It's averaging anywhere between 1.5 and 2.5mb

thebman

drunkmonkey wrote: »

No I don't work for 3, I supply broadband from a host of providers to rural communities and 3 is the clear favourite due to cost, portability and ease of use. 3 have had there problems i'm not denying that but this move will be a positive step forward for their network, 3 would have had a very decent phone network by now only for the uptake of mobile broadband which screwed up everything.
There due a break, i'm really tired of this constant 3 bashing, it's not fair, they have helped more consumers in Rural areas in one year than Eircom has done in 30......

The 3 solution isn't for the boys in d4 to play their xbox games on, it's there to provide acces to people who can't get it by any other means. It no substitue for a wired connection but these people in the sticks can't wait any longer for Eircom to get the finger out....

Do you honestly think i'm making up these speedtest results?

It's averaging anywhere between 1.5 and 2.5mb

Yes well my parents were on 3, my little brother and my other brothers girlfriend in a rural area in Offaly. Hardly D4 and all getting sub dial up speeds and not being able to connect at peak times, all connecting to different masts.

This is still the case for my brother and my other brothers girlfriend but my father has switched to O2 and now gets 1Mbps up/down constantly with 100ms ping times due to proximity to the mast.

I don't think they are due a break. They screwed the country for over a year and have never apologised or refunded customers for their inadequate service.

I work for a website and we ran into massive problems with their half-arsed shared IP policy too and the users themselves had to suffer with it when they tried to use Google and were being told their IP was showing irregular activity :rolleyes:

3 deserve to go under more than eircom. At least eircom customers are happy with the quaility of the service even if it is over priced and not available in enough areas (which is the biggest problem).

drunkmonkey

Are they on the very edge of signal?, When was the last time you ran a speed test on 3? Could you do one for me now?

thebman

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Are they on the very edge of signal?, When was the last time you ran a speed test on 3? Could you do one for me now?

My parents and brother were/are on 1-2 bar signal.

My brothers girlfriend I'm not too sure about but she is in Clara town so I can't imagine she'd have that poor a signal.

I'm in Dublin and don't use 3 so can't do a speedtest.

drunkmonkey

brim4brim wrote: »

My parents and brother were/are on 1-2 bar signal.

My brothers girlfriend I'm not too sure about but she is in Clara town so I can't imagine she'd have that poor a signal.

I'm in Dublin and don't use 3 so can't do a speedtest.

So what your saying is, your partents and brother currently don't have it, you don't have it either but your brothers girlfriend has it in clare but you've no idea what speed she's getting...
Don't think you've any justification in 3 bashing as your not even a current customer...

I'm on a network with heavy voice and data traffic, it's now peak time all the kids are home from school...

Not great but it's still a big jump from a few months ago...

watty

You are "a" user. HSDPA is VARIABLE from 100kbps to 3.5Mbps. You can draw no conclusions whatsoever from your speed as you can't know how many people are using it.

I can roughly work out how many might be using a sector of a mast, but only by making some assumptions. On 3.6Mbps HSDPA you could have as few as 3 users continuously accessing traffic get that speed. It can be under 500kbps for 5 simultaneous streams on 3.6Mbps, or about 8 streams for 7.2Mbps cell, assuming all modems support the higher speed.

I'm not bashing "3". But I know how the technology works and the serious limitations of it for fixed Broadband is that you would need to have less than 120 real internet using customers in a cell to have the poorest broadband speeds and 3 to 5 times real broadband latency and over TEN times real broadband jitter.

As the product becomes more mature you would have no way of limiting the customers to 120 (40 per sector) and assume only 1/8th of them transferring data at same time to get Broadband speed.

Your particular statistics prove nothing. I'm sure withing driving distance of where I am I could find > 1.5Mbps or < 200kbps HSDPA.

At least Meteor or O2 can fall back to 240kbps EDGE for extra capacity (Meteor are rolling out 3G/HSDPA, at present they have only GSM/GPRS/EDGE for data). 3 Ireland has only 3G/HSDPA.

Statistics show that about 10% of customers will run torrents etc. So if a sector has 100 physical customers about 1/2 can connect at once (I'd expect a lot less than 1/2 at once actually, to the 48ish connection limit of 7.2Mbps is not too bad). However maybe 10 will be running 24/7. Lets be generous and say the Farmers Lads aren't into Torrents and only FIVE run 24x7 streams. That means that if ONLY one ordinary customer tries to connect if w-CDMA / HSDPA was perfect you would have 7.2/6 Mbps = 1.2Mbps. In reality if all have 3bars or more, they'll get 800kbps. If 5 ordinary users connect the speed would be 720kbps at best. HSDPA can't share at that efficiency and some will have poorer signals so expect 300kbps to 420kbps speed.

So you need the 7.2Mbps to be able to get 5 ordinary users online at less than 1/2 basic Broadband speed.

I've been generous. On unmanaged uncapped Broadband about 5% to 10% of users will eat 80% of the traffic. In my example where there are only 100 customers in the Geographic Mast area, those users will eat 1/2 the bandwidth as the market matures. That is why there is a Cap. A rolling 30 day cap of 10Gbytes would be a 24x30 speed of only 31kbps. Some ISPs throttle to a generous 120kbps. Which allows a generous 38GByte per month if you never get unthrottled.. (If you spend 20 days getting to cap, then you over next 10 days add about 13Gbyte, thus you have to stop the torrents for nearly 2 weeks to get below Cap enough to be un-throttled).

Will "3" Throttle, Disconnect or Charge for "over 10Gbyte" Cap traffic? If they don't Disconnect or Throttle, expect deadly slow speeds always on some masts.

viking

brim4brim wrote: »

I work for a website and we ran into massive problems with their half-arsed shared IP policy too and the users themselves had to suffer with it when they tried to use Google and were being told their IP was showing irregular activity :rolleyes:

This explains why slashdot has banned my IP when I try to access the site from my 3G phone. ffs!

Sponge Bob

3 have at most 100 cells in Ireland

each has 3 sectors or so .

They have 100k+ HSDPA subscribers so their contention is over 333 users per 7.2mbit sector .

There are some quiet ones but 333 into 7.2 is 21.6k each . Crap dialup

It should be sold as a flatrate substitute not a bb substitute .

cgarvey

drunkmonkey wrote: »

i'd call 100,000 + broadband users a bit of a migration..

Me too, but that's not the point I was addressing.

You're sentiment that 3 is better than nothing is entirely correct, and they have and will continue to get people connected that had no choice up until then. However, if they are to use HSDPA for the NBS, it is a technology that will not scale well especially in rural areas. The upgrade in speed will certainly help (assuming it's matched with backhaul, which is not a given), but that upgrade, as Watty has explained, will still be subjected to the non-linear contention (i.e. users won't see twice the speed because of this upgrade).

You're right that a lot of people are happy with the speeds, and it's fine for a lot of people. My main issue is that unless 3 introduce a new technology (which is still possible), they will not be able to meet the current spec of supporting VoIP and online gaming (unless Hearts over the network comes back in fashion).

The 3-bashing as you call it is justified based on the number of complaints on this forum alone, for their poor customer service and network/topology practices. In the absence of ANY indication that 3 won't use 3G, we can express great concern over the aforementioned limitations of 3G. Neither, in my opinion, take away from the fact that 3 have been an asset, and will continue to be, in getting people online.

crawler wrote: »

I wonder has the game been fully played yet - Can't see eircom just accepting it. I think Rex might be best avoided today

Well, given the rumoured price difference, the rumoured reluctance of eircom to use it's wealthy FWA spectrum and the insiginificance of DSL in these areas (without major lines investment), I can't see why either side would bother?

Blaster99 wrote: »

do we know for a fact that 3 is planning to use HSDPA for their service?

No, nor do we have ANY indication that they won't. Should we just say nothing at all until all the facts are revealed next year? If so, perhaps we should also stay silent on LLU, given the ongoing processes there, and many other topics aside. Wild speculation is pointless, but I think it's reasonable to have opinion about a national strategy that looks like is fundamentally flawed be aired now, before it's too late.

brim4brim wrote: »

The only good that can come of this is people leaving eircom dial up for 3 which will give eircom an incentive to upgrade those exchanges

I don't see the incentive? If they upgrade the exchanges serving this mythical 10%, they'll need to heavily invest in the copper to be even in a position to get people connected. Even then, they'll be in a subsidised market, per se, with a small catchment area, and an established brand to compete against. Tough going. It's probably why they haven't done anywhere else rural (being served by 3G providers).

oscarBravo wrote: »

What else would they use?

Good question. Some nomadic or FWA? Using their masts as part of that network, but breaking out to local FWA? NLOS/nomadic/some-half-arsed-WiMax implementation would deliver an altogether more manageable product that would be a much better experience than 3G, without hammering valuable sector space. It might be a stretch of my imagination, but it's not impossible, and wouldn't be a heap more expensive than adding more sectors/backhaul (assuming that 3 would at least do that!) in the affected areas. Speculation, of course!

thebman

drunkmonkey wrote: »

So what your saying is, your partents and brother currently don't have it, you don't have it either but your brothers girlfriend has it in clare but you've no idea what speed she's getting...
Don't think you've any justification in 3 bashing as your not even a current customer...

My brother still uses it too and it is crap for him still.

I'm on a network with heavy voice and data traffic, it's now peak time all the kids are home from school...

Not great but it's still a big jump from a few months ago...

That's good for you, might I suggest when it was crap, lots of people left the network and that's why your speeds increased?

Working with the website I work for, we contacted three to try to resolve the problems we had with their shared IP's and it took us about a month to get them to send us the one line of text we required to unblock them. In that time, we got at least 3 complaints a day from 3 customers asking why they couldn't use our website.

3 don't care about their customers, they never have and they never will. I've been following 3 since my father signed up and had bad speeds, have had first hand dealings with them and know about 10 people that are or have used the service and are very unhappy with it.

Just read the megathread. Originally they didn't have an SMTP server and were stating they didn't have to provide one to customers and so they weren't going to. They only did after being put on a phone in show where their PR person eventually said they'd do it after lying a few times live on air about their service.

A mod can delete any of this if he feels it might be necessary, I don't really care. I'll continue warning people off this crap service. When your service goes down drunkmonkey, your tune will change and it will go down as soon as more people in your area sign up to these amateurs.

Blaster99

oscarBravo wrote: »

What else would they use?

WiMax? Some other wireless technology? They/BT have a lot of mast infrastructure so surely there are a lot of possibilities? Since when do companies just sell stuff they already have?

oscarBravo

Blaster99 wrote: »

WiMax? Some other wireless technology? They/BT have a lot of mast infrastructure so surely there are a lot of possibilities? Since when do companies just sell stuff they already have?

Mast infrastructure isn't an issue; spectrum is. WiMAX in this country pretty much means 3.5GHz. ComReg have reserved 10MHz of 3.5GHz spectrum for the winner of the NBS in case they want it, but 10MHz isn't much.

bealtine

oscarBravo wrote: »

Mast infrastructure isn't an issue; spectrum is. WiMAX in this country pretty much means 3.5GHz. ComReg have reserved 10MHz of 3.5GHz spectrum for the winner of the NBS in case they want it, but 10MHz isn't much.

They could use one of the LTE alternatives (but I don't see that happening any decade soon)

cowboy1981

I got a sneak preview of a marketing clip 3 intend using to sell Broadband in rural Ireland,

Don't worry - the boys on the Mainland will localise the text for the Eire market. And of course the support chaps in India know all about Sacred Cows.

These guys clearly have a deep down understanding of the market they are entering...is it any wonder the Govt gave it to them?

mike76

does anyone know will the 2 bids be available under FOI and when?

watty

Mobile Wimax is only slight better than HSDPA. 10MHz isn't enough. You'd need 30MHz for reasonable WiMax. Mobile Anything on 3.5GHz is poor.

LTE wants 3 x chunks of 20MHz + 20MHz to produce its fabled 100Mbps. There arn't even plans yet to licence any spectrum for LTE.

Fixed Wireless (either Legacy, Fixed WiMax or DOCSIS) offers best use of spectrum. BUT it has to be installed.

HSDPA uses 2.1GHz and thus is better rural coveage, though very much poorer than 900MHz EDGE and a bit poorer than 1.8GHz EDGE.

In terms of spectrum, user Modem cost, self install etc, I'll eat my hat if it isn't mostly HSDPA (3G/UMTS/w-CDMA/3GPP Rev 5 flavoured). They MIGHT do some HSUPA, but that only helps upload, and only if signal good. It does nothing for Latency, Jitter, Code Contention, Cell Breathe and all the other CDMA woes that GSM had solved.

History Footnote:
Unfortunately penny pincing and Politics won on 3G and its derived from the inferior CDMA in USA rather than GSM. A 3G system derived from GSM would be 1/2 the latency, almost no jitter, no cell breathe and nearly twice the speed with linear slow down with added users rather than the issues of w-CDMA that is used. Anyway, LTE is NOT CDMA based but OFDM based but there is no way to co-exist LTE and W-CDMA based 3G on the same spectrum in the same Country. NO LTE for NBS.

"3" needs desparately to roll out 6x the masts it has now and avoid paying Vodaphone for 3G roaming. I know what I would do if I was "3".

The Reserved 10MHz can't be used in most areas. Look at white bits on Map. The people in the paint ball splats have that same 10MHz. Unless they erect a 100m high chicken wire fence around the boundaries they can't use the 3.5GHz. Someone that ALREADY is using it nearby *maybe* could, but it's problematical. In reality there isn't really any NEW reserved spectrum of any significance for the NBS. "3 Ireland" has lots of spectrum. They can ONLY run 3G/HSDPA (UMTS/w-CDMA) on it.

Lunabu

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Do you honestly think i'm making up these speedtest results?

It's averaging anywhere between 1.5 and 2.5mb

Well, lucky you! I'm not in the same boat and while I'm generally happier with them than I used to be, I reach a point usually EVERY DAY where my connection packs up and I'm down to 0 down/up.
For six weeks, not long ago, I got constant network errors and could hardly use the internet at all. They did fix it eventually and didn't charge me for those 6 weeks which was very nice of them.
However, I still experience intermittent problems and I'm rarely able to watch, say, a YouTube video without it stopping and starting. While what I have is better than dial-up, I'm fully aware that it's not BROADBAND.

Lunabu

Now, here's my speed test. And today is one of my better evenings online:

Sponge Bob

watty wrote: »

Mobile Wimax is only slight better than HSDPA. 10MHz isn't enough. You'd need 30MHz for reasonable WiMax. Mobile Anything on 3.5GHz is poor.

LTE wants 3 x chunks of 20MHz + 20MHz to produce its fabled 100Mbps. There arn't even plans yet to licence any spectrum for LTE.

Fixed Wireless (either Legacy, Fixed WiMax or DOCSIS) offers best use of spectrum. BUT it has to be installed.

HSDPA uses 2.1GHz and thus is better rural coveage, though very much poorer than 900MHz EDGE and a bit poorer than 1.8GHz EDGE.

In terms of spectrum, user Modem cost, self install etc, I'll eat my hat if it isn't mostly HSDPA (3G/UMTS/w-CDMA/3GPP Rev 5 flavoured). They MIGHT do some HSUPA, but that only helps upload, and only if signal good. It does nothing for Latency, Jitter, Code Contention, Cell Breathe and all the other CDMA woes that GSM had solved.

To explain . There is a 3g evolution roadmap. The next bit will be to introduce faster uploads ( HSUPA ) and to rename this+HSDPA as HSPA and jump to 14.4mbits per sector. 3.5G evoluton stops there, c 2009 in most countries including here .

Then along comes this 3G LTE which is a big jump , 3.9G almost .

The problem is that most LTE will operate on spectrum allocated to MMDS TV in Ireland until 2014 so while the Uk and the rest of Europe can have LTE from 2010 WE CANNOT

This spectrum is even crappier in rural areas than the current 3G spectrum anyway

Blaster99

cgarvey wrote: »

No, nor do we have ANY indication that they won't. Should we just say nothing at all until all the facts are revealed next year? If so, perhaps we should also stay silent on LLU, given the ongoing processes there, and many other topics aside. Wild speculation is pointless, but I think it's reasonable to have opinion about a national strategy that looks like is fundamentally flawed be aired now, before it's too late.

My question was if anyone knew for sure what the proposed solution is, and the answer appears to be no. It's good to keep up the age old Boards tradition of discussing whether it's worth having a discussion, though.

Sponge Bob

Blaster99 wrote: »

My question was if anyone knew for sure what the proposed solution is, and the answer appears to be no.

The solution is the same as it ever was

Read It

watty

14.4 is pretty much fantasy. You'd need to be close enough to mast to stone it. It adds a marginal increase in capacity. Even 7.2 doesn't much change the speed for 20% of the cell.

drunkmonkey

@Watty, what would BT have used if they got the contract? Any reason why that can't steer 3 someway in that direction?:rolleyes: