filling in the gaps between exchanges

Zan

Ireland should think about implementing something like NZ are currently doing.
Tis a long article. but about 1/3rd of the way down it details the "road side cabinets" which is what I reckon would suit well here in Ireland - where there are loads of people not quite close enough to an exchange to get decent broadband .. or any broadband.

http://www.nbr.co.nz/opinion/chris-keall/chorus-quiet-revolution

Capt'n Midnight

Chorus has started to deploy 3600 roadside cabinets as part of its Telecommunications Act-mandated mission to bring 10Mbit/sec to 20Mbit/s broadband connections to 80% of New Zealanders by 2011
...
Each roadside cabinet extends the reach of fibre optic cable from the exchange to within at least 2km o your house,

not too sure on the demographics but it looks like it would only work in a small town , $145,000 per cabinet and only 2km lines from it !

anyway 3 got the mandated mission to bring BB to the masses, and it sure as hell won't be 20MB , if I could reliably get 200KB I'd have got it a long time ago.
20KB would be more realistic here

Sponge Bob

eircom are proposing sub 2km copper lengths but only in the biggest towns when they roll out VDSL2 in those towns ...whenever that is .

In rural / extraurban areas you can put something the size of a biscuit pin on a pole to do exactly the same thing .

Zan

I think it's $145k NZ at an exchange rate of 0.39 that's like €60k per cabinet.
would only need to get in the region of 100 subscribers for each cabinet (provided they didn't all go on el cheapo plan - but with 20mbit support why would they) and the costs would be covered in a 3 year time frame (including maintenance). and the quality would be massively better than 3 will ever get via mobile networks.

I use fixed wireless from lighthousenetworks in Connemara where i'm at and the performance is actually pretty good. 2mb, ping is only 10ms slower than when I had DSL in dublin.

3's mobile broadband i also use for travelling and it's lag is huge.. so much so that it's useless. so really the difference is, is the cabinet cheaper than a fixed wireless tower? if yes then it's a goer.. else fixed wireless is the way to go.

Sponge Bob

Zan wrote: »

I use fixed wireless from lighthousenetworks in Connemara where i'm at and the performance is actually pretty good. 2mb, ping is only 10ms slower than when I had DSL in dublin.

You yourself have explained it . The cabinet idea works well if there is a population concentration within a 1km or 2km radius of the cabinet .

Where you get clusters the pole mount or biscuit tin size idea may work ...there is a lot of fibre along the N59 from Maam to Galway and a cabinet could be put at the bottom of a boreen at the N59 , for example.

Once you go past Maam the population density is such that a well built wireless network such as the Lighthouse one is vastly cheaper and more reliable than any copper based technology would be . Anyway there is no fibre beyond Maam Cross .

Then there is the fact that todays €60k unit serving maybe 200 households would have cost €300k only 5 years ago .

Finally , as you no doubt noticed , we pay the highest line rental in the world, by far , so 200 times €22 a month is what eircom could pull in on that particular cab ( ex vat) where in other countries they might only pull in 200 x €10 a month because the line rental is so much lower....yet the cab costs the same .

Line rental in New Zealand is lower despite the country being 4 times the size of Ireland and with the same population and with much of that in one town .....Auckand vs Dublin .

So the economics vary a lot from country to country and it is worth keeping an eye on how NZ and Aus ...and indeed Finland and Norway do things as they are not dissimilar to Ireland in having much of their population in one or two urban areas with the rest fairly well scattered .

The UK is far more urbanised .

watty

Mix of cabinets + DECENT fixed Wireless.