Eircom shelves broadband roll-out plan

bealtine

http://www.examiner.ie/ireland/idgbojidau/

Eircom shelves broadband roll-out plan
by Conor Ryan and Stephen Rogers

EIRCOM’S multi-billion euro plan for super-speed broadband in one million homes has been shelved because of the recession.

The company denied it is cash strapped and said it can meet its outstanding debts.

But its head of public policy Pat Galvin said Eircom could not commit to the e2.5 billion needed for the next generation of broadband. This was piloted in Dublin and proved 10 times better than traditional broadband.

"The scale of the investment is quite phenomenal and Eircom, given the current economic position, has no choice but to review the business plan," he said.

This week Eircom began a company review after suffering e791m in losses. Sean Fitzpatrick of the Communications Workers union said it would oppose compulsory redundancies.

Mr Galvin told the Oireachtas communications committee it spent e1bn upgrading regional exchange hubs for large traffic. But he said the benefits were negated by copper-based local networks — from the street to house.

"The real critical investment decision, not just for Eircom but for Ireland, is in [local systems]. How do we get high speed broadband to end-users.... The vision and aspiration is to invest. The scale of the investment needs careful consideration," he said.

Eircom’s chief technology officer Geoff Shakespeare said a full upgrade will cost e2,500 per home.

Deputy Simon Coveney (FG) asked Eircom if it had a new plan for delivering next generation broadband and if its parent Babcock and Brown was solvent as some believed the parent company was broke.

Headshot

just about to post this

its beyond a joke now

my area is suppose to be broadband enabled this yr

and this news comes out

really fed up with this country

Isaac702

Actually that is a good question how this this if at all affect the rollout of stand DSL broadband?

I would hope that it doesnt as I know several people who are expecting it in the near future. However if Eircom never planed for those rollouts to go ahead in the first place that could cause problems.

This is where the money from the NBS scheme have went. To develop a next generation network that includes every household in the country. Even if it was joint effort with each ISP who wished to be involved at least it would be in place.

Hopefully Babcock and Brown Capital Managment will be bought out by a business in a NIC which has alot of money. Its the only way we are actually going to get anywhere. Our government is defiantly not going to do anything about it.

Sponge Bob

everybody like WHOA !

Currently eircom are in the throes of enabling 330 exchanges . This program was supposed to complete in q3 2009 . The vast bulk of the work has been done and contracts signed for the gear . 100 or so are live .

No money will be saved by cancelling this program which is largely rural with some small urban exchanges included too.

The project that has allegedly been cancelled to divert attention away from job and pay cuts and strike threats in eircom is a thing called Fibre Ireland.

Fibre Ireland is either the 5 big cities or the 5 big cities + the Gateway Towns of Dundalk and Sligo and the linked gateways of Letterkenny and the Midland towns of Athlone/Tullamore/Mullingar

OR the 5 Big Cities + the Gateway Towns of Dundalk and Sligo and the linked gateways of Letterkenny and the Midland towns of Athlone/Tullamore/Mullingar + "hubs" which will support, and be supported by, the gateways and will link out to wider rural areas and which are Cavan, Ennis, Kilkenny, Mallow, Monaghan, Tuam and Wexford, along with the linked hubs of Ballina/Castlebar and Tralee/Killarney.

Fibre Ireland, in short , depends on what the eircom spin doctors are looking for and yes, most of these towns already have some fibre ....quite likely all of them .

The plan is , allegedly , to install fibre beyond current exchanges to street cabs for VDSL. However for some mysterious reason they only ordered cabs for Dublin :cool:

shayser

Prime Time is covering this now.

Headshot

prime time show was interesting

brought up a good point about the 30 mb broadband

do people really want 30 mb broadband ?

hellboy99

Headshot wrote: »

do people really want 30 mb broadband ?

They would, think of what it could be used for ie. live media streming and downloads, businesses would greatly benefit from it too and more jobs would be created.

Isaac702

Headshot wrote: »

prime time show was interesting

brought up a good point about the 30 mb broadband

do people really want 30 mb broadband ?

I missed the Primetime show however I will go and watch it once it is put into the archive.

The question however is not wither people want 30mb broadband it is becoming wither or not it is needed. Broadband penetration has been linked several times to job creation in the states it is a important factor for business.
It would also be useful for home users to avail of the new VOD and download services that are coming available.

Provided the package is affordable, I see no reason why it would not be taken advantage of.

Sponge Bob

There was **** all about eircom on that program .

hellboy99

Sponge Bob wrote: »

There was **** all about eircom on that program .

That's because the presenter didn't get to see all of the script in time because of slow download speeds

Blazer

Plus if Eircom start blocking sites thanks to RIAA etc what point in having 30meg broadband.
I'd rather have 10meg open access than 30meg closed access.

Patrickof

I believe The Heath exchange (Laois) is due for upgrade completion on April 14th next. It was scheduled for Feb-April 09, so can't complain there.

Snickers Man

Headshot wrote: »

prime time show was interesting

brought up a good point about the 30 mb broadband

do people really want 30 mb broadband ?

That could be up there with the famous Bill Gates comment (early 1980s) that "640kbyte of memory should be enough for anybody"

What's the current entry level for memory in a PC? Mine has 2gigs and that was bought last year.


Or how about IBM's projections back in the 1940s that they could only foresee a worldwide computer market of about five machines per year?

watty

However IBM *has* recently designed a supercomputer cluster that could run every Internet server in the world.

I'd aim at a plan for 20Mbps to 100Mbps *REAL* internet in Urban, with 3Mbps minimum in far flung rural and 6Mbps to 20Mbps in Suburban, in Ireland. An integrated NBS/NGN.

Some people and many buisness want/need 30Mbps +

Cabaal

As entertainment changes to HDTV and more and more services move on-line like movie rental, buying games, tv shows etc then yes 30MB BB has its uses in respect of the wait times people will have to wait when they use these services

Thraktor

Headshot wrote: »

prime time show was interesting

brought up a good point about the 30 mb broadband

do people really want 30 mb broadband ?

Short answer: yes, but it'll still be too slow for them a few years down the line.

Long answer:

Households

There are many other reasons for a decent broadband connection in the home, but TV is probably the best example. Television is gradually moving to a scenario where the TV data is received over a broadband IP connection. This is very common in countries like South Korea and Japan and it's now even available closer to home in Britain and France. HDTV over IP signals today would usually take up about 8Mbps, but it's worth noting that this is usually for a 720p picture, and there can still be some noticeable compression artifacts at that bitrate. For full 1080p HD with no noticeable artifacts, you'd probably want to go up to Blu-Ray quality encoding, which can use up to 48Mbps. But, that's intended for 24/30Hz content. If you wanted to transmit at 50Hz/60Hz (which is preferable especially for sports), you'd need almost double that, which would almost use up a 100Mbps FTTH connection in full. Then again, most family houses would have more than one TV, so that could be doubled or tripled at any one time if other TVs are in use, and perhaps more if something's recording as well. Furthermore, when 3DTV comes in, the required bitrate will jump even more.

Businesses

Damien Mulley made a good point on this on the show. The government continually touts investments by Google, Facebook etc. as an indication that Ireland is good for tech companies. In fact, the reason these companies come here is the low corporate tax rates and educated, English-speaking workforce. They can afford to pay for expensive, dedicated fibre-optic internet connections precisely because they're large, international companies. Microsoft, Google and Facebook were all small companies once, though, and they grew because they were in an environment which fostered their growth.

It's the small companies that have the greatest potential for innovation in high-tech industries, and they need to be fostered by providing them with an infrastructure capable of reaching a world-wide audience. This means high-quality, affordable, reliable broadband. If we ever want to develop an Irish company along the lines of Facebook and Google, then we're going to have to give all the small innovators out there the best possible start, in the form of the highest quality national broadband infrastructure that we can get.