NBS "Broadband"

foggy_lad

do you live in an NBS area?
have you signed up to get three's offering and if so what are your impressions?
is the download speed as advertised between 1.2mbps and 5mbps?
does it disconnect regularly or at all?
have you needed to call customer care at all? and were they helpful?
have you any experience of three's maintenance/installation technicians?

good and bad experiences welcome!

watty

Asking these questions in 6 months time wil give a more accurate answer.

It supposed to be MINIMUM 1.2Mbps
and no worse than 120ms latency
Also meant to be ALWAYS on.

List of live Areas http://www.three.ie/nbs/live-areas.htm
Map to zoom into
http://ve.bizmaps.ie/threeireland/Pages/Public/NBSPublicPage.aspx

foggy_lad

watty wrote: »

Asking these questions in 6 months time wil give a more accurate answer.

It supposed to be MINIMUM 1.2Mbps
and no worse than 120ms latency
Also meant to be ALWAYS on.

List of live Areas http://www.three.ie/nbs/live-areas.htm
Map to zoom into
http://ve.bizmaps.ie/threeireland/Pages/Public/NBSPublicPage.aspx

i was thinking more of seeing what level the service is at now at the start then watch and see if it gets better or maybe even worse in six months time.

watty

You would need a Map of masts.

10 Users and at edge of indoor contour SIMULTANEOUSLY measure the 10 user speed at 3pm, 8pm, 2am indoors (as you can't know how many people are using it). Then again with your controlled test group using same test files, test servers and locations some months later.

Then you have an idea of actual contention and coverage and real throughput. You can't know the total contention as that is (number of people in sector sold package)/(Number of people that can do 1.2Mbps simultaneously in a sector). Only 3 can estimate contention and only if they assume they have real addresses and no-one using it Mobile. Hence the 36:1 contention claim for NBS can't be enforced.
If 30% of people in an NBS area signed up, the contention would be about 100:1 on average with planned number of masts. Since people are not spread equally, that means some masts will have only 10:1 contention and some will have 1000:1 contention at the extremes. They do try to vary mast density with population density, but the capacity of each sector is so low that "smoothing" it out is not possible.

drunkmonkey

I was in an NBS area yesterday, it was running at over 4mb on nearly every speedtest and not cutting out, this was indoors & outdoors with no repeaters etc in very bad weather (rain)...e180 modem...
So far it looks very good for people in the NBS areas i've been, ...Very underpopulated areas, I can't see any huge drain coming on the service like what happend when they initally launched in more urban areas...

As watty says it's very early days, it's very good at the moment, wheater it's the same by christams is yet to be seen...

jor el

I was in several NBS areas of Limerick at the weekend, Oola and Pallasgreen, and I think it's interesting that they both have full HSDPA coverage by O2, as well as eircom DSL available. I see on the coverage maps, that large areas of Bruff and Hospital are also in the NBS, despite the fact that eircom DSL has been there for quite some time, and O2 have good HSDPA and EDGE out there too. Munster Broadband also provide in all these areas (not sure what they use, wireless or satellite maybe).

The NBS is a joke, and does little more than prop up Three's mobile phone network, which doesn't have coverage in those areas yet.

drunkmonkey

stupid question but if all these area's already have coverage why have the government deemed them not to have broadband?, I doubt 3 got to decide where the areas are, I presume that had to come from the government..

jor el

drunkmonkey wrote: »

stupid question but if all these area's already have coverage why have the government deemed them not to have broadband?

It's not a stupid question, as there are many areas in the NBS that already have an equivalent HSDPA service, or a better (proper) broadband available. Maybe the areas were set out long before the NBS was assigned to any company, but I know Bruff has definitely had O2 HSDPA and eircom DSL for over a year now.

drunkmonkey

Seems like a waste of time and money if the area's are aready serviced. Do they not revue this evey few months and see where other operators have since provided coverage?

watty

I asked Eamonn Ryan that question and didn't get a satisfactory answer.

No-one blames 3 for the NBS coverage fiasco. That is entirely the responsibility of Government. It's not impossible that in a future date the Government will have to give account of its actions. 3 Ireland did not, as far as we know, decide the EDs to be covered.

OTOH 3 is responsible for the promises that they made in NBS contract /SLA. Those promises are not sustainable. However there is no adequate monitoring or surveying in place to verify the SLA compliance.


However 3 is simply completing a Mobile Phone Rollout they were supposed to do 2 to 3 years ago. Most of the rollout money is theirs. It makes sense for 3 to roll out their service where they don't have it irrespective of who is already there.

There has never been ANY suggestion that 3 has colluded with the Government on which EDs should be covered. Though the NBS coverage map for the Tender is quite different to the NBS map for the awarded Contract. Maybe SpongeBob could overlay the two maps?

foggy_lad

maybe "an bored snip" will do away with the NBS? also i wondered what happens if three do not provide "broadband" to the levels they claim to be able to provide? will they be penalised or fined? is there penalties for late finishing or going over budget? there probably is but if it is like every other infrastructure project in this country three will be able to take their time and spend 2-3 times the budget and nothing will be done.

watty

We don't know. It's secret. The only aspect known is that 3 get paid about €50,000 (Not sure exact figure) for each ED enabled with 95 coverage initially and that the satellite terminal install is subsidized (max 5% per ED). There is no Satellite service yet. 3 Ireland are unlikely to do all 1000 EDs.

So of the €79M the government is giving 3, about 39M comes directly from us via Government, i.e. about 39K per ED, which ceases when 3 give up doing EDs (which they will before the end).

My guess is that the only penalties would be payments to 3 (via Court case) if the Government tried to cancel the scheme now.

Also I'm not sure where the money for "NBS/ Broadband Coming " adverts is from (out of the 79M or additional?) and where the €400 per ED (€400,000 total) to Analysis Mason for "monitoring and verification" comes from.

Conclusion:
I can't see there being any change. The NBS is cheap. It really does nothing. To really do something we would have to spend about twice as much.

However €160M on FWA would provide real broadband to about 400 to 800 mast sites, each serving 200 to 1000 customers, 250,000 households (Router + WiFI). 3 Ireland's €220M is adding about 300 masts each at best about 120 customers at 1/4 speed and higher contention = 36,000 individuals, not households because there is no router + WiFi. But of course it supports Mobile phones and Mobility. It will support over 500,000 Mobile phone users, that's what it's for.

Walkman

watty wrote: »

3 Ireland's 220M is adding about 300 masts

3 are adding nearly 700 masts for the NBS rollout

watty

That's mis-information. Majority of the so-called NBS masts are pre-existing. The was confirmed by Eamonn Ryan.

Have you actual proof that there are 700 absolutely new cells? (Rather than upgrades of existing cells).

Anyhow they would need 1200 new masts at least to meet the Contention and Speed they have agreed in the NBS SLA. Even then often it would not meet the 1.2Mbps or 120ms or 36:1 in many sectors due to the poor ratio between even iHSPA sector throughput and number of users.

smiley321

Bruff is not covered under the NBS