Vodafone CEO Hoencamp on Infrastructure.

clohamon

From Silicon Republic
http://www.digital21.ie/news/item/762

In tackling the big problem of who will invest in the next-generation networks that Vodafone and others will need for the future, Hoencamp points to fellow Dutch native EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes who has set a target of 30Mbps for every European citizen by 2020 and aspires that half of homes will have 100Mbps.
"I think for Ireland to achieve a universal 30Mbps, because of the geography and low population, the most economically viable route is mobile, particularly in rural areas. There is no business case for putting fibre in the ground and reaching every single home, even if all operators co-invested," explains Hoencamp.
"To achieve 100Mbps, now that's a different story. For half the country to achieve Kroes' targets of 100Mbps it will require putting substantial fibre into the ground but the solution will still be a combination of fixed and mobile.
"You will need to put fibre into the ground to join up base stations as well as homes and businesses. So, whoever does the planning, can we please just put the fibre into the ground once - the next time you're building a highway between Cork and Dublin can we please put some ducts in the ground. Do it right."

That last sentence might be a reference to the NRA's view up to June of this year that ducts in roads are primarily for road-related purposes.

http://www.nra.ie/RepositoryforPublicationsInfo/file,17150,en.pdf

"2.5 Retention of Ducts/Duct Space for Road-Related Purposes.
The ducting installed along major national road schemes in recent years is primarily intended for road-related purposes. The granting of consent by the Authority to network operators wishing to avail of such ducting will, accordingly, only be considered where surplus capacity exists over and above existing and potential future*road-related needs of the Authority/ the road authority for the area concerned. In general, a minimum of two ducts are required for road-related purposes."

watty

"I think for Ireland to achieve a universal 30Mbps, because of the geography and low population, the most economically viable route is mobile, particularly in rural areas. There is no business case for putting fibre in the ground and reaching every single home, even if all operators co-invested," explains Hoencamp.

Absolute hogwash. You would need about 5000 base stations each with 120MHz of bandwidth to get 30Mbps with Mobile.
That's about 1.5 Billion install cost excluding Backhaul.

Energy cost is 60 Mega Watts

FTTC/FTTH mix with limited FIXED wireless (about 1/4 to 1/10th power consumption per base and x8 capacity per MHz) is about €1.5 Billion install and 1.5Mega Watts for 2 Million premises.

Guess what?
Vodafone make almost no money from their Fixed Broadband and 90%+ of their money from Mobile Voice calls.

So he would say that.

The Geography/population issue is a lie. If you can do ESB to a location you can do fibre. Those un-economic to get fibre are a very small percent and can be done much better with FIXED Wireless.

oscarBravo

clohamon wrote: »

That last sentence might be a reference to the NRA's view up to June of this year that ducts in roads are primarily for road-related purposes.

Bwuh? What the hell do roads need fibre for?

clohamon

oscarBravo wrote: »

Bwuh? What the hell do roads need fibre for?

There's more here.

The Authority has, in recent years, adopted a practice of installing roadside ducting as part of the construction of new motorway and dual carriageway sections of the network (please see map below). While the ducting is primarily intended for current and future road-related purposes, e.g. traffic route lighting, variable message signs, I.T. applications for traffic and road network management, etc., limited spare capacity exists in some of these ducts which could cater for non-road-related uses such as electronic communications cabling."

oscarBravo

That's a small percentage of one fibre pair accounted for, right there. Assuming they're putting in a useful number of ducts (like, say, four) - "limited spare capacity"?

The mind boggles.

clohamon

oscarBravo wrote: »

That's a small percentage of one fibre pair accounted for, right there. Assuming they're putting in a useful number of ducts (like, say, four) - "limited spare capacity"?

The mind boggles.

I presume they're including power lines in their own requirements.