Want to start a petition to bring broadband to Culdaff

culdaffguy

OK i'm completely fed up with putting up with 3's mobile internet and constant downtime and fluctuating speeds.

I want to start a petition to enable the Culdaff exchange for broadband similar to what other areas around the country had done before. Unfortuantely my web skills are not the best, and I was wondering if anyone could please help me by making a simple web page with a petition for locals to sign. I can supply the website domain.

Headshot

Is there any local politician in your area? For once my local TD came in useful and helped my area get broadband

culdaffguy

There is, however he's to busy talking in the local press how great 3 is bringing broadband to the area (which they had to under the NBS)! I had contacted him, but no response.

Headshot

culdaffguy wrote: »

There is, however he's to busy talking in the local press how great 3 is bringing broadband to the area (which they had to under the NBS)! I had contacted him, but no response.

no surprise there

when he wants votes he'll come running to you, they're all the same

culdaffguy

OK guys managed to get a site set up, now up and running at:

http://www.broadbandforculdaff.com

Headshot

you should consider putting a pettition in your local post office, it would be better than the online one

watty

By definition a Web petition lacks value compared to paper. Too easily gamed.

Also your target Demographic is less likely to have Internet or look for the Web site.

All the local shops is the place. Online is really pointless.

bealtine

watty wrote: »

By definition a Web petition lacks value compared to paper. Too easily gamed.

Also your target Demographic is less likely to have Internet or look for the Web site.

All the local shops is the place. Online is really pointless.

Also if people don't have broadband how can they get to the petition?

Furthermore a lot of politicians seem to believe that mobile midband is broadband so you'll need to educate them on why
mobile is not real broadband.
IrelandOffline have a number of papers on why mobile is not broadband, they might be worth summarising
and giving to the local politicians...

lucernarian

culdaffguy wrote: »

There is, however he's to busy talking in the local press how great 3 is bringing broadband to the area (which they had to under the NBS)! I had contacted him, but no response.

I pity ye lads, he talks a lot of ****e from what I hear about midband.

watty

The NBS is fantasy. Subsiding a Mobile phone rollout doesn't give anyone Broadband.

culdaffguy

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

I pity ye lads, he talks a lot of ****e from what I hear about midband.

That's for sure. He seems to have gone quiet of late, maybe he's started to realise that 3 is not 'broadband' like they advertise themselves to be. Also the 3 NBS mast located just outside Culdaff has had an outage now for almost 24 hours, the 5th outage this month. What's strange about Culdaff was it was never included in the NBS area, so therefore when the speeds on 3 drop to below 1MB as they do, I can't do anything about it. When I contacted the Government NBS Department they told me the reason why Culdaff was never included in the NBS was due to North West Electronics http://www.nwewn.com having service in the area, which of course they do not have. No one in Culdaff can pick up their line of sight mast which is far from the area.

I know I need to also put this in the local shop/post office, however from alerting people on facebook I've managed to get almost 30 names in the space of a day or two.

drunkmonkey

What's involved in enabling an exchange like Culadaff, is there a huge investment needed?

culdaffguy

drunkmonkey wrote: »

What's involved in enabling an exchange like Culadaff, is there a huge investment needed?

Good question, I'd love to know a roughly what it costs for eircom to enable an exchange for broadband.

watty

It depends on if there is adequate backhaul for Data to / from Dublin. It's unlikely that there is as one DSL user is over 100 times the data of one phone call. Just 10 users would max out the existing connection on a typical village exchange.

It's very cheap to add the shelves of DSL gear. You can get about 96 lines in roughly a pizza box size shelf cheaply (ADSL2+ or VDSL+ with ADSL2+ fall back DSLAM). Adding enough speed of Microwave link or fibre is the expensive bit. Box with 96 phone lines and 1 Gbps ethernet to Switch/Router for Backhaul. So simple wiring & install. The 96 pairs to MDF labour likely costs more than the DSLAM.

watty

culdaffguy wrote: »

I know I need to also put this in the local shop/post office, however from alerting people on facebook I've managed to get almost 30 names in the space of a day or two.

You log IP and know these are "real"?

culdaffguy

I'm not logging IP, but know they are real as have set up a facebook page, and know most people anyway.

As regards adequate backhaul to/from Dublin, if you have a look at this map here, http://www.broadbandatoz.ie/your-area.asp?id=5 ourselves and Gleneely are the only exchanges not enabled. The exchange in Malin and even Ballygorman, Malin Head are enabled, so would this not indicate that there is likely already the backhaul in place for the exchange here?

culdaffguy

By the way, we actually do not even have NBS here, whilst a mast is situated outside the village, Culdaff itself was never included in the NBS as it was deemed to have broadband already from this crowd http://www.nwewn.com

North West Electronics had received funding under the Group Broadband Scheme, but never brought service to Culdaff. When I asked the NBS Department they informed me that NWEWN had no obligation to provide service to Culdaff despite having received funding.

watty

culdaffguy wrote: »

I

As regards adequate backhaul to/from Dublin, if you have a look at this map here, http://www.broadbandatoz.ie/your-area.asp?id=5 ourselves and Gleneely are the only exchanges not enabled. The exchange in Malin and even Ballygorman, Malin Head are enabled, so would this not indicate that there is likely already the backhaul in place for the exchange here?

no. It suggests the reverse. The high speed connection at a different small exchange is no use.

culdaffguy

Nice article slamming the NBS scheme here:

http://www.donegaldaily.com/2010/12/29/stewart-slams-government-over-fake-broadband-in-donegal/

culdaffguy

Another article which was printed in todays Inishowen Independent

bealtine

culdaffguy wrote: »

Another article which was printed in todays Inishowen Independent

Nice to see the media using the term midband to describe the NBS or mobile "broadband" in general.

Keep up the good work!

watty

Then again online polls can be amazing http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/31/bt_race/

Great to see Politicians and Newspapers accurately describe 3G Mobile and NBS.

ASAI, Minister Ryan, DCNER and/OR Comreg should be ashamed/Resign/Apologise?

culdaffguy

Broadbandforculdaff.com is disappointed with today’s response from eircom that they will not be upgrading the Culdaff exchange for broadband. The site broadbandforculdaff.com was launched on St Stephen’s day and has so far had the support of 126 people locally. There is adequate demand for a fixed line broadband service in Culdaff, Co Donegal.

Culdaff has unfortunately been one of the few areas forgotten about. Culdaff was never included in the National Broadband Scheme announced by the Government as it was deemed to have suitable coverage from North West Electronics, based in Derry. They received funding to provide a Group Broadband Scheme in areas throughout Donegal several years ago but Culdaff was never included. Whilst Culdaff does benefit from the 3G coverage under the NBS it does not benefit from the minimum speed of 1.2MB agreed between the Department of Communications and Hutchison 3. 3 erected a mast at Claggan, Culdaff in order to meet the terms of the NBS, to provide coverage to Glengad and Portaleen. The so called NBS scheme provided by 3, is not technically a broadband service, but is infact midband. It suffers from severe fluctuations in speed as the more users that latch on to a mast the slower it gets, and in December broadbandforculdaff.com calculated outages of seventy hours for the mast at Claggan, Culdaff where infact no-one could access the internet. The government injected 79.8 Million Euro into 3 to roll out the NBS and they installed 388 masts, which basically means each mast cost the government 205,670 Euro.

When broadbandforculdaff.com contacted eircom to ask them to review the enabling of the exchange at Culdaff in light of the huge amount of support we received, they were willing to do so. The following was the response which we received:



“When analysing it, the main costs incurred would be the upgrade of the transmission network serving the exchange. There is approximately five and half kilometres of cable that would need to be completely replaced at a cost of approximately €250k. The existing cable supports all existing voice services, but does not support the necessary bandwidth for broadband even if the broadband equipment was installed in the exchange. There are additional costs to provide the hardware for the exchange and these are currently estimated at approximately €15k.

There are just over 400 customers currently connected to the exchange, but unfortunately, even if every customer in Culdaff agreed to take eircom broadband for the next five years, eircom would not receive a return on the investment. Making consideration for Culdaff’s local geography, there would almost certainly be a small but significant percentage of up to 20% of customers who would not be able to get DSL broadband if the exchange was enabled. This is a result of the physical limitation of the technology and the distance the broadband signal has to travel over the copper lines to customers who live outside of the village in the surrounding community. The maximum distance is approximately 4-5 kilometres. This additional consideration also further weakens the business case.


It is disappointing that Culdaff has not been included in the National Broadband Scheme. eircom made its position clear to the Department of Communications as far back as 2007 when we were asked to submit a full list of nationwide locations that would be enabled as well as those locations that would not be broadband enabled. The Department of Communications can provide further clarification as to why Culdaff was not included in the NBS following the submissions made by the various operators.”




Broadbandforculdaff.com is disheartened that a fixed line broadband service for Culdaff is not in the pipeline, and in light of Culdaff having been excluded from the National Broadband Scheme now calls on the Government to give eircom the 265,000 Euro required to upgrade the cables and exchange. Each 3 NBS mast cost 205,670 Euro for an unreliable ‘midband’ connection so we call on the government to give a similar amount to eircom to make sure Culdaff is not excluded any longer.

clohamon

AFAIK the current number of masts has not been confirmed independently, but there are only 208 successful planning applications so far. So the actual subsidy per mast might be a lot higher than your figure.

The terms of the contract are not public either (it has been exempted from FOI) but I don't believe that it specifies the number of masts or their locations.

Best of luck with your campaign. It ain't over till its over.

culdaffguy

That's interesting, in the presentation from 3 I read it says this:

"Programme completed in 21 months - 388 sites switched on"

Link to that powerpoint presentation is here:

http://www.pobail.ie/en/RuralDevelopment/NationalRuralDevelopment/ComhairlenaTuaithe/file,10194,en.ppt

clohamon

The communication from Eircom only gives the cost elements. It might be worth asking them how much actual subsidy they need in order to do the job. Presumably they would be making some investment themselves, as they did with the other marginal exchanges.

On the other hand (and being cynical), it might suit them to have a vocal group such as yourselves continuing to make headlines about the relative performance of landline broadband vs mobile midband.

The map on slide 15 is pretty damning. Its clear that many many EDs will not get anywhere near the 92% HSPA coverage promised. That may not be such a bad thing if it means more will be entitled to satellite provision, except that (AFAIK) the continued subsidy of NBS satellite connections is not clear beyond 2014.

More interesting still, is the coverage of EDs that were not in the NBS. Wexford seems to be particularly favoured.

CelticTigress

Good work on that Culdaffguy. You know me, I'm the one in the same predicament in Gleneely, 4 miles up the road.

Gleneely has a bright shiny new 3 mast which isn't even part of the NBS (because we're outside it as well) but it hasn't actually gone "live". So I get a residual signal - usually 1 bar, 2 on a good day, from Culdaff or possibly other places nearby.

This has been since October when I signed up to 3 after they told me it was going live "next week".

What happened to the petition I signed in McGuinness' shop a couple of years back? It had a good few signatures on it.

As for your facebook page petition I know half the people on there and am related to most of those...