eircom Announces fibre roll out

bk

Wow, I do away for a few days on holidays and I come back to find you all having a very interesting conversation

A few points.

Why UPC haven't really focused on the business market?

When UPC first came to the Irish market having bought NTL/Chorus, they were faced with having 600,000 very nice profitable TV customers, who were unfortunately on an old, rotting network, which would mean they would likely lose many of those valuable customers to Sky in time if they didn't do something about the network and stem the churn quickly.

So their first and most important goal was to quickly upgrade the network, to improve the quality of the TV service to stop the lose of customers to Sky.

They then discovered (well really they knew this from the start), that for just a (relative) little extra cost (docsis gear, network gear + some international backhaul) they could also use this new network to steal hundreds of thousands of phone and broadband customers from Eircom for almost free.

Thus making lots more easy money and the triple play phone + BB + TV would help them re-inforce their grip on their TV customers too and many even win some back from Sky!!

So their focus on residential customers stems from this, it is just so easy to steal them from Eircom, it is like stealing candy from a baby.

Also business customers tend to be slower to move, they often have a long term relationship with a company and are slow to move to a new company, specially one that hasn't been long in the market.

But Eircom shouldn't assume this will continue and it should scare the hell out of them when (not if) UPC turns it's attention to the business market. UPC aren't a new player anymore, they are a company with a generally very well regarded reputation now, many of these business customers have rock solid high speed UPC connections at home and those people will be wondering why they can't use UPC for their business too. When UPC start targeting these businesses and make use of their extensive fibre netwrok, it will be a blood bath for Eircom.

I also wouldn't assume that UPC won't expand outside of their current network. Once they complete the network upgrade of their existing network, I think it would be a bad mistake to think that UPC will sit still. No, instead I'll expect they will start expanding their network, initially into high density areas close to their existing network (I'm thinking places like parts of Cork and Fingals, covered by UPC MMDS), but in time maybe even into towns with no UPC, but connected to e-Net and MANS. So watch out here too Eircom.

Finally UPC are likely to turn their attention to improving TV services over the next year, with VoD, catch up TV, IPTV and their new media box.

Does UPC care about this new Eircom fibre co-op joint venture?

Nope, SpongeBob is correct, UPC already have an extensive fibre network that covers most of their existing core co-ax network, so they certainly don't need Eircom for this.

And they probably have plenty of areas close to their existing network or areas served by cheaper e-net/MANs to keep them busy for years before they need to go talking to Eircom.

They may eventually talk to Eircom if they want to become a 100% provider and expand further, but I don't see that happening for years.

Why aren't Vodafone, o2, BT, etc. interested?

They probably are interested, but are very wary of Eircom and their underlying motives. They don't want to get caught in some trick by Eircom to wring more money out of the government or screw their bondholders over.

Who is the really target of their PR?

Don't kid yourself, this PR was aimed straight at the bondholders. While UPC are a massive and perhaps mortal threat to Eircom, the biggest threat they actually face is their 3.9 Billion debt. If they can't sort this first and invest in the network then Eircom are finished.

If Eircom do eventually invest in NGN, where will they do it?

Well they certainly won't be doing towns where UPC aren't present. After all why would they bother investing in expensive new equipment in areas where they already have a monopoly?

No, instead they have to target areas where UPC are present or likely to be soon. It is the same reason why UPC had to invest in their network to compete with Sky. Eircom simply can't survive if they lose all their highest value customers (people living in densely populated areas) to UPC. These customers subsidise the much less valuable customers in more rural areas.

But even with Fibre products, will Eircom be able to compete with UPC?

No, not really, UPC will still offer faster speeds for less money. But that won't manner, Eircom will hope that if they can get close enough, they can use their marketing expertise, brand name and peoples inertia to change to reduce their churn and stop the flood of customers.

The problem is that currently the gap between UPC and Eircoms products and prices are so great, even the best marketing in the world couldn't save them. But if they could offer some half decent speeds and some sort of triple play package with TV, that they could muddy water enough with marketing that people mightn't notice the difference.

Do Eircom have to open up their new fibre network to other operators?

Yes, definitely. A few other operators thought of the idea of investing in a fibre network as a way of getting away from their operator with significant market power commitments, but the EU saw that one coming from a mile away and laid down in no uncertain terms conditions that meant any new network investment had to be open fairly to all.

Also people are assuming that a monopoly would be better for Eircom financially. But BT in the UK have dis-proven that, they are making far more money today with their highly separated wholsesale arm then they ever did as a monopoly.

Also it is interesting to note, that a lot of this new PR has popped up in the last few weeks from Eircom since the EU introduced new legislation giving governments the power to break up telcos like Eircom into separate wholesale and retail divisions where the companies are failing to compete. This has certainly scared the hell out of Eircoms owners.

Interesting times lay ahead for Eircom.

Sponge Bob

I do think that eircom wholesale are separating from eircom retailand eircom corporate in terms of mindset. It took long enough, God knows it did.

The guidelines on the new regime are explained in part here. The 'revised' access directive forced a clearer separation ( "Functional Separation") between the wholesale and retail arms of incumbents like eircom..in Ireland since the 1st of July 2011. The applicable provisions are sections 9-13 of the revised Access Directive.

The old eircom wholesale was a figleaf of pretend separation but the new eircom wholesale is a rather different beast. Meetings with the industry on matters like the FTTx trials in Wexford and Sandyford are ongoing and by all accounts they are serious minded and not at all rancourous...like the old LLU discussions were.

In order to keep them all talking seriously Comreg are conductiing a review of Wholesale Broadband Access and have defined ireland as a single market in which UPC do not have significant market power. eircom responded to that definition by stating the following. I was amused to say the least....they are describing the eircom wholesale we needed in 2001

http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/ComReg1149c.pdf

Second, the analysis conducted by ComReg does not appear to be forward-looking.
At the very least, eircom would submit that too much emphasis is being placed on the
past circumstances of the markets rather than, as a forward looking approach would
require, on the evolution of the markets which can be expected in the light of current
trends. eircom in this regard believes that the market for wholesale broadband
access clearly tends towards competition in urban areas and that this should be
reflected in the remedies imposed on eircom. Indeed, in many respects, ComReg‟s
conclusion that having regard to the progress of cable-based broadband, it should
monitor developments over the period of the review would have been appropriate two
or three years ago. In the meantime, however, the market has progressed to an
extent such that it must be recognized in the way ComReg proposes to regulate the
market.

But of course that can only be demonstrably true if the negotiations between eircom and the other market player continue in the current serious vein and lead to an acceptable result for all the players ( which would include UPC were they to care)

And so eircom are now in the position where they have to prove that the market mechanism works and the only way to prove it is to engage with the market and develop future products in a transparent and non rancourous manner.

Then eircom can prove that the new eircom wholesale model is working because the industry was present and agrees it is working.

Finally, Comreg can safely assume that a "forward looking" regulatory toolset is appropriate in this new Ireland and can act accordingly. That will be because the industry will sit in a room and half work out future plans before the regulator kicks in....instead of the old model where wholesale packages and the onerous conditions and pricing attached to them were invariably dragged out of eircom after much kicking and screaming.....eg Bitstream.

But not QUITE yet. eircom still have lot to prove to everybody.

lucernarian

From the documents I see on eircom's "next generation networks" website, i *think* the DDN and PPK VDSL2 cabinets will go live around the same time as the FTTH stuff in Wexford and Sandyford, and other operators will be able to place orders through the unified gateway for both on Monday week.

http://www.nextgenerationnetwork.ie/downloads/filg_meeting_9/programme_review_filg9.pdf

Sponge Bob

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

From the documents I see on eircom's "next generation networks" website, i *think* the DDN and PPK VDSL2 cabinets will go live around the same time as the FTTH stuff in Wexford and Sandyford,

Oh goody, 4 years after they were installed.

Those of you of an anoraky nature may wish to map an FTTC deployment so I attach the positions of the PRP and DDM cabinets below ( KMZ) so that you get an idea of the number of cabs needed to provide VDSL instead of ADSL.

The original exchanges are located here Dundrum and Priory Park.

Their original boundaries are attached as DDM.kmz and PRP.kmz

eircom installed 30 cabs in the DDM area and 27 in the PRP area to deliver VDSL speeds.

You can do a spot of network planning with that data Load the 3 files into Google Earth and turn them all on! Then zoom to south Dublin.

A 'D side' is the number of customer side pairs and an 'E side' is the number of exchange side pairs, there should be more D than E sides but E sides are irrelevant in FTTC as they are replaced by Fibre.

HTH

lucernarian

Bk, I agree with practically every word you said, it was a great post. Do clarify something for me though: Did you mean to say "Well they certainly won't be doing towns where UPC are not present."? That would make more sense, with the caveat that were eircom to treat a potential TV service seriously then they may spread their wings more freely so as to take on Sky also. Purely speculative I know. It's worth pointing out that Wexford town has no UPC broadband whatsoever though a cable network in place is more of a threat to eircom than somewhere with no cable network whatsoever like Dundalk or Monaghan town. There will likely be a few exceptions like these places based on what I mentioned earlier, but it will be UPC areas for the most part methinks.


I think the part about monopolies and BT wholesale is better looked at by considering that Openreach in particular still has a monopoly, except that it is regulated better. The UK has a more competitive comms market with a much higher prevalence of LLU. Due to BT's monopoly on the access network and in certain cases on backhaul too, they will still generate revenue on this at little extra marginal cost. BT has also been consistently better at improving their own product line and availability too (eircom's Amber programme came 2 years after BT for example) and have been market leaders (excepting Virgin Media) relatively consistently over the past decade, barring the LLU operators' entry into the market earlier in that decade. Telewest/NTL/Virgin's presence has always been around and recognised and adapted to, whereas UPC have gone from a joke of a TV operator to reaching near 50% broadband availability currently in the space of 3 years.

A sudden attack on eircom's market share that a poorly-regulated monopoly will never adapt quickly to, and that's before we consider that eircom's debt burden which came almost solely from buying itself is over 50% of BT's, a far larger company!

Eircom do have an awful lot to prove but their product/investment options are narrowing down to "have widespread FTTx over the next 3 years" or "stop offfering any products"! The latest announcement probably stems more from the preparation of a new business plan for the bondholders than a regulatory threat by itself. I suspect the announcements over wholesale fibre might please Comreg and Brussels while the FTTH/FTTC announcement is more to get the attention of bondholders.

lucernarian

If I may speculate on the delay in properly using the VDSL2 cabinets, it seems that there may have been a certain displeased regulator involved at the then structure for sub-loop unbundling and the opportunities for wholesale access to them. Along with eircom's heel-dragging tendencies when it comes to wholesale services of any sort. Is it possible that these cabinets would facilitate a rack or two from an OLO? I.e. unbundling within the cabinet? These cabinets are rather spacious boxes as street-side furniture goes.

Here's one I know of, I might look at google earth later to see the lot of them.
Link to Dundrum cabinet, Woodpark estate in Ballinteer

Also, where in the Sandyford exchange area are they deploying VDSL2 currently? Everything I've read about it so far suggests it's an exclusively FTTH trial there and that they are taking the results of Priory Park, Wexford, Sandyford and Dundrum together on deciding how to proceed with a combined FTTC and FTTH rollout.

bk

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

Bk, I agree with practically every word you said, it was a great post. Do clarify something for me though: Did you mean to say "Well they certainly won't be doing towns where UPC are not present."?

Yup, typo there, posting too late

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

That would make more sense, with the caveat that were eircom to treat a potential TV service seriously then they may spread their wings more freely so as to take on Sky also. Purely speculative I know. It's worth pointing out that Wexford town has no UPC broadband whatsoever though a cable network in place is more of a threat to eircom than somewhere with no cable network whatsoever like Dundalk or Monaghan town. There will likely be a few exceptions like these places based on what I mentioned earlier, but it will be UPC areas for the most part methinks.

I think this is what makes Wexford any interesting experiment for Eircom.

Obviously UPC will eventually Broadband enable Wexford, they will BB enable all their existing cable areas naturally. So if Eircom can get in there first, it will be interesting to see if they can use these new products to stem the flow of customers to UPC when they finally move in.

I expect Eircom will first target high density areas which currently don't have UPC, but will likely soon have UPC. Followed by UPC areas.

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

Eircom do have an awful lot to prove but their product/investment options are narrowing down to "have widespread FTTx over the next 3 years" or "stop offfering any products"! The latest announcement probably stems more from the preparation of a new business plan for the bondholders than a regulatory threat by itself. I suspect the announcements over wholesale fibre might please Comreg and Brussels while the FTTH/FTTC announcement is more to get the attention of bondholders.

Yes, that is it exactly.

Sponge Bob

My apologies, Sandyford is FTTH not FTTC

The FTTC nodes in PRP and DDM are to be retrofitted to allow for unbundling INSIDE the cabinets. I think this is in train as we write. I never found out whether the PRP and DDM cabs were VDSL only or whether they are MSANs (an MSAN is a full mini exchange which launches all services near the customer where an xDSL cabinet still passes telephony/fax/dialup back to the original exchange)

The OAOs will share a single device inside each cabinet and back to the exchange site where at least one operator already has gear from the LLU days but where eircom will offer ethernet aggregation backhaul too.

lucernarian

I'd hazard a guess and say that they are full MSANs. I think Pierre Danon said at the time (and I also heard this directly from someone in eircom) that they were looking to VDSL cabinets to "decentralise" their network and allow for the sale of various eircom properties and the exchange buildings themselves. That was how the rollout was to be funded, along with going cap in hand to the govt of course. They would presumably need to be full MSANs if they had ambitions of selling exchange property.

bealtine

Sponge Bob wrote: »

My apologies, Sandyford is FTTH not FTTC

Just to be clear the Sandyford announcement is just a recycled announcement of the Belarmine (FTTH) trial done a few years ago.

Dundrum/Priory are also recycled announcements of the FTTC trials also from a few years ago.

The only new thing is the Wexford trials.

What is not clear is the extension of these trials out of their respective areas.

who is this

D'Peoples Voice wrote: »

This is why i raised the point in another thread, Eircom should try and avoid a head-on price war with UPC unless it can charge people in rural areas higher prices to subsidise the cost of the service in Cork city, Galway city and Dublin.

That would be innaccurate. Providing broadband in the urban centres has a lower cost to the provider than in the rural areas (houses are denser: faster to upgrade, maintenance doesn't require travelling as far etc.)

More accurate would be to say discriminate pricing based on the true cost of providing the service. I've long thought that if eircom had been split up geographically before privatisation (one focusing on urban centres the other on rural) there would be much better rural broadband coverage: A rural-eircom would be free to charge a price appropriate to the true cost, but would also be able to focus specifically on technologies which are suited to the job (say what you will about Three running NBS, but using HSDPA for rural broadband is more suited to the job, price-wise, than ADSL). An urban-eircom would have been able to charge lower prices, and compete more readily with UPC.

Plus you would then have two (roughly) equally-large telecoms companies, each owning their own infrastructure, which could compete against each other in the "foreign territory" (and neither would be at an inherent disadvantage, since both would own large infrastructure of their own)

bk wrote: »

Don't kid yourself, this PR was aimed straight at the bondholders. While UPC are a massive and perhaps mortal threat to Eircom, the biggest threat they actually face is their 3.9 Billion debt. If they can't sort this first and invest in the network then Eircom are finished.

I can never understand why people are so determined to avoid eircom "failing" (really reminds me of Anglo-Irish). The only way I ever see eircom being able to properly compete with UPC is by failing, having those huge debts written off, and being able to start fresh.

Alternate scenario: it fails and its assets are sold to other providers (Vodafone, BT etc.). Would reduce the power of any one telco forcing them all to cooperate with each (unlike eircom), plus they would all be able to invest properly in upgrades

Sponge Bob

eircom as a debt structure is dead, it can only survive beyond 2015 with at most €1.5bn of debt ...meaning €2bn written off in short order and saving used to invest heavily and quickly....meaning 500,000 FTTC/H enablements by end 2013

eircom the network is what we are discussing here. A de minimis investment would cost around €1.5m per exchange area like Dundrum or Priory Park with VDSL Cabs to get around 15k lines marketable for FTTC on each exchange at a cost of around €100 per line ....more for FTTH obviously given all the extra digging.

That only on a large order for equipment mind and not everybody will want VDSL either. Cost per subscriber will be around €500 per line ...€300 eventually. FTTH costings are elaborated on here.

Absent that investment they are toast in the cities.

lucernarian

Rural areas often end up with natural monopolies for things like communications networks so allowing them to set whatever price they wish would be bad for consumers in those markets.

There's some scope for charging a higher line rental in rural areas but considering eircom had the highest line rental in the world and still had lower rural broadband availability than most of their european peers, I can't see what difference that would make.

For the total of about £20 million in govt investment, the NI authorities are helping to fund the rollout of FTTC to all but the most isolated parts of Northern Ireland. http://www.nibroadband.com/

Meanwhile eircom asked for hundreds of millions (€260 million I think?) just to provide basic up to 1 mbps broadband nationally and to help make up for their lack of investment in anything but pairgains in the late 90s. Giving €80 million for three to live up to its own license obligations is not good for either taxpayers or the people it is supposed to serve.

With proper regulation, market structures, a company interested in expanding its business and an interested govt, the story in NI need not be so unique.

Sponge Bob

One other thing, EVEN if eircom do get €2bn of debt completely written off today it only frees up an extra €200m per annum for investment in 2012 and 2013 at most.

bk

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Remember that eircom are now losing c.5k a month lines to UPC. On service alone they have three more years of shrinkage ahead of them at 60-70k skullz a year.

eircom ....if they execute on target......will only match UPC coverage in mid 2015. By then they will have 200,000 fewer lines and UPC will have 200,000 more customers, minimum.

Yup and I wouldn't be surprised if that is the lower end of the estimate. Here you are assuming no increase in the churn rate from Eircom to UPC, but I'd be surprised if the churn rate doesn't increase for the following reasons:

1) People become more aware of UPC as a large, quality ISP
2) Word of mouth, people get to see their family and friends UPC internet and want if for themselves.
3) The increased availability (and acceptance and take up) of new high bandwidth video streaming services like iTunes, RTE/c4/BBC iPlayer, Youtube HD, Netflick, Amazon VOD, etc. which will drive people to wanting higher speeds.
4) Increased availability and acceptance of cloud services like iCloud, dropbox, Steam, etc. which also require higher upload speeds.

It could easily hit Eircom losing more then 300,000 customers in that time. And those lost customers, are totally lost to Eircom. People that sign up to Vodafone, UTV, etc. DSL, are still on Eircoms network and still giving them lots of money. But someone who moves to UPC, end up not giving Eircom one cent.

And finally don't forget Eircom will be losing customers to the mobile operators 3G services and LTE services in future.

Praetorian

Attention Eircom bond holders. DO NOT look in this thread, thank you!

Solair

Sponge Bob wrote:

Remember that eircom are now losing c.5k a month lines to UPC. On service alone they have three more years of shrinkage ahead of them at 60-70k skullz a year.

eircom ....if they execute on target......will only match UPC coverage in mid 2015. By then they will have 200,000 fewer lines and UPC will have 200,000 more customers, minimum.

You also have to factor into this that a lot of people will be dumping landlines entirely as mobiles are getting far more price competitive. There are not really good unlimited deals, particularly from Eircom's own mobile divisions. However, I can see that market getting really competitive over the next few years.

Mobile data will also be a lot more of a big deal as LTE starts to make an appearance over the next few years.

The traditional copper pair landline will become very much a thing of the past.

pat13wx

Isn't it unfair to compare UPC to Eircom? UPC seems to only cater for large, built up areas while Eircom, as bad as they are, cover the whole country. Having said that if UPC was available to me I'd jump at the chance.

Thor

pat13wx wrote: »

Isn't it unfair to compare UPC to Eircom? UPC seems to only cater for large, built up areas while Eircom, as bad as they are, cover the whole country. Having said that if UPC was available to me I'd jump at the chance.

They cover the entire country with shít!! Simple as.

The main concern is that Eircon tried to pass of the same technology(NGB) as new technology last year. All that did was give people the max there line could take and everyone would suffer terrible connections due to contention.

This new fibre roll out will probably take about 10 years and will probably only reach about a 1000 homes.

I can't even understand where they are getting the money for this, Aren't they in like €1bn debt!!

They are trying to fool people into getting Eircom but making them think next generation!! NO THANKS

I will stick with my flawless 100MB line from UPC for the same price!! Thanks!!

zt-OctaviaN

Migration of customers from eircom to UPC in the 100's of thousands?
Fibre will only go to cities over the coming years UPC fibre saw about 400million investment where's that laid out? So Eircom has factored the cost of setting up a tv supplying division into that cost also have they not? 100m is going to be stretched to reach many people!!

I fail to see why the likes of LTE/4G can't be used like in the states that gives users an adequate 100Mb connection and requires no lines! Why can't they adopt cost affective techs reach more given the rural displacement here?
Once again we see ourselves at the dialup end of the spectrum whilst virgin media begins a rollout of 1.5Gbps in London.

El Inho

itll still be a loada ****e! ireland is light years behind other countries, i lived in holland for 6 months and its mortifying how fast it is over there

AlmightyCushion

zt-OctaviaN wrote: »

Migration of customers from eircom to UPC in the 100's of thousands?
Fibre will only go to cities over the coming years UPC fibre saw about 400million investment where's that laid out? So Eircom has factored the cost of setting up a tv supplying division into that cost also have they not? 100m is going to be stretched to reach many people!!

I fail to see why the likes of LTE/4G can't be used like in the states that gives users an adequate 100Mb connection and requires no lines! Why can't they adopt cost affective techs reach more given the rural displacement here?
Once again we see ourselves at the dialup end of the spectrum whilst virgin media begins a rollout of 1.5Gbps in London.

Where are you getting LTE reaching 100Mbps from. Last I checked Verizon were getting about 15/20Mbps from it. Also, even if it is capable of getting 100Mbps, I'd take FTTH over LTE any day of the week. And, how can you compare FTTH to dial up and then in the same sentence praise Virgin Media. Virgin's use a HFC network, FTTH is superior to HFC everything else being equal.

Anywho, I am somewhat sceptical about this whole fibre rollout like most here. Saying that, Eircom must know that if they don't do something to take on UPC then they'll be dead in the water. When/if UPC saturate the areas they are in and run out of people to sign up, they'll just expand their network, slowly but surely taking more and more of Eircom's customers.

watty

LTE:
100Mbps is the peak speed, 20MHz channel, only one user connected and only about 0.5% of cell area.

To be getting 15Mbps to 20Mbps means that only a couple of people are using the sector, signal is very good and channel is 20MHz. With sort of Mast numbers vs Customers in Ireland on 3G you would get 1Mbps to 10Mbps on 20MHz channel and 0.25MBps to 2.5Mbps on 5MHz channel.

LTE here could be 5MHz channels (1/4 speed).

LTE can't support VOD/IPTV. Fibre can and thus compete with cable. LTE is only good for Bursty occasional traffic from users on the go. It's not ever a fixed broadband replacement.

Fibre can easily allow people to have 240Gbyte to 2Tbyte "caps" (i.e. for most people no cap at all). To control congestion and manage contention LTE needs to have 2Gbyte to 30Gbyte caps depending on spectrum available and usage pattern of users. A large number of fixed users on LTE would degrade really mobile users performance by x4 or more and result in lower caps.

zt-OctaviaN

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Where are you getting LTE reaching 100Mbps from. Last I checked Verizon were getting about 15/20Mbps from it. Also, even if it is capable of getting 100Mbps, I'd take FTTH over LTE any day of the week. And, how can you compare FTTH to dial up and then in the same sentence praise Virgin Media. Virgin's use a HFC network, FTTH is superior to HFC everything else being equal.

Anywho, I am somewhat sceptical about this whole fibre rollout like most here. Saying that, Eircom must know that if they don't do something to take on UPC then they'll be dead in the water. When/if UPC saturate the areas they are in and run out of people to sign up, they'll just expand their network, slowly but surely taking more and more of Eircom's customers.

Dont shoot/flame the messenger dude Im only going on articles I read of which there are many around 4G and LTE here is one!!!:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/03/clearwire-adding-lte-advanced-ready-technology-to-its-holdings/

I was'nt comparing FTTH to Dialup? I was stating that in terms of broadband rollouts Ireland is in comparison at a dialup state in terms of speeds being rolled out elsewhere at this stage!
i.e. years ago we were on dial up whilst other countries adopted ISDN and fibre. so we are back at that stage again.

Also albeit as quoted from wiki:
Much of the standard addresses upgrading 3G UMTS to 4G mobile communications technology, which is essentially a mobile broadband system with enhanced multimedia services built on top.
The standard includes:
Peak download rates of 326.4 Mbit/s for 4x4 antennas, and 172.8 Mbit/s for 2x2 antennas (using 20 MHz of spectrum).[10

Watty
"LTE can't support VOD/IPTV. Fibre can and thus compete with cable"

Thanks, I didnt realise LTE couldnt cope with that I believed it was more sustained data transfers.
Dont believe everything you read i guess!

Ok so I now agree seeing that 4G/LTE solutions are'nt great for IPTV and VOD, Fibre is the way to go but 100m investment is pocket change for this!

D'Peoples Voice

pat13wx wrote: »

Isn't it unfair to compare UPC to Eircom? UPC seems to only cater for large, built up areas while Eircom, as bad as they are, cover the whole country. Having said that if UPC was available to me I'd jump at the chance.

you should have left it at that

oh and Thor, their debt is only about €3.5 Billion but maybe you were marking it to market

Thor

D'Peoples Voice wrote: »

you should have left it at that

oh and Thor, their debt is only about €3.5 Billion but maybe you were marking it to market

Shocking amount to be in debt, Here is me thinking it was only €1bn in debt!!

Can't believe they are acutally allowed to invest money into upgrading there technology and still have a massive debt, I suppose the taught lies on how else are they going to make the money!!

Certainly someone and eircon has to relize that they are going about it the wrong way.

They should be offering 8mb lines for like 15 euro and do away with line rental charges, The only way to beat speed is to beat price. Which UPC are also trashing them on!!

bealtine

Thor wrote: »

They should be offering 8mb lines for like 15 euro and do away with line rental charges, The only way to beat speed is to beat price. Which UPC are also trashing them on!!

Basically Comreg sets the price after allowing eircom a nice profit.
So if you want to reduce the price you have to persuade Comreg first.

Thor

bealtine wrote: »

Basically Comreg sets the price after allowing eircom a nice profit.
So if you want to reduce the price you have to persuade Comreg first.

Ah jesus, I would have a better chance convincing UPC to give me 200MB line by next year!!

To think that eircon use to have the best deals going in this country,I glad i have UPC and don't live in an area that doesn't

I do feel sorry for those who are stuck with Eircon, But in the end of the day, There is someone out there who can't even get Eircon and have to stick with wireless!!

Or worse!!

Satellite!

DrGreenthumb

I wouldn't go back to Eircom after those assholes charged me 250 for a modem when they interduced broadband

zt-OctaviaN

D'Peoples Voice wrote: »

oh and Thor, their debt is only about €3.5 Billion but maybe you were marking it to market

How come they havent been shut down?
other companies would have been!