Eircom DSL rollout. Delayed and no longer a priority.

arctan

tis an old term alright, but it's still getting plugged around Eircom, most of the industrial estates in Dublin, their exchanges are still called RSU's even though they might be fed with Fibre and have ODF's etc.. in them, not exactly legacy stuff.... a spur off a bigger exchange if anything else is all they are.

they have to maintain a customers capability yes, but from a rollout sense, if the exchange the customer is connected to is not connected to NGN, they won't get DSL ...

edit: just a note on the exchange, some of the rural RSU's are basically signal boosters, no A to D or D to A done...

Sponge Bob

You mean some of the rural exchanges are merely pairgains of some sort ?? Which ones off that list would be pairgains ??

I think the point you are making is that ATM exchanges are no longer being considered for DSL Upgrades, they must have Ethernet backhaul in order to be considered. Am I correct ??

Ethernet can be backhauled over Wireless ( STM-1 minimum) or Fibre, am I also correct ??

arctan

not that they are not being considered, but yes they may be put on the long finger compared to higher yielding exchanges, exchanges in urban areas are continuously getting upgraded ...

if STT had of invested in Eircom, there was a program going to be run to replace pair gains and multiplexers for better technologies in rural areas, but that's on hold and funds being diverted to the next phase of FTTH & FTTC in urban spots I think, which is due to get going in the next couple of months

Eircom's core backhaul network is all NGN, but it's the exchanges connecting into it, if they are not NGN, you won't get DSL

(obviously they have to get onto the NGN somewhere, usually the next main exchange they are interconnceted with, be it using ATM or other older technologies)

ethernet can be backhauled over Wireless and Fibre yes, but it's not usually done in a backhaul sense, distribution sense moreso on the fixed access operations side, FCS, FTTH, FTTH etc.. (Fibre being vDSL, FCS using GPRS or in some areas 3G)


edit: sorry didn't answer the first part, no they wouldnt just be pairgains, but you could find them along them, yes ...

have a look here

http://www.eircomwholesale.ie/ExchangeMap/Modal.aspx?boundaries=true

just for example off that list, Kilmacanougue 1 is not broadband enable, Kilmacanouge 2 is though according to the map, as far as I remember they are both in the same building and can be jumpered across, so broadband should be available to customers off that exchange ....
this is a spur from Bray ... Enniskerry is also, so may have been upgraded the last while (or may be an RSU from from Bray also carrying DSL) , but on the list and map it says no Broadband is available... it's a big inconsistancy between what can be actually done and what's on record

Sponge Bob

I was discussing Aggregation more than Access, 3g cells are also backhauled over Ethernet. The Access network is a mess but many pairgains are being abandoned nodadays because of the pace of customer flight from eircom which means copper need no longer be split...no customers for it.

Do you have a list of the non A/D conversion exchanges from that list above??

Oh and Dahamsta, your exchange has fibre backhaul and is a designated WSEA Reach Node so it it Ethernet enabled too. Even fibred exchanges can still backhaul over ATM I am sorry to say.

eircom need but plug and play an upgraded DSLAM in your case.

dahamsta

I know, which makes it all the more frustrating. I pass it daily and regularly see the lads havin' the tae there, makes me want to stop and offer to install it for them....

For feck's sake if I could get in there I could patch myself up to my own cab in CIX, and break out from there.

Sponge Bob

Around 700 of eircoms 1200 exchanges are now Ethernet backhauled ...Arctan can confirm that I think.

Yet only 210 of the 700 have had the 7 year old ADSL2 technology installed ( marketed as Next Generation of course but it is 7 years old ) and perhaps another 30-100 will be done in future.

In terms of backhaul I don't know how many of the remaining 500 exchanges are due to be switched off ATM or Pairgaining and onto Ethernet.

arctan

aggregation, yes you're right in that sense,

consumer flight, from mobiles in rural areas to UPC in urban areas can be bad for business for eircom, but, particularly in rural areas, it's good for the consumer, its freeing up lines to be used as regular lines instead of Digital carriers... so instead of having 4 customers, you now have one who can avail of more services, Broadband (if they can get it) and PSTN ... Eircom still lose out, but instead of 4 unhappy customers they have one happy customer using more services

I don't have a non A/D list handy sorry ...

Sponge Bob

Do you have any Ethernet stats, we cross posted at the same time there??

arctan

not off hand sorry, but I think it's an awful lot more than you mention, as i said exchanges are gettin upgraded all the time, but records take their time on being updated

Sponge Bob

Final question, is the Ethernet backhaul upgrade program still underway and at what rate per month roughly ???

arctan

they are getting upgraded depending on usage ... i.e. higher capacity (regardless of area , but 9 times out of 10 it's urban) have priority

not uncommon for busy inter exchange lines to get an upgrade in capacity once every year or two (i.e. pulling in a new fibre) if the customers to use it are there ...

unfortunately it pulls man power and funds from elsewhere, leaving, particularly rural customers, with Eircom's obligation of voice services only...

but the plan is to get majority of exchanges up to NGN spec, but when is a different story, especially with fook all funds to develop the network with

Sponge Bob

Forgot to mention to Dahamsta. One can get a symettrical layer 2 Ethernet product from your premises to a WSEA Node Reach exchange to a reputable datacentre somewhere like Dublin and then you can get Layer 3 IP Transit there for feck all . That would give you a decent connection, one far above what even ADSL2 would provide...especially if one needed the uplink speeds.

eircom can do up to 100mbits symettrical if they bond copper pairs. Thereafter one requires fibre to the premises but the prices for the fibre pull are not outrageous if one lives 1-1.5km from the exchange.

Just a thought :cool:

dahamsta

It's me house SB, my premises is CIX. Well under 500m by line I reckon, but I think I'll stick with the deprecated DSL for now; I've seen Eircom's prices for that kinda stuff.

God, I remember years ago trying to get a naked line for my "taxi service", do you remember those days? I'm getting on now....

regress

Sponge Bob wrote: »

eircom have around 1220 exchanges.

950 or so have broadband,

210 of the 950 have NGB

270 have nothing. Many of those 270 were promised _something_, ie not fibre and not VDSL...just bog standard ADSL.

The previous technical discussion went a bit over my head but assume that above is basic description of situation. I assume as well that Ant was being disingenuous when he directed posters to NGB website for info of plans for the 270 with nothing.

While we must accept that most of the 270 will never get anything there are two categories for which basic DSL was promised and I think it is reasonable to expect some sort of an explanation from Eircom for why they have nothing

1 Exchanges covered by the 2007 upgrade program

2 Exchanges in the five major cities ( take all orders ) promise

I suppose expecting a response from Eircom is a bit hopeless at this stage as the reps only want to talk about NGB .

regress

regress wrote: »

I think it is reasonable to expect some sort of an explanation from Eircom for why they have nothing

1 Exchanges covered by the 2007 upgrade program

2 Exchanges in the five major cities ( take all orders promise)

.

Bump. Still waiting a response from Eircom reps. Although I realise ye have been very busy responding to NGB queries. Some of us with nothing still hope for ADSL.

regress

Bump. I think it is reasonable to expect a response from Eircom in relation to broken promises.

Broken Promise No 1. Exchanges on the 2007 Upgrade list will be upgraded to ADSL by 2009

Broken Promise No 2. Those living in the 5 major cities will have basic 1MB broadband by 2009, either through ADSL or wimax. The "Take all orders" promise.

eircom: Ant

regress wrote: »

Bump. I think it is reasonable to expect a response from Eircom in relation to broken promises.

Broken Promise No 1. Exchanges on the 2007 Upgrade list will be upgraded to ADSL by 2009

Broken Promise No 2. Those living in the 5 major cities will have basic 1MB broadband by 2009, either through ADSL or wimax. The "Take all orders" promise.

Hi regress,

Apologies for delay. I've asked Technical Support for more information on your query. I'm looking into this and will advise further during the week.

Best wishes,
Ant

regress

Thanks Ant

regress

Thanks Ant



Broken Promise No 1

In 2007 Eircom announced a programme to reprogram certain named exchanges and carry
out works to ensure that the exchanges on this list could deliver 1MB DSL broadband. 
Eircom committed to completing this work by the end of 2009.

Eircom even set up a site (formerly at www. broadbandatoz.ie) to announce when these exchanges were enabled.

According to Spongebob Eircom promised to enable the following Exchanges





Ballyforan
Carrigallen
Cloonee
Kilrickle
St. Johnston
Annyalla

Ballydesmond
Knocknagree
Knockraha
Ballydesmond


Ballyporeen

Bruree

Oldtown
Coon

Calverstown


Broken Promise No 2

http://www.irishpressreleases.ie/printer-page.php?p=1440

Quote:
16 Jan 2007 eircom today announced that with immediate effect the Company is taking all
broadband orders placed within the five main urban areas of Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Galway. Customers whose telephone lines have previously failed to qualify for broadband are encouraged to contact eircom to have their lines re-tested.

Five years after this promise was made Eircom has abandoned plans to rollout 1MB broadband throughout the five named cities and is refusing the honour the "take all orders" promise. 

Of course their are an additional 200+ Exchanges in addition to the above with nothing but let's address those two groups first. 

jay93

All tough people are looking for ADSL it's a dying tech at this point i really can't see Eircom ever complete the ADSL roll out in Ireland.

If Eircom had the funds rolling out Fibre FTTH FTTC would be better for the future ADSL is terrible for long distances and overall speed we have a ''8Mb'' line with Eircom it's good but upload is crap 0.30Mb/s fibre could reach well over 20Mb/s Upload on fibre can't see ADSL being rolled out anymore their doesn't seem to be much in it for Eircom again they complete the ADSL roll out they would be starting with fibre then.

I can only imagine how annoying it must be to have no form of fixed broadband but Eircom are broke as a business the only way Eircom can save all the customers jumping to UPC is by starting to roll out more FTTH FTTC otherwise the more UPC spreads across Ireland the quicker Eircom will loose ADSL customers to the UPC cable service.

Fibre trials of the new Eircom/Magnet FTTH and FTTC have seen some amazing results with great pings download and upload rates..

Chances of us getting Fibre here are very slim for the moment anyway..

Liam Byrne

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Around 700 of eircoms 1200 exchanges are now Ethernet backhauled ...Arctan can confirm that I think.

Yet only 210 of the 700 have had the 7 year old ADSL2 technology installed ( marketed as Next Generation of course but it is 7 years old ) and perhaps another 30-100 will be done in future.

In terms of backhaul I don't know how many of the remaining 500 exchanges are due to be switched off ATM or Pairgaining and onto Ethernet.

Very true - I remember some eircom sales rep trying to sell me "Next Gen" and I said "oh - the non-contention technology that I had years ago when I was lucky enough to be with Smart Telecom" (next generation my arse)

Mind you I also had to tell him that he was offering something that he couldn't supply due to whatever mental route the cable.snakes to the exchange; he contradicted me but had to ring back the following day to admit it and apologise.

lockup35

The US looks to be abandoning ADSL. Hopefully this will motivate UPC and smaller cable companies in Ireland to expand into areas where people are stuck with limited or no DSL..

[HTML] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/27/cable_adsl [/HTML]

arctan

it's in Eircoms interest to roll out NGN to those exchanges that haven't been upgraded, the price of running and infrastructure is cheaper to run and maintain than current equipment, but it's gettin this infrastructure in place thats takin the long time,

ADSL wont die yet unfortunately especially with the like of 7302 iSAM nodes popping up in exchanges over the years, they allow DSL to be ran off the NGN, its when FTTC starts getting some steam under its rollout when you'll see big changes in the service ...

regress

lockup35 wrote: »

. Hopefully this will motivate UPC and smaller cable companies in Ireland to expand into areas where people are stuck with limited or no DSL..
]

Problem is UPC coverage is limited even within the major urban areas and tends to be available in areas which already have fixed line availability from Eircom.

regress

arctan wrote: »

it's in Eircoms interest to roll out NGN to those exchanges that haven't been upgraded ...

Unfortunately the silence of the reps would indicate that this is not the case. Query to them relates to ADSL because that is what people in these areas were promised by Eircom many years ago. Not necessarily querying why the promised ADSL has not been provided but rather why these areas still have nothing and an admittance from Eircom that promises were broken.

Sponge Bob

Your Forgot Broken Promise Number 3. The Most recent.

eircom Next Generation Broadband Announcement

More than 240 exchanges will be upgraded by the end of 2011.

Missed that target by around 20 or so.

regress

Aware of that but wanted to restrict this thread to discussion of the areas which have no fixed line broadband service. And to highlight eircoms refusal to answer queries on that.

Discussion of NGB upgrading of already enabled Exchanges has been comprehensively covered on other threads and it is something reps have no problem discussing.

arctan

I'd imagine the lack of information being fed through the chain is the main reason and the info just isn't there .... although yeah the lack of customer feedback is frustrating, but the fact is that there is a big back log of NGN jobs which could get the all clear at any time, but due to budget and cost/benifits measures, although they might be scheduled for a few months time , they could get the all clear tomorrow, or vica versa ...

the iSAM nodes should open up some DSL to some of the bigger rural towns, but as with all DSL, if you're too far from the exchange, unless you have the funds for fibre or HSDSL you're gonna get crap speeds

regress

arctan wrote: »

I'd imagine the lack of information being fed through the chain is the main reason and the info just isn't there ....

Not good enough. And I don't believe that Eircom does not know why it broke it's own promises. Surely the refusal to give any sort of explanation undermines the legitimacy of this forum. And while well aware that DSL is limited, for many it would be better than nothing or GPRS dongle speeds.

arctan

regress wrote: »

And I don't believe that Eircom does not know why it broke it's own promises.

lol .. you'd be surprised, especially with a lot of the old kit that's rampant in country areas which can't be monitored centrally