Eircom eFibre VDSL/FTTC rollout – plans to reach 1.6m premises by mid 2016

Psygnosis

Article below
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/25879-eircom-fibre-rollout/

So we know they have started already in wexford and parts of south dublin.

Would anyone have a schedule of when the rollout and what towns are set to go live on dates.
How exactly are they doing it setting up small cabinets outsides people estated where I presume fibre will go to from the main exchange. These cabinets will then provide the internet to the house over the existing copper is this correct.

MOD BK: Updated 29/08/2014 Now it is 1.6 million premises by 2016:
http://pressroom.eircom.net/press_releases/article/eircom_Full_Year_and_Fourth_Quarter_Results_To_30_June_2014_/

bealtine

Psygnosis wrote: »

Would anyone have a schedule of when the rollout and what towns are set to go live on dates.
How exactly are they doing it setting up small cabinets outsides people estated where I presume fibre will go to from the main exchange. These cabinets will then provide the internet to the house over the existing copper is this correct.

There is a list of the 10 exchanges to be upgraded on the eircom wholesale website.
Basically they change the cable from your local green cabinet back to the exchange with a fibre, copper runs from the cabinet to your house. This is known as FTTC.

Sponge Bob

In the UK the ratio between homes with fibre an homes with fibre to the box at the bottom of the road is around 1 in 10...with the 10 getting the slower tech.

eircom will have upgraded around 15 out of their 1200 exchanges by the end of 2012 and in so doing they will still miss people by their own admission.

Most of those who will be upgraded will have fibre near the house, not in it.

Solair

Well, with the way the eircom debt mountain is, a better resourced company might be running the show by 2015.

Sponge Bob

eircom are Janus, telling their senior bondholders they will get their money back (they won't) while telling their customers that proper broadband is coming soon ( it ain't)

UPC will destroy them by end 2014 and UPC are, frankly, crap.

long_b

I take it this will only benefit those who can currently get a decent speed on their copper lines ?

bealtine

long_b wrote: »

I take it this will only benefit those who can currently get a decent speed on their copper lines ?

Not really, as the length of the line will now be only from the local cabinet to your house, the cabinet will be fed by fibre. The speed will be determined by your distance from the local cabinet.So if you live a long distance from the local cabinet you won't get full speed.

Ranicand

bealtine wrote: »

Not really, as the length of the line will now be only from the local cabinet to your house, the cabinet will be fed by fibre. The speed will be determined by your distance from the local cabinet.So if you live a long distance from the local cabinet you won't get full speed.

UPC works in a similar way only the last bit is coaxial cable rather then copper?

If the backbone of Eircoms network was fiber it would be a vast improvement on what is there now.

Praetorian

The 10-15 exchanges that people have mentioned, are these the already rolled out exchanges in south co dublin and wexford?

MrO

Psygnosis wrote: »

How exactly are they doing it

I'll bet that's a question most of the engineering staff in eircom are asking themselves - hard to 'reach' 1m homes when you haven't got a washer.


Unless of course by 'reach' you mean that fibre will be somewhere in the same postcode as your house. In which case I'm sure they'll hit the targets :-)

nilhg

Anyone have an idea of the sort of costs involved in doing this for Eircom per cab/exchange, assuming that no civils are involved because ducting is in situ already.

Am I correct in assuming that fiber is point to point, that it's not possible to "tap into" an existing fibre "cable". In my case the trunk cable comes out to Rathangan from Kildare following the road, at its nearest it's less than a KM from the cabinet serving my house, which is almost 3Km from the exchange.

iMuse

How close would you need to be to a cabinet to receive decent speeds like 25meg? My line can only handle about 3 meg at the minute so If I could get anywhere near 20 I would be delighted. I'm in 1 of towns listed in the phase 1 rollout and there's no UPC available.

lucernarian

There are quite a number of cabinets that are poorly placed and end up serving villages or areas which are nowhere near the cabinet itself. Rural towns and villages that might otherwise benefit from being connected to larger exchanges are going to lose out when the cabinet that serves them all is still 3km away.

iMuse

nilhg wrote: »

Anyone have an idea of the sort of costs involved in doing this for Eircom per cab/exchange, assuming that no civils are involved because ducting is in situ already.

Am I correct in assuming that fiber is point to point, that it's not possible to "tap into" an existing fibre "cable". In my case the trunk cable comes out to Rathangan from Kildare following the road, at its nearest it's less than a KM from the cabinet serving my house, which is almost 3Km from the exchange.

They announced they are spending 5 million on upgrading letterkenny but it depends how far they are going with the fibre. What does an eircom cabinet look like, how big is it?

Nothingbetter2d

Ranicand wrote: »

UPC works in a similar way only the last bit is coaxial cable rather then copper?

If the backbone of Eircoms network was fiber it would be a vast improvement on what is there now.

coaxial cable is still made from copper though.

arctan

Nothingbetter2d wrote: »

coaxial cable is still made from copper though.

co-ax is an unbalanced cable though with much more bandwidth capacity and lower attenuation than twisted pair...

nilhg wrote: »

.

Am I correct in assuming that fiber is point to point, that it's not possible to "tap into" an existing fibre "cable". In my case the trunk cable comes out to Rathangan from Kildare following the road, at its nearest it's less than a KM from the cabinet serving my house, which is almost 3Km from the exchange.

i.e. you'll be less than a kilometer from the DSLAM (the DSLAM is currently in your exchange)

iMuse wrote: »

What does an eircom cabinet look like, how big is it?

bit of a crap shot

http://maps.google.ie/?ll=53.290065,-6.199379&spn=0.007209,0.021136&t=m&z=16&layer=c&cbll=53.290132,-6.199446&panoid=kxsrKSDHZEEK-dW-g2mLDQ&cbp=12,253.34,,1,12.68

in around 2M long, 2 cubic meters I think it's volume is

arctan

Clonee, Mervue, Tallaght, Ballyboden, Douglas, Swords, Donabate, Dooradoyle, Letterkenny and Palmerstown are the next locations to be ran out ....

ducts going in around Tallaght & Ballyboden the last few weeks, Technicians being drafted in for the process, closing dates for applications is next week ...

Judging by how fast Sandyford and Priory Park were done, all going to plan with no snags, the majority of the Dublin locations could be up and running by the end of the summer the latest

10belowzero

On top of the 10 listed exch area's, Clonee, Mervue, Tallaght, Ballyboden, Douglas, Swords, Donabate, Dooradoyle, Letterkenny and Palmerstown .another 45 exch area's have been added - the area's being done have yet to be announced.
Clonee , Tallaght ,ballyboden ,Sword's ,Donabate and Letterkenny have started and will be up and running this summer.
I don't know about the country location's or palmerstown , but I beleive they have started ,planning etc etc all done.
I believe there will be a mix of FTTH + FTTC , across the area's , but will mainly be FTTC .
Techician's are being asked this week if the wish to transfer to the new fibre build team's , that are being set up across the country in the next month.
The cost is in the region of 300 million euro's and without doubt the staff side will deliver on or before time.

Alun

Sounds interesting. The amount of work involved for FTTC should be fairly small as others have pointed out. As long as there's room in the existing cabinets, as far as I can see it's little more than pulling the fibre along the already existing ducts owned by Eircom and relocating the DSLAMs from the exchange to the cabinets. Not as much work as, for example, UPC had to do to broadband enable Bray which involved a lot of digging for new ducting plus renewal of a lot of their existing coax cable.

Sponge Bob

New cabinets will be needed. Alongside the existing Green ones or in place of them.

arctan

-new cabs needed
-ESB supply
-subducting for fibre

some additional new cabs needed in the Dublin area (i.e. trenching in new cables)

then whatever civils are needed thereafter (wall/jointbox/groundwork rebuilds) ....

that's all in ideal circumstances.... then you have stuff like collapsed or full ducts, complaints from various sources etc... which all hold up the contractors

Ben D Bus

There was work going on at the cabinet outside my flat in Ballyfermot (Palmerstown exchange) this morning. Maybe unrelated. Not that it matters for the foreseeable. Moved to UPC years ago.

Sponge Bob

arctan wrote: »

in around 2M long, 2 cubic meters I think it's volume is

Yep, that is one. It can do 192 lines max I think.

Sponge Bob

Eircoms top 67 Exchanges serve over 1m lines between them and have 10,000 lines each. Minimum.

If your exchange is not on this list then you may consider an upgrade is somewhat unlikely to say the least.

TLH Tallaght
CRA Crown Alley
BDT Blanchardstown
DBN Dolphins Barn
BBH Beggars Bush
NMN North Main
MER Merrion
BLP Belcamp
PRP Priory Park
BLB Ballyboden
DLA Dunlaoghaire
SRD Swords
WAL Walkinstown
LMK Roches Street
QKR Quaker Road
FNG Finglas
MVW Mervue
DBC Drogheda
RMS Rathmines
PAL Palmerstown
DDK Dundalk
TRE Terenure
DDM Dundrum
KNY Kilkenny
SAN Santry
WTD Waterford Central
BRI Bray
NUT Nutley
ENS Ennis
CHF Churchfield
CAB Cabra
CRW Carlow
SRL Summerhill
WHI Whitehall
NAS Naas
ROC Rochestown
LKY Letterkenny
TWV Tralee
MGR Mullingar
SLA Shantalla
WRD Wellington Road
DGS Douglas
CKC Cork Central
AUV Navan
STN Sutton
DNU Droichead Nua ( Newbridge)
DYX Dennehys Cross
CLK Coolock
CLM Clonmel
LKD Dooradoyle
CRL Crumlin
CBR Castlebar
CLT Clontarf
CLD Nangor Road
BNC Ballincollig
LCN Lucan Ballydowd
SKL Shankill
PHB Phibsboro
BRN Balbriggan
CHD Caherdavin
PGS Portlaoise
TYC Tycor
SHP Ship Street
GAL Galway
KLN Killarney
SNH Sandyford Aeh

ozmo

arctan wrote: »

Clonee, Mervue, Tallaght, Ballyboden, Douglas, Swords, Donabate, Dooradoyle, Letterkenny and Palmerstown are the next locations to be ran out ....

ducts going in around Tallaght & Ballyboden the last few weeks, Technicians being drafted in for the process, closing dates for applications is next week ...

Judging by how fast Sandyford and Priory Park were done, all going to plan with no snags, the majority of the Dublin locations could be up and running by the end of the summer the latest

What kind of speeds would you get from this, without having fibre to the door? Will it approach UPC speeds?

Cantona's Collars

ozmo wrote: »

What kind of speeds would you get from this, without having fibre to the door? Will it approach UPC speeds?

Here in Wexford speeds are 150Mbs in many areas and 50Mbs in others.Mate of mine was doing some work for Eircom and said takeup was low from the public in Wexford.They see €20 a month on something that barely works (3g dongles) as better value than superfast fibre optic broadband:rolleyes:

http://www.fibrepilot.ie/locations#wexford

https://www.magnet.ie/fibre/

starviewadams

Good explanation of how FTTC/FTTH works.

http://www.leyingitout.co.uk/2010/01/what-is-fttc-and-how-does-it-work/

arctan

ozmo wrote: »

What kind of speeds would you get from this, without having fibre to the door? Will it approach UPC speeds?

can't comment on the FTTH because there has been very little uptake, hence feedback about it .... but circa the 100 Mb/s wouldn't be far off ...

FTTC ... majority of places it'll be rolled out first, most premises will be less than a KM from the cab .... VDSL2+ starts losing a lot of signal after 1KM... within that KM speeds from circa 25 to 30 minimum, right up to 45 are the norm ...

again.. depending on your line conditions from the cab to your house too ...

10 Megs has been thrown around as the absolute minimum .... sounds ****e, but this is to people who might not have been able to access broadband at all due to line length or conditions ...

big plus also, over the likes of UPC is, when you're gettin your 25 or 30 or whatever, that's what you are getting, you woun't be contending with the rest of your estate, no fluctuating or drop off of speed during peak times, it's all your datastream...

tested a 25 Meg UPC line earlier and was only getting 12 on it, which fluctuates a lot .... again they'll have some similar problems as Eircom, long line lengths, bad lines etc... but once anyone has more than 6 - 8 Megs the majority seem happy with speeds cos it'll download your everyday stuff fairly sharpish unless you're using the likes of Netflix etc...

Freddie59

arctan wrote: »

tested a 25 Meg UPC line earlier and was only getting 12 on it, which fluctuates a lot .... again they'll have some similar problems as Eircom, long line lengths, bad lines etc...

Someone pointed out earlier the difference between coax and twisted pair. Have a read of it. Completely different technology AFAIK.

Solair

I don't know about elsewhere, but a lot of Cork City areas seem to have had new cabinets put in in the last 10 years or so. There was a major tidy-up of their local network cabling in older parts of the city where it would have had a lot of overhead lines running back to exchanges in the past.

I would assume this might make life easier for them with a fibre rollout as the cables should be fairly structured and there was a lot of new ducting put in place relatively recently.

They eliminated a lot of the old overhead networks.

I think the same is true in a lot of parts of Dublin and I assume elsewhere too.

The list of exchanges there is pretty much all the pre-1970s major urban ones. Outside of that list of large exchanges, there are a lot or urban ones that are <10,000K lines, particularly in newer areas! These are scattered around Cork and Dublin etc. The technology radically changed in the 1980s and more so in the 1990s and 00s that allowed for small exchanges (RSUs) to be put in in newly developed areas. It was often more cost effective and practical than extending existing exchanges and kept the line lengths more reasonable.

There are plenty of <10,000K exchanges that would be perfectly suitable for fibre-to-home rollout too. Any urban area really should be fine. Even small towns are suitable (if there's sufficient fibre to the exchange and ducts and cabinets in the urban area)

The major ones listed there were mostly originally large urban exchanges that would have started out as Step-By-Step or Crossbar switches and were subsequently switched over to digital in the 1980s/90s. Hence, they have huge numbers of incoming lines.
Many of these are pretty vast!

arctan

Freddie59 wrote: »

Someone pointed out earlier the difference between coax and twisted pair. Have a read of it. Completely different technology AFAIK.

different technologies along it ... the cables are the medium

UPC still have high contention on the lines, it's fine for the moment but in a few years without more speed upgrades you'll see drop offs and crap speeds