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

Machinehead

Attached link from Radio Kerry page 17/09.
http://www.radiokerry.ie/news/internet-companies-cant-provide-service-where-not-commercially-viable/
Looks like anything west of a line from Athlone down to Cork, where inferior infrastructure prevails, living outside county capitals & other major towns & cities will have to wait.

amdaley28

Machinehead wrote: »

Attached link from Radio Kerry page 17/09.
http://www.radiokerry.ie/news/internet-companies-cant-provide-service-where-not-commercially-viable/
Looks like anything west of a line from Athlone down to Cork, where inferior infrastructure prevails, living outside county capitals & other major towns & cities will have to wait.

What was that date they mentioned in the link ?
2016 must have been a misprint,2036 is more likely :rolleyes:

bk

Villain wrote: »

Agree 100% but sadly eFibre also isn't a solution for the majority of people either, their reluctance or refusal to locate cabinets further than a few hundred meters from town boundaries means vDSL is not much use to rural populations.

Yes it is, eFibre now passes 1 million premises, that is more then 50% of all homes in Ireland, which thus means the majority of homes (a majority is anything greater then 50%).

By 2016 it will reach 1.6 million premisses, which will be 80% of all premises in Ireland.

So yes, in fact it is a solution for the majority of people.

In the UK they are using VDSL to reach 95% of homes. Now that requires a subsidy to reach that extra 15%, but the same could happen here in Ireland.

Of course that still leaves that 5 to 20% of people without decent broadband, but please lets not overstate the problem.

Villain wrote: »

Although I did notice that Eircom are going to put a cabinet in Mount Juliet which is about 5km from the exchange in Thomastown which is good to see however I think is very much the exception.

No wrong again, Eircom has been rolling out cabinets widely in rural Ireland. You can easily see the proof of it on the Eircom and Ireland Off Line maps.

Villain wrote: »

To be honest the majority of people I know that work in the network industry laugh at Eircom been allowed to use the word fibre for this product! Following the logic that a FTTC product is called eFibre you say any connection that is connected to Fibre at some point is a fibre product even wireless solutions!

Clearly eFibre is not FTTH, however it certainly isn't something to be laughed at! Eircoms VDSL/FTTC rollout is one of the largest, quickest and most impressive network rollouts this country and the network industry has ever seen. In fact it is one of the most impressive rollouts in Europe.

Trust me, no one in the ISP industry is laughing at Eircom now. Everyone is very impressed and maybe a bit worried at this new Eircom.

In the end, it is delivering high speed broadband, to a great majority of the country in a very short period of time.

Ah-Watch wrote: »

Okay I know we are talking different scales between America and Ireland but I was on 4G all summer in the USA and it was perfect. Speeds were brilliant everywjere I went bar one stop on the CTA where I reverted to EDGE but on the otherhand you couldnt use that freely nowing you had a FUP with them. We had fibre installed in July while I was gone and theres still problems with speeds jumping up and down erratically. I don't notice a massive difference between ADSL and VDSL even though I am on an 80Meg fixed profile with fibre.

Remember 4G seems very fast at the moment, because there are so few people with 4G devices and so few people using it. As time goes on and more people start using it, the slower it will get. Eventually I don't expect it will be much faster then 3G.

It is purely physics and the amount of radio spectrum that has been issued to 4G.

spix wrote: »

If everyone still stuck with slow speeds started moving away from Eircom I'm sure they'd be much quicker in upgrading.

If everyone moved to 3G/4G, trust me you would be getting speeds much slower then 2mb/s

Again it comes down to pure physics, 3G/4G simply don't have much bandwidth and the more people who use it the slower it will get. 3G/4G are mobile broadband, it really designed to be a replacement for wired broadband, instead it is supposed to be only an addition to wired broadband.

Also Eircom is roll out of eFibre is one of the quickest I've seen anywhere in the world. I really don't think they can do it much faster! They are already doing it so fast due to the competition pressure from UPC, ESB FTTH and yes 3G/4G

Manc Red

Apparently my home is now "fibre enabled" and I can get a maximum speed of 7Mb on eFibre. Yep, eFibre is slower than my regular broadband. I checked houses nearby and they are the same.

Going by that, we would be included in the 1 million premises, which just goes to show how false those numbers probably are.

same ol sh1te

Manc Red wrote: »

Apparently my home is now "fibre enabled" and I can get a maximum speed of 7Mb on eFibre. Yep, eFibre is slower than my regular broadband. I checked houses nearby and they are the same.

Going by that, we would be included in the 1 million premises, which just goes to show how false those numbers probably are.

Not possible that it's slower than adsl, how far are you from the cabinet? What's your attenuation and SN margin? Have you tried speedtest over ethernet not wireless?

Manc Red

same ol sh1te wrote: »

Not possible that it's slower than adsl, how far are you from the cabinet? What's your attenuation and SN margin? Have you tried speedtest over ethernet not wireless?

It's due to distance. ADSL at my distance from the cabinet is faster than VDSL speeds.

ED E

same ol sh1te wrote: »

Not possible that it's slower than adsl, how far are you from the cabinet? What's your attenuation and SN margin? Have you tried speedtest over ethernet not wireless?

Totally possible. You might want to understand the tech before you post. Its not super common but it happens.

Edit for example:
2.5km ADSL link
Cab 500m from exchange
Thats 12Mb ADSL and 7Mb or 0Mb VDSL

same ol sh1te

Manc Red wrote: »

It's due to distance. ADSL at my distance from the cabinet is faster than VDSL speeds.

That does not make any sense and is not possible, you must have a problem, your modem must be at the end of a very long or bad quality internal cabling or split before it gets to the modem. Are you sure you have it connected in the main filtered socket. The engineer is supposed to do a check your internal cabling. They will not install fibre if your line does not pre-qualify as being suitable

Its Only Ray Parlour

same ol sh1te wrote: »

That does not make any sense and is not possible, you must have a problem, your modem must be at the end of a very long or bad quality internal cabling or split before it gets to the modem. Are you sure you have it connected in the main filtered socket. The engineer is supposed to do a check your internal cabling. They will not install fibre if your line does not pre-qualify as being suitable

He hasn't switched over to fibre. He's saying his pre-qualify for fibre is slower than his current ADSL connection.

same ol sh1te

Its Only Ray Parlour wrote: »

He hasn't switched over to fibre. He's saying his pre-qualify for fibre is slower than his current ADSl connection.

Ah, ok

BigMoose

Wahoo! Friendly KN guys turned up this morning and connected me to the new cabinet on the MerryMeeting exchange. 50Mb down and 20Mb up - currently getting about 48/19 on speedtest. They weren't sure if vectoring was already enabled on this cab - any way to tell?

amdaley28

BigMoose wrote: »

Wahoo! Friendly KN guys turned up this morning and connected me to the new cabinet on the MerryMeeting exchange. 50Mb down and 20Mb up - currently getting about 48/19 on speedtest. They weren't sure if vectoring was already enabled on this cab - any way to tell?

At least you were lucky with the KN guys who called to you.
The two I had,one fellow didn't want to know & the other was too afraid of the first to open his mouth probably because he has to work with him every day.
At least I only had him for a few minutes :mad:

jeffk

Emailed comreg for the laugh as I’m two years waiting to get Efibre with ten houses in the estate having it already

“…I have read your email in detail. Unfortunately by not giving you any definite date for the fibre optic broadband availability that does not constitute that you can break your contract with eircom”

I'm sorry I didn't try out home-plugs before signing back up and id likely be on UPC now

Villain

bk wrote: »

Trust me, no one in the ISP industry is laughing at Eircom now. Everyone is very impressed and maybe a bit worried at this new Eircom.

In the end, it is delivering high speed broadband, to a great majority of the country in a very short period of time.

I obviously know different people in the industry than you do

Saying the great majority of the country is a big stretch too, eFibre is welcome but its not where we should be at.

ED E

Im half way between yourself and BK on this. Eircom still has a lot of problems, but they're miles better than they used to be, and the rollout is going well, can't blame eircom for a county council taking three months to give permission to break ground on repair works, not even new cabs.

Villain

Well to be fair it's easy to be better than ADSL2+, one the main issues I have here is the use of the word Fibre, it lends people who are not interested in the industry or technology to think they are getting something they obviously aren't getting.

It is also easy to make customers think this is a great product and the future has arrived when in reality they are far off the present never mind the future!

Take a relation of mine e.g. he had 3mb/256k from Eircom and they put a Cab live last month about 1.3km away from him and he now has 15mb/3mb which he thinks is great but imo its still crap.

Calling anything that has an upload speed of less than 20mb high speed is a joke tbh, sadly many people here seem to think that 50mb/10mb is "high speed" broadband! Tell that to someone who had 100mbps 5 years ago with a REAL fibre connection and see what they say.

Mayo Yid

Villain wrote: »

Well to be fair it's easy to be better than ADSL2+, one the main issues I have here is the use of the word Fibre, it lends people who are not interested in the industry or technology to think they are getting something they obviously aren't getting.

It is also easy to make customers think this is a great product and the future has arrived when in reality they are far off the present never mind the future!

Take a relation of mine e.g. he had 3mb/256k from Eircom and they put a Cab live last month about 1.3km away from him and he now has 15mb/3mb which he thinks is great but imo its still crap.

Calling anything that has an upload speed of less than 20mb high speed is a joke tbh, sadly many people here seem to think that 50mb/10mb is "high speed" broadband! Tell that to someone who had 100mbps 5 years ago with a REAL fibre connection and see what they say.

FWIW UPC use the word fibre too.

jca

Villain wrote: »

Well to be fair it's easy to be better than ADSL2+, one the main issues I have here is the use of the word Fibre, it lends people who are not interested in the industry or technology to think they are getting something they obviously aren't getting.

It is also easy to make customers think this is a great product and the future has arrived when in reality they are far off the present never mind the future!

Take a relation of mine e.g. he had 3mb/256k from Eircom and they put a Cab live last month about 1.3km away from him and he now has 15mb/3mb which he thinks is great but imo its still crap.

Calling anything that has an upload speed of less than 20mb high speed is a joke tbh, sadly many people here seem to think that 50mb/10mb is "high speed" broadband! Tell that to someone who had 100mbps 5 years ago with a REAL fibre connection and see what they say.

I have 4 family members living abroad, 2 in the Netherlands, one who lives in central Amsterdam on a kpn landline connection, my Eircom fttc is far superior to hers in both speed and reliability. The other sister is in Zwolle and she's also on a kpn supplied landline for BB and TV her reliability is good but dl speeds are less than half of mine. The other sister is in Washington DC, her supplier is a cable company, reliability is very good with dl speeds slightly below mine and her ul speed less than a quarter of mine. This rubbish that Ireland is way behind everyone else just isn't true. I don't know anyone with a greater than 20meg upload speed, do you?

SeamusFX

jca wrote: »

I don't know anyone with a greater than 20meg upload speed, do you?

Yes, JCA, I don't know anyone In Ireland with a greater than 20meg upload speed or anywhere close! If you have an upload speed greater than 20meg, you are an exception. Unfortunately, as country as a whole, our average speeds are well below the averages of other modern countries.

red_bairn

jca wrote:

I don't know anyone with a greater than 20meg upload speed, do you?

100/100 back in 2010 until 2012 in S.Korea but that is an exception I guess.

Mayo Yid

amdaley28 wrote: »

At least you were lucky with the KN guys who called to you.
The two I had,one fellow didn't want to know & the other was too afraid of the first to open his mouth probably because he has to work with him every day.
At least I only had him for a few minutes :mad:

Do you honestly think you'll get any info out of the Kn installers, they are told not to discuss speeds with the customer and as they contract for all providers cannot give you any info or say anything about your line or any provider. He's just doing his job which is to make sure your line is ok and tell you discuss things with your provider.

Manc Red

Any news on if Eircom will be doing FTTH like the ESB?

jca

SeamusFX wrote: »

Yes, JCA, I don't know anyone In Ireland with a greater than 20meg upload speed or anywhere close! If you have an upload speed greater than 20meg, you are an exception. Unfortunately, as country as a whole, our average speeds are well below the averages of other modern countries.

This good enough for ya??

DoYouEvenLift

jca wrote: »

This good enough for ya??

Still a pretty bad speed to be honest. Anyone with over 100Mb is doing really well though. TFW stay at friends place for a few days and get used to their speeds which are usually 100-150Mbps and then go back home to my poverty 12Mbps.


Does anyone think that if UPC had never come along and rolled out fibre that eircom probably still wouldn't be trying to do it? Hope there are more ISPs started to get more competition going for speeds and prices...or if Google decided to just use Ireland as an example of what's possible and provided gigabit internet nationwide lol.

Mayo Yid

I have 2 sisters in the USA, one in NY, one in Philly. One in Philly has cable and only 25 mbit with small upload, one in NY has fibre but only 30 mbit package also with small upload. The statement that high speed is 20 mbit+ upload is ridiculous, very few places other than Japan and Korea offers that.

Capt'n Midnight

Manc Red wrote: »

Any news on if Eircom will be doing FTTH like the ESB?

Yes they are trialling it

but don't hold your breath. one fibre to a cab means they could in theory connect up to 198 customers over the existing copper

do the maths, a cash strapped Eircom with hungry debtors , they'd be crazy to roll it out until they've plucked a lot more of the low hanging fruit

bk

Villain wrote: »

Take a relation of mine e.g. he had 3mb/256k from Eircom and they put a Cab live last month about 1.3km away from him and he now has 15mb/3mb which he thinks is great but imo its still crap.

I totally understand your relation, I do think there is a sweet point around 15mb/s for the vast majority of people at the moment.

I experienced it myself. I went from 16mb/s ADSL2+ to 120mb/s UPC and to be honest I experience almost no real world difference in download speed.

Most webpages (boards, facebook, etc.) loaded at exactly the same speed on both services and Netflix and Youtube HD worked perfectly fine on 16mb/s with no noticeable difference on UPC.

The odd big operating system download did come down a bit faster, but as that is something that you usually just kick off and come back to later, it didn't really make much of a difference. Mostly it seems I'm limited by the bandwidth of the server.

To be honest I would go as far as saying the extra download speed isn't worth the extra €14 a month I pay for UPC!

What has made a big difference and made it worth paying for is the increase in upload speed from 500kb/s to 10mb/s with UPC. This has been a revolution, it makes working from home so much easier and it also makes cloud services, uploading photos, video, etc. so much easier.

But I do think we are currently hitting the law of diminishing returns where the internet technologies that require more then 100mb/s just haven't materialised and there doesn't seem to be any technology on the horizon that will require speeds greater then 100mb/s

Don't get me wrong I'll be delighted if my ISP wants to give me 1gb/s, but despite being a techie, I just can't think of what I'd do with it. I think most people will be very happy with about 50mb/s and most won't be willing to pay a lot more for speeds faster then that.

I think we maybe hitting a "good enough" point in broadband speeds, similar to what we have seen in other tech industries (PC's, MP3's, Video Streaming Quality, even Smartphones).

Manc Red wrote: »

Any news on if Eircom will be doing FTTH like the ESB?

I'm hearing rumours that Eircom maybe starting new FTTH trials and that they are also looking into FTTdp. Obviously we will have to wait and see for more firm confirmation and rollout plans, but it looks like Eircom might not be taking the ESB's rollout plans sitting down.

UPC better also watch out that it doesn't end up getting left behind!

Exciting times, isn't competition great?

jca wrote: »

This rubbish that Ireland is way behind everyone else just isn't true.

Well it was true 4 years ago, but it is certainly true that things have radically changed in the last 2 years in particular and that at least in urban areas, Ireland is doing extremely well.

In fact for the most part in urban areas we have surpassed the UK. Something unimaginable just 4 years ago when we looked on in jealousy at what you could get in the UK.

Cable: UPC 200mb/s vs Virgin Media 150mb/s
VDSL: Eircom 100mb/s vs BT 40 to 70mb/s

Thus are the real products available to most people in the UK. We certainly aren't jealous of those anymore.

According to speedtest.net, Ireland is now 40th out of 193 countries, with an average speed of 23.8mb/s. Not a bad position, about in the middle of most mainland European countries.

That is up from an average speed of 10.64mb/s and 53rd of 178 countries just 2 years ago.

That is a massive jump in just two years and as more people sign up to VDSL, I believe we will see our position improve even more.

The UK sits at 29.14mb/s and 27th place, despite having slower products then us. This is because their VDSL products have been available much longer and thus have had higher take up figures. We are quickly catching up with them and I believe in the next year or two we will be close to 27th place.

Our current ranking is in and about the same as most of mainland Europe. Only the Northern European countries like Sweden and the small Eastern European countries significantly surpass us with double our speeds, thanks to their rollout of FTTH.

Interestingly, despite people talking about amazing speeds in Asia, Japan actually falls behind us in 47th place at an average 20.51mb/s!

Though in fairness, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, etc. all do rank near the top.

So things really aren't looking that bad at the moment, we look like a mid ter European country and with the ESB rolling out FTTH, we could start moving up towards the top of the charts to compete with the likes of the Nordic and Eastern European countries.

DoYouEvenLift

Does anyone know if UPC offer the same speeds they do in the other countries they operate in as they do here?

Capt'n Midnight

bk wrote: »

To be honest I would go as far as saying the extra download speed isn't worth the extra €14 a month I pay for UPC!

Haggle harder

I'm hearing rumours that Eircom maybe starting new FTTH trials and that they are also looking into FTTdp. Obviously we will have to wait and see for more firm confirmation and rollout plans, but it looks like Eircom might not be taking the ESB's rollout plans sitting down.

IIRC they aren't planning to go head to head with UPC they'll target other suburban areas first.

The bit to remember is that the ESB have deep enough pockets to plan for 30 year infrastructure so hopefully they'll target rural areas far from cabinets at some stage

UPC better also watch out that it doesn't end up getting left behind!

Exciting times, isn't competition great?

If they buy into a mobile operator it'll be really interesting

At present UPC also offer about 3mb wifi if you are near someone else's home and you can use internet on your mobile to make international calls at your home rates which usually means 400 minutes free for most places. All of the efibre providers require extra charges or plans for anything off the island.

of course faster upload would be nice but UPC means free phone , free calls and lots of wifi hotspots


It's horses for courses, because everyone is the cheapest for their particular combinations of services.

SpaceTime

DoYouEvenLift wrote: »

Does anyone know if UPC offer the same speeds they do in the other countries they operate in as they do here?

Speeds here are as high as any other UPC territory and higher than the UK (Virgin is owned by same company)