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

KOR101

In the Irish Times this morning.........

The battle between network providers in the next-generation super-fast broadband stakes will step up a notch later today when Eircom announces the rollout of a new fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network in 66 towns across the State.

The new network can achieve speeds of up to a gigbyte or 1,000MB – fast enough to download a high-definition movie in less than one minute – which is 10 times what is available on Eircom’s existing fibre network.

The announcement comes a day after the European Commission green-lighted a similar FTTH joint venture between ESB and Vodafone that will build a €450 million super-speed network across ESB poles in regional areas.

FTTH achieves this by running fibre directly from its main fibre network through the walls of subscribers’ homes and businesses, bypassing the slower copper lines that deliver its regular services in the final stretch to buildings.

Eircom is billing its FTTH announcement, which also covers parts of the major cities, as its “strategic response” to the threat from ESB-Vodafone, raising the prospect of a rollout and price war between both sides as demand for super-speed broadband services picks up in coming years.

Eircom has selected 66 locations across the country for the new “hands up” FTTH service, which will require a sufficient number of customers in a locality to order the service before its engineers will run the fibre directly to buildings.

The network will include parts of the major cities, every county town and major regional urban areas. Work will begin next month on the first three locations in the rollout: Cavan town, Kilkenny city and Letterkenny. Each town will take six months to hook up to the service, and Eircom hopes to launch its first products next summer.

In Dublin, the new service will initially be concentrated on the northside, with Malahide, Portmarnock and Swords among the towns slated to be part of the FTTH rollout, which will take until the end of 2017.

Eircom says it will release a full rollout plan “in due course”, and that the sequencing of towns will be guided by its network planners.

It has already notified the communications regulator and the Government of its intention to offer FTTH services.

“This is our strategic response to the ESB-Vodafone joint venture,” said Richard Moat, Eircom’s acting chief executive. “We will do it where there is demand. There has to be a sufficient number of people who want it. If, for example, 25 people in a housing estate got together and came to us, we would roll it out for them.”

Premium product
He said it would be a “premium product with a premium price attached”.

At the end of August, Eircom announced it was accelerating its normal fibre rollout, which offers speeds of up to 100MB, to 1.6 million homes by the end of 2016.

It will also announce today a further acceleration, promising to hit its target six months ahead of the schedule it set in the summer.

It will announce its plans to test FTTH services in Belcarra in Mayo, to assess the technology’s suitability for providing broadband in rural areas.

Mr Moat, who was Eircom’s chief financial officer under former boss Herb Hribar, is running the company in an acting capacity following Mr Hribar’s departure last month. He confirmed to The Irish Times that he has applied to replace his old boss.

“I’m doing the job on an acting basis and I’m proud to do so. But I’ve indicated to the board that I’d like to do it full-time,” said Mr Moat.

bk

MOD: Thanks KOR101 for posting that. Folks can we keep this thread for primarily talking about eFibre VDSL/FTTC and discuss Eircom FTTH on this new thread here:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057315844

gerryk

And so the gap widens...

KOR101 wrote: »

In the Irish Times this morning.........

The battle between network providers in the next-generation super-fast broadband stakes will step up a notch later today when Eircom announces the rollout of a new fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network in 66 towns across the State.

The new network can achieve speeds of up to a gigbyte or 1,000MB – fast enough to download a high-definition movie in less than one minute – which is 10 times what is available on Eircom’s existing fibre network.

The announcement comes a day after the European Commission green-lighted a similar FTTH joint venture between ESB and Vodafone that will build a €450 million super-speed network across ESB poles in regional areas.

FTTH achieves this by running fibre directly from its main fibre network through the walls of subscribers’ homes and businesses, bypassing the slower copper lines that deliver its regular services in the final stretch to buildings.

Eircom is billing its FTTH announcement, which also covers parts of the major cities, as its “strategic response” to the threat from ESB-Vodafone, raising the prospect of a rollout and price war between both sides as demand for super-speed broadband services picks up in coming years.

Eircom has selected 66 locations across the country for the new “hands up” FTTH service, which will require a sufficient number of customers in a locality to order the service before its engineers will run the fibre directly to buildings.

The network will include parts of the major cities, every county town and major regional urban areas. Work will begin next month on the first three locations in the rollout: Cavan town, Kilkenny city and Letterkenny. Each town will take six months to hook up to the service, and Eircom hopes to launch its first products next summer.

In Dublin, the new service will initially be concentrated on the northside, with Malahide, Portmarnock and Swords among the towns slated to be part of the FTTH rollout, which will take until the end of 2017.

Eircom says it will release a full rollout plan “in due course”, and that the sequencing of towns will be guided by its network planners.

It has already notified the communications regulator and the Government of its intention to offer FTTH services.

“This is our strategic response to the ESB-Vodafone joint venture,” said Richard Moat, Eircom’s acting chief executive. “We will do it where there is demand. There has to be a sufficient number of people who want it. If, for example, 25 people in a housing estate got together and came to us, we would roll it out for them.”

Premium product
He said it would be a “premium product with a premium price attached”.

At the end of August, Eircom announced it was accelerating its normal fibre rollout, which offers speeds of up to 100MB, to 1.6 million homes by the end of 2016.

It will also announce today a further acceleration, promising to hit its target six months ahead of the schedule it set in the summer.

It will announce its plans to test FTTH services in Belcarra in Mayo, to assess the technology’s suitability for providing broadband in rural areas.

Mr Moat, who was Eircom’s chief financial officer under former boss Herb Hribar, is running the company in an acting capacity following Mr Hribar’s departure last month. He confirmed to The Irish Times that he has applied to replace his old boss.

“I’m doing the job on an acting basis and I’m proud to do so. But I’ve indicated to the board that I’d like to do it full-time,” said Mr Moat.

bk

gerryk wrote: »

And so the gap widens...

Given that both Eircom and ESB/Vodafone are proposing using FTTH for the National Broadband Plan, things are actually looking good for low density areas.

SpaceTime

The seismic shift is that eircom have suddenly realised they're actually a data company with a legacy phone application running on their data network.

UPC similarly woke up a few years ago and realised they're actually a data company with a TV service.

It took eircom a LONG time to finally realise the phone company business is obsolete.

ESB-Vodafone launch as a pure data company without baggage.

bk

One thing that was missed in all the exciting FTTH news, was that Eircom have also announced that they are speeding up the rollout of their FTTC network. They will now reach 1.6 million homes 6 months earlier then planned, by mid 2016 instead of December 2016

I'll update the thread tile to indicate this news.

This is also great news as it will mean more people will get higher FTTC speeds faster.

PeadarB

SpaceTime wrote: »

The seismic shift is that eircom have suddenly realised they're actually a data company with a legacy phone application running on their data network.

UPC similarly woke up a few years ago and realised they're actually a data company with a TV service.

It took eircom a LONG time to finally realise the phone company business is obsolete.

ESB-Vodafone launch as a pure data company without baggage.

Having waded through the relevant elements of the report it is obvious that our stakeholders have gotten the message - bk's appraisal is excellent. ESB will bring in clusters countrywide with a density as low as 20 houses.

Given that my connection has collapsed over the past week and that Letterkenny FTTH will be available from next summer my hand has just shot up for a voluntary trial connection, if one is available. From the Times article - "Work will begin next month on the first three locations in the rollout: Cavan town, Kilkenny city and Letterkenny. Each town will take six months to hook up to the service, and Eircom hopes to launch its first products next summer".

The race is on - hook me up winner!!!

SpaceTime

Totally rural broadband i.e. not in a cluster at all will probably have to look at something like Fibre-to-Radio systems that do the last mile over a very high speed radio link. There's no reason why that couldn't be >100mbit/s though at this stage either.

I'd also assume they'll start to run fibre with their electrical installations on new installs from now on. So, really rural houses being wired up now might actually be fibre-ready from day one.

We should be hanging some kind of radio system off the edges of ESB and Eircom's infrastructure though to catch those rural areas that aren't covered.

Its Only Ray Parlour

Here's a list of towns for the FTTH rollout: http://pressroom.eircom.net/images/uploads/eircom%20FTTH%20Map.pdf

CARLOW
Carlow

CAVAN
Cavan

CLARE
Ennis
Shannon Town

CORK
Ballincollig
Bandon
Carrigaline
Cobh
Cork
Little Island
Mallow
Midleton

DONEGAL
Letterkenny

DUBLIN
Balbriggan
Malahide
Portmarnock
Rush
Skerries
Swords
Dublin

GALWAY
Galway
Loughrea
KERRY
Killarney
Tralee

KILDARE
Athy
Celbridge
Droichead Nua
Kilcock
Leixlip
Maynooth
Naas

KILKENNY
Kilkenny

LAOIS
Portarlington
Portlaoise

LEITRIM
Carrickonshannon

LIMERICK
Limerick

LONGFORD
Longford

LOUTH
Drogheda
Dundalk

MAYO
Ballina
Castlebar
Westport

MEATH
Navan

MONAGHAN
Monaghan
OFFALY
Edenderry
Tullamore

ROSCOMMON
Roscommon

SLIGO
Sligo

TIPPERARY
Clonmel
Nenagh
Roscrea

WATERFORD
Dungarvan
Tramore
Waterford

WESTMEATH
Athlone
Kinnegad
Mullingar

WEXFORD
Enniscorthy
Gorey
Wexford

WICKLOW
Arklow
Bray
Greystones
Wicklow

marno21

bk wrote: »

One hing that was missed in all the exciting FTTH news, was that Eircom have also announced that they are speeding up the rollout of their FTTC network. They will now reach 1.6 million homes 6 months earlier then planned, by mid 2016 instead of December 2016

I'll update the thread tile to indicate news.

This is also great news as it will mean more people will get higher FTTC speeds faster.

My local exchange is on the list of planned on fibrerollout.ie (no date yet). Good news for semi rural areas, finally coming out of the dark ages in the next 20 months

bk

SpaceTime wrote: »

Totally rural broadband i.e. not in a cluster at all will probably have to look at something like Fibre-to-Radio systems that do the last mile over a very high speed radio link. There's no reason why that couldn't be >100mbit/s though at this stage either.

Interestingly the Eircom submission actually says that even for rural ribbon development, FTTH is still even a better solution and in the long term a more affordable solution then FWA!

They say that basically FWA, LTE and VDSL miniDSLAMS involve too many active network gear out in the field that are expensive to run and maintain!

I get the impression that Eircom has run the numbers and found that while it might be more expensive to install FTTH upfront, it ends up being cheaper over it's lifetime due to reduced operational and maintenance costs, while having the advantage of being much faster, more reliable and easy to upgrade.

It seems for a change Eircom is thinking long term!!!

Its Only Ray Parlour, thanks for the list of towns. Cork and Dublin are particularly interesting inclusions. Eircom still hasn't launched VDSL in the Cork and Dublin core city areas. I wonder might they be thinking of jumping straight to FTTH for these areas.

ED E

bk wrote: »

Its Only Ray Parlour, thanks for the list of towns. Cork and Dublin are particularly interesting inclusions. Eircom still hasn't launched VDSL in the Cork and Dublin core city areas. I wonder might they be thinking of jumping straight to FTTH for these areas.

Its more the direct fed problem there tbh, they won't bother adding ccp cabs but instead do exchange launched vdsl folloed by ftth.

galait

The Eircom guy on the radio this evening did not give me much hope a rural dweller ,
He said this is not Singapore or South Korea where people live in high rise apartments making 100% penetration easy , He simply said Ireland is the most rural economy in Europe and reaching everyone in Rural Ireland was impossible due to cost...

ClonNGB

galait wrote: »

The Eircom guy on the radio this evening did not give me much hope a rural dweller ,
He said this is not Singapore or South Korea where people live in high rise apartments making 100% penetration easy , He simply said Ireland is the most rural economy in Europe and reaching everyone in Rural Ireland was impossible due to cost...

They announce ftth when 1000s of us beside exchanges cant get basic vdsl.
They need to sort this first. I beieve Eircom are just trying to scare Esb about ftth when in reality they dont have the capital or staff to do it.

Mayo Yid

ClonNGB wrote: »

They announce ftth when 1000s of us beside exchanges cant get basic vdsl.
They need to sort this first. I beieve Eircom are just trying to scare Esb about ftth when in reality they dont have the capital or staff to do it.

Tbf the ESB don't have the trained staff to do it either, KN networks do Eircom work and did the ESB trial in Cavan

bk

ClonNGB wrote: »

They announce ftth when 1000s of us beside exchanges cant get basic vdsl.

The hold up is waiting for permission from Comreg to go ahead with Exchange launched VDSL. I hear that it maybe about to get the go ahead and rollout of it will be pretty quick.

ED E

Mayo Yid wrote: »

Tbf the ESB don't have the trained staff to do it either, KN networks do Eircom work and did the ESB trial in Cavan

Afaik the ESB have a full telecoms dept for a long time, they just don't have the numbers to do thousands of fittings.

red_bairn

bk wrote: »

The hold up is waiting for permission from Comreg to go ahead with Exchange launched VDSL. I hear that it maybe about to get the go ahead and rollout of it will be pretty quick.

Still doesn't rectify the problem for those of us on direct fed lines 2.3km away.

bk

red_bairn wrote: »

Still doesn't rectify the problem for those of us on direct fed lines 2.3km away.

Well really that is no different then a person connected to a VDSL cab 2.3km away!

red_bairn

bk wrote:

Well really that is no different then a person connected to a VDSL cab 2.3km away!

When there was word on them working on the Exchange for DF lines I originally thought that they would sort out our problem but after the long wait with no word on civils to be done on the lines close to the distribution cabinet I feel less supportive for Eircom. Will try to jump on to FTTH with ESB/Vodafone as soon as we get word of trials in the town.

mobil 222

red_bairn wrote: »

When there was word on them working on the Exchange for DF lines I originally thought that they would sort out our problem but after the long wait with no word on civils to be done on the lines close to the distribution cabinet I feel less supportive for Eircom. Will try to jump on to FTTH with ESB/Vodafone as soon as we get word of trials in the town.

Eircoms FTTH will first of all cater for all direct feeds that are probably within
500 Mtrs from the Main Exchange.
Direct feed lines that are greater distances than this have been set up in alot
of Main towns already ...this is evident by the introduction of a new copper and
fibre cabinet

mobil 222

red_bairn wrote: »

Still doesn't rectify the problem for those of us on direct fed lines 2.3km away.

I am on a direct line located 6 km from my local exchange.
Eircom have now subducted out to a point 4 km from that exchange.
They have erected a new copper and fibre cab at this point which happens to
be located at the end of their underground network and start of overhead

red_bairn

mobil 222 wrote: »

Eircoms FTTH will first of all cater for all direct feeds that are probably within
500 Mtrs from the Main Exchange.
Direct feed lines that are greater distances than this have been set up in alot
of Main towns already ...this is evident by the introduction of a new copper and
fibre cabinet

I haven't heard about KN Networks pulling through any new copper cabling or seen any development a part from the installation of a VDSL cabinet back in 2013 (July). They still need to do work for homes that are on a direct feed to the Exchange that were built during the TE times.

mobil 222

red_bairn wrote: »

I haven't heard about KN Networks pulling through any new copper cabling or seen any development a part from the installation of a VDSL cabinet back in 2013 (July). They still need to do work for homes that are on a direct feed to the Exchange that were built during the TE times.

In towns like Letterkenny, Ballina, Castlebar and Sligo direct feed lines have
been changed over and alot more are ready to go but are been held up due
to Licence issues over blockages on duct etc

Manc Red

mobil 222 wrote: »

In towns like Letterkenny, Ballina, Castlebar and Sligo direct feed lines have
been changed over and alot more are ready to go but are been held up due
to Licence issues over blockages on duct etc

Well we are on a direct fed line in one of those towns and we haven't heard anything yet. How do you know they have been switched over? Have they started offering it yet?

Johnboy1951

mobil 222 wrote: »

I am on a direct line located 6 km from my local exchange.
Eircom have now subducted out to a point 4 km from that exchange.
They have erected a new copper and fibre cab at this point which happens to
be located at the end of their underground network and start of overhead

I am a distance from my local exchange and there is a cab planned for the edge of the village ....... but underground ducting comes further out to within meters of my home ..... and no plans yet to erect a cab there .......

Maybe the competition will encourage them to come out further ....

ED E

What was the term BT were using to refer to cabinetising df lines? Remember reading it but not where...

degsie

ED E wrote: »

What was the term BT were using to refer to cabinetising df lines? Remember reading it but not where...

I think they called it "network rearrangement".

mobil 222

Manc Red wrote: »

Well we are on a direct fed line in one of those towns and we haven't heard anything yet. How do you know they have been switched over? Have they started offering it yet?

I know for a fact that Sligo has more than half completed its direct line subscribers

MBSnr

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

I am a distance from my local exchange and there is a cab planned for the edge of the village ....... but underground ducting comes further out to within meters of my home ..... and no plans yet to erect a cab there .......

Maybe the competition will encourage them to come out further ....

I'm not sure of their logic either but perhaps it will change. I'm 2.5Km from the exchange on a direct fed line. The next village from the exchange is 3.5Km on the same road. Just about 300m from me is a point where all the telephone lines appear from underground (with terminations on a pole) after passing below power lines. If they put a cab there (~2Km from exchange), then they'd cover both the direct fed up to that point and also all the houses around and the village beyond - as all the lines come from the exchange. That village (which may never get fast fibre access) and anyone within ~500m of it would still be within 2km of a cabinet - all done with the cost of one cab install. There's 3 cables strung up on the poles, each with at least 50 pairs, meaning 150 lines at the minimum and I'm told they are short of pairs in the cable.