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

Jackobyte

bluemachaveli wrote: »

Other ISP's will have the option to resell also. Vodafone have a register your interest bit on the website.

Is this expected to happen anytime soon? Cancelled my Meteor mobile "broadband" contract this morning with the intention of moving to Smart or Sky within the 30 days(both have €30pm deals). Now just wondering if I sign onto a 12 month contract with either of these, would I be missing out on potentially cheap Fibre in the near future. Gah, decisions, decisions, decisions...

Sponge Bob

The mapping exercise has gone very well, links at bottom. We have found about half of all the cabinets installed to date.

We are missing data particularly in the following exchange areas. Other areas are largely complete and our mappers are diligently hunting for a few stragglers hidden in back alleys now. Some areas are extremely well mapped, eg Balbriggan, Mullingar Sligo and Letterkenny to name a few of the outstanding standouts.

Missing some or lots of Cabinets in the following areas, these should be complete.

Limerick City (Limerick);
Dun Laoghaire (incl Monkstown and Sandycove)
Ennis, (Clare)
Bray, (Wicklow)
Ballina (Mayo)
Castlebar( Mayo)
Tallaght, Ballyboden, Palmerstown (S and W Dublin)
Waterford City
Kilkenny City
Tralee (Co. Kerry);
Westport (Co Mayo);
Crown Alley, Dolphin’s Barn, Nutley and Beggars Bush ( City Centre Dublin)
Mervue (Galway)

Some activity has been noted in Phase 4 already.

I have bolded the exchanges where some progress has been noted and bolded italics Phase 4 exchanges that are well advanced.

Arklow Wicklow
Ashbourne Meath
Blanchardsown Dublin
Cabra Dublin
Caherdavin Limerick
Carlow Carlow
Carrick on Shannon Leitrim
Carrigaline Cork
Castletroy Limerick
Cavan Cavan
Clonmel Tipperary
Cobh Cork
Cork Central Cork
Denehy’s Cross Cork
Dundalk Louth
Dundrum* Dublin (new Green Cabinets not the grey ones)
Enniscorthy Wexford
Finglas Dublin
Glanmire Cork
Greystones Wicklow
Hettyfield Cork
Killarney Kerry
Kildare Kildare
Leixlip Kildare
Longford Longford
Mallow Cork
Midleton Cork
Monaghan Monaghan
Nenagh Tipperary
Newbridge Kildare
Newtownmountkennedy Wicklow
Oranmore Galway
Portlaoise Laois
Priory Park* Dublin (new Green Cabinets not the grey ones)
Rathmines Dublin
Roscommon Roscommon
Roslevin Westmeath
Rush Dublin
Shannon Town Clare
Skerries Dublin
Sutton Dublin
Thurles Tipperary
Tullamore Offaly
Tycor Waterford
Wellington Road Cork
Wexford* Wexford ( more fibre, Wexford is fibre only)
Whitehall Dublin
Wicklow Wicklow
Gorey Wexford
Terenure Dublin

Links below to existing maps and to the mapping engine. Thanks to all who have helped to date.

feen

The concrete base's for the cabinets have been installed in Carrigaline over the last 2 weeks.

Praetorian

I went for a cycle yesterday for an hour and a half & found 2 whole cabinets that were already mapped. How annoying!

Cabinet spotted!!! No it's a green wheelie bin. Cabinet spotted!!! No it's a post box. Cabinet spotted!!! No it's a stupid green upc? box!!! Doh!

Solair

Interesting UPC are busily doing stuff too

red_bairn

Solair wrote: »

Interesting UPC are busily doing stuff too

It'll make things interesting since UPC have boosted many customers speeds up 20-30Mbps higher. :rolleyes:

allen175

There are a fair few VDSL cabs missing from the belcamp and coolock exchanges, will try my best to get out and map them, but i have noticed a cab on the n32 at clarehall that has fibre coming up from the ground but no VDSL cab.

Liamario

Solair wrote: »

Interesting UPC are busily doing stuff too

What's this based on?

Praetorian

Liamario wrote: »

What's this based on?

I get the impression UPC are coming more towards the end of their investment phase. They are upgrading a lot of places that always had cable broadband. They got into new developments during the boom times. But I do not think they will retrofit many other areas.

Eircom are mid investment and cannot even release the products yet. But at least there is soon to be good competition, at least in urban areas.

Solair

New UPC cabinets have been appearing around here in last few days... Can only assume they're upgrading their broadband in some areas.

They also relayed a load of cable around Douglas.

I don't think they're standing still anyway.

Sponge Bob

Praetorian wrote: »

I get the impression UPC are coming more towards the end of their investment phase. They are upgrading a lot of places that always had cable broadband.

Balbriggan only had congested ADSL and crap Wireless as late as 2009.

UPC sorta upgraded the network (it was fed by MMDS) but cannot offer decent speeds on that network as i understand it.

Hopefully eircom rolling out a dense network of VDSL cabinets will prod UPC into rolling out high end product in Balbriggan too, something they did not do unless they offered 50mbit plus recently unbeknownst to me.

either way Balbriggan, thankfully, is better off for the competition.

lucernarian

There's f-all of Balbriggan upgraded, just recent housing estates towards the west of Balbriggan which happened to have ducts and cabling installed for TV. The rest of Balbriggan would have to use MMDS:(

Praetorian

allen175 wrote: »

There are a fair few VDSL cabs missing from the belcamp and coolock exchanges, will try my best to get out and map them, but i have noticed a cab on the n32 at clarehall that has fibre coming up from the ground but no VDSL cab.

I've just added one on the n32. I think there is another on the Malahide road as well, but I need to have another look at it to make sure it was a vdsl cab and not a upc box.

Solair

Thanks for the Carrigaline Cabinets btw

I've renamed them as Cork - CGI - Street Address, in line with all the other Cork areas that are named by eircom exchange code now.

Could someone please put them into the block in the list with the rest of the Cork cabs as I can't seem to move them. I moved one and then the system became really glitchy.
I am using the latest version of Chrome, so you'd kinda think it'd work!

We could do with a list of the exchange code names though as it's kinda confusing with different towns / suburbs having the same name in say Cork and Dublin e.g. Rochestown Exchange is in Dublin where as many people in Cork might assume it was in Rochestown in Cork. etc.

& they make the tags on the map shorter. E.g. Wellington Road vs WRD

Sponge Bob

Can you leave the later 'in progress' Cork exchanges on the last Page Solair and move the 4 largely completed ones to page 1 , rg Churchfield Wellington Road Quaker and Douglas ONLY.

It is easier for occasional mappers as they see all the data in one go and dont think they lost something. I would leave Cobh Carrigaline Farmers Dennehys Central Hettyfield Glanmire and Midleton on the last page.

They all show up in the big map (non editable) anyway . Big Map > HERE and you should ALWAYS check it first before you add cabinets in case someone else already has.

Thanks to all participants to date.

Solair

It's a pity that list can't be sorted a bit more easily. Google's got loads of glitches in maps, although it's the best of the bunch at the moment.

E.g. I don't know why it doesn't just let you see all of the points on a single list rather than having to flip through multiple pages

Although, that being said, it's still MASSIVELY better than iOS maps

I'd say WRD is far from completed. There's a load of ground works going on around St Lukes X and still a rather conspicuous lack of cabinets in some large housing developments and stuff. There's quite a bit to go yet.

I've noticed a few brand new locations have gone in too which never had cabinets before e.g. Sidney Hill (very near the WRD exchange itself)

I'd love to know why there's no cabs in Mount Oval in Rochestown too. It's a pretty seriously big development. There are modern, high security distribution cabs in place as it was only built in the last 10 years but, there's no sign whatsoever of VDSL and Douglas is allegedly complete.

Hopefully it's not going to be like UPC where certain developments are just skipped for awkwardness of cabling reasons or something.

I'd say Cork City Centre will be 'fun' as the distribution from what I gather is all in underground vaults. I've never seen a single cabinet anywhere on the central island/city centre.

By the looks of it, a lot of the older parts of Cork inner suburbs are mostly done that way.

Sponge Bob

Solair wrote: »

It's a pity that list can't be sorted a bit more easily. Google's got loads of glitches in maps, although it's the best of the bunch at the moment.

E.g. I don't know why it doesn't just let you see all of the points on a single list rather than having to flip through multiple pages

I understand, that is why I tend to leave the 'lesser' mapped ones on the later pages and group the better mapped ones with experienced mappers on earlier pages. Balbriggan always goes to page 1 for example as there are a few mappers there and they can see the stuff grouped properly. The 4 big exchanges in Cork have a few mappers on the case too.

Full Map here ..updated every day or two at most and it renders quickly as it is not editable. > http://bit.ly/10834qE

I'll personally sort out Belcamp and Coolock later this week and recolour them for display purposes.

If someone wants they can always PM me a text file or spreadsheet of their area with details and I can bulk add them to the map in one go.

Richard Dower

Pics of the cabs around Limerick, I didn't have to look too hard to find cabs I didn't see before. There are two sets of cabs in Garryowen, one right across from Garryowen Stores (pic incl) and not shown another set of cabs a good bit down the road on a grass area.

There is a cab right outside St. Johns Hospital + another cab outside that childrens school just up from St. Johns Cathedral. Last pic is the one outside the school. First two are right on the corner of Tubs and tiles. Third pic is the cab just across from Limerick jail, right down from the further education college. Fourth pic is the Garryowen Stores.

Richard Dower

More cabs various locations. First pic is right outside St. Johns hospital. Second pic is where the old Chorus head office used to be, cant think of the street, the st. where Donkey Fords is....where that doctors office is. Next three pics are a single location, the cabs were not together as usual.

Richard Dower

These two are the cabs in Kileely I mentioned. Pretty sure there are plenty more dotted about

dave1982

Orange cable being laid in Middleton today by the market green

Tonio

dave1982 wrote: »

Orange cable being laid in Middleton today by the market green

Good to hear! I saw some workers near the Castle Rock roundabout early this morning with some blue rope near some man hole covers - like they may have been about to pull through some fibre! I wondered if they might have been working for Eircom.

Solair

Seems they've pulled in loads of contractors for this. Lots of unbranded vans being used.

They were swapping out more older cabinets on Middle Glanmire Road today.

Seems to be serious momentum to this project!

CraigSmith_IO

Solair wrote: »

Seems they've pulled in loads of contractors for this. Lots of unbranded vans being used.

They were swapping out more older cabinets on Middle Glanmire Road today.

Seems to be serious momentum to this project!

One can only assume that they're trying to launch later phases earlier to gain customers? :cool:

red_bairn

CraigSmith_IO wrote: »

One can only assume that they're trying to launch later phases earlier to gain customers? :cool:

This is what I hope.

Solair

dave1982 wrote: »

Orange cable being laid in Middleton today by the market green

I think that's actually 'subduct' which is just sort of flexible, narrow tubes that the fibres are then blown through.

It's actually quite an impressive piece of engineering technology :

Ericsson system:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8YH5E-8KUs

Here's Alltec Fibre Ltd doing it in Ireland with a 144 fibre bundle :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4143NcqxRQ0

(They uploaded it themselves so it's public http://www.alltecfibre.ie/ )

Praetorian

I added another cab on Clonshaugh ave which I passed this morning. K&N doing a lot of works on Clonshaugh road, not sure who for.

I've been having a lot of difficulty with maps for the last few days. The map moving itself, the points refusing to move etc. Always using internet explorer 9 / 10. If anyone is having similar problems, try using chrome. It seems to be working better.

Also, Eircom seem to have edited their "triple play advert" on the radio to say, & superfast fibre upto 50 m/bit coming soon. I hope it's not going to max out at 50m/bit on release.

Solair

It's up to 70mbits and then up to 100 when they turn on "vectoring" (crosstalk management technology)

wheresmybeaver

Solair wrote: »

Seems they've pulled in loads of contractors for this. Lots of unbranded vans being used.

They were swapping out more older cabinets on Middle Glanmire Road today.

Seems to be serious momentum to this project!

When they were laying the sub duct around Glanmire the lads were using a bouncy castle van.

No sign of any fibre being put down just yet though in this area. But as this is going on just around the corner on Middle Glanmire Road and Old Youghal Road I would say it's a matter of weeks.

Richard Dower

Loads more cabs spotted in Limerick, did a walk around the city center and took lots of pics of numerous locations, will list them and add pics later.