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

stevenf17

Liamario wrote: »

Do we have a complete list of all phase 2 locations?

That's the complete list up above you!

Contrarian wrote: »

Shantalla (Galway); Quaker Rd (Cork); Limerick City (Limerick); Rathedmond (Sligo); Ballincollig (Cork); Belcamp, Dun Laoghaire, Rochestown (Dublin); Ennis, (Clare); Drogheda, (Louth); Bray, (Wicklow); Ballina and Castlebar( Mayo).

Sponge Bob

They are not doing the rural areas at all.

Mervue in phase 1 and Shantalla in phase 2 have sizeable rural hinterlands that are not being upgraded at all. EG Menlo, Carnmore and Bushypark.

This is some cod

Praetorian

Yahoo, at least in my office I'll have good broadband in the next 12 months,

Sponge Bob

All of the phase 2 areas are on this map ( from an eircom presentation last year) as is the 250,000 a year target. If your area is not on this map then forget it.

Hogzy

What do cabinets actually look like? We have a large Green box within about 200m of our home in a housing estate. It makes a loud enough buzzing noise (its probably an ESB box tbh).

Can anyone post an image of what an Eircom Cabinet looks like so i can try find out how far i am from one. Im living in Grange (Cork) and i am connected to the Douglas exchange (Listed under Phase 1)

lucernarian

Sponge Bob wrote: »

They are not doing the rural areas at all.

Mervue in phase 1 and Shantalla in phase 2 have sizeable rural hinterlands that are not being upgraded at all. EG Menlo, Carnmore and Bushypark.

This is some cod

Are there no cabinets out that direction? I can't find any additional details on the Phase 2 announcement. In particular on the rural hinterland of Drogheda!!

Sponge Bob

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

Are there no cabinets out that direction? I can't find any additional details on the Phase 2 announcement. In particular on the rural hinterland of Drogheda!!

You can see the rural hinterland west and north of Drogheda on this here map here.

http://maps.google.ie/maps?q=http:%2F%2Fwww.nextgenerationethernet.com%2Fexchanges.kmz&ll=53.732466,-6.360741&spn=0.108249,0.308647&t=m&z=12

I can guarantee you that places like Tullyesker and Townleyhall and Bealieu and Dowth and Bawntaafe will not get any 40Gbit VDSL products...if they get stable ADSL2+ they will be doing well.

You can see a very small exchange out in Tullyallen surrounded by the Drogheda exchange area where they ran out of copper some years back, bet that won't be upgraded to VDSL either.

iMuse

arctan wrote: »

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

Hogzy wrote: »

What do cabinets actually look like? We have a large Green box within about 200m of our home in a housing estate. It makes a loud enough buzzing noise (its probably an ESB box tbh).

Can anyone post an image of what an Eircom Cabinet looks like so i can try find out how far i am from one. Im living in Grange (Cork) and i am connected to the Douglas exchange (Listed under Phase 1)

From earlier in the thread, post a pic from google street view and im sure someone will be able to tell you if its a cabinet

Hogzy

Is this a cabinet???

EDIT: Image is prob too big to embed.

D'Peoples Voice

Sponge Bob wrote: »

They are not doing the rural areas at all.

This is some cod

ah now this is the Age of the Soundbites!

Saying they WILL pass the homes of a QUARTER of a million homes,
conjures up immediately, for the management board,
hundreds of thousands of potential new customers for minimal investment.
They are thinking, wow this could be a fantastic rate of return on the investment.

If they were to pick a rural area,
to be able to give a nice big figure like quarter of a million customers to the managment board, they would probably need an investment of 2-3 times the current investment. Not very easy to convince management then :rolleyes:

I can completely understand their PR in this case.
Obviously our razor sharp journalists will pick up on the fact that many of these 250,000 homes will have a current Eircom product that already satisifes their requirements or will have a reasonable package from a competiting telecommunications provider, and therefore a large percentage of that 250,000 will not migrate over. So their rates of return won't look as good in reality.
But reality is nothing, perception is everything

arctan

s.welstead wrote: »

Typical, I've been waiting for this for ages and only noticed this thread today. I got really excited and went straight on to the Eircom site to check the maps.
The apartment developments on both sides of me and the housing in front of my development are all purple, mine isn't!
I'll try give them a ring tomorrow to see why we're not connected but anyone got any ideas? Would it be our management agents refusing access to the Eircom engineers?

I really need the higher speeds for work. Wfh is such a pain in the ass with large files.

eircom offered to feed almost all new apartment developments from around 05/06 onwards... (this whole NGA scheme has been in the pipeline since then) ... some developments got it, but eircom gave some developers the two fingers because the developer had to put in the civils and were trying to make a few quid after by saying "it's our civils, so if your services are in them you have to pay us rent on it" ...

that explains why some have it, some don't ... and why some shells of apartments with no tenants have fibre for superfast broadband, while the housing estate next to it doesn't :pac:

Hogzy wrote: »

Is this a cabinet???

EDIT: Image is prob too big to embed.

no thats an ESB sub station ...

this is a FTTC cab

D'Peoples Voice wrote: »

ah now this is the Age of the Soundbites!

Saying they WILL pass the homes of a QUARTER of a million homes,
conjures up immediately, for the management board,
hundreds of thousands of potential new customers for minimal investment.
They are thinking, wow this could be a fantastic rate of return on the investment.

If they were to pick a rural area,
to be able to give a nice big figure like quarter of a million customers to the managment board, they would probably need an investment of 2-3 times the current investment. Not very easy to convince management then

I can completely understand their PR in this case.
Obviously our razor sharp journalists will pick up on the fact that many of these 250,000 homes will have a current Eircom product that already satisifes their requirements or will have a reasonable package from a competiting telecommunications provider, and therefore a large percentage of that 250,000 will not migrate over. So their rates of return won't look as good in reality.
But reality is nothing, perception is everything

you'd actually be surprised the amount of people who are coming back to Eircom ... lots of reasons, ****e UPC (sometimes service, sometimes customer service) ... coming back from OLO's (OLO's can only guarantee PSTN faults fixed for free... anything after that is charged, plus there can be a lead time delay in faults being fixed) ... landline needed (i.e. for Sky multiroom, which has to be installed by Eircom) etc...

bk

arctan wrote: »

you'd actually be surprised the amount of people who are coming back to Eircom ... lots of reasons, ****e UPC (sometimes service, sometimes customer service) ... coming back from OLO's (OLO's can only guarantee PSTN faults fixed for free... anything after that is charged, plus there can be a lead time delay in faults being fixed) ... landline needed (i.e. for Sky multiroom, which has to be installed by Eircom) etc...

Err, while some people might be coming back, they are in fact losing customers at a much greater rate then they are gaining them back.

They are mostly losing customers to:
1) UPC with their much higher speeds and quality service
2) Wireless 3G services

Basically Eircom are piggy in the middle. People who want a higher quality service (speed, download cap) are heading to UPC. Those that just want basic browsing, email, etc. are heading to the much cheaper wireless 3g services.

Eircom are gaining back some customers, but that is mostly from OLO bitsream DSL customers like UTV, Vodafone, etc. But as they are Eircom customers anyway, it isn't such a positive.

arctan

it's fairly balanced at the moment with people coming and going, customer base is still up from last year so far...

bk

arctan wrote: »

it's fairly balanced at the moment with people coming and going, customer base is still up from last year so far...

Interesting to note that Eircom no longer produce Quarterly Reports, which they did up till 2010 and no Annual report for 2011. Things must be really bad.

The most recent report I can find is up till May 2011:
http://pressroom.eircom.net/press_releases/article/eircom_third_quarter_and_nine_month_results_announcement_to_31_march_2011/

PSTN lines:
- retail down 37,000
- wholesale up 9,000

Fixed line Broadband:
- Retail down 9,000
- Wholesale Bitsream up 4,000
- Wholesale LLU up 1,000

Doesn't look good to me at all.

DRose1

bk wrote: »

Interesting to note that Eircom no longer produce Quarterly Reports, which they did up till 2010 and no Annual report for 2011. Things must be really bad.

The most recent report I can find is up till May 2011:
http://pressroom.eircom.net/press_releases/article/eircom_third_quarter_and_nine_month_results_announcement_to_31_march_2011/

PSTN lines:
- retail down 37,000
- wholesale up 9,000

Fixed line Broadband:
- Retail down 9,000
- Wholesale Bitsream up 4,000
- Wholesale LLU up 1,000

Doesn't look good to me at all.

Hypothetical situation... the sh!t really hits the fan at eircom (far more-so than in recent months) and it results in them going into fire-sale mode...

Would a company like UPC step in and takeover Eircoms existing DSL customers (who are using Eircoms current cabling infrastructure) or is it possible that those of us who cannot currently get UPC etc would be left without broadband?

Praetorian

DRose1 wrote: »

Hypothetical situation... the sh!t really hits the fan at eircom (far more-so than in recent months) and it results in them going into fire-sale mode...

Would a company like UPC step in and takeover Eircoms existing DSL customers (who are using Eircoms current cabling infrastructure) or is it possible that those of us who cannot currently get UPC etc would be left without broadband?

Upc certainly would not step in. Someone else may after a large debt write off, but Eircom isn´t hugely attractive as an investment anymore. There will always be an Eircom or an entity doing what Eircom do.

However, they will keep losing market share unless they can invest. I think their debt will be partially written off. They will shed a lot of jobs to try and save money. They are overstaffed and their staff are on big bucks. A lot of them are not trained in the new stuff like fttc or fibre in general.

Their fibre rollout phase 1 & phase 2 is welcomed but it is not exactly a fast rollout. I am sure there is a lack of funds and a lack of trained teams.

arctan

NGA is running out at fairly fast pace at the moment, most areas are ahead of schedule

there were problems with techs not wanting to move over to the NGA rollout after what happened to techs during the pilot trial, but more and more are jumping on board and training programs are happening weekly throughout the country, so trained staff is not a problem

re:take overs

if the **** does hit the fan ...hypothetically, expect meteor, eircom wholesale, and pretty much anything on the fixed access side of things to be sold off .... most likely buyers being Sky or Vodafone or the likes etc...

Eircom would still remain as a company, but only in charge of the core side of the network (exchange to exchange, network to network etc...)

as part of the deal I'd see the debt burdon being shared by Eircom and whatever potential buyer....

bealtine

arctan wrote: »

re:take overs

if the **** does hit the fan ...hypothetically, expect meteor, eircom wholesale, and pretty much anything on the fixed access side of things to be sold off .... most likely buyers being Sky or Vodafone or the likes etc...

Eircom would still remain as a company, but only in charge of the core side of the network (exchange to exchange, network to network etc...)

as part of the deal I'd see the debt burdon being shared by Eircom and whatever potential buyer....

I don't see eircom collapsing, the most likely outcome imho is that the senior lenders take control of the company and then renegotiate the debt. Hopefully that will be the outcome anyway.

Basically if eircom don't invest in FTTH/FTTC then they will wither away and slowly die. So consider this rollout as a strategic investment and needs to be widened out considerably for their own sake.
The big question is what eircom will do on the fringes of the exchanges they've announced...

DRose1

I could certainly see Sky making a play for some of the assets if they became available. They already have the digital tv market by the proverbial balls over here and I am sure they would be happy to roll out 'sky broadband' if they got the chance (much like they have in the UK already).

arctan

at the moment, even with all the ****e in the papers, I don't see them collapsing either .... had it been this time instead of 4 months ago, I'd say STT would have stayed in too

Eircom is still very profitable, there are another 3 months of examinership (well if they get the extension) in which time the first few areas of FTTC and FTTH of the second phase will have come online, this will be a big part of Eircom's argument for re-structure of debt, that they can afford it, but need to have timelines and payments re-structured ...

if that goes ahead, I could see other potential investors coming out of the woodwork because they would have a long term infrastructure plan, hence increased annual turnover

Solair

The problem, as I see it anyway, is that eircom might struggle to get any kind of investors at all.

#1 : The debt will absolutely have to be written down before anyone would touch it with a barge pole.

#2 : Their landline, consumer-oriented infrastructure has been allowed to become obsolete and is in need of major redevelopment. They have spent a lot of time talking about fibre-to-the-cabinet or fibre-to-the-home rollouts and achieved very little.

Even forgetting fibre, their NGN rollout isn't complete nationwide and there are still a significant number of exchanges (particularly outside urban areas) that don't even support ADSL2+ (up to 24 mbit/s) which is amazing in 2012!

Even on their most bog-standard services i.e. voice, they are probably in need of replacing equipment at this stage. Much like a lot of other telcos, their digital exchanges largely date from the 1980s. To make maters more urgent, Telecom Eireann was one of the first in the world to do a major roll-out of digital exchanges, so eircom's equipment is probably older than most other equivalent operators who largely went digital in the 90s.
So, I would suspect that even without moving to fibre to home, some of that aging gear is probably going to need to be replaced anyway.

#3 They are way behind their main compeditor in urban Ireland i.e. UPC which seems to be taking vast numbers of broadband & voice customers in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick, etc.

Also, based on disposable income, Dublin and Cork in particular are the most attractive areas to invest in because of their household spending power.

Basically, eircom's being left with a monopoly in areas that other companies wouldn't really be bothered with anyway as the costs are high, the lines are long, the population density is low and the spending power is also lower and even in rural areas, they're increasingly being out run by wireless service providers using fixed point microwave networks to an antenna on the roof.

#4 Ireland's economic situation's going to really play a huge role in getting an investor for eircom. The economy is still a mess and there is no clear path out of our mess at the moment.
So, if you are going to invest in an infrastructure company, I don't think
Ireland would be high on many agendas.
The GNP is contracting, spending is contracting, the Government's perusing slash-and-burn austerity tactics which are resulting in ever-decreasing spending from consumers and also from the public and private sectors.

The local banks are also basically bust and nationalised and that will hamper any ability to get capital from local investors and may mess up cash-flow due to inability to get flexible financing.

Also, given the state of eircom's finances and the national finances, you would wonder if they would be in a very strong position to get good deals on financing for new equipment. I would seriously doubt that they are.

#5 Competition :
UPC is a powerful player in this market and it is extremely well resourced (technically and financially) and part of a very large multinational. In the mobile sector, eircom's up against Vodafone, Telefonica (O2) and Hutchison (3) all of which are some of the worlds largest telecoms companies.
In fixed line infrastructure it is up against BT Ireland, again a huge telco.

I'm not trying to paint an entirely gloomy picture, but I am not seeing very many rainbows shining over eircom right now.

positron

Quick question to the people in the know.

Here in Drogheda (Wheaton Hall, in Dublin road), and we have been getting extremely poor speeds (~2 mpbs) with Eircom & Vodafone despite paying for 8 mbps or more. The reasons quoted are that the houses are wired to an exchange 5 kms away etc.

Recently a UTV internet sales team is going around offering 24 mbps, and according to the sales guy the fibre was laid here some 10 years back when the estate was being built, and it's only going active now. And the fibre runs up to local exchange box in the estate, which according to him is just outside the cul-de-sac (however that looks like a ESB sub/power-station to me based on photos and comments above). From what he said it sounds like he's referring to FTTC, and because the house is so close to the box I should get much faster speed once I switch to UTV Internet.

Now he also claims UTV Internet has exclusive access to this FTTC/Fiber setup for next 5 years? Is this correct? If that's not the case, I would much rather stay with Vodafone and get better speeds with them, as I've read horror stories about UTV throttling etc.

Could someone throw some light on this please? There's a good few of us considering switching over at NE/Louth forum, would be great to know if we are being taken for a ride.

Thanks a million!

Sponge Bob

Solair wrote: »

The problem, as I see it anyway, is that eircom might struggle to get any kind of investors at all.

#1 : The debt will absolutely have to be written down before anyone would touch it with a barge pole.

#2 : Their landline, consumer-oriented infrastructure has been allowed to become obsolete and is in need of major redevelopment. They have spent a lot of time talking about fibre-to-the-cabinet or fibre-to-the-home rollouts and achieved very little.

Interestingly they were offered somewhere around €1.7bn cash for it ( with all the long term debt written off) but they chose to keep €2.4bn debt written on and rejected that bid. I would have thought they had a future at around €1.5bn of debt myself so €1.7bn was generous in that context.

They have been starved of investment, Fixed and Mobile and Next Generation for around 12 years now although the Australian bankers/ Pierre Danon spent a bit during a catchup exercise in 2007. That didn't last long and some of that 2007 programme is incomplete 5 years later.

Even forgetting fibre, their NGN rollout isn't complete nationwide and there are still a significant number of exchanges (particularly outside urban areas) that don't even support ADSL2+ (up to 24 mbit/s) which is amazing in 2012!

They have 1200 exchanges ( pre cabinetisation an exchange generally covers a much larger geographic area). Of they 1200 they have only NGN enabled 300 and of the 1200 they have only DSL enabled 950 or so.

250 odd exchanges have nothing faster than dialup.
650 further exchanges have nothing faster than 7.6mbit c. Year 2001 standard ADSL. 11 Year old technology. Very few of the 650 will be upgraded to ADSL2+ and even fewer to VDSL.

All the exchanges selected for phase 2 ( and for phases 3 4 5 and 6 over the next few years) will have ADSL2+ already.

Sponge Bob

positron wrote: »

sales team is going around offering 24 mbps

The salesman LIED, in a nutshell. These people are on commisssion and will say ANYTHING to get a sale.

Stay away from UTV and wait for VDSL to appear either side of the New Year before you lock yourself into any contracts. You may notice a speed bump on basic ADSL for free ( ie to nearer 8mbits) before they offer VDSL>

bealtine

Sponge Bob wrote: »

The salesman LIED, in a nutshell. These people are on commisssion and will say ANYTHING to get a sale.

Yeah it sounds like complete BS...

"Now he also claims UTV Internet has exclusive access to this FTTC/Fiber setup for next 5 years? Is this correct?"

That's just more bs...

Solair

bealtine wrote: »

Yeah it sounds like complete BS...

"Now he also claims UTV Internet has exclusive access to this FTTC/Fiber setup for next 5 years? Is this correct?"

That's just more bs...

That's absolutely total nonsense. The FTTC products from eircom wholesale will / are (in a very limited way) available to anyone who wants to use them, much like wholesale DSL products are.

So far, as far as I am aware, only eircom retail & magnet are offering this kind of fibre service.

UTV offer some kind of wholesale version of BT Infinity in Northern Ireland alright, but again, it's just wholesale stuff on BT's infrastructure. I'd assume whatever they launch in the Republic will be similar.

UTV do good deals on price for DSL and voice, but that sales pitch is utter nonsense.

mobil 222

Sponge Bob wrote: »

They are not doing the rural areas at all.

Mervue in phase 1 and Shantalla in phase 2 have sizeable rural hinterlands that are not being upgraded at all. EG Menlo, Carnmore and Bushypark.

This is some cod

Dont worry they will be done as well especially carnmore with a sizeable industrial input... Probally what has happened is that there is no duct and service is already provided on poles.

Back a few years ago when Eircom found it to expensive to install duct they linked exchanges with Fibre hung on poles ...most of these poles were upgraded to take other cables as well so providing a new fibre would be no problem.

Some cabinets fed out of Mervue are very remote as would be the case with a lot of Western Towns such as Sligo, Donegal and Castlebar.

Looking at Phase 2 you will see Rathedmond in Sligo is included but the other exchange is not because of a fair precentage of its customers are rural and fed directly by cable

Sponge Bob

mobil 222 wrote: »

Dont worry they will be done as well especially carnmore with a sizeable industrial input... Probally what has happened is that there is no duct and service is already provided on poles.

Nope it is ducted from the existing exchange to Carnmore Cross.

Back a few years ago when Eircom found it to expensive to install duct they linked exchanges with Fibre hung on poles ...most of these poles were upgraded to take other cables as well so providing a new fibre would be no problem Some cabinets fed out of Mervue are very remote as would be the case with a lot of Western Towns such as Sligo, Donegal and Castlebar.

My understanding is that no new cabs will be provided out there and they will serve the lot from inside the City.....which is impossible to do properly..... eg the Curragh Line and Menlo could be launched from cabs in Ballindooley but only at ADSL2 speeds...not Next Generation. eircom already has ducting all the way out the Curragh Line.

Cantona's Collars

Didn't want to start a new thread but speaking of fibre,it looks like the folks up North are going to be spoiled.

Belfast Gets Ready For Ultrafast 1Gbps Broadband Network

Belfast is reportedly using its broadband cash from George Osborne to build a broadband network apparently capable of speeds of 1Gbps

http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/belfast-gets-ready-for-superfast-broadband-71644

skyflyer

zerks wrote: »

Didn't want to start a new thread but speaking of fibre,it looks like the folks up North are going to be spoiled.


http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/belfast-gets-ready-for-superfast-broadband-71644

Stuff like this makes living here incredibly irritating...:mad: