The great broadband myth

clohamon

Long piece in the Examiner by John Hearne. Pulls a lot of things together.


http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/the-great-broadband-myth-214452.html

It’s painfully familiar to rural dwellers. When Fiona Falconer moved from London to the Wexford village of Monamolin, she expected internet speeds would be slower. She hadn’t anticipated no internet.

"I couldn’t believe that there were no broadband options whatsoever," she says. She was working as a documentary filmmaker, and drove to Gorey three days a week to use an internet café.

"I contacted all of the various people who were touting broadband services in the area, to see what was feasible, and it turned out there wasn’t anything feasible. We were in, what I was told, was a black hole," she says.

wildefalcon

Amazing, when such a simple solution exists:

The minister determines minimum data speeds for land lines - a legacy issue to ensure fax lines work. Telcos have to provide this.

Up this to a basic broadband speed - 1mb, say.

Fine the telcos for not delivering.

Two things can happen:

1) telco buys some decent kit.

2) telco goes bust and state takes back critical infrastructure.

Simple, but requires brains and balls - both of which are absent in the Irish Political "life".

MagicMarker

It requires brains and balls to force a company in a ridiculous amount of debt to take on a huge and costly project that would not be in any way cost effective?

PogMoThoin

MagicMarker wrote: »

It requires brains and balls to force a company in a ridiculous amount of debt to take on a huge and costly project that would not be in any way cost effective?

It could easily have been done properly by fixed wireless if the Government weren't loved up by the mobile phone companies. The NBS wasted €250 million and didn't bring a single person broadband. They should have divided up that money and given it out on a local level to the fixed wireless providers who are struggling to improve and expand their networks.

wildefalcon

MagicMarker wrote: »

It requires brains and balls to force a company in a ridiculous amount of debt to take on a huge and costly project that would not be in any way cost effective?

The State shouldn't kowtow to the internal demands of a Private company.

The Private company has mismanaged it's affairs, it's problem.

It manages some critical state infrastructure and so the state can, does and should, dictate the basic minimum standards. If the Private company doesn't believe it makes economic sense to uphold those standards then it should be fined until it DOES make sense.

Or goes bust.

But that's not the Irish way, is it?

MagicMarker

wildefalcon wrote: »

But that's not the Irish way, is it?

That's not 'any' way, because it's silly and ill thought out. It doesn't make any economic sense forcing a company that's just trying to stay afloat to spend a shít load of money to make sure some granny in the back arse of no where can get 1mb broadband. It's madness.

I agree that a solution is needed, but this isn't it.

wildefalcon

MagicMarker wrote: »

That's not 'any' way, because it's silly and ill thought out. It doesn't make any economic sense forcing a company that's just trying to stay afloat to spend a shít load of money to make sure some granny in the back arse of no where can get 1mb broadband. It's madness.

I agree that a solution is needed, but this isn't it.

Following that logic to its extreme would result in no-one, other than those living in high density apartments, with broadband, water, sewerage or electricity.

We live in a country with a cultural preference for distributed village housing patterns.

It's expensive, but it's the way we are. If the State (Us) thinks that provision of electricity, phone, post, broadband and water to all households is a fundamental right of any resident then it must ensure that such services are provided.

Oh, and it isn't all that expensive - upgrade the exchange switches to modern Cisco Long Range Ethernet equipment, ditch the multiplexers and strip out all that cheap aluminium cable that the Asset Stripping buyers installed and the job is done.

Compared to an entire village driving to the nearest town to do their essential chores (remember that an increasing amount of interactions with the State are via the internet) on a regular basis it is quite cheap. Especially if it allows the villagers to e-commute.

mike65

Not a mention of satellite BB, there are a number of providers on the market now.

bealtine

mike65 wrote: »

Not a mention of satellite BB, there are a number of providers on the market now.

Who the hell cares about satellite? It isn't broadband and never will be

mike65

Is 18mb not enough to qualify?

http://digiweb.ie/home/tooway/

bealtine

mike65 wrote: »

Is 18mb not enough to qualify?

http://digiweb.ie/home/tooway/

spin it however you want, it's still not broadband as the latency is ridiculous and the rolling caps will kill the average user. Sat is useless for a number of standard things people do on real broadband

PogMoThoin

mike65 wrote: »

Is 18mb not enough to qualify?

http://digiweb.ie/home/tooway/

Snake Oil. What good is 18mbit off peak when you've a 4Gb monthly rolling cap and a throttling system during peak hours. It's also unsuitable for many services, VoIP, VPN, etc.

mike65

I didn't say it was perfect but if you just want file transfer and e-mail for small business it should be grand. Gamers stay away obviously.

bealtine

mike65 wrote: »

I didn't say it was perfect but if you just want file transfer and e-mail for small business it should be grand. Gamers stay away obviously.

and anybody else that wants to use real broadband...

http://support.digiweb.ie/questions/3851/Tooway+Satellite+Ku+Traffic+Usage+%26+Fair+Access+Policy+Explained..

oscarBravo

mike65 wrote: »

Is 18mb not enough to qualify?

If I fill up a DVD-R and drive it into town, it takes about five minutes to get there. 4.7GB in five minutes is 125Mbit/s - pretty impressive bandwidth.

But it ain't broadband.

knotknowbody

wildefalcon wrote: »

Oh, and it isn't all that expensive - upgrade the exchange switches to modern Cisco Long Range Ethernet equipment, ditch the multiplexers and strip out all that cheap aluminium cable that the Asset Stripping buyers installed and the job is done.

Compared to an entire village driving to the nearest town to do their essential chores (remember that an increasing amount of interactions with the State are via the internet) on a regular basis it is quite cheap. Especially if it allows the villagers to e-commute.

That's fine but your not taking into account that many lines take the scenic route to homes, the line to my parents house is over 11km, the shortest route by road to the exchange is about 4.5 km, of this only the 1 km nearest the exchange has lines installed, for them and a couple of other houses in their immediate area to get DSL BB would require new poles to be installed in the "gap" and then cable to be installed on them, this is not in any way feasible to do in order to provide BB to 4 or 5 houses, especially at that distance from the exchange.

In my opinion, the only viable solution for rural Ireland is to invest in fixed wireless in a targeted way, focus on areas where DSL is never going to be commercially viable, to go back to my parents example they are at the extremity of their exchange, their neighbours are obviously then also at the extremity of the neighbouring exchanges, in their area there are about 18 homes within 1/2 a mile that can't get BB due to distance from 3 different exchanges.

It is never going to be viable for the Telco to upgrade all those lines to be capable of BB but, however there are at least 3 hills in the area with masts on which could house FWA equipment, if this equipment was installed on one of these with a wireless back-haul to the nearest wireless high-site, which is currently fully operational and about 20 km away and with full line of site, then it starts to look viable to provide BB to those houses.

This is in my opinion the only viable way to provide proper Broadband to many parts of rural Ireland, the mobile operators will never be able to compete with proper FWA for speed, latency and basic reliability of service, FWA should have been funded instead of the mobile solutions. The various schemes which the government funded to expand the mobile operators BB offerings were ill thought out and if I'm honest I believe the ministers who approved them did not have the technical knowledge needed to make such a decision at their disposal, if they had I can't see how it was possible to make such a bad decision.

wildefalcon

Would that be cheaper than replacing the aluminium with copper or fibre?

How much does a base station cost? How is the base station wired into the internet backbone?

It's a good idea.

watty

You can get fibre anywhere ESB power gets, cheaper too. But Fixed Wireless can be good for last few percent.

Fibre is MUCH cheaper than mobile for same coverage and gives 100 to 1000 times speed/capacity!

GreeBo

Yeah, dont we have some magical Figure of 8 backbone on the ESB network?
Why cant that be used to give some measure of broadband to every home with electricity?

/edit
this from 2005?!

Bill Shock

GreeBo wrote: »

Yeah, dont we have some magical Figure of 8 backbone on the ESB network?
Why cant that be used to give some measure of broadband to every home with electricity?

/edit
this from 2005?!

Because its on ESBs transmission network not their Distribution one.

GreeBo

Bill Shock wrote: »

Because its on ESBs transmission network not their Distribution one.

Fair enough. But I'm guessing these networks interact?
In any case, everyone is on the grid and the grid can be used to transmit data so...?
Article
Does seem to be some interference issues, but for remote areas it could be sustainable. Also if sub-stations are an issue, can we just assume the sub station would be on a broadband network and the data would be offloaded there?

oscarBravo

Broadband over power lines doesn't work. No matter what trickery is tried from time to time to make it seem like it might work, it doesn't work. Power transmission lines make very poor data transmission lines. Forget about power lines, unless you're wrapping fibre-optic cables around them, which is how the ESB's NTFON is built.

watty

Feeding from the substation is the ONLY method really for Power line networking. It only gives ISDN speeds, if on overhead wires any mobile radio "knocks it out" and it creates massive RF interference.

Even a slower intermittent version for "smart meters" is unreliable and generates interference.

Kensington

wildefalcon wrote: »

Amazing, when such a simple solution exists:

The minister determines minimum data speeds for land lines - a legacy issue to ensure fax lines work. Telcos have to provide this.

Up this to a basic broadband speed - 1mb, say.

Fine the telcos for not delivering.

Two things can happen:

1) telco buys some decent kit.

2) telco goes bust and state takes back critical infrastructure.

Simple, but requires brains and balls - both of which are absent in the Irish Political "life".

Problem in both of those scenarios is that neither party has any money - either to invest or to pay fines.

Eircom is wobbling on the edge, swamped in debt and hemorrhaging their lucrative urban users to the likes of upc. Rural users present an even greater loss with less and less urban users to subsidize them.

So lets say Eircom goes bust? The Irish Government can't afford to repair our road or water networks never mind sink hundreds of millions into an aging, squeezed copper network wrought with lots of bureaucracy and red tape.

We have the technology for extremely fast fibre transmission networks being developed right on these shores - but no-one has any money to implement it here.

wildefalcon

Kensington wrote: »

Problem in both of those scenarios is that neither party has any money - either to invest or to pay fines.

Eircom is wobbling on the edge, swamped in debt and hemorrhaging their lucrative urban users to the likes of upc. Rural users present an even greater loss with less and less urban users to subsidize them.

So lets say Eircom goes bust? The Irish Government can't afford to repair our road or water networks never mind sink hundreds of millions into an aging, squeezed copper network wrought with lots of bureaucracy and red tape.

We have the technology for extremely fast fibre transmission networks being developed right on these shores - but no-one has any money to implement it here.

Sad truth, a bankrupt country. Still, if Eircom goes bust then the debt goes away. Without the debt the upgrades become affordable.

Cheerful Spring

I have been with Eircom since 2003 been on 7 meg package since 2007 no closer to an upgrade than i was yesterday.

I live only 9 to 10 miles from Limerick city, its a pain there is other provider anywhere with better speeds. Eircom also charges way too much for their service.

It would actually work out cheaper for me if i was on a UPC package of 100mb, this what annoys me the most. Least i don't have it as bad as some in rural Ireland with less speeds than i got.

funnyname

We need to get the finger out and start doing it ourselves, just like we did when we had to bring water to our houses via rural community water schemes.

I read an article on the bbc website that said there was at least 50 to 60 community based schemes not waiting for BT or the government to connect them and the most exciting of these I think is this lot.

http://b4rn.org.uk/

But obviously there are a few in Ireland like Big Lar down in Waterford and wireless technology is great for those of us too far from the local exchange.

However having a FTTH 1gb symmetrical connection would be a total wet dream!