SIRO - ESB/Vodafone Fibre To The Home

bk

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Is that meant to be a capital B for bytes. If so that's awesome. 40GBps split 32/64 ways is just insane. That's either 10 or 5 Gbps dedicated each.

Sorry, my apologies, that should be b as in bits, not bytes, as networking is always counted in as opposed to storage. Edited the post

My brain is clearly muddled after just reading the 500 page industry input to the NBP doc! :eek:

bk

dalta5billion wrote: »

http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/NR/rdonlyres/D2786222-4075-428C-83FE-95967A370E9B/0/SubmissionstoCFIforpublication22ndOctober2014FINAL.pdf

Yup, I've just read much of it over the past few hours :eek:

You can find my analysis of it over on the National Broadband Plan thread:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=92788090&postcount=79

crawler

And now eircom say they will rollout Gigabit technology to 66 towns

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/technology/eircom-to-offer-extra-fast-fibre-broadband-1.1978690

Competition is fantastic!!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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.

SpaceTime

jca wrote: »

That isn't really true of Eircom. The privatisation of Eircom was its ruination. I know for a fact from a retired Eircom engineer that plenty of fibre was laid when it was a state company. He showed me access holes where fibre was lying unused for years, guys were sent for training in how to splice and join fibre cable. As soon as eircom was floated everything ground to a halt.

Because it became a private monopoly for a while. It had no effective competition and it's only incentive was to make profit, as it is for all businesses. It wasn't and isn't there to provide a public service on the same basis as a state body.

What inventive did it have to invest? It was making plenty of money out of bog standard internet and PSTN and nobody was providing anything better.

The regulation of the flawed market was also very weak in those years.

If you think back to Telecom Éireann days, there's a lot of rose tinted glasses nonsense too. Yeah, it was high tech in the early 1990s. However, it still had quite a few electromechanical exchanges in service in 2001! There were politicians going on and on about how high tech it was when all it had done was early success in state funded rollout of digital switching in the 80s in response to its predecessor the Dept of Posts & Telegraphs having run the network into the ground to the point that it was so bad that it was one of the worst in the developed world and couldn't even manage to provide reliable voice services in many areas.

The cost of calls and data under TÉ was astronomical too compared to what was available in the UK, the USA or any market with a functioning competitive telco sector.

The only cases where it was value for money was where it was being directed to be by the c state - multinationals, call centres etc etc in thé 1990s may have got competitive rates but consumers, SMEs and large Irish business certainly didn't.

Compare that to the Irish market in 2014 - costs are comparable to most developed markets. Broadband is highly competitive and quite reasonably comparable to most EU and US markets in terms of speed. Availability in rural areas can still be an issue but in most areas is available and competitive.

They made a hash of the privatisation by initially creating an private access network monopoly without any incentive for it to do anything other than sweat assets.

However, I wouldn't really rate TÉ as some kind of consumer friendly utopian entity either. We'd some of the highest telecoms costs in the EU and late availability of services like ISDN which launched much earlier (despite all digital exchanges etc here) in other markets.

More access network competition from UPC and now ESB is extremely positive for consumers as it shatters that monopoly situation.

This opening of new access infrastructure by ESB and Vodafone is a very, very welcome development for residential and business users.

Mayo Yid

"speeds of up to a gigbyte or 1,000MB"........ Why do press releases always get written by the wrong people.

No denying it's great news.

SpaceTime

Mayo Yid wrote: »

"speeds of up to a gigbyte or 1,000MB"........ Why do press releases always get written by the wrong people.

No denying it's great news.

Good thing they don't issue press releases for the automotive industry! .... With a top speed of 230 tons...

One slight complication is Vodafone are rumoured to be looking at buying Liberty Global (UPC's parent company). That could reduce us back to two companies competing.

Hank Scorpio

Sorry lads if this has been answered but what kind of roll out is expected? I live in a small town and read on the ESB site they're looking to roll it out to 5 million homes, does that mean nationwide coverage?

bk

SpaceTime wrote: »

One slight complication is Vodafone are rumoured to be looking at buying Liberty Global (UPC's parent company). That could reduce us back to two companies competing.

Hmm.... that might explain why UPC didn't get involved with the ESB as their JV partner (frankly a very logical thing to do) and why the ESB/Vodafone JV isn't planning on competing with UPC

nuxxx wrote: »

Sorry lads if this has been answered but what kind of roll out is expected? I live in a small town and read on the ESB site they're looking to roll it out to 5 million homes, does that mean nationwide coverage?

The ESB are targeting 500,000 premises in the first phase, with the possibility of future phases. 500,000 premises represents about 25% of premises in the state, so no it isnt a full nationwide coverage.

SpaceTime

Well, other than in its UK home market, Vodafone has been making big strides in the fixed broadband area and is a major player. Even here in Ireland it rapidly placed itself as the biggest alternative player on the PSTN and FTTC platform by buying its way in.

Liberty is probably one of Europe's largest super-fast broadband players. It's got a big presence in most of Northern Europe including the UK where it purchased Virgin Media.

You could easily see Vodafone becoming the first seriously big pan-EU telco out of that deal.

It has very deep pockets at the moment too.

bk

SpaceTime wrote: »

Well, other than in its UK home market, Vodafone has been making big strides in the fixed broadband area.

Liberty is probably one of Europe's largest super-fast broadband players. It's got a big presence in most of Northern Europe including the UK where it purchased Virgin Media.

You could easily see Vodafone becoming the first seriously big pan-EU telco out of that deal.

Yes, it makes an awful lot of sense. I believe the concept of separate telcos, cablecos, mobicos, etc. is going away and will be replaced by datacos, integrated companies that deliver broadband services over multiple platforms (4G, FTTH, cable, etc.) in the end it is all just data.

bk

MOD: Thread started here to specifically discuss Eircoms FTTH rollout:

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

SpaceTime

bk wrote: »

Yes, it makes an awful lot of sense. I believe the concept of separate telcos, cablecos, mobicos, etc. is going away and will be replaced by datacos, integrated companies that deliver broadband services over multiple platforms (4G, FTTH, cable, etc.) in the end it is all just data.

Vodafone's an excellent brand too with a lot of recognition right across Europe. Oddly enough, they've considered themselves to be a data company from day 1 way back in 1983.

VOice DAta Fone is where the name Vodafone originally came from.

They're one of the few EU telcos that constructed a genuinely pan European brand too. They've positioned themselves to become a very significant I think.

The only large EU market they're not present in is France.

7upfree

SpaceTime wrote: »

Good thing they don't issue press releases for the automotive industry! .... With a top speed of 230 tons...

One slight complication is Vodafone are rumoured to be looking at buying Liberty Global (UPC's parent company). That could reduce us back to two companies competing.

That's over a year old now.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/epic/vod/10409235/Liberty-Global-1bn-deal-opens-way-for-Vodafone-bid.html

SpaceTime

7upfree wrote: »

That's over a year old now.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/epic/vod/10409235/Liberty-Global-1bn-deal-opens-way-for-Vodafone-bid.html

Its become current again in recent months.

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-23/suvretta-s-cowen-says-liberty-global-target-for-vodafone.html

http://m.rte.ie/news/business/2014/0911/643063-vodafone-liberty-global

http://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/idUKKBN0H61K820140911?irpc=932/

ED E

...with estimated 1.3 million customers across its markets. LGE operates in 15 European, 4 Latin American and 2 Asian/Pacific countries.

Thats a big buy!

PeadarB

Methinks the EU decision has booted Eircom up the ass.

"Mergers: Commission clears joint venture between Irish electricity company ESB and Vodafone Ireland
The European Commission has approved under the EU Merger Regulation the creation of a joint venture between the Electricity Supply Board and Vodafone Ireland Limited. The Electricity Supply Board is controlled by the Irish State and owns Ireland’s electricity transmission and distribution systems. Vodafone Ireland is part of the Vodafone group and provides mobile and fixed telephony and broadband services in Ireland. The joint venture will build and operate a fibre-to-the-building broadband network to homes and businesses in parts of Ireland with a view to providing wholesale access on an open and non-discriminatory basis to this network as an input for various companies to provide retail services to end consumers. The Commission concluded that the creation of the joint venture would not raise competition concerns because it will lead to the creation of a new network and a new entrant in the market for the wholesale of local network access. Moreover, the joint venture will not have the ability and incentive to exclude rivals of Vodafone by preventing their access to the new network, because it lacks the market power to do so and because Vodafone’s rivals will still have access to other networks. The transaction was examined under the normal merger review procedure. More information is available on the Commission’s competition website, in the public case register under the case number M.7307" .

Let the fun begin.:D:D

barry181091

Ireland could literally go from a dead-duck when it comes to broadband infrastructure to cutting edge in the matter of a year or so

bk

barry181091 wrote: »

Ireland could literally go from a dead-duck when it comes to broadband infrastructure to cutting edge in the matter of a year or so

Yup I expect it could jump into the top 20 countries in the next two years. Even possibly into the top 10 if the FTTH rollouts are widespread and fast.

SpaceTime

bk wrote: »

Yup I expect it could jump into the top 20 countries in the next two years. Even possibly into the top 10 if the FTTH rollouts are widespread and fast.

ESB aren't shy about laying a bit of cable either, unlike certain other utility companies ...

SpaceTime

ED E wrote: »

Thats a big buy!

Not if you're Vodafone it isn't.

wikipedia wrote:

Vodafone Group plc /ˈvoʊdəfoʊn/ is a British multinational telecommunications company headquartered in London and with its registered office in Newbury, Berkshire. It is the world's 2nd-largest mobile telecommunications company measured by both subscribers and 2013 revenues (in each case behind China Mobile), and had 434 million subscribers as of 31 March 2014.

It's also just been going through a phase of selling off assets it doesn't control, including SFR in France and a 45% in Verizon in the US which it sold for $130 billion.

To say it has a few quid behind the couch is a massive understatement. Vodafone's very, very cash rich at the moment and it's partner in this, ESB is in vastly healthier shape than Eircom too.

They seem to be very determined to be a huge player in broadband in Europe, their home market, as it ties in perfectly with their enormous mobile business.

Liberty's main business interests are in Europe, not the US even though it was originally a US company.

For eircom, this is a HUGE and scary competitor.

ED E

Its no wonder Herb Hribrar quit, he was scared off!

SpaceTime

ED E wrote: »

Its no wonder Herb Hribrar quit, he was scared off!

I think he just did the turn around and got them back on track and then moved on. There are a lot of CEOs like that.

red_bairn

SpaceTime wrote: »

I think he just did the turn around and got them back on track and then moved on. There are a lot of CEOs like that.

Oh. I thought he left because of the IPO. :S

Bog Standard User

red_bairn wrote: »

Oh. I thought he left because of the IPO. :S

lol im thinking it was the same.. didnt get ipo so left

georgewickstaff

I wonder what odds on it reaching my picturesque village which currently has an amber line (1.6mb) connection that travels 5km to Drogheda?

I'd be happy with 10mb let alone anything else :mad:

Liamario

georgewickstaff wrote: »

I wonder what odds on it reaching my picturesque village which currently has an amber line (1.6mb) connection that travels 5km to Drogheda?

I'd be happy with 10mb let alone anything else :mad:

You won't be happy with that bandwidth in a few years time. The web is requiring more and more bandwidth and 10mb is going to quickly become redundant and useless.

Mr. G

SpaceTime wrote: »

Not if you're Vodafone it isn't.



It's also just been going through a phase of selling off assets it doesn't control, including SFR in France and a 45% in Verizon in the US which it sold for $130 billion.

To say it has a few quid behind the couch is a massive understatement. Vodafone's very, very cash rich at the moment and it's partner in this, ESB is in vastly healthier shape than Eircom too.

They seem to be very determined to be a huge player in broadband in Europe, their home market, as it ties in perfectly with their enormous mobile business.

Liberty's main business interests are in Europe, not the US even though it was originally a US company.

For eircom, this is a HUGE and scary competitor.

For Eircom, they own the (while regulated), only PSTN network in the country. I don't mean to offend anyone here who might work for Eircom, but in my experience there is a "public-sector" attitude where productivity is frowned upon. Only for Comreg, Eircom would still be selling Dial-Up and "superfast" 1Mbps broadband at crazy prices. It takes time for this attitude to change.

For Vodafone, they know what they're at and I would believe it if Vodafone were to buy out Liberty. It would explain a lot about the selling of the Verizon shares, and quite possibly why UPC are in talks about joining with 3 to create an MVNO. That gives them the best coverage with 3/O2 in rural areas post-NGB & Vodafone.

Vodafone have invested a lot recently into their 3G and 4G networks, and for them to get UPC would be an icing on the cake.

But I wonder how the European Commission would approve of the UPC buyout by Vodafone?

Hutchison 3G (3) bought out Telefonia's O2 network here. It took a while for Hutchison to get approval from the EU, and when they did, Comreg were not one bit happy about it. Let alone Vodafone to buy out UPC!

That would leave Hutchison 3, Vodafone and Eircom to be the main players in the telecoms market. None of which are Irish.

Fine you have MNVOs like Blueface & Tesco Mobile, and then of course Digiweb, Pure and Blueface being the only main other player in the broadband market who are likely to fade into the background only for their enterprise services for call centres. Of course, 3 main telecom players is enough for a country with only 4.6 million.

Out of those, only Blueface & Digiweb are Irish, and in comparison they are very small.

It leaves questions about Eircom though, and how likely they are to survive under Vodafone's radar. Eircom have been unstable and never really succeeded here. That would leave just Vodafone really, so it would need to be open access.

Looks like a very exciting future ahead :pac:. Of course, these are only rumours and nothing has been agreed.

SpaceTime

It's not really ComReg but rather effective competition that's changed the eircom offering.

No business is going to invest money in services unless they have to keep up with competitors.

The rapid expansion of cable broadband was the big shock to the system as they lost a huge amount of customers to UPC.

Also, unlike switching to another DSL provider where eircom was still milking you for line rental and other revenue streams, when customers go to UPC or to a FWA operator or where they dump a landline in favour of mobile services, eircom lose all the revenue from that account.

ESB Vodafone fibre is a similar threat. If eircom don't compete they lose thousands and possible tens of thousands of customers.

ESB could easily just gobble up a huge chunk of the market very quickly because eircom was relying on barriers to entry rather than technical superiority.

Where a monopolist's market is disrupted by a new entrant, things can change very quickly and very fundamentally.

ESB have just changed the entire paradigm by entering the market.

bk

Actually I would argue that it was Ireland Off Line that got things started and definitely not Comreg.

Back when IOffL was created, they approached the minister of communications at the time, asking him the force Eircom to introduce FRIACO (flat rate internet dial-up). The Department of Comms at the time claimed he didn't have the power to force Eircom to do this, but we were able to clearly show the EU legislation that allowed for it.

So the Minister, Dermot Ahern, directed Eircom to introduce FRIACO. It radically changed the internet market overnight.

Esat/BT and Eircom then had flat rate dial-up products available almost immediately, that massively reduced peoples internet bills.

Within a month later Eircom cut the price of ADSL Broadband in half, from €110 to €55 and more importantly started rolling it out to exchanges widely. Before this it was really just a trial in a few limited exchanges.

FRIACO broke the log jam. Eircom went from being able to charge people hundreds a month for dial-up, to just a max of €30 per month. That meant that it was actually in there interest to get people onto ADSL, as ADSL was cheaper for them then unlimited dial-up, plus an ADSL user can still make and receive calls, giving them even more revenue.

The next big breakthrough in the Irish Broadband market was UPC taking over Chorus/NTL networks and totally rebuilding those networks to a very high quality and then selling very high speed broadband on these networks. Eircom lost massive numbers of customers to UPC and in the end it forced them to compete and rollout VDSL/FTTC. Which in fairness to Eircom has largely gone very well and been an excellent upgrade.

Hopefully the entry of ESB/Vodafone with their FTTH network will be the next big milestone in the Irish Broadband market and will shake things up again.

As for Vodafone buying out Liberty Global/UPC, I don't think it would face much opposition from EU regulators. The EU actually wants more pan european datacos and that only happens with mergers. For the most part Liberty and Vodafone have very little overlap and would actually be a good fit.

Here in Ireland they only compete with Vodafone VDSL/FTTC and since that is just reselling Eircoms wholesale product, I don't think it would be a major obstacle. If required, I'd imagine Vodafone would be happy to drop reselling VDSL/FTTC.

I don't think the ESB/Vodafone will ever compete heavily in UPC areas. There just isn't space for more then two physical networks.

I expect how the market will pan out is:

- Eircom everywhere with FTTH/FTTC
- UPC in there areas with Cable, going to FTTH in the long term
- ESB/Vodafone FTTH everywhere else that UPC doesn't operate in.

The UPC and ESB networks if a merger occurred, could eventually become one, leaving us with:

- Eircom everywhere with FTTH/FTTC
- UPC/ESB/Vodafone almost everywhere

I expect Sky will eventually get their finger out and replace Vodafone as the number 2 FTTC reseller when they finally launch their own product.

The one thing we need to make sure, is that both physical networks are opened up to virtual operators (like Sky, BT, Magnet, Digiweb, etc.) in a fair and transparent manner. And yes that includes the ESB/Vodafones new FTTH network and UPC's cable.

Its Only Ray Parlour

bk wrote: »

Actually I would argue that it was Ireland Off Line that got things started and definitely not Comreg.

Back when IOffL was created, they approached the minister of communications at the time, asking him the force Eircom to introduce FRIACO (flat rate internet dial-up). The Department of Comms at the time claimed he didn't have the power to force Eircom to do this, but we were able to clearly show the EU legislation that allowed for it.

So the Minister, Dermot Ahern, directed Eircom to introduce FRIACO. It radically changed the internet market overnight.

Esat/BT and Eircom then had flat rate dial-up products available almost immediately, that massively reduced peoples internet bills.

In what year did this happen? I can remember getting scolded by my mother for leaving the internet logged on. I think this was in 1999 or 2000 or maybe a bit later.

In 2003, I remember my friends had a deal were his internet was free during off-peak hours. I think he was with ESAT and it was between 8 a.m. to 8 p.m..