SIRO - ESB/Vodafone Fibre To The Home

KOR101

SpaceTime wrote: »

I would wonder if that's partly down to planning differences though?

The Republic creates a lot of rural scatter development without density of villages and towns. That makes sustaining anything viable very difficult.

Yes, and Scotland would be a better comparator.

One thing that strikes me is that, as someone who has been traveling down to Kerry for many years, the investment that has gone into roads. Year by year there have been improvements. The last one being the removal of the lights at the Ballincollig interchange.

And then the head of the NRA recently commented that Ireland could afford some small road projects, and then included Macroom to Ballyvourney in the list.

You would really wonder whether investing in something like FTTH would be economically more beneficial to rural areas than road investment at this point.

SpaceTime

I don't think it's an either/or scenario to be honest.

Broadband investment is akin to what telephone network investment was in the 1970s and 1980s.
Rural broadband's never going to be leading edge, but it can be pretty good, high tech and more than adequate to keep small businesses and residential users serviced.

I think realistically we need to look at small scale FTTH and FTTC in villages. It shouldn't be THAT expensive. However, I think in really, really rural areas, I still think radio solutions linked to good backhaul are probably the most viable option.

That's something that should be built on top of FTTH infrastructure. There's no reason why if you have an FTTH service running along a particular road, it couldn't also provide connectivity for a high-site / tower with rural wireless broadband services for that area.

There's also a major need to get a number of local, isolated Eircom Remote MSANs (RSU) (tiny exchanges) connected to fibre rather than microwave links. That might need subsidies and a rethink about using public owned fibre assets rather than waiting for Eircom to do it, which might be never.

We need to ensure a bit of joined up thinking.

Also, where any road project's being done - put some fibre ducts under it!
No roads should be built, widened or resurfaced without spare ducts going in.

Declaring certain areas Communication Assistance Areas and putting a framework in place to share assets between operators and state assist, while preserving an open market might make a lot of sense.

murphaph

jca wrote: »

Did you read my post? Nowhere in my post did I say that rural people were to be looked after first. Some posters here think that Ireland is a deserted wasteland outside the pale and the cultchies should be left on dial up.

You know the FTTH rollout largely ignores the "pale"?

ED E

SpaceTime wrote: »

That's something that should be built on top of FTTH infrastructure. There's no reason why if you have an FTTH service running along a particular road, it couldn't also provide connectivity for a high-site / tower with rural wireless broadband services for that area.

A big problem here is even upgrades require new licensing from Comreg($$$) plus site fees(more $$$) causing what could be very easy deployments and vast improvements for end users to be so far down on the priority list they never get done.

If the DECNR were serious about this they'd waive the fees and fastrack applications for point to point licences for any provider working to increase performance within the NBP areas.

KOR101

SpaceTime wrote: »

There's no reason why if you have an FTTH service running along a particular road, it couldn't also provide connectivity for a high-site / tower with rural wireless broadband services for tha.

There is one reason this won't work in some areas. Certain areas have planning restrictions relating to masts. Blackwater valley and Glenmalure are two I'm familiar with.

Unless I'm showing my ignorance about the 'radio' solution. I can get great radio reception, but no mobile signal where I Am.

SpaceTime

There are usually ways around those things with proper disguising and location of transmitters. They're not what you'd call enormous structures either for local radio links.

If there's an absolute planning restriction on transmission facilities though, those areas will simply never have TV or broadband. There's a need to strike a reasonable balance on these issues and I find Ireland goes from one extreme to the other most of the time.

We absolutely wreck the countryside with one off housing and inappropriate buildings in eye-catching locations, yet at if you try to put up an essential piece of infrastructure like a telecommunications tower there'll be protests and uproar. At the same time, the same people will be complaining about their lack of broadband not necessarily even realising that the two issues are connected.

Unfortunately, you can't really have modern life without some of this infrastructure. It's all about installing it sensitively.

The reality of the Irish countryside is that it is not natural. If it were, the whole country would be covered in trees, scrubland and bog, not little cultivated fields.

I remember seeing a shot of a landscape complaining about an ESB installation, when the biggest artificial blots on the landscape were actually a victorian viaduct and a load of farm buildings. Just because something is 20th/21st century it seems to suddenly be declared 'ugly' yet, somehow big, ugly bits of Victorian cast iron and anything (no matter how ugly or inappropriate) connected to agriculture seem to get a pass.

....

As for radio reception - not all signals propagate in quite the same way. In general, the higher the frequency, the more likely it will need to be 'line of sight' (as in you can actually see the transmitter).

FM Radio for example, is low frequency 88 to 108 MHz and it's also one-way. So, it can simply use a very high powered transmitter. Your radio doesn't need to talk back to it - it's just passive reception. That's quite easy to do and requires far fewer masts as it's a transmitter only, not a transmitter-receiver (Transciever)

So, mobile phone networks and rural wireless broadband would tend to use a network of small, relatively low power transmitter/receivers, not just big huge transmission antennae like a broadcaster would use.

Mobile phones are on 800MHz (4G), 900MHz (2G and now some 3G too but that's only starting), 1800MHz (some 2G and some 4G) and 2100MHz (the original 3G frequency).

The 900MHz band worked much more effectively for in-building reception and also for rural propagation.
All European networks picked 2100MHz for the initial 3G rollouts which is part of the reason why in-building and rural reception was so bad for so long. Thankfully, it's now being supplemented by 900MHz as the old 2G GSM network contracts. The only issue is that some handsets don't yet support 900MHz 3G so, depending on your phone you may/may not get 3G in areas where that service has been switched on.

4G on 800MHz should be very good in comparison to the old 3G rollouts though!

5starpool

murphaph wrote: »

You know the FTTH rollout largely ignores the "pale"?

Ya, why is this? Is it because most of the power lines are underground in Dublin city or something? I live within 4 miles of the spire and I have no access to fibre by any provider at the minute (although hopeful about the eircom cab being enabled reasonably soon).

bk

5starpool wrote: »

Ya, why is this? Is it because most of the power lines are underground in Dublin city or something? I live within 4 miles of the spire and I have no access to fibre by any provider at the minute (although hopeful about the eircom cab being enabled reasonably soon).

Well because for the most part Dublin is already well serviced by two high speed broadband providers UPC (cable/DOCSIS up to 200mb/s) and Eircom (FTTC/VDSL up to 100mb/s).

Of course there are "black spots" like your area, but hopefully these will be serviced in the next year.

The ESB/Vodafone seem to have decided to target urban areas that don't already have UPC service. This is purely a business decision on their part, there is no technical reason why they couldn't service Dublin, etc.

The business reason is that it is easier for them to compete with just one company (Eircom), then two companies (Eircom and UPC), specially as UPC has a particularly high quality network and can match the speeds of ESB FTTH.

I believe the ESB want to become the "UPC" of the non UPC areas. Basically UPC managed to take almost 50% of Eircoms customers in the areas that UPC service and I think the ESB are gunning to do the same in the non UPC urban areas.

From a business perspective, it is clearly the best way for them to invest their money. Having said that, this is just for their first phase (first 500,000 homes over the next 3 years). If it all goes well with this phase, their is nothing to say that they won't expand into Dublin in a future phase.

Also you can be certain that eventually both Eircom and UPC will in the longterm rollout FTTH in Dublin too.

An interesting wrinkle in all of this is the recent rumours of Vodafone may buy/merge with UPC. If that happens, I wonder could we end up seeing UPC and ESB/Vodafone FTTH working closely together.

ED E

5starpool wrote: »

Ya, why is this? Is it because most of the power lines are underground in Dublin city or something? I live within 4 miles of the spire and I have no access to fibre by any provider at the minute (although hopeful about the eircom cab being enabled reasonably soon).

FTTH is still in trials. Only a handful of areas got it and Dublin is well served as is.

Lots of the centre of the city(temple bar etc) is still on ADSL2+ as exchange launched VDSL is yet to go live.

KOR101

ukoda wrote: »

we should also note that ESB have been laying fibre in new electricity connection ducts for years, so a lot of the ground work is done in some areas

Do you know when they started that?

SpaceTime

5starpool wrote: »

Ya, why is this? Is it because most of the power lines are underground in Dublin city or something? I live within 4 miles of the spire and I have no access to fibre by any provider at the minute (although hopeful about the eircom cab being enabled reasonably soon).

Same in Cork City Centre too - Eircom hasn't rolled out FTTC on the central island that the city's core business and shopping districts sit on although I think UPC is quite easily available there.

Key parts of Dublin 1, 2, 3 and parts of 7 and 8 are really badly covered by various providers.

ED E wrote: »

FTTH is still in trials. Only a handful of areas got it and Dublin is well served as is.

Lots of the centre of the city(temple bar etc) is still on ADSL2+ as exchange launched VDSL is yet to go live.

Exchange launched VDSL will not be remotely as good as cabinet based services either due to bandwidth limitations on the copper network when it's mixing with ADSL2+ and various other services that people may be less aware of that carry various non-consumer oriented stuff.

Bog Standard User

SpaceTime wrote: »

Same in Cork City Centre too - Eircom hasn't rolled out FTTC on the central island that the city's core business and shopping districts sit on although I think UPC is quite easily available there.

Key parts of Dublin 1, 2, 3 and parts of 7 and 8 are really badly covered by various providers.



Exchange launched VDSL will not be remotely as good as cabinet based services either due to bandwidth limitations on the copper network when it's mixing with ADSL2+ and various other services that people may be less aware of that carry various non-consumer oriented stuff.

adsl cabs are separate to fttc cabs. they have no bearing on line speeds for fibre customers

also the undersea fibre cable eircom/vodafone share in the irish sea has now been repaired. speeds out of ireland should now start to improve again.

football_lover

SpaceTime wrote: »

Major major differences:

Population density Republic of Ireland : 65 per km2
Population density Northern Ireland : 133 people per km2

Co Dublin : 1380.8 / km2
Population Density Connacht: 30.5 /km2

Cities:

Dublin: 4,588/km2
Cork: 3,194.18/km2

Other cities in ROI: Unknown density (can't get area easily)

You can see though why rolling out FTTH is a LOT more profitable and sustainable in somewhere with 3000-4500 people per sq km vs somewhere with 19 (Leitrim)

There are tax funds going into these projects and people in the rural communities cannot be expected to pay taxes for a system that is not going to service them.

it makes not sense at all. Now I we are not talking about rural in the sense of out in the bogs.

We are talking most instances of housing clusters that already have copper phone lines going to them.

If copper could be fitted so can fiber optics. We are now at the point that it is almost as cheap to fit fiber as it is to fit copper.

Nollog

5starpool wrote: »

Ya, why is this? Is it because most of the power lines are underground in Dublin city or something? I live within 4 miles of the spire and I have no access to fibre by any provider at the minute (although hopeful about the eircom cab being enabled reasonably soon).

Yeah, when I was looking at apartments in Cork City, they all said to get a dongle, upc wouldn't service the centre, and eircom similarly.
It seemed so weird to me.

KOR101 wrote: »

Do you know when they started that?

2004 I believe?
I'm going by when they started supplying digiweb with internets.

dbit wrote: »

black lines looped through nooses just under the power lines about 2-3 foot under the power runs , the catherine wheel looking thing

After many-a-search, I've found what I think you're describing.

Nothing like this in Cobh that I've seen.

dbit

/\/ollog wrote: »

Yeah, when I was looking at apartments in Cork City, they all said to get a dongle, upc wouldn't service the centre, and eircom similarly.
It seemed so weird to me.


2004 I believe?
I'm going by when they started supplying digiweb with internets.


After many-a-search, I've found what I think you're describing.

Nothing like this in Cobh that I've seen.

Yup that pic though looks like a temporary version of what im describing , The wheel i saw was larger than that - slightly bigger with automated pull and release tension-er type mechanism. IT was on the Clonmel to dungarvan road i spotted it . Sorry i didn't take a pic.

SpaceTime

/\/ollog wrote: »

Yeah, when I was looking at apartments in Cork City, they all said to get a dongle, upc wouldn't service the centre, and eircom similarly.
It seemed so weird to me.


2004 I believe?
I'm going by when they started supplying digiweb with internets.


After many-a-search, I've found what I think you're describing.

Nothing like this in Cobh that I've seen.

That looks more like some kind of temporary mess for a festival or something. Doesn't look like fibre and looks pretty messy.
I don't think the fibre stuff will look that crude!

dbit

as stated the device i saw looked far more substantial than that shot , yes that shot again,.... looks temporary , like off for a cup o tea while they wait for the cherry picker to move to next pole.

SpaceTime

It's certainly messy whatever it is!

dbit

SpaceTime wrote: »

It's certainly messy whatever it is!

Tie wraps or temporary tied on ****e - You will know it when you see it . It looks very much like a catherine wheel. Its very noticeable from a distance.

Nollog

http://publicphoto.org/technology/aerial-fiber-optic-cable/
It's from here.

dbit

/\/ollog wrote: »

http://publicphoto.org/technology/aerial-fiber-optic-cable/
It's from here.

Its similar but not exact . the system i saw was done very neat and tidy only one fibre run in an attached hook nailed to the post about 1-3 foot below power lines and maybe every 5-6 poles you would see the tensioner im talking about. Can we not send out a minion in clonmel to find it . I was driving and cursing aloud as i spotted it . couldn't take a pic due to the rage i felt at the time lolz.

Girl i was with wouldn't have been impressed with me stopping the car and nerding it up over a cable on a pole.

dbit

Looked more like this




And now i see its not a tensioner only a way to allow splicing at ground level so they can uncoil , drop to ground and perform splices . My bad only applied a guess as to what it might be.

Mr. G

Once it's not like this I don't mind. My eyes!!

http://publicphoto.org/technology/aerial-fiber-optic-cable/attachment/aerial-fiber-optic-cable_24157/

dbit

Mr. G wrote: »

Once it's not like this I don't mind. My eyes!!

http://publicphoto.org/technology/aerial-fiber-optic-cable/attachment/aerial-fiber-optic-cable_24157/

The statement i made about one every 5-6 poles is only a load of aul ****e i did see two in a one mile area but these looking back are simply interconnects or for spans off in another direction.



Bloody awful cable work.

Bog Standard User

murphaph wrote: »

You know the FTTH rollout largely ignores the "pale"?

that is because alot of new ducting would be required

dublin city council, rathdown/dun laoghaire, are notoriously difficult to get dig permits from :mad:

fingal is not so bad

most county councils down the country are alot easier to get permits from

Bog Standard User

Its Only Ray Parlour wrote: »

It's not a waste. The money is to be made in the densely populated areas. Don't you think UPC would have rolled out fibre in rural areas already if there was money to be made there? They're not ignoring yous just to piss yous off or anything.

These private companies would go bankrupt if they rolled it out to the rural parts first. You should consider yourselves lucky that you're actually getting FTTH eventually because very few countries are getting a 100% fibre rollout.

Take a look at this: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=92848782&postcount=98

Around 37% of our population lives in rural areas, which is quite high. Countries with faster average speeds tend to have higher population densities, more apartments and less rural dwellings.

it doesnt help that eircom is forced by law to provide bband down the country whereas upc is not which is unfair

upc have no interest in installing high speed bband down where us bog monsters live because it is not profitable.

eircom wholesale however do not have that luxury... they are forced under law to bring it in.

Bog Standard User

worth noting about esb-vf venture

What's in the small print of the announcement about a new fibre broadband network, promising 1,000Mbs to 500,000 businesses and homes across 50 Irish towns? Here are five things you need to know.

http://www.independent.ie/business/esbs-new-1000mbs-broadband-plan-spooks-eircom-30409194.html

MOD: It is against the rules of boards to simply cut and paste and article, instead you most link to it.

MajesticDonkey

^^ A source for that wall of text would be nice, instead of just copy-pasting without recognition.

Johnboy1951

Bog Standard User wrote:

It's not hard to see why Eircom is a little spooked. While its own 'eFibre' rollout (which is really fibre to a nearby cabinet and then a phone line the rest of the way into the home or business) is planned to reach 1.4m premises in the next two years, it has a very finite capacity.

That is what is being done within 2 years, but Eircom will also have the capability to replace those phone lines with fibre, for FTTH, thereafter.

So by 5 years time they also can have FTTH.

In other words, the best you will get out of it will be 'up to' 100Mbs. That is absolutely plenty for today. But in five years time, will it look so good? Or will it be the 10Mbs service of today?

Up to 100Mbps by two years time ...... and FTTH very quickly afterwards, is on the cards.

bk

Bog Standard User wrote: »

it doesnt help that eircom is forced by law to provide bband down the country whereas upc is not which is unfair

upc have no interest in installing high speed bband down where us bog monsters live because it is not profitable.

eircom wholesale however do not have that luxury... they are forced under law to bring it in.

The Eircom network was built at the expense of the Irish Taxpayer. When it was privatised, the people who bought Eircom knew perfectly well that one of the requirements of owning the company was serving the entire country. In fact they were pretty much handed a defacto monopoly.

Serving rural Ireland wasn't the problem, the problem was the new owners who instead of investing in the company and network, decided to instead use it as their own private bank and suck 5 billion out of the company, leaving it with crippling death.

Non of this needed to happen, it is purely the fault of the government at the time for privatising the company in the way they did.

UPC aren't to blame for any of this. UPC did the complete opposite, investing 500 million of their own money in upgrading their network to a high quality standard and win customers by offering an excellent product and through fair competition.

It is because of the competition from UPC (and threat from ESB/VF) that is the only reason why Eircom has invested in rolling out VDSL.

It is dreadful way of thinking that UPC should somehow be punished and forced to serve uneconomic customers because it acted like a good corporate citizen, actually investing in the Irish economy and bringing excellent broadband to half the country!

Bog Standard User wrote: »

1. Eircom is unhappy and may pursue legal action

The country's biggest telecoms firm says it has a legitimate complaint about the new service - its use of state infrastructure.

It says that the only way to level the playing field is to allow rival operators access to the service's secret sauce, which is the electricity lines themselves. In other words, it wants the same 'unbundled' access to ESB infrastructure as it says it is obliged to give other telecom operators to its own telecoms network.

Except it isn't true and Eircom don't have a leg to stand on.

ESB/VF have already said that they will be wholesalers and will allow other ISP's to run on top of their network as resellers in much the same way Eircom allows others use it's ADSL/VDSL network as bitstream resellers.

What Eircom is looking for here is direct access to the ESB's poles and ducts. However Eircom doesn't allow anybody else direct access to it's poles and ducts, so I see no reason why Eircom should be allowed access to the ESB's.

Of course I fully expect Eircom will do whatever they can to delay the ESB/VF FTTH rollout, but they won't get anywhere with this.

Bog Standard User wrote: »

It's ironic that just as Eircom has picked up the ball on decent broadband investment, the game may be about to move on again.

Though it really wasn't a bad idea to invest in VDSL, just perhaps a little late. For a relatively reasonable cost, it brings a "good enough for now" level of high speed BB to most people and helps stem Eircoms loses of customers to UPC.

But the most important part to realise is that the FTTC network was all future proofed for FTTH and it will act as the foundation for the FTTH rollout. Most of the work and the money that was spent on the FTTC rollout, would have had to be done for a FTTH rollout anyway, so it really wasn't a waste of time or money.

Bog Standard User wrote: »

First, Vodafone has lots of cash after its Verizon share sale. Second, it critically needs some sort of fixed line infrastructure to buttress its mobile-only operation. In the long term, this appears to be a smart move, as fibre infrastructure is relatively future-proof.

Yes, it makes complete sense. It is very clear that over the next few years we will see the death of separate telcos/cablecos/mobicos and the rise of integrated datacos. Companies who sell you broadband services both wired or wireless. In the end it is all data.

It is very clear that the mobile market is switching from a young, high growth, high margin industry to a mature market, with low growth rates and smaller margins. It makes sense to become a more utility like company with less volatility and more steady profitability.

Bog Standard User wrote: »

3. This is not a rural broadband service

Forget any commentary you have heard about the ESB-Vodafone service providing broadband for rural Ireland - this simply isn't the case.

All of the 50 towns selected have population densities of at least 4,000 people. This is by design: both the ESB and Vodafone have said that they cannot currently see a commercial case for bringing the service to less densely populated areas.

The confusion comes from people definition of "rural".

Most people in Ireland consider "rural Ireland" to be anywhere outside the big cities. But that definition can include both "high density" towns and low density ribbon development and clusters of houses.

The "high density" areas of rural Ireland are clearly economically viable, the "low density" areas aren't.

That is why it is a "high density" versus a "low density" divide and not a urban vs rural divide.

Having said all that it is still extremely good news that a 1/4 of premsises in Ireland will get FTTH and that they will have another choice then just Eircom.

It is also in the long term good news for peopel living in "low density" rural areas as:

1) It brings fiber deeper into "rural" Ireland it will be the foundation on which future rural FTTH developements will be made.

2) It will give ESB/VF real world experience of rolling out FTTH and the real costs of doing it. They will thus have the expertise that can potentially be applied to the rollout of FTTH to low density areas too with the support of government subsidies.

I think many people are failing to grasp how big a gamer changer all of this is for Ireland and yes even for low density areas of Ireland.

The ESB are the one company best placed to bring high quality broadband to rural Ireland. The ESB think long term in terms of investments and returns, they already have massive engineering experience in bringing infrastructure to rural Ireland and they have the highest quality infrastructure in rural Ireland. They are by far the best placed to bring FTTH to rural Ireland. The only thing they lacked is experience in building a broadband network. It was never realistic that they would start in "low density" areas when they are so many "high density" profitable areas to take first. The sooner they get these areas done, then the sooner they gain experience and turn their attention to "low density" areas with government assistance.

Bog Standard User wrote: »

5. This could create a new digital divide, with Dublin losing out

The 50 regional towns selected for the first phase of this rollout will see speeds of 1,000Mbs.

That's far in excess of what UPC, the benchmark-setter and digital divide exacerbator with its 200Mbs product, currently offers in Irish cities. Could the future see Dublin TDs filling up RTE's Liveline segments complaining of 'discriminatory' slow broadband speeds in the capital?

Not overly concerned by this. First of all I doubt ESB/VF will be offering 1Gb/s from the start, I'd expect it to be more like 200mb/s at the start and going up from there.

Secondly, UPC is already rolling out 500mb/s BB in Poland and is the leader in the development of DOCSIS 3.1 which will bring speeds of 1Gb/s. I expect UPC will bring 500mb/s to 1Gb/s to more people faster, then the ESB/VF network will, never mind the NBP.

Also it will only be a matter of time before both Eircom and UPC roll out their own FTTH networks in Dublin. Dublin is their most profitable areas and their is fierce competition there.