SIRO - ESB/Vodafone Fibre To The Home

Grab All Association

Holycross is getting efibre and its a village with 700 people.

irishpancake

bk wrote: »

I'm sure they would trial it. Rumour has it they are even trailing it at the moment.

However if you are paying for it yourself, expect the bill to be thousands, not hundreds!

Just going through the thread, not sure if this has been mentioned, but what do folks think will be the impact of whatever is planned on those unfortunates, like me, who live in one of the designated so-called NBS areas.....

which of course, I don't use at all, preferring the relative assurance of ADSL from Voda/eircom, (I get around 1.6Mbps, steady, all the time, and even Netflix streams fine, without buffering, on my TV App).

If this could be provided to my rural, North Westmeath Village, [not far from Cavan]..... however, by wireless, with the fibre backhaul, or whatever, it would be fantastic....

We live in a black-spot here, as far as BB or even Mobile masts, you don't have to be in Kerry!!!

There are so many places like this in Ireland, villages of 200-500, who are being told, use the NBS....what a joke.

who do I need to bribe???

Who do I send the Brown Envelope to??

football_lover

ted1 wrote: »

But really why should others subsidise the added cost if supplying connections to people who chose to live in remote areas. A block of apartments in Dublin can contain 650 people and probably involve a run if 100m where's as the one in Clare would involve running a cable several km along with the added infrastructure needed to cover this distance

Well that game can go two directions. Why should people in the country allow food to be sold cheap to the towns.

We can always raise the price of food. But people in the country side or coast do not do this.

There are many things we could do in the country side that would make life very difficult for the cities.

We could also stop water being pumped from the country side to the cities and also block the power stations in the country side.

Ireland is a socialist country were it is expected that when people in the country side pay into the system there would be a return.

Trust me food is a lot tastier than fiber optics.

bealtine

irishpancake wrote: »

We live in a black-spot here, as far as BB or even Mobile masts, you don't have to be in Kerry!!!

There are so many places like this in Ireland, villages of 200-500, who are being told, use the NBS....what a joke.

Wait didn't you get the memo? Everybody in Ireland now has access to basic broadband...that's the official line nowadays...

Chris The Hacker

football_lover wrote: »

Ireland is a socialist country were it is expected that when people in the country side pay into the system there would be a return.

A socialist country where the means of production are mostly owned by private owners?

football_lover

Chris The Hacker wrote: »

A socialist country where the means of production are mostly owned by private owners?

If you use the dictionary definition then Ireland is not a socialist country not that I am a fan of socialism just being realistic.

What you are referring to is a socialist economy.

Ireland as a country is managed mostly from the center and that comes down right to the setting of wage standards.

My point to the original comment was to do with the fact that rural have a right to this as they are producing most of the countries food and they are also paying taxes to support the system but they get very little return for this.

norrie rugger

ted1 wrote: »

But really why should others subsidise the added cost if supplying connections to people who chose to live in remote areas. A block of apartments in Dublin can contain 650 people and probably involve a run if 100m where's as the one in Clare would involve running a cable several km along with the added infrastructure needed to cover this distance

So they should not be hooked up to the water/electricity networks then either?

MrO

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

Eircom, is willing to do it why not the ESB!

Villages with lots of houses and small town villages i bet is what ESB will be targeting first.

Eircom is not bringing fibre to the home.

Mr. G

MrO wrote: »

Eircom is not bringing fibre to the home.

Not yet. There is no evidence to say they won't, they are only trialling it in a small number of places. So technically they already do FTTH, just not on a mass scale.

MrO

football_lover wrote: »

Well that game can go two directions. Why should people in the country allow food to be sold cheap to the towns.

We can always raise the price of food. But people in the country side or coast do not do this.

There are many things we could do in the country side that would make life very difficult for the cities.

We could also stop water being pumped from the country side to the cities and also block the power stations in the country side.

Ireland is a socialist country were it is expected that when people in the country side pay into the system there would be a return.

Trust me food is a lot tastier than fiber optics.

This makes absolutely no sense...at all.

People in the country *allow* food to be sold cheap? This is nonsense, food producers like any business try to get the best possible rate they can for their products - they don't allow food to be sold cheap so that the slickers can eat well.

Stop water? I don't know where to start with this one.

'Block' power stations? Again...where to start, have you any idea what that would mean? Have you actually thought about it?

You're certainly not speaking for rural Ireland.

irishpancake

ED E wrote: »

It would appear you have an axe to grind here, I wasnt moaning. Eircom Field Techs get paid crazy money too. Thats ireland for you. Simply pointing out that it makes no sense for ESB to use their own staff for a more trivial role. They're heavily trained and follow very strict procedures, rightly so, and should be left to maintaining the grid.

I worked for eircom, as a Field Force Tech, up to 4 years ago, when I retired due to ill-health.

I dispute your allegation here....there was no crazy money paid to eircom staff, quite then contrary.

Wages there were quite low, comparatively speaking, and there was a policy of non-payment for extra time worked, this was given as time-off in lieu, on a 50/50 basis....you only got paid for 50% of the time worked, if you worked outside normal hours.

We were, as you know, the subject of a crazy privatisation policy, and were sold and re-sold again, in deals which were designed to give the maximum return to those buying the crippled company, with debt raised by the Company, leaving it totally over-burdened with debt, which was then asset stripped and left to the Vulture Capitalists, and I include the ESOP in this, who did manage to acquire a significant shareholding for the Employees, which is now gone.

I sincerely hope that ESB is not being lined up to receive the eircom treatment, as in this Country, making the same mistakes over and over seems to be the norm.

norrie rugger

For the greater good of the economy country needs a rural population, it's as simple as that. To get people to live rurally and do business there then the country needs to subsidise.

The water and electricity points (although badly made) have merit. Power lines and water pipes need to be constructed and maintained into cities. Why should people living near to the source have to pay the same as those in cities, given water loss and substation requirements?
Because the country needs as much utility coverage as possible to allow for business to thrive, wherever that may be.

irishpancake

SpaceTime wrote: »

Regardless of the internal machinations of ESB's union politics and pay rates, the fact remains it has a history of actually getting big, complicated infrastructure rolled out rather effectively and efficiently.

I would have quite a bit of confidence that ESB could get this network rolled out rather effectively and rapidly once they sign off on a design.

I was impressed with the speed of Eircom's FTTC rollout once they got rolling. It's the first time I've seen Eircom doing anything on that scale so quickly and effectively. The last time that they were doing something as large as that was probably as a semi-state in the 1980s when they pretty much rebuilt the voice network. Since then, most of the infrastructure just saw incremental updates.

You are on the button here my friend, if you only knew just how correct that is, bolded above. We, Telecom/eircom had a very good reputation, as a semi-state company, and we did deliver a state-of -the art digital voice network, and then, everyone knows what happened...

the vultures descended, investment dried up, the debt was ramped up, so the vultures could be fed, including those home-grown vultures we bred ourselves.

A salutary lesson for all, including this Government and ESB....don't do it again.

norrie rugger

Sell the licences to run the networks but never the networks.

Infrastructure will only ever be upgraded based on profit, if privately owned.
If state owned, the upgrades are based on the needs of the country.

That is the lesson that I hope will be learned, from the Telecom Eireann sale.

SpaceTime

There really needs to be some kind of legislation put in place at EU level to prevent what happened to eircom happening to any company really. It's ridiculous to allow investors to do those kinds of 'leveraged buy outs'.

Privatisation is one thing, but that kind of speculative activity isn't healthy and really needs much tighter regulation to prevent further problems in future.

The financial sector really needs to be brought very firmly into line. Between this kind of thing and the bailouts of banks due to their business models etc.. It's just all gone way too far.
The whole sector needs to be brought firmly back into line.

irishpancake

norrie rugger wrote: »

So they should not be hooked up to the water/electricity networks then either?

Yeah, everyone should live in high-rise apartment blocks, it's so much more socially progressive :eek:

Lovely East-German style workers and peasant dwellings, last forever they will....

just like Ballymun Towers....

wasn't it Rural, lot's of fields and pheck all else.....just name them after the "heroes of the revolution"...that'll make it OK!!!

ted1

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

Not true. I just checked this last night. A town close to were i live is going live with EFibre this June. Population 1100

I live in a village close by around 8km away and Eircom has planned for my village to get Efibre by July 2016.

Population of my village 676 people. I thought it was more, but i was wrong.

Eircom, is willing to do it why not the ESB!

Villages with lots of houses and small town villages i bet is what ESB will be targeting first.

Haha come back to me in 2016...,,

SpaceTime

In theory efibre is modular. Once you've fibres running to the village or group of houses you can install a cabinet.

Bear in mind eircom has many, many tiny exchanges that are really about as significant as one e fibre cabinet anyway. Many of them are actually housed in cabinets. The voice network uses remote exchanges linked (usually by fibre) to a parent exchange. It's like a 1980s/90s version of efibre. Similar layout. The ADSL services are similarly distributed and can be located in a small cabinet connected back to the main exchange in an area.

All they need to do is upgrade the fibre links and add one or two VDSL2 cabinets and a village has e-fibre. They'd be hosted at a major exchange not at the local tiny one.

The system is totally modular.

It can't address the problem in ribbon developments and scattered housing though. The technology isn't suitable.

Again, I think we need to urgently look at very good wireless services to serve those kinds of homes.

football_lover

MrO wrote: »

This makes absolutely no sense...at all.

People in the country *allow* food to be sold cheap? This is nonsense, food producers like any business try to get the best possible rate they can for their products - they don't allow food to be sold cheap so that the slickers can eat well.

Stop water? I don't know where to start with this one.

'Block' power stations? Again...where to start, have you any idea what that would mean? Have you actually thought about it?

You're certainly not speaking for rural Ireland.

The original poster said it makes no sense to supply fiber to the rural communities because people in the urban area's are subsidizing rural systems.

And I pointed out that this works in two direction. Food is produced in the country side and then shipped to the urban area's.

I have also said that people in the countryside and coasts would not raise prices but they could if they so desired if the urban area people start mess with us such as blocking modern communications systems.

If we want the best food standards then a modern fiber optics based rural system is the answer combined with a good wireless system such as LTE.

There is no point people in the countryside paying taxes and getting very little in return for there taxes.

Any national fiber optics system should start with the area's that are white spots and build infrastructure there.

Even if it costs more. You mention water by the way then maybe people in the countryside should consider blocking the Shannon water to Dublin plan.

football_lover

SpaceTime wrote: »

There really needs to be some kind of legislation put in place at EU level to prevent what happened to eircom happening to any company really. It's ridiculous to allow investors to do those kinds of 'leveraged buy outs'.

Privatisation is one thing, but that kind of speculative activity isn't healthy and really needs much tighter regulation to prevent further problems in future.

The financial sector really needs to be brought very firmly into line. Between this kind of thing and the bailouts of banks due to their business models etc.. It's just all gone way too far.
The whole sector needs to be brought firmly back into line.

I am not a fan of regulating the market place because it always has unintended consequences such as raising prices or making it difficult for new players to enter the market place and as such protecting existing monopoly's.

On the other hand Eircom is based on an infrastructure that was started by tax payers money so there is a common national interest in Eircom.

football_lover

irishpancake wrote: »

I worked for eircom, as a Field Force Tech, up to 4 years ago, when I retired due to ill-health.

I dispute your allegation here....there was no crazy money paid to eircom staff, quite then contrary.

Wages there were quite low, comparatively speaking, and there was a policy of non-payment for extra time worked, this was given as time-off in lieu, on a 50/50 basis....you only got paid for 50% of the time worked, if you worked outside normal hours.

We were, as you know, the subject of a crazy privatisation policy, and were sold and re-sold again, in deals which were designed to give the maximum return to those buying the crippled company, with debt raised by the Company, leaving it totally over-burdened with debt, which was then asset stripped and left to the Vulture Capitalists, and I include the ESOP in this, who did manage to acquire a significant shareholding for the Employees, which is now gone.

I sincerely hope that ESB is not being lined up to receive the eircom treatment, as in this Country, making the same mistakes over and over seems to be the norm.

There is nothing wrong with privatization when it is done properly. There is a big issue with state assets being Privatized as they have been set up with taxation based funds.

There there is also the issue of the infrastructure at present having an unfair advantage in the market place and no competitor can enter.

bk

norrie rugger wrote: »

For the greater good of the economy country needs a rural population, it's as simple as that. To get people to live rurally and do business there then the country needs to subsidise.

Yes Ireland needs a rural population.

What Ireland does NOT need is a rural population living in one off houses dispersed all over the countryside.

What Ireland needs is a rural population living in sustainable towns and villages. Just like is normal in most of rural Europe, where services like Broadband, Electricity, Water, Sewage, etc. can be delivered in an economically sustainable manner.

Irish planning law has failed us completely.

football_lover wrote: »

The original poster said it makes no sense to supply fiber to the rural communities because people in the urban area's are subsidizing rural systems.

Your post was totally ridiculous.

Cut off food supply and people in urban areas will simply buy it from Holland (we already are, see the 5c vegetables at Lidl/Aldi).

And then when the farmers of rural Ireland are out of work, how are they going to pay their wages and rent and bills, etc.?

As for power, it is almost all generated in or very near to the cities, electricity doesn't travel very well. Actually electricity generated near cities is usually then transferred to rural Ireland. Cut off the power and it is actually rural areas that would suffer brown outs.

Dublin currently doesn't get it's water from the Shannon. There is a plan to do it, but at the moment Dublin gets it's water from it's own region and supplies.

And if you are really going to go down this road, then it would mean Dublin would have far more tax money available to it, so it could use that money to build de-salination plants and become completely self sufficient.

Strictly speaking urban Ireland doesn't actually need rural Ireland. Now I'm not suggesting for a moment that we do anything like all I described above. But I'm only pointing out the economic reality of the situation. People in rural Ireland need to be realistic about the services that can be delivered economically to them.

R P McMurphy

Thread has descended into farce. Depressing.

garroff

Please.....this discussion has gone astray. Could we just stick to BB and ESB job of getting this vital resource to rural areas?

ED E

BK and spacetime are totally on topic. What they're explaining is exactly why rural dwellers dont have good services.

murphaph

irishpancake wrote: »

Lovely East-German style workers and peasant dwellings, last forever they will....

just like Ballymun Towers....

Except in the case of the former GDR those tower blocks are still there doing what they were built to do.....and mostly all with VDSL or cable broadband

Nobody is suggesting that there should be no rural dwelling, but the Irish definition of rural living invariably means one off housing, rather than small clusters of houses that can at least share a group water scheme, waste water treatment and of course utilities including broadband.

SpaceTime

Nobody is suggesting soviet blocks.
The 'village' is actually not a radically new concept. Scatter housing is!

It's also contributing to extreme isolation when people become elderly.

Ireland didn't have this pattern of scattered development until the 1960s either. It's not 'traditional'.

The issue now is how to get broadband to ultra low density housing.

As for suggesting some kind of urban vs rural mutual boycotting each other that is ridiculous. You'd end up with a very poor rural Ireland and two wealthy city states in Dublin and Cork as they're economically big enough to be self sustainable.

You can't carve countries up like that. What would be next? Split Dublin into 24, tiny independent statelets

football_lover

bk wrote: »

Yes Ireland needs a rural population.

What Ireland does NOT need is a rural population living in one off houses dispersed all over the countryside.

What Ireland needs is a rural population living in sustainable towns and villages. Just like is normal in most of rural Europe, where services like Broadband, Electricity, Water, Sewage, etc. can be delivered in an economically sustainable manner.

Irish planning law has failed us completely.



Your post was totally ridiculous.

Cut off food supply and people in urban areas will simply buy it from Holland (we already are, see the 5c vegetables at Lidl/Aldi).

And then when the farmers of rural Ireland are out of work, how are they going to pay their wages and rent and bills, etc.?

As for power, it is almost all generated in or very near to the cities, electricity doesn't travel very well. Actually electricity generated near cities is usually then transferred to rural Ireland. Cut off the power and it is actually rural areas that would suffer brown outs.

Dublin currently doesn't get it's water from the Shannon. There is a plan to do it, but at the moment Dublin gets it's water from it's own region and supplies.

And if you are really going to go down this road, then it would mean Dublin would have far more tax money available to it, so it could use that money to build de-salination plants and become completely self sufficient.

Strictly speaking urban Ireland doesn't actually need rural Ireland. Now I'm not suggesting for a moment that we do anything like all I described above. But I'm only pointing out the economic reality of the situation. People in rural Ireland need to be realistic about the services that can be delivered economically to them.

I am sorry to burst your little independent urban bubble but the majority of food in Ireland is produced in Ireland in rural areas.

Yes there are shops selling certain items at below cost but do not assume that this would apply to the whole food market because it does not.

My point is not that people in the countryside/coast are actually going to cut food off but that the countryside actually does matter.

Irish food is worth about 13 Billion to the Irish economy so it is only fair that the places that produce this get a fair share of the economy.

You say electricity does not travel well go and tell that to the government who are sponsoring a massive wind energy system in the rural areas which at present creates a capacity of over 1000MW.

People keep talking about sustainable urban living where in the hell do you think us farmers are actually go to live.

Do you actually think we are going to move away from our farms that our ancestors have worked for centuries.

Food is produced in the countryside that is a fact and we who produce that food need a functioning communications system.

Farming is on the cusp of a technology revolution and it will require communications system that will enable this technology. The world has a food shortage that the Irish economy could massively take advantage of.

Yet people like you imply that we are not worth it. Where do you think the extra water supply is going to come from for Dublin.

football_lover

SpaceTime wrote: »

Nobody is suggesting soviet blocks.
The 'village' is actually not a radically new concept. Scatter housing is!

It's also contributing to extreme isolation when people become elderly.

Ireland didn't have this pattern of scattered development until the 1960s either. It's not 'traditional'.

The issue now is how to get broadband to ultra low density housing.

As for suggesting some kind of urban vs rural mutual boycotting each other that is ridiculous. You'd end up with a very poor rural Ireland and two wealthy city states in Dublin and Cork as they're economically big enough to be self sustainable.

You can't carve countries up like that. What would be next? Split Dublin into 24, tiny independent statelets

I do not think traditional has anything to do with it. It is the economic situation that our country is in.

The boycotting is already underway rural communication systems are not being developed.

And people who are under some type of impression that the countryside/rural does not matter are living in a bubble.

A good communications system and creation of the right tools may help with rural isolation.

But there is also rural where there are large clusters of houses or even small cluster of say 10 to 15 house that are about average 50 yards apart and maybe 200 at maximum.

The state was able to get copper cables there so fiber optics on top of that existing infrastructure is not as big a task as some people are making out.

Yes it will be very expensive to do but so will doing nothing. Countries who embrace embedded systems networks are going to flourish and those like Ireland who do no will get left behind.

football_lover

murphaph wrote: »

Except in the case of the former GDR those tower blocks are still there doing what they were built to do.....and mostly all with VDSL or cable broadband

Nobody is suggesting that there should be no rural dwelling, but the Irish definition of rural living invariably means one off housing, rather than small clusters of houses that can at least share a group water scheme, waste water treatment and of course utilities including broadband.

There is not that many one of houses out there.

Most rural is based around clusters. But there is also the issue of farms requiring communications systems as well that may well be isolated.

There also might be coastal situations where communication systems are required.