SIRO - ESB/Vodafone Fibre To The Home

SpaceTime

The boycotting of rural communications networks is not underway.

There is actually a VDSL2 (e-fibre) service in a whole load of very small towns and it will reach even quite tiny towns by 2015/16.

Getting one-off housing and ribbon development covered with some kind of technology is a very different issue and really needs to be addressed with very high speed radio systems, backed by local fibre feeding the masts/towers. (As I have said repeatedly on the thread)

The reality is that you can't realistically provide some of these hardwired services in really low density scattered housing. You can absolutely provide them in small villages right down to under 30 homes.

FTTC technology's effectively completely useless for ribbon development and will never be a solution to it. Fibre's probably uneconomic to rollout along very long runs to individual homes unless there's some kind of agreement by the homeowner to pay for it much like power lines at present.

The best solution is a mix of fibre / FTTC for small towns and villages and radio systems for their hinterlands and really rural areas.

football_lover wrote: »

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.

Over 40% of rural homes are one-off houses (I've seen plenty of stats on this) and it's highly unusual by any comparison in Europe. There are a few similar US and Canadian examples and they also struggle with this kind of technology.

The problem is they're not clustered, they're often built spread along miles upon miles of roads between towns and villages. That's probably the worst possible kind of spread for communications technology as it's a ribbon not a cluster.

football_lover

garroff wrote: »

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

The reason why there is not modern communications systems in rural area's is down in factor to a large proportion of urban dwellers assuming that the rural communities do not matter.

You can even see the attitude on these forums existing.

This ESB bill will not bring fiber optics to rural dwellings. I really wish it would but it will not.

It will get blocked on the issue of cost. Until people in rural area's stand up and demand that they get communications sorted out nothing will happen.

The issue of rural economics needs to be brought to this table. People in the countryside contributed to the Irish economy at a conservative estimate of about 20 billion.

Yet a few billion in communications investment is considered to be too much. And some people who response is move to the urban area's.

dubrov

football_lover wrote: »

The reason why there is not modern communications systems in rural area's is down in factor to a large proportion of urban dwellers assuming that the rural communities do not matter.

Urban people aren't that different from rural people. Maybe you should get to know some.

football_lover wrote: »

It will get blocked on the issue of cost.

Now you are getting there.

It just costs more to get services to rural dwellings.
There has to be a balance and there is only so much cost that can be levied on urban dwellers.

iPhone.

dubrov wrote: »

There has to be a balance and there is only so much cost that can be levied on urban dwellers.

The construction cost is levied on everyone universally, not just on urban dwellers.

But then again as far as I know don't rural folk pay a larger standing charge for electricity than urban dwellers? Yet you have this recent trend of huge wind farms springing up in rural areas with miles of cables bringing the generated power to cities where people there pay a lesser standing charge than the people in the area the power is being generated.

Its not an us or them situation, we're a small island and depend on each other to keep the economy moving.

norrie rugger

murphaph wrote: »

rather than small clusters of houses that can at least share a group water scheme, waste water treatment and of course utilities including broadband.

I live in an area such as this and can only get Eircom's 8Mb (at a max) and they have no plans for an area upgrade

murphaph

football_lover wrote: »

There is not that many one of houses out there.

You may make some good points (farms need to be able to avail of quality broadband as well as farming is becoming more and more high tech) but to be honest you ruin any valid points you have by pretending that rural one off housing is not even a problem/issue.

The vast vast majority of people living in one off housing do not work on the land and don't even work in associated sectors (vets etc.). We all know the majority of rural one off dwellers could just as well live in clusters.

Your definition of "cluster" (houses up to 200 metres apart strung along a road) is actually one off housing and not a sustainable cluster type development at all.

Here is what rural Ireland looks like and here is what rural Germany looks like (same scale!). Can you not see why provision of utilities including broadband is so much more difficult in rural Ireland because we have chosen this one off development pattern? It is actually an American import. It is not how our forefathers settled rural Ireland.

murphaph

norrie rugger wrote: »

I live in an area such as this and can only get Eircom's 8Mb (at a max) and they have no plans for an area upgrade

Perhaps the ESB will bring you faster speeds then. It sounds like your cluster (it is a cluster and not a ribbon, right?) would be what the ESB will be going after.

norrie rugger

bit of column a and bit of c. Plenty of ribboning along the road but houses tend to be about 50 metres apart max, then there are plenty of 'mini clusters' with ten-twenty houses on private lanes.
All told it would be a somewhat dispersed village were there a centre spot with shop and stuff. Being located between Naas and Newbridge with Carragh and Kilmegue about removes that need.
My nearest neighbour is about 30 to 50 metres away.

murphaph

To be honest if your nearest neighbour is 30 metres away and that is typical spacing then it's more ribbon/one off than cluster. You can see from the German (but could pick England or France etc. just as well) map I linked to that clustering means that. In a 30m radius you'd have maybe 4 or 5 houses, not 1 or 2. You can run fibre to the centre of the cluster and serve VDSL. In Ireland it's a much harder proposition.

To be honest you're probably lucky to have 8MB.

I grew up in Newcastle, Co. Dublin and the "old" houses (1970s) can (at best) get ADSL from the Rathcoole exchange. My mother gets around 2MB on ADSL there in such a house. The new houses in the village all have UPC of course and Eircom plans to roll out VDSL to the village this year but up until this year you will have had much better BB than my mother (and her neighbours) who lives 2 metres from her neighbour on one side and 0 metres from her neighbour on the other. Until places like Newcastle are up and running with VDSL it would be unfair to expect your area to be sorted with houses spread out so far from each other. There are even parts of cities with no broadband, which is really not acceptable at all. You shouldn't be denied quality BB but you must realise that there are lots of places that "should" have it already and don't and they need fixing first.

Hank Scorpio

Is there any projected coverage for this or are things at an too early stage?

The Cush

nuxxx wrote: »

Is there any projected coverage for this or are things at an too early stage?

We probably won't see this in the public domain until the ESB (Electronic Communications Networks) Bill 2013 completes its passage through the Oireachtas.

norrie rugger

murphaph wrote: »

To be honest if your nearest neighbour is 30 metres away and that is typical spacing then it's more ribbon/one off than cluster. You can see from the German (but could pick England or France etc. just as well) map I linked to that clustering means that. In a 30m radius you'd have maybe 4 or 5 houses, not 1 or 2. You can run fibre to the centre of the cluster and serve VDSL. In Ireland it's a much harder proposition.

To be honest you're probably lucky to have 8MB.

I grew up in Newcastle, Co. Dublin and the "old" houses (1970s) can (at best) get ADSL from the Rathcoole exchange. My mother gets around 2MB on ADSL there in such a house. The new houses in the village all have UPC of course and Eircom plans to roll out VDSL to the village this year but up until this year you will have had much better BB than my mother (and her neighbours) who lives 2 metres from her neighbour on one side and 0 metres from her neighbour on the other. Until places like Newcastle are up and running with VDSL it would be unfair to expect your area to be sorted with houses spread out so far from each other. There are even parts of cities with no broadband, which is really not acceptable at all. You shouldn't be denied quality BB but you must realise that there are lots of places that "should" have it already and don't and they need fixing first.

There are several houses much closer together, my lane is the spread out one. The reason that it bugs me is that the cabinet, that is doing the fibre roll out for the surrounding areas is 700 metres away and is not even located in the mapped region that the upgrade is occuring

lucernarian

The GPON architecture is more suited to small clusters of housing than many other technologies or types of rollout. Whether urban or rural, a given MV to LV transformer can only support so many houses and they also tend to serve multiple houses that are located near to each other. The economics of this rollout are changed radically by the use of ESB infrastructure and the trial will be exceptionally useful, even on an international scale, of investigating this particular kind of rural fibre rollout.

Certainly, whatever can be said about France vs ribbon strip development a la Dromiskin, Co. Louth and many other examples, the ESB seem to be treating this as a serious prospect.

swoofer

if the esb are conducting a so called trial why is it not mentioned anywhere on their websites???? I think this is all baloney. At least with eircom they said where the tests were and so on.

Nonoperational

GBCULLEN wrote: »

if the esb are conducting a so called trial why is it not mentioned anywhere on their websites???? I think this is all baloney. At least with eircom they said where the tests were and so on.

Why would you say that? It's still in the very very early stages.

Hank Scorpio

I dont mind if it takes time , eircoms rollout has been a disaster

football_lover

dubrov wrote: »

Urban people aren't that different from rural people. Maybe you should get to know some.



Now you are getting there.

It just costs more to get services to rural dwellings.
There has to be a balance and there is only so much cost that can be levied on urban dwellers.

Are you trying to imply that rural communities do not contribute to the Irish economy.

This is part of the ignorance that seems to exist. As I have point out most of Ireland's food comes from the Irish countryside.

And there is also the up coming plan for Dublin water to be diverted from the Shannon. That is going to cost a lot of money maybe that should be blocked just as broadband is going to blocked.

I am sure there would be uproar in Dublin with their water cuts.

The cost issue travels in two directions.

football_lover

SpaceTime wrote: »

The boycotting of rural communications networks is not underway.

There is actually a VDSL2 (e-fibre) service in a whole load of very small towns and it will reach even quite tiny towns by 2015/16.

Getting one-off housing and ribbon development covered with some kind of technology is a very different issue and really needs to be addressed with very high speed radio systems, backed by local fibre feeding the masts/towers. (As I have said repeatedly on the thread)

The reality is that you can't realistically provide some of these hardwired services in really low density scattered housing. You can absolutely provide them in small villages right down to under 30 homes.

FTTC technology's effectively completely useless for ribbon development and will never be a solution to it. Fibre's probably uneconomic to rollout along very long runs to individual homes unless there's some kind of agreement by the homeowner to pay for it much like power lines at present.

The best solution is a mix of fibre / FTTC for small towns and villages and radio systems for their hinterlands and really rural areas.



Over 40% of rural homes are one-off houses (I've seen plenty of stats on this) and it's highly unusual by any comparison in Europe. There are a few similar US and Canadian examples and they also struggle with this kind of technology.

The problem is they're not clustered, they're often built spread along miles upon miles of roads between towns and villages. That's probably the worst possible kind of spread for communications technology as it's a ribbon not a cluster.

The vast majority of Irish housing in rural settings are clustered with other houses.

Ireland is not Canada where there is some great wilderness. You will find that the vast majority of Irish rural houses are within clusters.

There are some that are isolate like farms but they are few and far between and do not make up the vast majority of housing in the countryside.

Most houses sit on less than 1 acre of land in the countryside. Telephone lines where installed to these houses and so can fiber optics.

Will it be expense to do this yes very much so but that is only a fraction of agricultural GDP.

The bigger picture must be looked at in regards to this. We do not allow rural roads to disappear because that would have an imediate impact on our food exports and the domestic food networks.

Why people think it is acceptable for Ireland to have a terrible rural communications systems shows the actual lack of understanding in regards to agricultural GDP.

For Irish agriculture to remain competitive at a global level it will require investment in fiber optics systems.

Radio systems simply are not acceptable on their own as they have many limitations. Local level wireless networks could be employed on farms for sensor systems but they would still require a fiber optics system.

Genetics will be a very important tool for agriculture of the future and fiber optics is the only realistic option for this. We are talking 100 mbps for these types of systems.

swoofer

this was announced in July last year and it was said a decision would be made in Sept. Its now Feb 2014 ... and nothing.

I rest my case.

http://www.uswitch.ie/broadband/news/2013/07/22/esb-pursue-partnerships-for-new-super-fast-fibre-broadband-network/

Davy

GBCULLEN wrote: »

this was announced in July last year and it was said a decision would be made in Sept. Its now Feb 2014 ... and nothing.

I rest my case.

http://www.uswitch.ie/broadband/news/2013/07/22/esb-pursue-partnerships-for-new-super-fast-fibre-broadband-network/

Did you even read it?

After the decision has been made, there is expected to be months of negotiations regarding the operation of the new company, and work is expected to start in the first quarter of 2014.

We aren't even a month into 2014 yet. If its costing 400million surely it makes sense to get it right if it takes a few months longer.

Also just because the trials weren't on there website doesn't mean they don't exist.

football_lover

murphaph wrote: »

You may make some good points (farms need to be able to avail of quality broadband as well as farming is becoming more and more high tech) but to be honest you ruin any valid points you have by pretending that rural one off housing is not even a problem/issue.

The vast vast majority of people living in one off housing do not work on the land and don't even work in associated sectors (vets etc.). We all know the majority of rural one off dwellers could just as well live in clusters.

Your definition of "cluster" (houses up to 200 metres apart strung along a road) is actually one off housing and not a sustainable cluster type development at all.

Here is what rural Ireland looks like and here is what rural Germany looks like (same scale!). Can you not see why provision of utilities including broadband is so much more difficult in rural Ireland because we have chosen this one off development pattern? It is actually an American import. It is not how our forefathers settled rural Ireland.

I have not said that rural one off's are not a problem just that majority of Irish rural houses are not one off.

The number of houses that are one off are in the minority but still they are important as a lot of these are farms some of them because issues like communications may become abandoned and this will be lost farm production as well.

Farms are part of a community and if there is no community these farms will be highly isolated if everybody decides to move to the urban areas.

Houses that are 200m apart are not isolated houses they more than likely have telephones lines and mains water.

These are not some one of house in the middle of no where. If telephone cables can be put there so can fiber optics.


Farming of the no so distant future will rely on genetics and distributed sensor networks and automation and these will require fiber optics communications systems to deal with large bandwidth applications.

If you look at the bigger picture you will see that Ireland needs every advantage it can get and this will be one of them.

Disease monitoring, rapid reaction, soil monitoring, livestock monitoring and many more techniques will enable advanced agricultural practices.

it is projected that over the coming years agriculture will be come more important to Irish GDP.

Cost is not a real issue when this is being analysed in terms of development and investment on a large scale is required.

murphaph

nuxxx wrote: »

I dont mind if it takes time , eircoms rollout has been a disaster

Don't think that's fair at all. I was pleasantly surprised at the speed of the rollout.

Hank Scorpio

murphaph wrote: »

Don't think that's fair at all. I was pleasantly surprised at the speed of the rollout.

That was my point. I've seen nothing but complaints from efiber customers about massive contention at peak hours, many of which now experience slower speeds than they had with DSL.

football_lover

Davy wrote: »

Did you even read it?



We aren't even a month into 2014 yet. If its costing 400million surely it makes sense to get it right if it takes a few months longer.

Also just because the trials weren't on there website doesn't mean they don't exist.

To have a widespread rural fiber optics systems will be in billions not hundreds of million and this will not cover everybody.

But over the long term it could be achieved and the benefits of such systems will be very important to the Irish economy.

The Irish government actually has a chance to give Irish agriculture a massive advantage on the Global Scale with these fiber optics systems but my gut feeling is that Ireland does not have the vision to build these systems.

There are even those on these forums that will keeping bring up the cost issue for rural broadband.

And there solution is for rural communities to move to urban centers. If we want to keep our agriculture alive then this is one of the ways of doing it.

Davy

football_lover wrote: »

To have a widespread rural fiber optics systems will be in billions not hundreds of million and this will not cover everybody.

But over the long term it could be achieved and the benefits of such systems will be very important to the Irish economy.

The Irish government actually has a chance to give Irish agriculture a massive advantage on the Global Scale with these fiber optics systems but my gut feeling is that Ireland does not have the vision to build these systems.

There are even those on these forums that will keeping bring up the cost issue for rural broadband.

And there solution is for rural communities to move to urban centers. If we want to keep our agriculture alive then this is one of the ways of doing it.

I'm not making any point about the cost, just quoting the amount from the article linked, it mentioned the €400m.

murphaph

football_lover wrote: »

I have not said that rural one off's are not a problem just that majority of Irish rural houses are not one off.

The number of houses that are one off are in the minority but still they are important as a lot of these are farms some of them because issues like communications may become abandoned and this will be lost farm production as well.

Farms are part of a community and if there is no community these farms will be highly isolated if everybody decides to move to the urban areas.

Houses that are 200m apart are not isolated houses they more than likely have telephones lines and mains water.

These are not some one of house in the middle of no where. If telephone cables can be put there so can fiber optics.


Farming of the no so distant future will rely on genetics and distributed sensor networks and automation and these will require fiber optics communications systems to deal with large bandwidth applications.

If you look at the bigger picture you will see that Ireland needs every advantage it can get and this will be one of them.

Disease monitoring, rapid reaction, soil monitoring, livestock monitoring and many more techniques will enable advanced agricultural practices.

it is projected that over the coming years agriculture will be come more important to Irish GDP.

Cost is not a real issue when this is being analysed in terms of development and investment on a large scale is required.

Your definition of a one-off house is at odds with the accepted definition used by everyone else so it's very hard to debate the issue with you to be honest. In any case, the vast vast majority of homes in rural Ireland do not belong to farmers or those in allied sectors, far too many belong to people who work in urban centres but want to live 200m from the next house. That's a lifestyle choice that brings with it poorer availability of utilities.

norrie rugger

successive governments have allowed for congregation of our population into 3-4 urban sprawls.
Ireland is one of the worst offenders for having its population so concentrated. The only way to combat the constant pressure on our cities is to make living rurally a bit more attractive.
Towns and villages will grow (and will grow from loosely clustered housing) if the facilities are passable. How could you convince someone to live outside a city, if they can not even connect to the net, never mind the larger logistical issues of school locations/work opportunities/cinema/shops etc.

We already have too much internal migration to our cities as is and, as Ireland really is reliant on its agri-business, this is not a good thing

murphaph

Our rural towns and villages have been dying for decades as people have chosen not to build on to the village but to build a couple of kilometres away. People build a house 2km from a historic village core and then they need a car, so then they do their shopping in a shopping centre, rather than in the nearby village and the spiral of decline continues. No governments are to blame for peoples' choices to live apart from the village. That is a 100% lifestyle choice. Only farmers with livestock really need to live in such isolation, any one else is doing so out of a desire to do so. On the continent even most farmers live in the local village and travel to their farms each day, but that's just by the by.

The facts simply do not agree with your hypothesis that successive governments have "allowed for congregation of our population into 3-4 urban sprawls". Successive governments have failed to get tough on rural one off development as was done over in Britain and elsewhere. In England, which is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe, you still have plenty of areas of true wilderness. In Ireland, both north and south (because NI also failed to reign in rural one off development) you are (almost) never more than a few minutes drive from someone's house. England is a similar size to Ireland yet has a population about 10 times bigger, yet manages to maintain green belts and large and numerous national parks...look at any map of the UK & Ireland and you'll see the handful of national parks we have compared to theirs. We should be ashamed of ourselves really.

Rural Ireland has been suburbanised at an ultra low density.

Nonoperational

GBCULLEN wrote: »

this was announced in July last year and it was said a decision would be made in Sept. Its now Feb 2014 ... and nothing.

I rest my case.

http://www.uswitch.ie/broadband/news/2013/07/22/esb-pursue-partnerships-for-new-super-fast-fibre-broadband-network/

Career tip, never become a barrister.

nuxxx wrote: »

That was my point. I've seen nothing but complaints from efiber customers about massive contention at peak hours, many of which now experience slower speeds than they had with DSL.

You've seen some report on an internet message boards. Most people FTTC has been perfectly fine, mine included so far albeit I don't have it long.

Cheerful Spring

murphaph wrote: »

Don't think that's fair at all. I was pleasantly surprised at the speed of the rollout.

Eircom at least is doing something. Who'd would have thought a few years ago any villages in Ireland would get Fibre, really think about it.

However Eircom, i doubt myself will expand further beyond the 2016 plan? I only see those villages and towns with local exchanges been upgraded. People who're living in the very remote parts of Ireland may see 4G broadband eventually, but it could be a long wait for them.

ESB is looking for a partner to sell broadband on a wholesale basis. With that its very unlikely we will ever see 100% per cent fibre connectivity. I think 80% is a more realistic target and that could be reached by 2020.

My view of what's likely to happen.
70% of Irish homes and businesses will be able to get FTTC from Eircom by (2016-2018)

Eircom may upgrade in that period some homes to FTTH

ESB will likely bring FTTH to semi urban towns first and then villages?

My view could be entirely wrong and urban areas will see ESB broadband first, but i think that's the wrong decision.

Does urban Ireland really need another broadband provider? UPC and Eircom and ESB, i have my doubts.