New broadband investment

greilly123

Hello all I just seen that there will be a government investment of 500 million in broadband
in rural towns and villages.
Does anybody know what rural towns villages will be in this program?
Thanks

SpaceTime

Ones where government party councillors and MEPs risk losing seats.

greilly123

SpaceTime wrote: »

Ones where government party councillors and MEPs risk losing seats.

Every were so

AlanS181824

I have a feeling it's to sweeten us up for the elections coming around.

greilly123

I will vote for progress lol

greilly123

rte post 350 mill investment and Irish times 512 mill ?

NIMAN

Its Ireland, ah sure whats €162 million give or take, nothing to worry about.

greilly123

NIMAN wrote: »

Its Ireland, ah sure whats €162 million give or take, nothing to worry about.

+1

Zith

greilly123 wrote: »

Hello all I just seen that there will be a government investment of 500 million in broadband
in rural towns and villages.
Does anybody know what rural towns villages will be in this program?
Thanks

From the gov press release:

http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/NR/rdonlyres/952C67A4-63D2-4FE6-84E1-3C8B8DCC83FD/0/NBPdestinations.pdf

BeerWolf

Zith wrote: »

From the gov press release:

http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/NR/rdonlyres/952C67A4-63D2-4FE6-84E1-3C8B8DCC83FD/0/NBPdestinations.pdf

I see Oldtown listed there, and it so happens the exchange cabinet there is the ONLY one... in ALL of Co. Dublin, to not have been broadband enabled...

Dr. Nick

Zith wrote: »

From the gov press release:

http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/NR/rdonlyres/952C67A4-63D2-4FE6-84E1-3C8B8DCC83FD/0/NBPdestinations.pdf

Seems to be filling the gaps to be fair....We're on Tara exchange, right between Trim (046) and Dunshaughlin (01) exchanges, both fibre enabled.
Question is, where will the cabinets be as we're still miles away from the exchange.

murphaph

Dr. Nick wrote: »

Seems to be filling the gaps to be fair....We're on Tara exchange, right between Trim (046) and Dunshaughlin (01) exchanges, both fibre enabled.
Question is, where will the cabinets be as we're still miles away from the exchange.

You may not benefit initially until whatever replaces VDSL is out. There's only so deep they can go with fibre and if they enable every exchange and put cabinets in every village then that's enough IMO and if you are still out of reach then you'll have to make do with a wireless link until something with deeper reach than VDSL becomes available.

irishfeen

Our local exchange is listed, we're about 3.8 (by road) from the village local exchange - any hope of even getting normal 8MB broadband if its enabled??

Richard Bingham

I hear on the Marian Finuncane show this morning that during the announcement yesterday, Pat Rabbitte compared the roll out of broadband to the electricification of rural Ireland. The first time he did this was when speaking on the Marian Finuncane show shortly after I wrote a letter to him about our situation on 5 January 2012;

In my letter I stated the following;

The rural electrification scheme which commenced in 1946, and wasn’t completed until 1973 (27 years) due to lack of funding by the government of the time, resulted in a dramatic expansion in industrial and agricultural output in rural areas of Ireland and as such it was self-financing. It has been stated that without rural electrification Ireland may not have been able to contemplate entry into the EEC. It is our view that the upgrading of the current telecommunications network to facilitate the provision of real broadband to every house in Ireland is a critical issue which will determine the future prosperity of this country. The country is in dire straits and the only answer forthcoming is that Ireland will trade its way out of this mess; you cannot expect Irish businesses to compete on a world stage if they are not equipped to do so.

We understand that there is a shortage of funds for everything presently but it is our view that broadband availability is as important an issue now as the availability of electricity in the first half of the last century was and is not an issue which we can afford to solve over a period of 27 years.

It's good to see that these letters get read however I am confident given the governments track record on election promises and the timing, that this nothing more than an election promise which will be quickly forgotten the day after the election. Indeed Pat himself has previously admitted that making promises which you can't necessarily fulfill is what you tend to do during an election.

I would urge voters to disregard this as the very predictable stunt that it is and vote independent in the forthcoming elections.

Nonoperational

Richard Bingham wrote: »

I hear on the Marian Finuncane show this morning that during the announcement yesterday, Pat Rabbitte compared the roll out of broadband to the electricification of rural Ireland. The first time he did this was when speaking on the Marian Finuncane show shortly after I wrote a letter to him about our situation on 5 January 2012;

In my letter I stated the following;

The rural electrification scheme which commenced in 1946, and wasn’t completed until 1973 (27 years) due to lack of funding by the government of the time, resulted in a dramatic expansion in industrial and agricultural output in rural areas of Ireland and as such it was self-financing. It has been stated that without rural electrification Ireland may not have been able to contemplate entry into the EEC. It is our view that the upgrading of the current telecommunications network to facilitate the provision of real broadband to every house in Ireland is a critical issue which will determine the future prosperity of this country. The country is in dire straits and the only answer forthcoming is that Ireland will trade its way out of this mess; you cannot expect Irish businesses to compete on a world stage if they are not equipped to do so.

We understand that there is a shortage of funds for everything presently but it is our view that broadband availability is as important an issue now as the availability of electricity in the first half of the last century was and is not an issue which we can afford to solve over a period of 27 years.

It's good to see that these letters get read however I am confident given the governments track record on election promises and the timing, that this nothing more than an election promise which will be quickly forgotten the day after the election. Indeed Pat himself has previously admitted that making promises which you can't necessarily fulfill is what you tend to do during an election.

I would urge voters to disregard this as the very predictable stunt that it is and vote independent in the forthcoming elections.

And what would you propose the independents would do about it?

Eircom currently have 750,000 households that can access VDSL. That should double in 2 years. UPC around 500,000 is I recall correctly although no doubt with some overlap. There are some good WISPs that should provide improved bandwidth as more fibre gets rolled out and those along with 4G LTE will allow rural households to approach 30Mbit.

Maybe we should vote Sinn Fein... Anyone with over 100bits will have the bandwidth removed and distributed to the people on lower speeds

Richard Bingham

Nonoperational wrote: »

And what would you propose the independents would do about it?

Eircom currently have 750,000 households that can access VDSL. That should double in 2 years. UPC around 500,000 is I recall correctly although no doubt with some overlap. There are some good WISPs that should provide improved bandwidth as more fibre gets rolled out and those along with 4G LTE will allow rural households to approach 30Mbit.

Maybe we should vote Sinn Fein... Anyone with over 100bits will have the bandwidth removed and distributed to the people on lower speeds

I don't guarantee that the independents will do anything but its actually possible that a disparate group of independents might be just what this country needs. I've heard it said that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. FG/Labour told some of the biggest lies ever told during an election campaign in this country to get elected

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF6I1xKxdJo

Priceless.

You may want to reward them but I don't. I believe I'm not alone in this.

I agree with you on SF who want 80% of the country on welfare and the rest of us paying 80% income tax. If you have a suggestion which doesn't involve voting for the liars in FG and Labour or Sinn Fein, I'm all ears.

I don't think I could stomach FF yet either, maybe in a decade or two.

kaizersoze

This is just a re-hash of previous announcements followed by nothing happening.

irishfeen wrote: »

Our local exchange is listed, we're about 3.8 (by road) from the village local exchange - any hope of even getting normal 8MB broadband if its enabled??

No mention that these are exchanges listed, just areas with crap or no broadband.

irishfeen

kaizersoze wrote: »

No mention that these are exchanges listed, just areas with crap or no broadband.

Aye but say they did do the exchange - what kind of speeds would you be expecting 3.8-4 km away?

ED E

irishfeen wrote: »

Aye but say they did do the exchange - what kind of speeds would you be expecting 3.8-4 km away?

4Mb at the very best.

KIERAN1

By 2016 Eircom hopes 70 per cent of the country across 26 counties will have fibre to the cabinet. But its a logistics reason why Eircom can't bring fibre to the other 30 per cent. Many villages left out have no local internet exchanges. The majority of the people i would guess just live too far out from the local exchanges to receive fibre to the cabinet..

So unless Government brings in the ESB to do it, none of those places will see fibre broadband speeds ever. It will take ten years to bring ESB and its fibre to those houses miles off the beaten path.

Realistically the broadband plan only covers those areas Eircom is planning to go to over the next two years and after. So again ESB is the only one who can bring fibre to the 30 per cent.

We are looking at mobile 4G or fixed wireless here, unless i missing something?

Nonoperational

I don't think you are.

To be honest, I'd be skeptical of the value of the state bringing fibre to isolated homes 20km from the nearest village. Fixed wireless and LTE will be the way to go for some installations.

irishfeen

ED E wrote: »

4Mb at the very best.

We average about 1.5 - 3mb with ripplecom so tbh anything would be an improvement...

Just out of interest what's the distances between broadband cabinets? would the fibre line be run over say 10-12km straight of would it be broken up by cabinets? if more cabinets are required does the line be branched off at the cabinets or does it have to go to the exchange??

irishfeen

Nonoperational wrote: »

I don't think you are.

To be honest, I'd be skeptical of the value of the state bringing fibre to isolated homes 20km from the nearest village. Fixed wireless and LTE will be the way to go for some installations.

We are smack bang inbetween two villages - one village is enabled and the smaller one isn't ... so some of us out there are about 3km each side of villages with a few hundred people not 20km.

ED E

irishfeen wrote: »

We average about 1.5 - 3mb with ripplecom so tbh anything would be an improvement...

Just out of interest what's the distances between broadband cabinets? would the fibre line be run over say 10-12km straight of would it be broken up by cabinets? if more cabinets are required does the line be branched off at the cabinets or does it have to go to the exchange??

There probably arent any cabs in a situation like that. The lines would run in a bundle along the poles and break off as they pass homes.

Nonoperational

irishfeen wrote: »

We average about 1.5 - 3mb with ripplecom so tbh anything would be an improvement...

Just out of interest what's the distances between broadband cabinets? would the fibre line be run over say 10-12km straight of would it be broken up by cabinets? if more cabinets are required does the line be branched off at the cabinets or does it have to go to the exchange??

There must be serious backhaul or equipment issues with Ripplecom to be providing such low speeds. Hopefully with fibre coming closer they can sort this out as a stop gap at least.

murphaph

irishfeen wrote: »

We are smack bang inbetween two villages - one village is enabled and the smaller one isn't ... so some of us out there are about 3km each side of villages with a few hundred people not 20km.

Yeah but in fairness you knew the broadband situation there before deciding to live there. VDSL cabinets in every village and wireless for anyone beyond the reach of VDSL is more than reasonable and no less than in Germany (actually a lot more). Nobody is short changing anybody.

irishfeen

murphaph wrote: »

Yeah but in fairness you knew the broadband situation there before deciding to live there. VDSL cabinets in every village and wireless for anyone beyond the reach of VDSL is more than reasonable and no less than in Germany (actually a lot more). Nobody is short changing anybody.

My Grandfather moved here in 1948 ... haha I hardly think he had broadband in his mind handing over £2,500 for 140 acres of land.

irishfeen

Nonoperational wrote: »

There must be serious backhaul or equipment issues with Ripplecom to be providing such low speeds. Hopefully with fibre coming closer they can sort this out as a stop gap at least.

That's what it averages with high pings ... its brilliant of course that we are lucky enough to be in sight on the mast - IMO every house in the county (all of which could house the new Google/Twitter etc) no matter where should have access to fast broadband... we bang on about our technology led economy but for that to be real we need to lead the world in things like this.... and of course the spin off of jobs installing the technology.

Nonoperational

irishfeen wrote: »

That's what it averages with high pings ... its brilliant of course that we are lucky enough to be in sight on the mast - IMO every house in the county (all of which could house the new Google/Twitter etc) no matter where should have access to fast broadband... we bang on about our technology led economy but for that to be real we need to lead the world in things like this.... and of course the spin off of jobs installing the technology.

I agree. I have always argued that getting everyone up to 30Mbit is more important than having fibre to the home.

irishfeen

Nonoperational wrote: »

I agree. I have always argued that getting everyone up to 30Mbit is more important than having fibre to the home.

Yeah even 30mb in every business and home in the country would bring us to the fore of the technological economies in the world - we have a small island, a very small island in the grand scheme of things and we should not be afraid to spend money on improving the economy of the state - not only Dublin, Cork and Limerick but rural Cork, Mayo, Kerry etc.

murphaph

irishfeen wrote: »

My Grandfather moved here in 1948 ... haha I hardly think he had broadband in his mind handing over £2,500 for 140 acres of land.

My apologies. As an actual farmer you're one of the handful of people who live in isolated houses who really need to do so. If only such people lived in one off houses several miles from the nearest town or village then we could justify a subsidised scheme to get high quality wireless broadband to your business. The problem is that far too many people who don't need to live this way choose to do so and it'll never be economical to get decent broadband to most of them.

BeerWolf

Nonoperational wrote: »

and those along with 4G LTE will allow rural households to approach 30Mbit.

What a grand solution this is --- People with fibre pay only €25 or so for UNLIMITED broadband, while those stuck with 4G pay €30-35 for a pathetic 20-60GB usage cap...

Now if some bright spark starts selling 4G to fixed rural addresses and give a more reasonable allowance, that'd be a start. Could have a similar setup to FWA, the SIM integrated into the device itself so you can't have people using an actual SIM card in their mobile phones and roam about.

Nonoperational

BeerWolf wrote: »

What a grand solution this is --- People with fibre pay only €25 or so for UNLIMITED broadband, while those stuck with 4G pay €30-35 for a pathetic 20-60GB usage cap...

Now if some bright spark starts selling 4G to fixed rural addresses and give a more reasonable allowance, that'd be a start. Could have a similar setup to FWA, the SIM integrated into the device itself so you can't have people using an actual SIM card in their mobile phones and roam about.

Who said anything about a pathetic usage cap? It would have to be a deployment of the technology specifically for people who don't have any other means of decent last mile access...

fergus1001

Nonoperational wrote: »

Who said anything about a pathetic usage cap? It would have to be a deployment of the technology specifically for people who don't have any other means of decent last mile access...

Stuck with a midband dongle with WiFi around the house and 15gb a month we can't even use YouTube without going over the limit and being charged ~90 euro for going a gig over

This is three "broadband"

jbkenn

fergus1001 wrote: »

Stuck with a midband dongle with WiFi around the house and 15gb a month we can't even use YouTube without going over the limit and being charged ~90 euro for going a gig over

This is three "broadband"

And to think it only cost the taxpayer €80 million, cheap at half the price

Nonoperational

fergus1001 wrote: »

Stuck with a midband dongle with WiFi around the house and 15gb a month we can't even use YouTube without going over the limit and being charged ~90 euro for going a gig over

This is three "broadband"

This is not what I meant when I was talking about providing last mile access with fixed wireless and LTE.

shane7218

We are stuck on Satellite 20mb down and 6 up ..... Yeah more like 0.1 down and 0.05 up a ping of over 1000 ms on a good day and a usage limit of only 50GB and over 110€ a month for that. We need to sort out the broadband situation in this country ASAP. Plus saying people who live out in the country is their own fault not everyone has a choice farmers, people who operate certain business and also families who moved out to the country before the internet why should they have to move home just to get a basic connection in this day and age.

greilly123

How about get people of the dole to lay fibre
I live in kinlough in co Leitrim i contacted Eircom about the future plans of broadband I was told that NGB will be rolling out end of the year i can understand why the would put old tech into the exchange?
I see Bundoren co Donegal is 5 min away and they are getting E-fibre?
Pat rabbit was contacted about the lack of broadband in this area and his answer is that there will be a company in 2016 that will
provide better broadband to this area?

weisses

Is there any info regarding a time frame when these upgrades are supposed to take place ?

fergus1001

It will all go quiet after the elections wait and see

MajesticDonkey

fergus1001 wrote: »

It will all go quiet after the elections wait and see

Not if people keep the pressure on the idiots in the DCENR.

irishfeen

fergus1001 wrote: »

It will all go quiet after the elections wait and see

You see the good thing for us rural folk is that the main general elections are only over the horizon too - so my thinking would be that this will go ahead so Fine Gael in particular can canvass through rural communities during the next elections with the mantra that FG will/does forget about people outside towns and cities... put it this way, they finally bring broadband to us after 13/14 years of its launch in Dublin they will get five votes from this house ... Parents saving money with TV/Internet/Phone bills and us with a proper broadband service.

fergus1001

irishfeen wrote: »

You see the good thing for us rural folk is that the main general elections are only over the horizon too - so my thinking would be that this will go ahead so Fine Gael in particular can canvass through rural communities during the next elections with the mantra that FG will/does forget about people outside towns and cities... put it this way, they finally bring broadband to us after 13/14 years of its launch in Dublin they will get five votes from this house ... Parents saving money with TV/Internet/Phone bills and us with a proper broadband service.

I'm genuinely hoping that what you say happens I hope that after all this time it happens but I am just being cautious because we all have been burnt on this for a long time

dxhound2005

irishfeen wrote: »

You see the good thing for us rural folk is that the main general elections are only over the horizon too - so my thinking would be that this will go ahead so Fine Gael in particular can canvass through rural communities during the next elections with the mantra that FG will/does forget about people outside towns and cities... put it this way, they finally bring broadband to us after 13/14 years of its launch in Dublin they will get five votes from this house ... Parents saving money with TV/Internet/Phone bills and us with a proper broadband service.

Do you think it was a deliberate policy to deny "proper" broadband to rural areas? I think it was more to do with physics and economics. The physics bit can partly be solved now with fibre technology but not for isolated or far flung dwellings for the time being.

As always it is the economics which is the main stumbling block. One thing is certain, some people will get a service provided at a cost which will mainly be borne by the general taxpayer / billpayers. But this is the same for electricity and for the ordinary phone service. And it is the reason you will probably never see UPC in your area.

MajesticDonkey

dxhound2005 wrote: »

As always it is the economics which is the main stumbling block.

This, in general, is bullcrap. TWICE, two DIFFERENT governments pledged to invest at least €2 billion each time in rolling out fibre across the country. This would have connected almost every house in the country, at least to FTTC. EVERY house in the country would have FTTC by now if this had actually happened.

dxhound2005

MajesticDonkey wrote: »

This, in general, is bullcrap. TWICE, two DIFFERENT governments pledged to invest at least €2 billion each time in rolling out fibre across the country. This would have connected almost every house in the country, at least to FTTC. EVERY house in the country would have FTTC by now if this had actually happened.

Which is another way of saying that private companies will supply a service where there is a profit to be made and the taxpayer will have to fund the service where it is economically unviable. Every worker in the country was supposed to get an annual wage increase since 2008 (Towards 2016) but that never happened either.

MajesticDonkey

dxhound2005 wrote: »

Every worker in the country was supposed to get an annual wage increase since 2008 (Towards 2016) but that never happened either.

Yeah, because of the recession. Whereas those announcements regarding broadband were made in the middle of the recession. Why make the announcement if the funding isn't available? (which it obviously wasn't)

bk

MajesticDonkey wrote: »

Yeah, because of the recession. Whereas those announcements regarding broadband were made in the middle of the recession. Why make the announcement if the funding isn't available? (which it obviously wasn't)

Politics!

And you are surprised!!

However I don't think I ever saw anyone say that they were going to actually invest 2 billion. At least I don't remember any such promises, though I'd be happy to be corrected, if someone can point me to a link. I remember vague promises of investment in fixing the broadband problem, but that was about it.

MajesticDonkey

bk wrote: »

Politics!

And you are surprised!!

However I don't think I ever saw anyone say that they were going to actually invest 2 billion. At least I don't remember any such promises, though I'd be happy to be corrected, if someone can point me to a link. I remember vague promises of investment in fixing the broadband problem, but that was about it.

No, I'm not in the slightest bit surprised, which is why I was also not surprised by this:

Every worker in the country was supposed to get an annual wage increase since 2008 (Towards 2016) but that never happened either.

This was one example of a bit investment plan for broadband, by Labour in 2012 I believe: http://www.labour.ie/download/pdf/planfordigialireland.pdf

Fine Gael announced in 2009/10 that they would invest €2.5 billion in rolling out high speed broadband ("NewERA" project)
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/item/19440-fine-gael-plans-6bn-7bn/
http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0215/finegaelmanifesto.pdf

Neither of those happened, which is why I'm not overly convinced that anything will happen with the latest plan either.