Eircom to roll out 1Gb/s FTTH to 66 towns

crawler

The battle between network providers in the next-generation super-fast broadband stakes will step up a notch later today when Eircom announces the rollout of a new fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network in 66 towns across the State.

The new network can achieve speeds of up to a gigbyte or 1,000MB – fast enough to download a high-definition movie in less than one minute – which is 10 times what is available on Eircom’s existing fibre network.

The announcement comes a day after the European Commission green-lighted a similar FTTH joint venture between ESB and Vodafone that will build a €450 million super-speed network across ESB poles in regional areas.

FTTH achieves this by running fibre directly from its main fibre network through the walls of subscribers’ homes and businesses, bypassing the slower copper lines that deliver its regular services in the final stretch to buildings.

Eircom is billing its FTTH announcement, which also covers parts of the major cities, as its “strategic response” to the threat from ESB-Vodafone, raising the prospect of a rollout and price war between both sides as demand for super-speed broadband services picks up in coming years.

Eircom has selected 66 locations across the country for the new “hands up” FTTH service, which will require a sufficient number of customers in a locality to order the service before its engineers will run the fibre directly to buildings.

The network will include parts of the major cities, every county town and major regional urban areas. Work will begin next month on the first three locations in the rollout: Cavan town, Kilkenny city and Letterkenny. Each town will take six months to hook up to the service, and Eircom hopes to launch its first products next summer.

In Dublin, the new service will initially be concentrated on the northside, with Malahide, Portmarnock and Swords among the towns slated to be part of the FTTH rollout, which will take until the end of 2017.

Eircom says it will release a full rollout plan “in due course”, and that the sequencing of towns will be guided by its network planners.

It has already notified the communications regulator and the Government of its intention to offer FTTH services.

“This is our strategic response to the ESB-Vodafone joint venture,” said Richard Moat, Eircom’s acting chief executive. “We will do it where there is demand. There has to be a sufficient number of people who want it. If, for example, 25 people in a housing estate got together and came to us, we would roll it out for them.”



Premium product
He said it would be a “premium product with a premium price attached”.

At the end of August, Eircom announced it was accelerating its normal fibre rollout, which offers speeds of up to 100MB, to 1.6 million homes by the end of 2016.

It will also announce today a further acceleration, promising to hit its target six months ahead of the schedule it set in the summer.

It will announce its plans to test FTTH services in Belcarra in Mayo, to assess the technology’s suitability for providing broadband in rural areas.

Mr Moat, who was Eircom’s chief financial officer under former boss Herb Hribar, is running the company in an acting capacity following Mr Hribar’s departure last month. He confirmed to The Irish Times that he has applied to replace his old boss.

“I’m doing the job on an acting basis and I’m proud to do so. But I’ve indicated to the board that I’d like to do it full-time,” said Mr Moat.

Hank Scorpio

Their current infrastructure is crawling at peak times nationwide, it frustrates me so much when I read things like that knowing the type of company they are and customer service they provide

Don't get me wrong its good news, but its Eircom

bk

Wow, so much has happened on a bank holiday!

- ESB/Vodafoe FTTH Joint Venture gets EU approval
- National Broadband Plan Submissions doc gets released with lots of juicy details
- Now we have this FTTH announcement from Eircom

However I would urge some caution about this announcement from Eircom. It seems defensive and far less exciting then the ESB FTTH project.

The ESB seems to have solid plans to roll out their FTTH to 500,000 premisses.

On the other hand Eircom are saying that they may roll out FTTH to premises based on enough of your neighbours wanting it and that it will be a premium product with a premium price. Thus I think much less likely to happen in the short term.

So reading between the lines, this rollout from Eircom will be much more limited then the ESB one. Eircom expect most people to stay on cheaper VDSL and only a minority to upgrade to FTTH.

However one good aspect of this is that it seems Eircom are going to start using FTTH instead of VDSL from the start where it makes sense (for instance North Dublin) and hopefully on new apartment builds, etc.

yuloni

This post has been deleted.

bk

yuloni wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Yes, that is how I read it. That the entrance of the ESB FTTH network has thrown all previous assumptions out the window, that Eircom can no longer just sit there and sweet their copper assets.

It is clear that the ESB FTTH is going to compete strongly for the subsidies as part of the NBP and that Eircom has no choose but to also match it with it's own FTTH offering.

SpaceTime

No real reason why not.
They've ducts everywhere, easy access to most buildings, exchange buildings to house aggregation nodes everywhere that are already connected to a massive duct network.

They've fibre feeding cabinet's in almost every few streets in urban areas.

The ESB-Vodafone thing is just putting it up to them much like UPC drove them to launch FTTC.

If they're going to remain in business they can't just roll out VDSL2 and go to sleep.

UPC already is capable of gigabit service in many areas and ESB is very, very capable of rolling network wiring out to end users.

I think they've had this planned for some time. They didn't rollout FTTC to some very dense and prime business districts, notably Cork City Centre and a large chunk of Dublin 1 and 2. I noticed lot of duct laying and fibre laying on Cork that never led to any FTTC cabinets so I assumed FTTH is in the pipeline.

makeorbrake

So where is the list of 66 locations and is there a timeline on implementation already set out?

dalta5billion

I don't see how the whole enough-residents-committing thing will work if

a) The monthly fee is significantly "premium" (as they said) and

b) VDSL is already in place and residents don't see the point in paying extra.

SpaceTime

dalta5billion wrote: »

b) VDSL is already in place and residents don't see the point in paying extra.

Some will and the key word you're missing there is "yet".

The bandwidth requirements keep going up and up. 5 or 6 years ago who would have thought people would be signing up to 150mbit/s packages on UPC...

15 years ago that was enough bandwidth for a town!

I suspect they'll initially target SMEs

Then when ESB becomes a real competitor, push into residential.

You'd be surprised at how many early adopters you might have. Plenty of techies and people working from home need or want this stuff.

Also it's an opportunity to turn evison into a full cable TV platform that stands up against UPC and Sky.

They've clearly no exact pricing plan for this yet and aren't going to commit to one yet.

Also you never commit to a cheap price and then hike it. So, their vague statement is pretty much textbook.

Eircom has a history of launching new tech at extremely high prices and then dropping. Remember their initial ADSL rollout years ago?! It was very pricy and they sold as little bandwidth as they could get away with and even attempted to dial-up timed ADSL which thankfully fell flat on its face!

jowkon

makeorbrake wrote: »

So where is the list of 66 locations and is there a timeline on implementation already set out?

I does not matter it will be provisional as everything in Eircom.
This announcement its to pissed off eventually costumers waiting for it for next few years They still can't complete FTTC rollout.

Eircom do one thing properly! Not everything as usually!

Gonzo

I think we can safely bet that these 66 lucky towns will be the usual places with efibre/UPC already in place and the ESB fibre already being worked upon!

Avada

makeorbrake wrote: »

So where is the list of 66 locations and is there a timeline on implementation already set out?

Going by the examples in the IT article, it will be anywhere where ESB are rolling out.

Eircom are an absolute joke

Hackery

Random_Name wrote: »

Going by the examples in the IT article, it will be anywhere where ESB are rolling out.

Eircom are an absolute joke

The ESB are rolling out every where eircom FTTC is. FTTC is the basis for FTTH so it makes absolute sense for eircom to go to FTTC locations.

It was claimed at the time "that many of the locations in regional areas that ESB and Vodafone plan to reach are currently not served by other fibre broadband providers such as eircom and UPC at present". This was untrue as all were served by FTTC.

bealtine

Gonzo wrote: »

I think we can safely bet that these 66 lucky towns will be the usual places with efibre/UPC already in place and the ESB fibre already being worked upon!

absolutely...almost the exact same locations

http://pressroom.eircom.net/images/uploads/eircom%20FTTH%20Map.pdf

bk

Hackery wrote: »

It was claimed at the time "that many of the locations in regional areas that ESB and Vodafone plan to reach are currently not served by other fibre broadband providers such as eircom and UPC at present". This was untrue as all were served by FTTC.

No, that is simply untrue, the ESB never said that they wouldn't be targeting Eircom areas, just that they wouldn't largely target UPC areas. It was always 100% the plan for the ESB to target Eircom only areas and basically become the UPC of these areas. It makes complete business sense.

SpaceTime

These companies cannot just come to some kind of 'gentlemen's agreement' about where they're covering as doing so would be a breech of Irish and EU competition law and quite a serious one.

They've got to compete head-to-head.

Eircom's FTTC footprint is huge at this stage and also ESB wouldn't make any money out of the venture if they just pursued really remote rural areas. They're not entering this game to make a loss.

jowkon

If we still need to find 25 neighbour they will do home connection on request of group. In most of 66 town FTTC theoretically already exist so What they will upgrading there till 2017 or even 6mths on few streets?
Mi missing something?

PeadarB

jowkon wrote: »

If we still need to find 25 neighbour they will do home connection on request of group. In most of 66 town FTTC theoretically already exist so What they will upgrading there till 2017 or even 6mths on few streets?
Mi missing something?

My understanding was that the Huawei cabs were future proofed and capable of providing end to end fibre - i.e. disconnect the copper and connect and run the fibre from the cab to the home, either in tanden, or in its place. The copper is ducted to nearby poles and distributed from there. As to the practicalities!!! Eircom/KN very busy in Letterkenny the past week or so, though I suspect they are repairing storm damage, as in my case, rather than preparing for the new scenario.

Johnboy1951

I think all that has happened is that Eircom have been forced to make a vague statement at this time, about their future plans, by the big news of the approval of the ESB/Vodfone joint venture.

I have no doubt that Eircom have more solid plans, and their own time-table, which have not as yet been made public ...... and unlikely to be made public until the time is right for Eircom.

It will probably put financial pressure on Eircom to compete with ESB/Vodafone now ..... before they got to complete their present FTTC roll-out.

I, for one, hope they remain in a strong (for them) financial position, so they can be a real competitor in the FTTH market.

Hackery

bk wrote: »

No, that is simply untrue, the ESB never said that they wouldn't be targeting Eircom areas, just that they wouldn't largely target UPC areas. It was always 100% the plan for the ESB to target Eircom only areas and basically become the UPC of these areas. It makes complete business sense.

I agree. I was making a more nuanced point that in July when they announced the locations there were claims that some of these locations had no access to fibre services, when in fact all had.

Hackery

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

I, for one, hope they remain in a strong (for them) financial position, so they can be a real competitor in the FTTH market.

Agreed we need competition in all areas. The last thing we want is for eircom to leave the market and UPC and Vodafone to divide it up among themselves, creating essentially two area based monopolies like they have in the US. eircom are the only one competing on all fronts without them there is no battle.

Hackery

SpaceTime wrote: »

These companies cannot just come to some kind of 'gentlemen's agreement' about where they're covering

ESB and UPC?

KeRbDoG

crawler wrote: »

Premium product
He said it would be a “premium product with a premium price attached”.

ct5amr2ig1nfhp

Where does one sign up for testing

The Real B-man

Low Contention i would rather than 1gb, my 100mb Efibre connection is slowing own at peak times even when using OpenDns Speed is fine its just resolving a page, hope this is ironed out and they have sufficent backhaul once more customers are connected.

jowkon

PeadarB wrote: »

My understanding was that the Huawei cabs were future proofed and capable of providing end to end fibre - i.e. disconnect the copper and connect and run the fibre from the cab to the home, either in tanden, or in its place. The copper is ducted to nearby poles and distributed from there. As to the practicalities!!! Eircom/KN very busy in Letterkenny the past week or so, though I suspect they are repairing storm damage, as in my case, rather than preparing for the new scenario.

I meant What they we do as a upgrade from FTTC till 2017 if it will be on request from 25 people already having FTTC?

PeadarB

jowkon wrote: »

I meant What they we do as a upgrade from FTTC till 2017 if it will be on request from 25 people already having FTTC?

Guess the ESB / Vodafone will solve that problem for you.
The Eircom press release states, "These superfast speeds will be underpinned by ‘end to end’ fibre connections through the use of fibre to the home (FTTH) technology. Customer connections will be provided as demand for this connectivity emerges".
I don't see any mention of 25 people being needed to justify a FTTH connection. If that's the case a lot of people will be in for a long wait.

jowkon

PeadarB wrote: »

Guess the ESB / Vodafone will solve that problem for you.
The Eircom press release states, "These superfast speeds will be underpinned by ‘end to end’ fibre connections through the use of fibre to the home (FTTH) technology. Customer connections will be provided as demand for this connectivity emerges".
I don't see any mention of 25 people being needed to justify a FTTH connection. If that's the case a lot of people will be in for a long wait.

First post: “This is our strategic response to the ESB-Vodafone joint venture,” said Richard Moat, Eircom’s acting chief executive. “We will do it where there is demand. There has to be a sufficient number of people who want it. If, for example, 25 people in a housing estate got together and came to us, we would roll it out for them.”
Which means to me they are not going to do any upgrade everywhere in general.

Im asking cos all this announsmant sounds ridicules.

I know ESB will solve it unfortunately Im not on the lucky 50 list (8000 residents town only)

BorneTobyWilde

So it's just a case of giving even faster BB to people who have fast broadband while ignoring people who have slow BB.

SpaceTime

Hackery wrote: »

ESB and UPC?

Any of them.

bk

BorneTobyWilde wrote: »

So it's just a case of giving even faster BB to people who have fast broadband while ignoring people who have slow BB.

Both Eircom and the ESB have both made proposals to the Department of Communication that FTTH should be used for rural broadband under the National Broadband Plan and that they are both willing to roll it out.

What you are seeing happening here is a very important precursor to high quality FTTH broadband being broght to everyone in Ireland, including those in rural Ireland.

Both Eircom and ESB are currently trialling FTTH in rural areas (Mayo and Cavan).