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

AlmightyCushion

damienirel wrote: »

Where are you getting those figures - not denying them just asking?
Also when a CEO gets out of dodge when he can't sell the company - kind of says it all. http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/eircom-ceo-herb-hribar-steps-down-30623494.html

The Eircom figures come from this thread, the ESB ones come from the ESB thread.

damienirel

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Verizon FiOS is available to about 12m people. That sounds like a lot but it's less than 4% of the population. A similar service in Ireland would only have to be available to less than 20,000 people for our to match that availability. This is why it's such a big deal. It's not just the speed but the availability. Eircom us targeting 66 towns, ESB is targeting 600,000 premises (that number maybe off but it's close). These two rollouts shít all over Verizon's rollout (they actually does their FiOS rollout in 2010, 5 years ago) as a percentage of the population. It's not just the speed, it's the amount of people who will have access to it.

Also afaik Verizon only operates out of a few east coast states it only covers a % so if you want to do fair comparisons you would need to start there.
Overall my point is before we get carried away with Eircom marketing we are pretty far behind. That is all.

mass_debater

damienirel wrote: »

Also when a CEO gets out of dodge when he can't sell the company - kind of says it all. http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/eircom-ceo-herb-hribar-steps-down-30623494.html

Herb did what he set out to do which was 1, restructure the debt and 2, lose the workforce which were crippling the company

Did you just come in here to troll an Eircom thread?

kaizersoze

PeadarB wrote: »

And http://www.businessandleadership.com/business/item/50358-eircom-appoints-huawei-as-f

To quote the article in part - "Eircom said deployment of the equipment will proceed immediately in 16 communities where network construction has already started. These areas are Cavan, Ennis, Carrigaline, Douglas, Letterkenny, Balbriggan, Sandyford, Tralee, Naas, Kilkenny, Drogheda, Castlebar, Belcarra, Monaghan, Roscommon, Sligo, Mullingar, Wexford and Greystones. Customers will be able to order fibre services offering speeds of up to 1Gb/s by the end of August 2015. In all, 66 communities will benefit from FTTH services by 2017. The planned footprint includes areas of all five major cities, major regional centres and every county town in Ireland. Eircom said detailed rollout plans for each community will be announced in due course.
Huawei will deliver the latest optical line terminals (OLTs) and optical network terminals (ONTs) that will support broadband speeds up to 1Gb/s. According to Eircom, the equipment can deliver speeds beyond 1Gb/s as demand emerges."

Only one town in Co. Galway included in the 66 (Loughrea) and it's not the county town, Ballinasloe is. Not a criticism. I'm sure it'll come eventually.

damienirel

mass_debater wrote: »

Herb did what he set out to do which was 1, restructure the debt and 2, lose the workforce which were crippling the company

Did you just come in here to troll an Eircom thread?

No - i came here to speak truth. Also you missed the point completely. Herb did his job no denying that - although the shareholders didn't think he did enough - but that again is not my point. My point in mentioning why the CEO had to leave - he couldn't sell it - nobody wants it!!! In it's current state it needs massive investment. Now maybe if they looked for less like those nice guys in siteserv it would have sold

damienirel

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

The Eircom figures come from this thread, the ESB ones come from the ESB thread.

Yeah the internet never lies I guess.

AlmightyCushion

damienirel wrote: »

Also afaik Verizon only operates out of a few east coast states it only covers a % so if you want to do fair comparisons you would need to start there.
Overall my point is before we get carried away with Eircom marketing we are pretty far behind. That is all.

It is a fair comparison. We're not comparing companies but countries. The US doesn't have widespread FTTH, it's only available to a small percentage of the population. In a few years, Ireland will have FTTH available to a large percentage of the population. Even if ESB and Eircom didn't roll out FTTH we would still have UPC who can supply very high speeds to over 800,000 premises right now and whose network is easily capable of providing 1Gb speeds. We're currently in a very good position and over the next few years it's going to get even better.

damienirel wrote: »

Yeah the internet never lies I guess.

The figures come from Eircom and ESB they have been posted here is what I meant. If you don't believe the numbers then fair enough but Eircom has lived up to it's claims on it's VDSL rollout which has been very impressive to date.

lucernarian

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Verizon FiOS is available to about 12m people. That sounds like a lot but it's less than 4% of the population. A similar service in Ireland would only have to be available to less than 20,000 people for our to match that availability. This is why it's such a big deal. It's not just the speed but the availability. Eircom us targeting 66 towns, ESB is targeting 600,000 premises (that number maybe off but it's close). These two rollouts shít all over Verizon's rollout (they actually does their FiOS rollout in 2010, 5 years ago) as a percentage of the population. It's not just the speed, it's the amount of people who will have access to it.

Some errors in fact there. http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/verizons-shammo-doubts-google-fiber-will-build-fios-areas/2013-05-30

18 million homes is much more than 12 million people. Going by http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html, that means about 47 million Americans have access to FiOS and its current 300 Mbps top speed. The comparable figures in Ireland is actually around 700,000 people (I've allowed for Ireland having slightly more people per household) or about 260,000 premises. If the current noise from the two providers is halfway true, that may not be seen until the end of next year. Eircom think they can offer 16 large towns FTTH by the end of August and if they can do that, then this bodes well for the expansion of FTTH next year.

Also although Verizon don't offer 1 Gbps, they have started their rollout since 2005 and they continue to rollout slowly. It's more like UPC's strategy of filling-in areas of dodgy or MMDS-fed cable with their broadband services rather than expanding in new areas (but UPC are truly glacial in this regard since about 2012).

godskitchen

I saw 3 Eircom lads at a fibre cabinet in Castlebar last week. I know the Cab is live as I have customers on it. I stopped and had a chat with them....

They were pulling and terminating extra fibres from the exchange, they said they didnt know why and were just doing as the job sheet said.

I pushed them on the FTTH roll out but they sang dumb or didnt know.

A couple of weeks ago there was activity from Eircom and a company called IPOne around the town. Id never heard of IPOne before but they have worked with Digiweb in the past.

There is defiantly something about to happen as has been reported.

I can assure you all on here that as soon as the ordering process opens up I will have a number of clients applying and I will photograph the hell out of the installation and post plenty of info on here.

jca

godskitchen wrote: »

I saw 3 Eircom lads at a fibre cabinet in Castlebar last week. I know the Cab is live as I have customers on it. I stopped and had a chat with them....

They were pulling and terminating extra fibres from the exchange, they said they didnt know why and were just doing as the job sheet said.

I pushed them on the FTTH roll out but they sang dumb or didnt know.

A couple of weeks ago there was activity from Eircom and a company called IPOne around the town. Id never heard of IPOne before but they have worked with Digiweb in the past.

There is defiantly something about to happen as has been reported.

I can assure you all on here that as soon as the ordering process opens up I will have a number of clients applying and I will photograph the hell out of the installation and post plenty of info on here.

Sounds good. My town isn't on the Eircom ftth list but it is on the Esb / Vodafone joint scheme, we'll have a race.... First to post 150 meg or larger wins....

godskitchen

jca wrote: »

Sounds good. My town isn't on the Eircom ftth list but it is on the Esb / Vodafone joint scheme, we'll have a race.... First to post 150 meg or larger wins....

Just seen another ipone Van on the main street in castlebar. I see from their website they are also looking for fibre network planners.....

It's all adding up or I have too much time on my hands.

loyatemu

Cavan, Ennis, Carrigaline, Douglas, Letterkenny, Balbriggan, Sandyford, Tralee, Naas, Kilkenny, Drogheda, Castlebar, Belcarra, Monaghan, Roscommon, Sligo, Mullingar, Wexford and Greystones.

w00t!

I've noticed most of the Eircom duct covers in the town have yellow paint on them indicating the direction of cables exiting the ducts (some other ducts have been marked "UPC" in paint) - maybe this is part of the prep work.

I spent 20 minutes yesterday putting the number of local businesses into the prequal URL and there's a whole swathe of the town that still can't get eFibre despite the eVDSL cab being live, so maybe FTTH will come to our rescue

damienirel

lucernarian wrote: »

Some errors in fact there. http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/verizons-shammo-doubts-google-fiber-will-build-fios-areas/2013-05-30

18 million homes is much more than 12 million people. Going by http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html, that means about 47 million Americans have access to FiOS and its current 300 Mbps top speed. The comparable figures in Ireland is actually around 700,000 people (I've allowed for Ireland having slightly more people per household) or about 260,000 premises. If the current noise from the two providers is halfway true, that may not be seen until the end of next year. Eircom think they can offer 16 large towns FTTH by the end of August and if they can do that, then this bodes well for the expansion of FTTH next year.

Also although Verizon don't offer 1 Gbps, they have started their rollout since 2005 and they continue to rollout slowly. It's more like UPC's strategy of filling-in areas of dodgy or MMDS-fed cable with their broadband services rather than expanding in new areas (but UPC are truly glacial in this regard since about 2012).

Yeah it's hard to pull info from the web on what's actually happening - I was in the US last novemeber and everybody there that i knew that had fios had a 1gb connection. Not sure the wiki pages on this are a true reflection of how far ahead the US is. I like most people posting here would have previously thought that the US was way behind in regards broadband unlike what you hear about in korea and japan. So Eircom apart from a load of marketing hype and a 10 mill contract with huawei - which btw is a drop in the ocean when it comes to spend on equipment for this type of rollout, have very little to sing and dance about. And I'd be very skeptical of any 1gb roll-out and the extent of it - the problem being it takes lots of investment and Eircom are broke. I would hold more promise for ESB who are still semi state and can back such a huge project.

rob808

damienirel wrote: »

Yeah it's hard to pull info from the web on what's actually happening - I was in the US last novemeber and everybody there that i knew that had fios had a 1gb connection. Not sure the wiki pages on this are a true reflection of how far ahead the US is. I like most people posting here would have previously thought that the US was way behind in regards broadband unlike what you hear about in korea and japan. So Eircom apart from a load of marketing hype and a 10 mill contract with huawei - which btw is a drop in the ocean when it comes to spend on equipment for this type of rollout, have very little to sing and dance about. And I'd be very skeptical of any 1gb roll-out and the extent of it - the problem being it takes lots of investment and Eircom are broke. I would hold more promise for ESB who are still semi state and can back such a huge project.

I wouldn't say eircom broke because they wouldn't be doing FTTH if they were while the esb have more money it a win win for customers.

murphaph

kaizersoze wrote: »

Only one town in Co. Galway included in the 66 (Loughrea) and it's not the county town, Ballinasloe is. Not a criticism. I'm sure it'll come eventually.

I'm sure if every town in Galway except your town was done you'd be even more critical

bk

Broadband in the US is a mixed bag. Some places have amazing Google Fiber running at 1Gb/s and as a result Verizon, Comact and TWC are starting to wake up and also starting to finally offer comparable speeds in areas where they fear Google might enter the market.

However the majority of the US is not like this. I work for a US multinational and the majority of my colleagues who work in silicon valley are shocked that I get 240Mb/s for just €44. Most of them pay almost twice that for about just 50Mb/s.

And that is people who live in Silicon Valley, the heart of the worlds tech industry!

Of course that is anecdotal, putting some facts and figures behind it. Netindex.com, places the US 26th in the world with an average download speed of 36Mb/s and Ireland not far behind in 40th with an average download speed of 27Mb/s

That is a massive improvement for Ireland in just the last 2 years, jumping up 10 places and doubling it's average speed in just 2 years! While the US has stayed relatively static.

With all the developments in the Irish market, widespread rollout and take up of VDSL, ever increasing speeds at UPC and now the rollout of FTTH by ESB and Eircom, I fully expect Ireland will leapfrog the US in the next 2 years.

As a big critic of Eircom myself, I understand your criticisms of Eircom, however I have to say they really do seem to have turned over a new leaf in the last three years. Their rollout of VDSL has to be one the the biggest, fastest and most successful deployments I've ever seen. So while I remain weary of Eircom, I will give them the benefit of my doubt for the time being.

murphaph

Yup, almost five thousand VDSL cabinets installed so far. It's impressive when compared to anywhere in western Europe and the US.

Nollog

I agree, eircom wholesale are getting better.

kaizersoze

murphaph wrote: »

I'm sure if every town in Galway except your town was done you'd be even more critical

Not really. I'm happy enough on my 80/20 VDSL atm....

noc1980

Can anyone tell me when a town is 1gb enabled what the story will be with distance from the exchange and it's impact on speed? Will we need to be within a certain range to avail of these speeds?

dxhound2005

noc1980 wrote: »

Can anyone tell me when a town is 1gb enabled what the story will be with distance from the exchange and it's impact on speed? Will we need to be within a certain range to avail of these speeds?

I think when you have FTTH you will get the full speed no matter how far you are from the exchange. But Eircom have not given any detailed information as to what parts of the 66 towns/cities will be connected. Their original press release from last October says:


The planned footprint includes areas of all five major cities, major regional centres and every county town in Ireland. Detailed rollout plans for each community will be announced in due course.

Note the phrase "areas of".

http://pressroom.eircom.net/press_releases/article/eircom_to_Offer_Gigabit_Broadband_Speeds/

The very same wording is used in their newest press release detailing the first 16 towns to be connected.

http://pressroom.eircom.net/press_releases/article/eircom_selects_huawei_for_fibre_to_the_home/

ED E

GPON can do 10km+, range isn't an issue. Its a question of how far they're willing to pull/blow it.

swoofer

No, the idea of fibre is that distance becomes irrelevant, fibre is glass and the signal is light so theoretically it can go on forever! but as with everything other factors intervene. Its good for about 60 miles before it needs amplification but it changes everyday. In towns it will be governed by cost, ie the actual cable itself and the cost of running it to each house, eircom have a nice video that explains how the intend to do it. Each cabinet will have 24 main fibre cables and each cable can support 32 houses so say 768 houses per cabinet. I would say eircom will concentrate on boxes that are full already and close to groups of houses. The range at the moment is 1000m. Speed will be on what you want to pay. This is all new so no one really knows how its going to work. The way it appears to me eircom will have cables at cabinet all ready and then say its available, then you ring up and get a cost, I am 850m from cabinet so I think my installation may be more than someone 100m from cabinet but eircom may offset this by their charges ie a common intsallation fee and then pay more for the speed ie 150, 300, or 1gb. I think the big caveat may be number of take ups, say I am the only one who want it then eircom may say no you have to wait until a minimum number sign up. Its still a mystery but when it happens it will be awesome.

Gonzo

ED E wrote: »

GPON can do 10km+, range isn't an issue. Its a question of how far they're willing to pull/blow it.

Hopefully they will pull it all the way, they need to in order to start tackling homes outside of the town 'boundary'. If and when dunshaughlin gets started that 10km range would get the entire town and surrounding houses all the way to boundary with Ratoath, nearly half way north to Navan and South to the Dunboyne boundary. If that was applied to all towns/villages, that would cover nearly everybody except those on long rural one off housing areas. Sounds like the perfect solution for ribbon development throughout Meath, Kildare and Wicklow.

lucernarian

swoofer wrote: »

No...

No to what exactly? If it's about GPON able to do any arbitrary distance, not just 10km then that's simply wrong. Even glass introduces attenuation for a laser beam. There's little background noise as such except for thermal noise in the receiver for example but that doesn't mean a fibre cable can work at infinite lengths and anyway (10)GPON is a particular standard which would need more expensive splitters or taps or whatever they're called, and more expensive higher-quality glass fibres to allow for longer and longer distances. Also VDSL2 has been allowed for customers up to 2km away from the cabinet according to lots of reports on this forum.

Besides, ED E works in the industry.

dxhound2005

lucernarian wrote: »

No to what exactly? If it's about GPON able to do any arbitrary distance, not just 10km then that's simply wrong. Even glass introduces attenuation for a laser beam. There's little background noise as such except for thermal noise in the receiver for example but that doesn't mean a fibre cable can work at infinite lengths and anyway (10)GPON is a particular standard which would need more expensive splitters or taps or whatever they're called, and more expensive higher-quality glass fibres to allow for longer and longer distances. Also VDSL2 has been allowed for customers up to 2km away from the cabinet according to lots of reports on this forum.

Besides, ED E works in the industry.

I think Swoofer was replying to noc1980's post.

lucernarian

No to noc1980's post, fair enough!

digiman

Range will depend on how what type of optical transmitters and receivers they go with in the home and also back in the exchange or cabin. Fibre normally has a loss of 0.2-0.25dB/km, but GPON networks will have splitters which will introduce further significant losses depending on splitting ratio. 1:2, 1:4, 1:8, 1:16, 1:32, 1:64. Typical values below.

SPLITTER 1x2 1x4 1x8 1x16 1x32 1x64
LOSS (dB) 3.8 8 11.5 14.5 18 21

You also have splicing loses and connecters to contend with but these are usually quite low but they will add up. Around 20km would probably be the limit with standard equipment and some networks may choose to go with less to give a larger margin as the network will degrade slightly over time.

The main point here is that there is a huge different between the distance that you will get out of fibre in a GPON network and in a core backhaul network using DWDM between cities for example and this is down to one is a point to multipoint and the other is a point to point network.

Gonzo

lucernarian wrote: »

Also VDSL2 has been allowed for customers up to 2km away from the cabinet according to lots of reports on this forum.

While that may be true in some cases, it is only available up to 2km if property is fed into the cabinet and even where it happens after about 1300m the speeds aren't great and in some cases slower than the DSL equivalent after 1500m+ in many cases. e.g. some people here who were/still are on 10-15meg ADSL2+ only getting up to 7meg on efibre.

Anyone more than 1km away will be much better served with real fibre if and when it comes around. This real fibre is very badly needed for homes on the edge of town, ribbon developments, business's/schools both urban and rural etc.

loyatemu

Gonzo wrote: »

Anyone more than 1km away will be much better served with real fibre if and when it comes around.

anyone at any distance will be better off with real fibre...