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

lucernarian

I wonder what will be the impact upon existing infrastructure needs for the pstn network. In particular, running fibre up small tubes designed for ten or thirty pair cables to the DP. What will be the exact topology of the fibre network? Fit e.g. an 8-port "tap" beside an existing DP like China Telecom or KT corp (Korea).

I know that huawei have future proofed the cab rollout but that has little bearing on exchange fed lines.

Next, will they provide solutions for those on dialup modem based monitored alarms? Will the gpon equipment have a backup battery or use the existing pair to power some facilities? NBN in Australia uses a battery or none at all in different circumstances.

Another thing I'd like to see an answer to is what will happen to the rural hinterlands of the selected towns and will this tie in with the govts ideas of some subsidies? Will they only provide to within a certain distance of the nearest cab or exchange?

Will they diligently respect exchange boundaries like is the case with RSUs in Drogheda where some will enjoy VDSL and places nearby will get nothing?

How will gpon fit into the world of LLU or will it be treated as a different market by comreg with therefore no bearing on rollout?

Furp

it is indeed interested particularly in housing estates and depending on when the existing copper was laid, is it possible to just push fibre through the existing ducts, I wouldn't have thought so does fiber still have to have larger radius bends compared to copper?

ED E

Bog Standard User wrote: »

actually thats what i meant. (cost of optical cable) it cost alot money to buy and lay that cable. and yes they can replace the copper for optical. they simply do it on an order basis.

customer A wants ftth instead of fttc so they go pull out customer A's copper line and replace it with an optical line.

That only works for drop wires, that's a very small percentage of the copper network. The rest is bundled in 50,100,200,500,800 pair bundles that will have to be left insitue. So the cost recovery would be tiny.

SpaceTime

Furp wrote: »

it is indeed interested particularly in housing estates and depending on when the existing copper was laid, is it possible to just push fibre through the existing ducts, I wouldn't have thought so does fiber still have to have larger radius bends compared to copper?

Not really, it seems to be able to handle pretty serious bends these days, probably as good / better than copper (particularly as you can probably reduce the use of huge bundles of wires required for phone service by using multiplexing of multiple customers together onto a single fibre)

The biggest issue would be where wires are direct-buried without ducts at all. This was common at one stage where they used armoured cables rather than ducts. That's also a possible issue for ESB's FTTC rollout in a minority of areas and developments of a particular age.

The Irish utilities have been quite fond of ducts though which is a good thing! They're very fond of direct-burried cables in some countries which is a huge issue now for retrofitting fibre.

Praetorian

I don't expect an impressive roll out from Eircom on FTTH like we have seen with FTTC. The majority of customers are happy enough with up to 100m/bit offered via FTTC.

This is just an exercise in keeping up with the neighbors (UPC & Voda/ESB). Has there been any talk of money? How much they are going to invest for example?

Some people will pay a premium for FTTH. I would. Most of us on this forum probably would, so bring it on!

What would I pay? €300-400 towards the installation, and an extra €10-15 per month? Probably. It may not be marketable at those prices however.

What would ye pay?

bk

SpaceTime wrote: »

The biggest issue would be where wires are direct-buried without ducts at all. This was common at one stage where they used armoured cables rather than ducts. That's also a possible issue for ESB's FTTC rollout in a minority of areas and developments of a particular age.

In these cases I believe they will use G.Fast/FTTDp along the existing copper cable over the last 100 meters into the building.

This is what Eircom have to say on the matter in their NBP Submission:

FTTDP refers to the deployment of optical fibre as far as the copper distribution point (DP) and connection from the DP to the customer’s premises via existing copper infrastructure. The DP could be located in a manhole, an enclosure on a pole or in the basement of a building. This architecture
could support VDSL or G.fast technology for a short copper drop connection, normally less than 250m. G.fast is particularly appealing for drops of less than 50m but the disadvantage is that it requires a very significant number of active elements in the network (e.g. an element per 48, 32 or 16 users) which is operationally challenging. G.fast will be commercially available in late 2016,
although pre-commercial and pre-standardised versions are currently available. eircom will be conducting a prototype trial of G.fast over the coming months to gain more experience. eircom would consider G.fast to have advantages in cases where the connection to the house is under ground and has been obstructed preventing installation of a replacement connection to the house.
However, as many rural homes are connected via overhead, eircom considers that it should be possible, in the majority of cases, to deploy fibre all the way into the home. Nonetheless, G.fast offers an additional technical option that will prove useful in an FTTH deployment.

Gonzo

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.

This is the way I see it

Once upon a time, we were all equal on our 2 lane roads in our countryside and cities.
Eircom stepped in and finally offered us dual carriageways in parts of cities and some towns.

Eventually these dual carriageways started to become wider in cities and larger towns, they became motorways. The people in the countryside still had their 2 lane roads but potholes were starting to emerge.

Over the past 2 years all large towns and cities are now bypassed by large motorways and in some cases double and triple motorway rings. Now Eircom want to bypass these areas again with a 4th motorway ring offering 8 lanes of traffic in each direction, while the other motorways in these areas are still more than adequate for the next 10 years.

The 2 lane roads in the countryside are now beginning to crumble and turn into dirt tracks with grass growing along the middle of the roads.

Enjoy the mud tracks while we can because eventually they will become over grown by tree's with bit's of a pathway emerging through the nettles and submerged surfaces!


On a serious note tho we were all thinking Eircom are looking after the low hanging fruit first before moving on up the tree to higher and further places, but now that they are going to revisit the low hanging fruit yet again after 2016 when will they ever have the time or money to go any further up?

mobil 222

Don't forget that Eircoms fibre network now comprises of enough capacity in the types of subduct they rolled out.
It was only in difficult duct situations that a single tube was used ,but in a lot of cases these orange duct they were using
comprised of a lot of tubes
In other words one tube coming from the Exchange could feed up to 4 cabinets leaving a few tubes for future development.

PeadarB

The latest addition to the fibre coverage map from eircom - http://fibrerollout.ie/where-and-when/ - now shows Letterkenny as -

"Letterkenny (Donegal)

11070 premises in this exchange can now access up to 100Mb/s fibre broadband. This is a planned FTTH exchange with speeds up to 1000Mb/s when complete".

Hope this happens soon. It will be interesting to see how this will be implemented. No doubt the backhaul from Letterkenny will have to be increased, though if you consider that each fibre cabinet is already linked back to the exchange via fibre, the core civils must be in place already.

Now now do they plan to get that little fibre all those 190 meters from the cab to my house? Or will it be a new connection back to the new "planned fibre exchange"?

ED E

PeadarB wrote: »

The latest addition to the fibre coverage map from eircom - http://fibrerollout.ie/where-and-when/ - now shows Letterkenny as -

"Letterkenny (Donegal)

11070 premises in this exchange can now access up to 100Mb/s fibre broadband. This is a planned FTTH exchange with speeds up to 1000Mb/s when complete".

Hope this happens soon. It will be interesting to see how this will be implemented. No doubt the backhaul from Letterkenny will have to be increased, though if you consider that each fibre cabinet is already linked back to the exchange via fibre, the core civils must be in place already.

Now now do they plan to get that little fibre all those 190 meters from the cab to my house? Or will it be a new connection back to the new "planned fibre exchange"?

Wrong thread buddy, this one is for ESB/Voda not Eircom.

bk

MOD: Thanks, lets try and keep things in their correct threads where possible.

fabo1thecross

Can someone explain to me how this will work. Say my case I'm connected to the ballinlee exchange in longford. I'm 4.2 km from the exchange and I always have what I'd call good enough broadband. After coming from 3g my nice stable ping and consistent 2.5 download speed is great. But direct Fed from the exchange I think it's called. I really would like to know what type of work will need to be done.

bk

fabo1thecross wrote: »

Can someone explain to me how this will work. Say my case I'm connected to the ballinlee exchange in longford. I'm 4.2 km from the exchange and I always have what I'd call good enough broadband. After coming from 3g my nice stable ping and consistent 2.5 download speed is great. But direct Fed from the exchange I think it's called. I really would like to know what type of work will need to be done.

If you order it and Eircom accepts the order, then they would run a new fibre cable from the closest FTTC cabinet to your home.

What we don't know yet, is what criteria Eircom will have to allow people to order this.

fabo1thecross

Thanks for the reply bk but I don't think there is a cab. I think it goes to the exchange. Am I wrong.

bk

fabo1thecross wrote: »

Thanks for the reply bk but I don't think there is a cab. I think it goes to the exchange. Am I wrong.

I would expect that they would run it from either the closest cab or exchange. The route your current line takes would be largely irrelevant.

Bog Standard User

bk wrote: »

I would expect that they would run it from either the closest cab or exchange. The route your current line takes would be largely irrelevant.

the route is relevant... due to cost.

its likely gonna be run house to nearest cab rather than to exchange unless the exchange is closer than the nearest cab

bk

Bog Standard User wrote: »

the route is relevant... due to cost.

its likely gonna be run house to nearest cab rather than to exchange unless the exchange is closer than the nearest cab

Which is exactly what I said. The route of your existing copper phone line is irrelevant as they will be running a new fiber line which as you say will most likely be run from the nearest exchange or cab.

Tommy Lagahan

Gigabit, in Ireland? Ah jaysus I must still be asleep, better get up for college.
In all seriousness, it would fit them better to put a few cabinets in rural areas and feed us some ADSL2 or long range VDSL2. This 28.8k dial up line that I have is beyond a joke and fixed wireless is great until everyone hops on it and crushes it with contention. I'd settle for 5Mbit if I could get a steady ping.

murphaph

Tommy Lagahan wrote: »

Gigabit, in Ireland? Ah jaysus I must still be asleep, better get up for college.
In all seriousness, it would fit them better to put a few cabinets in rural areas and feed us some ADSL2 or long range VDSL2. This 28.8k dial up line that I have is beyond a joke and fixed wireless is great until everyone hops on it and crushes it with contention. I'd settle for 5Mbit if I could get a steady ping.

Actually the best hope for rural Ireland is FTTH. Copper technologies like xDSL fall off a cliff once you go past a km or so from the cabinet. At 2km you can forget it. And that's assuming your line is actually in good shape.

Instead of bemoaning FTTH rollouts, users in rural Ireland should be thankful for every metre of fibre that is pushed deeper into the countryside through these rollouts. They are your only hope for genuine quality BB in the future because no other technology is more or less impervious to problems caused by line distance.

You might settle for 5Mb today, but that's already useless for many modern applications and you would be back on here in 2 years talking about your 5Mb like you are talking about your dial up now. Aiming for 5Mb is absolutely pointless.

Tommy Lagahan

murphaph wrote: »

Actually the best hope for rural Ireland is FTTH. Copper technologies like xDSL fall off a cliff once you go past a km or so from the cabinet. At 2km you can forget it. And that's assuming your line is actually in good shape.

Instead of bemoaning FTTH rollouts, users in rural Ireland should be thankful for every metre of fibre that is pushed deeper into the countryside through these rollouts. They are your only hope for genuine quality BB in the future because no other technology is more or less impervious to problems caused by line distance.

You might settle for 5Mb today, but that's already useless for many modern applications and you would be back on here in 2 years talking about your 5Mb like you are talking about your dial up now. Aiming for 5Mb is absolutely pointless.

Speak for yourself, as someone whos been dealing with this for 8 years and probably will be for another 3 or 4, 5mbit now would be welcome.


I don't think the drop off for ADSL2 is too bad tbh: http://i.imgur.com/yFdt2.png
Provided the cabinets can do ADSL2, 8Mbit at 2.5KM (ofc lines will be worse so lets say 5) is still decent BASIC internet access which is something we don't even have. Don't even start me on the 3G joke.
Anyway the cabinets would facilitate rural FTTH (like thats gonna happen) later given how they're setting them up in urban areas to do such.
Ill be thankful for nothing until I get a cable into my house that gives me stable internet.

murphaph

You can't have rural FTTH without first driving fibre backhaul to a nearby town and from there to a nearby village and from there to a nearby cabinet and from there to your house. There's no "short cut" that FTTH can take straight to your house. It has to be a structured network or it would be total chaos to maintain. They can't start at your house and work backwards for obvious reasons.

Eircom, as far as I can tell, are simply driving fibre to every cabinet on their network. Given the pace of the rollout I expect every cabinet and exchange will be VDSL enabled within 3 years. If you live beyond the reach of a VDSL enabled cabinet or exchange then you will have to either wait for FTTH, or for your line to be moved to a new cabinet (Eircom are doing this as well at present) which is VDSL enabled and is within range. though the fibre rollout may as a by product provide you with quality fixed wireless as an interim solution for a few years. Quality fixed wireless needs quality (fibre) backhaul.

You know it's the same for people most of the world over who choose to live in very remote locations that they have sh!te broadband? It's one of the reasons property in such locations is much cheaper than in cities.

MajesticDonkey

murphaph wrote: »

You know it's the same for people most of the world over who choose to live in very remote locations that they have sh!te broadband? It's one of the reasons property in such locations is much cheaper than in cities.

I agreed with you up to here. Living in the countryside is not this luxury choice for everybody, as people seem to think it is. Some people have no choice.

Its Only Ray Parlour

MajesticDonkey wrote: »

I agreed with you up to here. Living in the countryside is not this luxury choice for everybody, as people seem to think it is. Some people have no choice.

Only animal farmers do. Only 3% of Belgium's population live in rural areas. Ireland's is over 30%. Instead of taking out a bigger mortgage and buying a house in a town/village or living in apartment, they chose the cheaper option of building outside of a town/village where land is much cheaper.

Now they are suffering the consequences by having poor broadband access.

frozenfrozen

Good internet in cities is a by-product of high population density, not the other way around.

For some reason I don't think every rural house is going to move to a city anytime soon so as it stands there needs to be a fix to this broadband problem, not the suggestion of everyone saving up more money to move closer to a town.

animaal

frozenfrozen wrote: »

For some reason I don't think every rural house is going to move to a city anytime soon so as it stands there needs to be a fix to this broadband problem, not the suggestion of everyone saving up more money to move closer to a town.

The point is that people in urban areas put up with smaller, overlooked properties, higher home tax, and a larger number of neighbours in close proximity. This is a compromise they accept, in order to have other benefits - perhaps to live closer to work or better internet services.

Likewise, there are advantages and disadvantages to living in rural areas.

If "there needs to be a fix", perhaps it can be arranged/funded by those who stand to benefit?


Edit: Just to add, I believe everybody should have access to a basic internet. But I don't believe the taxpayer should be on the hook for the costs of laying miles of fibre to one-off houses, so the occupants can get Netflix.

Its Only Ray Parlour

frozenfrozen wrote: »

Good internet in cities is a by-product of high population density, not the other way around.

For some reason I don't think every rural house is going to move to a city anytime soon so as it stands there needs to be a fix to this broadband problem, not the suggestion of everyone saving up more money to move closer to a town.

I don't think the rural dwellers of Ireland comprehend how lucky they are because they are getting a 100% rollout eventually. I'm not happy with that because it will cost a serious amount of money and our taxes won't be spent elsewhere where it will benefit the majority.

As it stands, there doesn't need to be a fix. Slow broadband isn't going to kill them and they put themsevles in this predicament, now they want the urban tax-payer to bail them out and if they don't, they'll logon to Boards.ie and present poorly-thought-out arguments about how they are entitled the high speed internet despite them being subsidized by both urban customers and urban tax-payers.

Tommy Lagahan

animaal wrote: »

Edit: Just to add, I believe everybody should have access to a basic internet. But I don't believe the taxpayer should be on the hook for the costs of laying miles of fibre to one-off houses, so the occupants can get Netflix.

This is what I'm getting at, ADSL2+ using existing lines just backed up with a closer cabinet would be plenty.
If I need 1000Mbit I'll lay my own damn cable or move.

SpaceTime

Every exchange needs to be on the NGN network at this stage though. The major ongoing issues in rural areas are caused by lack of backha to very small exchanges.

murphaph

MajesticDonkey wrote: »

I agreed with you up to here. Living in the countryside is not this luxury choice for everybody, as people seem to think it is. Some people have no choice.

Let's be honest with ourselves here. The problem is not living in rural Ireland, it's living in one off and/or ribbon development. Broadband can't be cost effectively deployed to such properties. It can be cost effectively deployed to rural towns and villages. Are you really going to suggest to me that all the people in all the houses in this map need to live 100 metres or more from their next door neighbours? If all those people lived (even in the same size properties with the same amount of land) in a cluster around the center of that map, they'd all have 100Mbps broadband by the end of next year at the latest. FACT! As it is, perhaps 10% of those premises will get anything near that and the rest will be on a sliding scale down to dial up. Are you going to defend the indefensible and tell me that all those people NEED to have built those modern properties there and couldn't have built them in a cluster around the existing "village" centre?

It's a lifestyle choice for the vast majority, with a very few minor exceptions such as farmers who have livestock. Even cereal farmers don't NEED to live on their farms. They can just as easily live in a nearby village, as can the vet, the forge, the pharmacist etc. Take a look at our neighbours in Great Britain on google maps and tell me why they don't seem to have the same development patterns if so many people NEED to live in these types of properties.

Its Only Ray Parlour wrote: »

I don't think the rural dwellers of Ireland comprehend how lucky they are because they are getting a 100% rollout eventually. I'm not happy with that because it will cost a serious amount of money and our taxes won't be spent elsewhere where it will benefit the majority.

As it stands, there doesn't need to be a fix. Slow broadband isn't going to kill them and they put themsevles in this predicament, now they want the urban tax-payer to bail them out and if they don't, they'll logon to Boards.ie and present poorly-thought-out arguments about how they are entitled the high speed internet despite them being subsidized by both urban customers and urban tax-payers.

I agree to an extent. Personally I believe that every town, village and hamlet should have FTTC, even if that requires a taxpayer subsidy. I believe those living further out in one off and ribbon developments should be allowed to pay for FTTH connections back to the nearest cabinet at their own expense, as is possible in the UK with openReach, or to be able to club together to sponsor additional FTTC cabinets closer to a group of properties. I have less of a problem with some sort of direct subsidy for initial installation of quality fixed wireless, with towers fed from the fibre backhaul that has been subsidised by general taxation, but the cost of running should be borne entirely by the users at the full economic cost.

MajesticDonkey

Its Only Ray Parlour wrote: »

Slow broadband isn't going to kill them and they put themsevles in this predicament, now they want the urban tax-payer to bail them out and if they don't, they'll logon to Boards.ie and present poorly-thought-out arguments about how they are entitled the high speed internet despite them being subsidized by both urban customers and urban tax-payers.

As you are with other things, thanks to rural people. Off the high horse please.