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

KOR101

Deagol wrote: »

Wouldn't get too excited, it seems in other towns that it's a very limited rollout. Unless your in a housing estate built in the last 10(?) years and next to a cabinet, I very much doubt you'll get it.

New estate. Cabinet in estate. Close to cabinet. All good.

ED E

Nice one KOR, but can you add an "m" in that URL before .jpg, its bloody massive

Praetorian

Thanks Kor,

assuming the advert isn't a mistake or just being advertised too early. I would love to know where 1000m/bit is actually available. I've tried around 30 addresses now, most in likely spots I would have thought should be covered but no joy.

Praetorian

I spoke to sales and they don't know where it's available either. Really why spend good money on advertising a product that may* pass apparently 320 homes. Also not inform your own sales staff or systems. Frustrating.

LFCFan

Eir may tell you your 'Area' has Extreme Fibre but that means SFA. I got an email back in October telling me Fibre Extreme was available in my 'Area' and 6 months later it still isn't. 'Area' to me means my immediate area, i.e. my estate or road. 'Area' to Eir means an entire town where maybe 1 estate is enabled in total but will try to claim to entire town is enabled. A load of guff

Gonzo

agreed thats really bs if they claim a whole town is enabled yet it might only be 1 street/few houses in reality.

Balbriggan is listed as 1 of 17 towns as 'live' on the eir extreme checker webpage.

Johnboy1951

LFCFan wrote: »

Eir may tell you your 'Area' has Extreme Fibre but that means SFA. I got an email back in October telling me Fibre Extreme was available in my 'Area' and 6 months later it still isn't. 'Area' to me means my immediate area, i.e. my estate or road. 'Area' to Eir means an entire town where maybe 1 estate is enabled in total but will try to claim to entire town is enabled. A load of guff

I would think 'area' in eir parlance would be the area serviced by an exchange ---- the exchange from which the fibre is fed out.

So if the exchange provides FTTH to any recipients then the exchange area has Fibre Extreme ........ just not to all parts of the area.

One comes to expect such fudging from commercial organisations (and politicians )

LFCFan

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

I would think 'area' in eir parlance would be the area serviced by an exchange ---- the exchange from which the fibre is fed out.

So if the exchange provides FTTH to any recipients then the exchange area has Fibre Extreme ........ just not to all parts of the area.

One comes to expect such fudging from commercial organisations (and politicians )

I agree but it's beyond cheeky to send an email to someone to tell them it's available now and to click on a link to go order. If it was a case of being a few weeks away I'd forgive them but when it's 6 months later and still nothing, that's just wrong

mcquaim

Hi folks,

I got and email from Pure today to say FTTH is available to my house in Monaghan.

I'm currently on their 90MB FTTC package for €47 pm.

The FTTH packages are as follows:

150MB for €65 pm.
300MB for €75 pm.
1000MB for €85 pm.

All their packages include unlimited calls and data.

I'm wondering if it's worth it, would I notice much difference from what I currently have?

Cheers,
mcquaim

Praetorian

Kor101,

So a buddy of mine has confirmed that FTTH is actually now available in some large areas in Balrothery. That work is complete, I've also confirmed this by checking on Eir's line checker.

Balrothery is of course, NOT Balbriggan

KOR101

Praetorian wrote: »

Kor101,

So a buddy of mine has confirmed that FTTH is actually now available in some large areas in Balrothery. That work is complete, I've also confirmed this by checking on Eir's line checker.

Balrothery is of course, NOT Balbriggan

Thanks for the detective work. I assume Balrothery already had FTTC. There must be a reason they started there.

Praetorian

KOR101 wrote: »

Thanks for the detective work. I assume Balrothery already had FTTC. There must be a reason they started there.

It does yes, at least 3 cab's if my memory is right. So it's possible these estates now covered by ftth, did not have fttc. I'll try and find that out.

edit. I'm 90% sure one of them had a cab already, now I can't be sure the cab right out side that estate served it...but it would seem logical. What that means I don't know. Are they going to blow the practically from the cab?

ItHurtsWhenIP

mcquaim wrote: »

Hi folks,

I got and email from Pure today to say FTTH is available to my house in Monaghan.

I'm currently on their 90MB FTTC package for €47 pm.

The FTTH packages are as follows:

150MB for €65 pm.
300MB for €75 pm.
1000MB for €85 pm.

All their packages include unlimited calls and data.

I'm wondering if it's worth it, would I notice much difference from what I currently have?

Cheers,
mcquaim

I suppose it depends on how much you use the FTTC? Do you find it slowing down at times? Is there much buffering? Or does it go along blisteringly fast all of time?

If the latter, then the only real difference would be on the upstream speed. The 150Mbps package has a 30Mbps upstream, whereas you're probably on 20Mbps at the moment. So if you use "the cloud" a lot, synchronise lots of data with on-line storage or transfer lots of data to other sites then the increased upstream speed should benefit you.

The 300Mbps package has 50Mbps up and the 1,000Mbps package has 100Mbps up.

KOR101

Praetorian wrote: »

It does yes, at least 3 cab's if my memory is right. So it's possible these estates now covered by ftth, did not have fttc. I'll try and find that out.

edit. I'm 90% sure one of them had a cab already, now I can't be sure the cab right out side that estate served it...but it would seem logical. What that means I don't know. Are they going to blow the practically from the cab?

Are SIRO starting with outlying areas first?

mcquaim

MMFITWGDV wrote: »

I suppose it depends on how much you use the FTTC? Do you find it slowing down at times? Is there much buffering? Or does it go along blisteringly fast all of time?

If the latter, then the only real difference would be on the upstream speed. The 150Mbps package has a 30Mbps upstream, whereas you're probably on 20Mbps at the moment. So if you use "the cloud" a lot, synchronise lots of data with on-line storage or transfer lots of data to other sites then the increased upstream speed should benefit you.

The 300Mbps package has 50Mbps up and the 1,000Mbps package has 100Mbps up.

Well, I work from home as an IT developer so I'm constantly online. To be fair I haven't noticed much slowdown with Pure FTTC.

I connect to the head office via Cisco AnyConnect VPN. I think the slowdown is actually the limitations in the head office as I never actually get near the up or down speeds I have available on FTTC currently.

I upload a good bit of photos to the cloud but nothing major that my current 20Mbps isn't handling fine!

I also stream a good bit online but again it doesn't suffer slowdown so much and with online gaming it's currently working fine too.

I think I've answered it myself, currently I don't think I have the need for more than what I have.

As nice as FTTH sounds it probably isn't worth it currently to jump from 100Mbps to 1000Mbps.

If I was only getting 5-6Mbps then I'd be signing up straight away..

Thanks a mill.

Gonzo

KOR101 wrote: »

Are SIRO starting with outlying areas first?

I dont think they are, to date they are only available/planning in urban areas of more than 4,000 residents. A complete contrast to Eir's FTTH rollout.

KOR101

Gonzo wrote: »

I dont think they are, to date they are only available/planning in urban areas of more than 4,000 residents. A complete contrast to Eir's FTTH rollout.

This is the town thread. I meant outlying areas of the towns they've started in. That might explain why EIR would start in Balrothery.

ED E

I haven't analyzed it but the ideal target for OpenEir is medium density areas just around VDSL areas. Not economical for copper but still ok periods to recoup investments. The crappy one house every 800m of road areas can be paid for by the NBP.

pegasus1

KOR101 wrote: »

This is the town thread.

This is the Eir Thread!

seaniefr

ED E wrote: »

I haven't analyzed it but the ideal target for OpenEir is medium density areas just around VDSL areas. Not economical for copper but still ok periods to recoup investments. The crappy one house every 800m of road areas can be paid for by the NBP.

Would any of you know if there is a case to be made where there are say 35 houses within a 1 km cluster within 500m of where the blue line stops?
We have this case in our area it seems that it was not analysed thoroughly as they are covering areas with less housing density on the route from the VDSL cab. Is there any way of making a business case on this?

ED E

seaniefr wrote: »

Would any of you know if there is a case to be made where there are say 35 houses within a 1 km cluster within 500m of where the blue line stops?
We have this case in our area it seems that it was not analysed thoroughly as they are covering areas with less housing density on the route from the VDSL cab. Is there any way of making a business case on this?

OpenEir have set realistic targets of 100 and 300k, this has probably meant there are many clusters like yours that could be viable but that their access development guys have had to skip for now purely because of the limits in how much they can afford to deploy right now.

The eircom group has historically ignored requests from the community but the odd time has listened to TDs. There's a high chance you're NBP eligible so while the timeline is now longer than it was a week ago it weakens your argument that you need the rollout extended.

KOR101

Praetorian wrote: »

I spoke to sales and they don't know where it's available either. Really why spend good money on advertising a product that may* pass apparently 320 homes. Also not inform your own sales staff or systems. Frustrating.

Another ad now outside the SPAR.

When you say 320 homes, that's the 'blue lines' rural 100,000 home scheme. Why could it not be the 66 town scheme?

Praetorian

KOR101 wrote: »

Another ad now outside the SPAR.

When you say 320 homes, that's the 'blue lines' rural 100,000 home scheme. Why could it not be the 66 town scheme?

I've found no evidence of actual availability in "Balbriggan" yet. So if the adverts are counting Balrothery as Balbriggan then yes we certainly found quite a lot of the 320. The Eir website lists Balbriggan and Balrothery separately so without further evidence it's hard to see what's going on. If I find out more I'll post here. I don't know if the current lot is the "rural" or "town".

There would be some great candidate estates in central Balbriggan for FTTH as they are currently very poorly served by FTTC. (download rates between 20-25 and that's after pleading to get bumps on the initial offering).

Gonzo

Praetorian wrote: »

I've found no evidence of actual availability in "Balbriggan" yet. So if the adverts are counting Balrothery as Balbriggan then yes we certainly found quite a lot of the 320. The Eir website lists Balbriggan and Balrothery separately so without further evidence it's hard to see what's going on. If I find out more I'll post here. I don't know if the current lot is the "rural" or "town".

There would be some great candidate estates in central Balbriggan for FTTH as they are currently very poorly served by FTTC. (download rates between 20-25 and that's after pleading to get bumps on the initial offering).

I would say its the town ftth and not the rural ftth, the blue line scheme has only had preparation work carried out so far such as ducting/pole checking and tree/hedge trimming.

The fibrerollout map claims that 750 homes can access 1000meg FTTH in Balbriggan since 19 March 2016, that would definitely be the 66 towns scheme.

KOR101

Praetorian wrote: »

I've found no evidence of actual availability in "Balbriggan" yet. So if the adverts are counting Balrothery as Balbriggan then yes we certainly found quite a lot of the 320. The Eir website lists Balbriggan and Balrothery separately so without further evidence it's hard to see what's going on. If I find out more I'll post here. I don't know if the current lot is the "rural" or "town".

There would be some great candidate estates in central Balbriggan for FTTH as they are currently very poorly served by FTTC. (download rates between 20-25 and that's after pleading to get bumps on the initial offering).

Saw another ad in the Fingal Independent as well.

This is what the map says....



Also, it's definitely the town scheme. It's listed at the very bottom of this page...

https://www.eir.ie/extreme/

ED E

Praetorian wrote: »

There would be some great candidate estates in central Balbriggan for FTTH as they are currently very poorly served by FTTC. (download rates between 20-25 and that's after pleading to get bumps on the initial offering).

From an end users perspective yes, commercially its a small incentive as you know.

I remember Balbriggan was one of the very first ones to be mentioned after the testing phase but 750 is a pretty small footprint.

KOR101

The mystery is where the hell the houses are. I've just checked a couple of dozen estates and no luck.

Praetorian

Ed e you are right of course about the commercial decision, I think it would be ethically fair for Eir to realise the balls they made of some of the estates however and rectify it with FTTH. 18 m/bit to 25 in large estates is not a good modern connection. They could have put a cab or two more in the right places alternatively. It's more the fact we don't believe the figures. Balbriggan is quite a big town, but between a few of us on here we've checked all over it and found no availability at all. Balrothery yes. A lot of availability. It's not Balbriggan even though Eir on one site count it as Balbriggan, and on their own checker list it separately. There is no availability off the blue lines, so it would be just nice to know where those 750 houses allegedly are.

ED E

OpenEir still operate somewhat on the previous P&T districts, would Balrothery have been part of the Balbriggan district perhaps?

Praetorian

Totally would have been served off the Balbriggan exchange alright. Have actually found my first house with FTTH Eir availability. Exactly where I did not think i would find it. Right in a UPC area, no where near one of the blue lines. That is interesting.

Balbriggan lads, if you want to drop me a pm, I can share a google doc with areas I've confirmed have / have not FTTH in the Balbriggan / Balrothery area. If you like to contribute we can maybe map the town fairly quickly

thanks