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

AlmightyCushion

bk wrote: »

WOW, more massive news today. Eircom Wholesale have released the specification details and wholesale pricing of their FTTH products:

http://www.eircomwholesale.ie/news/FTTH_Pricing/

Standalone FTTH Product (Mb/s) - Monthly rental
150/30 €20.50
300/50 €25.50
1000/100 €35.50


POTS based FTTH Product (Mb/s) - Monthly rental
150/30 €6.98
300/50 €11.98
1000/100 €21.98

Note these are the wholesale charges, excluding VAT, etc.

As a comparison VDSL is currently priced at €17.50 and currently increasing to €19.50 (thus the recent Vodafone/Eircom/Sky price increases).

The €19.50 charge leads to a retail price of between, €38 (vodafone VDSL only) to €55 (Eircom including calls etc.).

So 150/30 FTTH should only be about €2 more expensive then their VDSL counterparts, while 1000/100 will have at least a €20 premium.

Also note, that there is a €150 install charge for the ONT, so expect a big up front install fee.

Eircom have said they are already started working on rolling it out to the first 16 of 66 towns and that it should go live around August. More here:

http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/eircom-to-launch-new-pure-broadband-with-speeds-of-up-to-1000mbs-31027344.html

A €20 premium on top of what Vodafone charge for VDSL is about €60. That's a great price for 1000 down, 100 up. Obviously, end user pricing is still up in the air but hopefully it's close to that.

bk

Great to see FTTH finally being widely rolled out in Ireland. And surprisingly by Eircom! ESB/Vodafone better get their finger out or it will be too late for them!

Hopefully ESB/Vodafone were just waiting for Eircoms pricing and they will now announce their own.

I think Eircom should have tiered their products slightly different, to better compete with UPC:

- 300/30
- 500/50
- 1000/100

would be more competitive IMO. They might actually start winning some people back from UPC with products like that!

I think the upload speeds are a little disappointing for an almost symmetric, FTTH product, specially at the 1000.

Also I'm surprised they haven't announced a VoIP service over the FTTH only product and seem to also be pushing a copper line in parallel with the FTTH line! Seems unnecessary, though I assume it is for regulatory reasons. Would be handy for those stuck with fax machines, monitored alarms, etc.

UPC better be careful here, while UPC still looks more competitive at the moment for the vast majority of people. They won't want to get left behind on speeds. They will need either DOCSIS 3.1 or DOCSIS 3.0 modems with more bandwidth. Better wifi gear, better DVR/TV experience and they need to become a quad play provider by launching their own mobile service.

Very interesting times ahead

EDIT: ED E in before me there again about the POTS line, I totally agree.

bk

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

A €20 premium on top of what Vodafone charge for VDSL is about €60. That's a great price for 1000 down, 100 up. Obviously, end user pricing is still up in the air but hopefully it's close to that.

Maybe, though I'd expect closer to €70 to be more realistic. Still very good for so much speed. But I do wonder how many people actually need those speeds.

Also BTW while I mentioned the high ONT install charge, I don't see any information if that includes the cost of running the fiber to the home or not! Obviously that could make a big difference to install charges.

Either way, I certainly wouldn't be expecting any free installs.

ElNino

Very interesting news. Have eircom revealed what the first 16 towns are going to be? I am specifically wondering about Ennis.

PeadarB

ED E wrote: »

As the POTS option is cheaper and requires a double drop I think we can assume they're separate charges. That means its 2x the cost to maintain PSTN services, roll on VOIP!

31st August 2015 pricing date (TBC) would indicate availability from soon after that date.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QvVXFdKHY5Y

Geoff Shakespeare seems to be indicating FTTDp as the preferred choice here - in essence this is my transcript of what he was saying from 4.30 on in the clip was - "When we built the original NGA what we were doing with the cabinet based stuff, actually we dropped 24 fibres at every cabinet, even though we only needed 4. The reason we did that was so we could, when the time was right, we could pick those fibres up and bring them out in a GPON configuration. And a GPON configuration basically lets us take one fibre strand and split it into 32 and bring it out to peoples homes. So effectively those 20 spare fibres in a cabinet, you know, let us connect a couple of hundred more homes with GPON. So what we are looking at doing, we'll use a technology called 10GPON, which means that those 32 fibres will be able to share dynamically 10 gig of capacity which moves things on dramatically. When we look at G.FAST, we've actually done a pilot on G.FAST, and effectively what we can see is that over a copper drop of between, you know, 30 and 100 metres we see about a Gb of capacity on a persons line, roughly speaking, the way we have the trial set up, 750 down 250 up. And, you know, and where we would like to go with G.FAST is that it would be reversed powered from the customers CP so we don't have the expense of trenching in ESB power. So effectively what we will do is we will take one of those strands of fibres, and if it's an area where we're not running G.PON in there we'll take that strand and run that strand into the G.FAST modem and serve 8 to 12 houses off of that G.FAST modem, bringing those kinds of speeds without having to interfere with the ingress point into the house, 'cause one of the issues when you run a fibre network is, if you've got to get into somebody's house and drill a brand new hole or dig a trench in a garden, which in urban areas, tends to be a bigger issue that in rural areas, then you're looking for a clever way of getting that bandwidth in, and taking the fibre to within 30 or 40 metres of the home, putting the electronics there at the top of a pole, and then driving that bandwidth into the home. That's a clever way of doing it, so that's the king of way we see ourselves using G.FAST. It's a very promising technology.

When you look at it, really, with the distances involved, the idea of, I mean, effectively copper based broadband technologies require the electronics to be closer to the home, so as I kind of described, you know, we put it out to the cabinet within a km of the home and we can serve the 200 customers connected to that cabinet. We put it to a pole within 30 meters of a home we can serve 8 customers off that pole but when you're in rural areas you're not going to get those aggregations of people easily. So really, when you look at it from a technology point of view, fibre is the solution to put it out there. and, what we're looking at is G.PON and we are being quite creative. Ireland is a reasonably unique location for how our build practices have been and we tend to do an awful lot of what we call ribbon and rural. In other words you have a crossroads with a pub and a church and a shop and then there's houses going out north south east and west, and it's a difficult environment to serve. So you have to be quite creative and it's reasonably unique, certainly in Europe as we look at the techniques, so we're spending a lot of time and money trying to understand what those build techniques would look like. We're building a pilot up in Belcarra up in County Mayo where we are testing a lot of these configurations out and thats all with a view to putting our best foot forward when the National Broadband Plan does come out".

They will be squeezing the bejayzus out of that last 20 to 30 meter pair but given that it's already in place the fibre blow to the new mini dslam on the pole should be relatively straight forward. As to a direct FTTH connection from the cab we'll soon see what the plan is, I hope.

godskitchen

If I have this correct in my head it will work as follows...

Eircom will run fibre from your building to your vdsl cabinet. Will there be a higher cost the father away you are and what will the limit be for fibre runs?

Does anyone know what the first 16 towns are?

EDIT:
Thought I would add that this is a great break through and it seems Eircom are serious about staying in the game. This will shoot Ireland up the league table for internet speed in just a few years.

bealtine

I suspect the vast bulk of these "fibre" installs will be G.Fast, that is fibre to the pole outside the house and the last few metres will be copper, but I could be wrong of course

ItHurtsWhenIP

bk wrote: »

Maybe, though I'd expect closer to €70 to be more realistic. Still very good for so much speed. But I do wonder how many people actually need those speeds.

Dude/Dudette - I'm paying €35 for 3/1 - I will very very happily pay €70 for 1000/100 ... funded by dropping Sky Sports of course

Gonzo

MMFITWGDV wrote: »

Dude/Dudette - I'm paying €35 for 3/1 - I will very very happily pay €70 for 1000/100 ... funded by dropping Sky Sports of course

I would love the extra speed seeing as im just into the 10meg mark but if i was given a choice of the 3 speed alternatives outlined by Eircom I would probably go for the 150/15... anything else is just to show off. I can do most things fine on 10meg, 4 or 5 people all using the internet together in the one home would probably work grand on 150meg... Unless everybody needs to be downloading 1080p movies 24/7 in every room in the house would 1000meg be needed! the only other reason would be for that 100meg upload if you were a business user and had to send large files fast every single day.

Mc Love

This is going to be a good year, hoping my area gets the ftth

rob808

Gonzo wrote: »

I would love the extra speed seeing as im just into the 10meg mark but if i was given a choice of the 3 speed alternatives outlined by Eircom I would probably go for the 150/15... anything else is just to show off. I can do most things fine on 10meg, 4 or 5 people all using the internet together in the one home would probably work grand on 150meg... Unless everybody needs to be downloading 1080p movies 24/7 in every room in the house would 1000meg be needed! the only other reason would be for that 100meg upload if you were a business user and had to send large files fast every single day.

I think your forgetting about 4k Tv they be the norm in a few years and most pc gamer have 4k monitors and wouldn't go back to 1080p.I think 100meg grand for now but your gonna need 1gb be happy if you can get it.Im in rural Ireland on DSL 4mb that a far cry from 100meg never mind 1gb.

Gonzo

rob808 wrote: »

I think your forgetting about 4k Tv they be the norm in a few years and most pc gamer have 4k monitors and wouldn't go back to 1080p.I think 100meg grand for now but your gonna need 1gb be happy if you can get it.Im in rural Ireland on DSL 4mb that a far cry from 100meg never mind 1gb.

dunno about 4K tv, it's years away from getting anywhere. normal HD is only starting to get going now after a few very slow years and the less said about 3DTV the better! Im sure 4K will be great but it's gonna be years before it's widespread and we won't see it in gaming consoles for at least 5 more years. Sure were still waiting for TV3 to go HD!

rob808

Gonzo wrote: »

dunno about 4K tv, it's years away from getting anywhere. normal HD is only starting to get going now after a few very slow years and the less said about 3DTV the better! Im sure 4K will be great but it's gonna be years before it's widespread and we won't see it in gaming consoles for at least 5 more years. Sure were still waiting for TV3 to go HD!

yea I know what you mean but I bet yea eircom and vodafone will launch a 4k tv channels through FTTH.It good the trail in mayo was a success it give me some hope of getting decent broadband if Eircom win the contract for NBP took me 20+ hours to download assassin creed unity on Xbox 41gp it probably take 1 min or less on 1gb.

Nolars

Gonzo wrote: »

dunno about 4K tv, it's years away from getting anywhere. normal HD is only starting to get going now after a few very slow years and the less said about 3DTV the better! Im sure 4K will be great but it's gonna be years before it's widespread and we won't see it in gaming consoles for at least 5 more years. Sure were still waiting for TV3 to go HD!

Nearly every high end device if be smartphones or cameras can shoot 4k now or even for the past year. Youtube supports 4k for a good while. Netflix is doing 4k. With more and more content being watched online and less on TV, TV isnt the norm anymore.

DoYouEvenLift

What's the point of this if they just send out warnings to their customers who download movies illegally? Let's be honest, the people who actually make use of speeds like this are torrenters.

rob808 wrote: »

yea I know what you mean but I bet yea eircom and vodafone will launch a 4k tv channels through FTTH.It good the trail in mayo was a success it give me some hope of getting decent broadband if Eircom win the contract for NBP took me 20+ hours to download assassin creed unity on Xbox 41gp it probably take 1 min or less on 1gb.

Not that it's a huge difference but it would take ~5 minutes, at least if you were getting the full 1Gb/125MB per second download speed.

Calibos

Gonzo wrote: »

I would love the extra speed seeing as im just into the 10meg mark but if i was given a choice of the 3 speed alternatives outlined by Eircom I would probably go for the 150/15... anything else is just to show off. I can do most things fine on 10meg, 4 or 5 people all using the internet together in the one home would probably work grand on 150meg... Unless everybody needs to be downloading 1080p movies 24/7 in every room in the house would 1000meg be needed! the only other reason would be for that 100meg upload if you were a business user and had to send large files fast every single day.

You're not wrong.

7 Adults in our household, all browsing, streaming, torrenting, youtubing, gaming and quite often all at the same time. 4 Desktops, 2 laptops, 2 tablets, 7 Smartphones and 6 XBMC HTPC's.

Our 120/12mb UPC connection never broke a sweat.

Just upgraded to the 245/25mb package the other day doubling our bandwidth even though the 120mb was plenty.

For the simple reason that this new package was the same price as what we were paying for the 120mb and it also came with free calls to mobiles which were costing us €5-€30 on our bill.

One of my brothers explained how its a trip down memory lane for him when he and his GF stay at her family home where they can only get 7/0.7mb. Just like my gamer brother 10 years ago, his GF's teenage gaming brother often pops his head in the door and frustratingly exclaims, "Is anyone downloading anything!?!?!" when his connection/ping goes to sh!t Ah, I remember those days!

mass_debater

DoYouEvenLift wrote: »

What's the point of this if they just send out warnings to their customers who download movies illegally? Let's be honest, the people who actually make use of speeds like this are torrenters.

Who? Wait, what?

murphaph

Fair play Eircom. Credit where it's due in apparently being quicker to market with FTTH despite "playing catch up" (if some of the posters here are to be believed) with ESB.

It isn't actually surprising of course. The FTTH is an extension of the existing VDSL network. For once a big Irish company future proofed something and it's paying off for them.

DoYouEvenLift

murphaph wrote: »

Fair play Eircom. Credit where it's due in apparently being quicker to market with FTTH despite "playing catch up" (if some of the posters here are to be believed) with ESB.

It isn't actually surprising of course. The FTTH is an extension of the existing VDSL network. For once a big Irish company future proofed something and it's paying off for them.

I'll still never be able to look past how little of an effort they made with improving their broadband standards before UPC came along with fibre. I'd love if there was a way to know how long it would've actually taken them to make such efforts if they hadn't competitors pressuring them, it's probably safe to assume we'd be nowhere near the standard we are at today without UPC so if any ISP deserves praise it's them. Hopefully if this all goes ahead soon and there's more investment in Ireland from large tech companies we'll be able to have better international recognition for the speed that our internet infrastructure has improved.

Praetorian

I would also love to know which towns are first. Personally I'd prefer gpon over gfast. Although I would also like to know what ping times are expected on eircoms gfast implementation.

It''s certainly all happening now. Direct fed vdsl, gfast, gpon, upc upgrades, and ftth.

rob808

Praetorian wrote: »

I would also love to know which towns are first. Personally I'd prefer gpon over gfast. Although I would also like to know what ping times are expected on eircoms gfast implementation.

It''s certainly all happening now. Direct fed vdsl, gfast, gpon, upc upgrades, and ftth.

They use G.fast in places were the lines are underground and are to hard to reach you can still get up to 1Gb with G.fast.

stefanovich

Calibos wrote: »

One of my brothers explained how its a trip down memory lane for him when he and his GF stay at her family home where they can only get 7/0.7mb. Just like my gamer brother 10 years ago, his GF's teenage gaming brother often pops his head in the door and frustratingly exclaims, "Is anyone downloading anything!?!?!" when his connection/ping goes to sh!t Ah, I remember those days!

10 years ago I was suffering with dial up getting 3kB/s max. Eircom line couldn't handle ASDL. Only other option was ISDN which was pricey.

Downloading something overnight or over the space of a few days. Some joker makes a phone call! Download managers were a godsend.

Finally I moved and got internet with Smart telecom. The difference was unbelievable. I think it was around 20Mb.

Rocking a 240/24 UPC connection now. I think my choice is always going to be the fastest available. Driven somewhat by earlier dialup related feelings of inadequacy.

bk

DoYouEvenLift wrote: »

I'll still never be able to look past how little of an effort they made with improving their broadband standards before UPC came along with fibre. I'd love if there was a way to know how long it would've actually taken them to make such efforts if they hadn't competitors pressuring them, it's probably safe to assume we'd be nowhere near the standard we are at today without UPC so if any ISP deserves praise it's them. Hopefully if this all goes ahead soon and there's more investment in Ireland from large tech companies we'll be able to have better international recognition for the speed that our internet infrastructure has improved.

Here, here, given Eircoms track record, had it not been for UPC, the rollout of VDSL would have been much slower (as in years slower) and I'm sure a lot more expensive, they would have charged it as a premium product.

This is why real competition is so important.

BTW yes, Ireland has already leapt up various international speed indexs, such at speednet, netflix, steam, etc. and it is definitely been noticed by the likes of Google who like to have the employees have the ability to work from home.

stefanovich wrote: »

Rocking a 240/24 UPC connection now. I think my choice is always going to be the fastest available. Driven somewhat by earlier dialup related feelings of inadequacy.

Haha, yes! I know exactly what you mean!! Eircom should be paying for therapy for us all

Having said that, if Eircom continues the way they have over the last two years, with the VDSL rollout, then I'll give them a big shout out and a pat on the back and say yes, they do seem to have changed their colours.

After all, the truth is there are many fantastic people working at Eircom, network planners, engineers of various types, middle managers at Eircom who are great people, who I'm sure where dying to give the people of Ireland fantastic broadband, but where for years held back and frustrated from doing so by upper management who were only interested in using Eircom as their own personal piggy bank and lining their own pockets. Now those upper management seem to be gone and that is better for all of us

murphaph

I think refusing to buy an Eircom product today would be akin to refusing to buy a VW because they did some very bad things under previous management! The old guard seem to be gone. I wish it were so here in Germany but Telekom seems to want to sweat every last drop out of their copper last mile and unfortunately Kabel Deutschland hasn't been as proactive as UPC in Ireland. Enjoy it! Great time to be Irish and interested in these things. I'd expect Ireland to top the list of (real) European countries (so excluding the likes of Monaco etc.) within 5 years if all these plans come to fruition. Only select Asian countries will be ahead of us at that stage too, if even them.

ED E

Gonzo wrote: »

dunno about 4K tv, it's years away from getting anywhere. normal HD is only starting to get going now after a few very slow years and the less said about 3DTV the better! Im sure 4K will be great but it's gonna be years before it's widespread and we won't see it in gaming consoles for at least 5 more years. Sure were still waiting for TV3 to go HD!

Conventional broadcast maybe, but youtube already do 4k, my phone is 2560x1440 and my new monitor will be same. When IPTV becomes the big player resolutions will scale much quicker as it won't depend on hardware decoders in STBs. A lot of stuff is already shot above 1080 but the current tv networks are primarily 720p (stoneage now tbh).

DoYouEvenLift

Can someone comment on my earlier post ITT as well? I left eircom because I received a warning, or two, about downloading copyright material. Haven't had any issues like that with Vodafone. Are eircom still doing that and other bullsh!t?

murphaph

ED E wrote: »

Conventional broadcast maybe, but youtube already do 4k, my phone is 2560x1440 and my new monitor will be same. When IPTV becomes the big player resolutions will scale much quicker as it won't depend on hardware decoders in STBs. A lot of stuff is already shot above 1080 but the current tv networks are primarily 720p (stoneage now tbh).

Broadcasting as we know it will seem very strange to our children's children. They'll wonder why we blasted random transmissions out to people who may or may not (mostly not) be interested in the content at all, when the obvious thing to do is allow people to watch what they want, when they want it.

For this to really work for multiple users in a property and in the new resolutions, it must be fibre. Copper was fine for voice, but it isn't fine for the future bandwidth needs we will all have.

hfallada

Its great to see that in Ireland, even though we so small. That cities will probably have choice of high speed broadband from either Eircom, UPC and possibly vodafone. In the US, cities generally have 1 internet provider who is super expensive and quite slow. Due to US cable companies agreeing not to compete in each others markets.

Hopefully there will be competition between internet providers and it puts an end to the constant price increases of UPC

MajesticDonkey

rob808 wrote: »

I think your forgetting about 4k Tv they be the norm in a few years and most pc gamer have 4k monitors and wouldn't go back to 1080p.I think 100meg grand for now but your gonna need 1gb be happy if you can get it.Im in rural Ireland on DSL 4mb that a far cry from 100meg never mind 1gb.

How many PC gamers do you know with 4k monitors!? I have a very high end gaming PC with two 1080p monitors. 4k monitors are still upwards of €500-600, don't forget. Very few people have one.

dxhound2005

DoYouEvenLift wrote: »

I'll still never be able to look past how little of an effort they made with improving their broadband standards before UPC came along with fibre. I'd love if there was a way to know how long it would've actually taken them to make such efforts if they hadn't competitors pressuring them, it's probably safe to assume we'd be nowhere near the standard we are at today without UPC so if any ISP deserves praise it's them. Hopefully if this all goes ahead soon and there's more investment in Ireland from large tech companies we'll be able to have better international recognition for the speed that our internet infrastructure has improved.

No sign of UPC in Dundalk or anywhere in counties Monaghan or Cavan. Nor probably in the majority of the 26 counties. Why are Eircom bringing fibre to every county if they are only reacting to UPC?

After dial up I had 512/128 k which has gradually gone up to 50/15 m and the price has come down substantially. All in the absence of any UPC option. It's just the progression of technology and if Eircom are going to be in the market why would they not use the latest and best systems?

If UPC are serious about competeing in the market they have to offer a nationwide product.