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

DoYouEvenLift

MajesticDonkey wrote: »

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.

This. If he said 1440p it'd probably hold true though.

dxhound2005 wrote: »

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.

Clearly missing my point. Eircom basically had a monopoly on broadband in a large part of the country for a time here and were laid back when it came to improving and innovating since, like any business, why upgrade and cut into your profits when you can hold off for as long as possible until you absolutely have to upgrade. This is understandable from a business point of view but from a customer point of view it's very bad. When UPC came along you do realise they couldn't just start work on such a network, right? Because eircom had most of the regions and that's basically why we saw UPC upgrading area by area over time, as they grew and paid for more expanding into more regions. Eircom seeing how successful UPC were getting and growing and basically the shameful comparisons in speeds obviously finally registered with them and they decided to get back in the game, and now are trying to get ahead of the game with genuine innovations such as this Gigabit network.


Even if UPC had decided to upgrade those areas you mentioned at first rather than the ones they actually happened to do the result would've eventually been the same.


Do you think UPC have stopped expanding upon their regions or something? You seem to think that they're not aiming to be able to offer a nationwide service lol, why would they not want more customers?

PeadarB

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.

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

Looks like Cavan Town, Kilkenny City and Letterkenny are in the first row for this. Past experience tells us that once eircom throw the ball in it could go anywhere between the 66 locations. The efibre rollout was phenominal and went very quickly with few glitches.

http://www.huawei.com/en/solutions/broader-smarter/hw-364940.htm

Huawei are at the forefront of G.Fast development and with the now experienced eircom and KN personnel, could provide these products on demand once the upgraded civils are in place.

mass_debater

DoYouEvenLift wrote: »

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?

It was only music, and only for people clueless enough to leave their public ip visible for all to see. Anyway they have stated that they never actually disconnected anyone. It was a money saving deal to avoid further court cases fighting a mafia with deep pockets

ThisRegard

murphaph wrote: »

Broadcasting as we know it will seem very strange to our children's children.

Actually to our children, never mind their children. I only had a similar discussion earlier with my wife while we were making dinner and I had the rugby playing on the laptop, and the kids had HD movies on demand in the living room via Chromecast and Netflix.

We were saying they don't know how lucky they have it. When we were their age a movie was to be anticipated weeks in advance and a whole family evening was based around it such was y he rarity of it.

Manc Red

When they say it's going to be rolled out in those towns, what do they mean? Do they mean to every house and business or only a select few? I cant imagine it taking less than a year to finish putting fibre into everyone's homes.

rob808

Manc Red wrote: »

When they say it's going to be rolled out in those towns, what do they mean? Do they mean to every house and business or only a select few? I cant imagine it taking less than a year to finish putting fibre into everyone's homes.

It take 6 months to complete first six towns,I think it done by demand you have to order it then they hook you up not sure on this doh.

stefanovich

Manc Red wrote: »

When they say it's going to be rolled out in those towns, what do they mean? Do they mean to every house and business or only a select few? I cant imagine it taking less than a year to finish putting fibre into everyone's homes.

"Customer connections will be provided as demand for this connectivity emerges."

Looks like they are just talking about putting the infrastructure in place. How do they gauge when there is demand? There is demand now I reckon!

rob808

stefanovich wrote: »

"Customer connections will be provided as demand for this connectivity emerges."

Looks like they are just talking about putting the infrastructure in place. How do they gauge when there is demand? There is demand now I reckon!

If it done that way then the other efibre location not on 66 town could get FFTH in the future which isn't bad if there enough demand of course.

DoYouEvenLift

Should they not do it like Google's Gigabit internet and make it available everywhere in the area and customers who want it from the start will get it and over time the rest can sign up and then it's just as simple as running the fibre from the nearby boxes into the new customers homes. A lot of people wouldn't sign up at the start but once they see it in use at their neighbours and friends places they'll want it. This way the entire areas are all future proofed and other ISPs will be playing catch up.


If they also did a similar package to Google and gave a one time charge package for a 10Mb connection it'd be good.

grbear

DoYouEvenLift wrote: »

Should they not do it like Google's Gigabit internet and make it available everywhere in the area and customers who want it from the start will get it and over time the rest can sign up and then it's just as simple as running the fibre from the nearby boxes into the new customers homes. A lot of people wouldn't sign up at the start but once they see it in use at their neighbours and friends places they'll want it. This way the entire areas are all future proofed and other ISPs will be playing catch up.


If they also did a similar package to Google and gave a one time charge package for a 10Mb connection it'd be good.

Eircom don't really have the ability to make money off selling ads so I can't see them offering a free package like that.



As someone who isn't in one of the 66 towns listed to get this and almost certainly won't be in whatever expanded list of towns comes next I'm still excited to see Eircom start offering connections like this to customers and I hope it does well for them.


That being said I'd still prefer to see the ESB get the contract to roll out the NBP and bring FTTH to everyone as I really don't want to give Eircom any of my money due to bad experiences with their idea of customer care in the past.

tv221

DoYouEvenLift wrote: »

This. If he said 1440p it'd probably hold true though.






Clearly missing my point. Eircom basically had a monopoly on broadband in a large part of the country for a time here and were laid back when it came to improving and innovating since, like any business, why upgrade and cut into your profits when you can hold off for as long as possible until you absolutely have to upgrade. This is understandable from a business point of view but from a customer point of view it's very bad. When UPC came along you do realise they couldn't just start work on such a network, right? Because eircom had most of the regions and that's basically why we saw UPC upgrading area by area over time, as they grew and paid for more expanding into more regions. Eircom seeing how successful UPC were getting and growing and basically the shameful comparisons in speeds obviously finally registered with them and they decided to get back in the game, and now are trying to get ahead of the game with genuine innovations such as this Gigabit network.


Even if UPC had decided to upgrade those areas you mentioned at first rather than the ones they actually happened to do the result would've eventually been the same.


Do you think UPC have stopped expanding upon their regions or something? You seem to think that they're not aiming to be able to offer a nationwide service lol, why would they not want more customers?

Yes UPC have stopped expanding. I can think of numerous area's with hundreds of houses within a few meters of existing network that don't cross busy roads or other such hindrances that have not be cabled as they can't be bothered. Didn't their CEO say they wouldn't look outside current footprint.

KOR101

tv221 wrote: »

Yes UPC have stopped expanding. I can think of numerous area's with hundreds of houses within a few meters of existing network that don't cross busy roads or other such hindrances that have not be cabled as they can't be bothered. Didn't their CEO say they wouldn't look outside current footprint.

That's my experience too. They are in the estate but only serve the apartment blocks in the estate. Terraced houses too, so would be easy to cable.

murphaph

tv221 wrote: »

Yes UPC have stopped expanding. I can think of numerous area's with hundreds of houses within a few meters of existing network that don't cross busy roads or other such hindrances that have not be cabled as they can't be bothered. Didn't their CEO say they wouldn't look outside current footprint.

Long term that's potentially a dangerous business model of course (expand or die etc.). It allows Eircom/ESB to just walk in to non-UPC estates and hook customers up to FTTH. Nobody will move backwards from FTTH to coax cable, so these customers will be extremely difficult to win over to UPC (and only then with FTTH as no matter how fast UPC can sweat their coax, the ESB or Eircom can just push their FTTH up to 11 and it will always be able to go to 11)

Eircom and the ESB will gradually go around rolling out FTTH avoiding UPC but in a few years they will run out of "alternative areas" and will start targeting UPC areas with FTTH (if UPC haven't already upgraded to FTTH themselves, but of course they have the best copper network that has far more bandwidth than a phone line so they are naturally going to be the least inclined to push FTTH the last bit. Maybe the'll look at a coax equivalent of G.Fast, which would allow them to replace the coax running along the fascia board or outside in the duct to be replaced with fibre and the last 10 feet with (what is a very high bandwidth) coax cable.

Hugely interesting times ahead.

ED E

If UPC stick with a DOCSIS3.1 layout their outgoings will be very low in comparison to the other players paying hundreds of thousands of man hours, they could easily undercut FTTH for several years and be the best value option for those who only need 600 or 800Mbps.

Avada

ED E wrote: »

If UPC stick with a DOCSIS3.1 layout their outgoings will be very low in comparison to the other players paying hundreds of thousands of man hours, they could easily undercut FTTH for several years and be the best value option for those who only need 600 or 800Mbps.

They'll need to seriously improve their routers! I'm using the ubee one at the moment. Things are bad when the Sky Hub 1.0 was better. A discussion for another thread though probably

dxhound2005

DoYouEvenLift wrote: »

Clearly missing my point. Eircom basically had a monopoly on broadband in a large part of the country for a time here and were laid back when it came to improving and innovating since, like any business, why upgrade and cut into your profits when you can hold off for as long as possible until you absolutely have to upgrade. This is understandable from a business point of view but from a customer point of view it's very bad. When UPC came along you do realise they couldn't just start work on such a network, right? Because eircom had most of the regions and that's basically why we saw UPC upgrading area by area over time, as they grew and paid for more expanding into more regions. Eircom seeing how successful UPC were getting and growing and basically the shameful comparisons in speeds obviously finally registered with them and they decided to get back in the game, and now are trying to get ahead of the game with genuine innovations such as this Gigabit network.


Even if UPC had decided to upgrade those areas you mentioned at first rather than the ones they actually happened to do the result would've eventually been the same.


Do you think UPC have stopped expanding upon their regions or something? You seem to think that they're not aiming to be able to offer a nationwide service lol, why would they not want more customers?

I'm sorry if you think I missed the point and that it is amusing for you. My question was what was the motivation for Eircom to continue upgrading the service available to me and hundreds of thousands of others who never got any offer from UPC. UPC didn't just happen to go into certain areas and ignore others. They did that deliberately.

Judging on their record to date there does not seem to be any evidence that UPC want to expand much further geographically. And unlike Eircom which has published detailed plans for the whole country, there is nothing like that from UPC. Unless you know different. When are they going into Co Donegal for instance?

ED E

UPC are in it to make money. Rural BB != profit. They're sitting pretty on a nice setup and raking in the cash.

Eircom is the USO. It has to provide phonelines(and dialup). It may as well sell BB on top of that while its there as its still got to maintain exchanges and service crews.

PixelTrawler

Bad idea for UPC to sit still though. The ds-lite nonsense may push some customers away. Sitting still trying to hold onto market share doesnt sound great.

Moving customer support out of Ireland may not be wise (could be a disaster and have to be brought back at huge cost - has happened other companies).

If eircom rolled out FTTH to suburban parts of dublin (I'm in D15) I'd move in a heartbeat.

The indo reported 2 weeks ago, UPC lost 14000 customers.

By the the way is it a case that its Dublin that will now be left behind in speeds?
http://pressroom.eircom.net/images/uploads/eircom%20FTTH%20Map.pdf
When you look at the maps here and the plans of ESB/Vodafone, it would appear so - I presume we'll be looking to UPC to turn up the dial

murphaph

Initially Dublin seems set to be left behind but (speaking as a Dub) I don't think that's a bad thing for the country. Speeds in Dublin are already generally very good and compare extremely favourably with our neighbours in Europe, largely thanks to UPC but Eircom have really filled a lot of the gaps and VDSL is very effective in urban and suburban areas.

Of course Dublin long term will get FTTH as well...the market is too big to ignore and as speeds move up and up I would expect the non-UPC areas in Dublin to be targeted by either Eircom or the ESB or both for FTTH, with a gradual targeting of UPC areas if UPC haven't themselves moved on from the current state of the art. The reality is that right now even several parallel 4k streams would be nothing to a UPC customer on a 240Mb connection (9 simultaneous 4k streams would be possible on 240Mb, so Dublin is mostly fine for several more years before it will "need" FTTH, so why not get FTTH rolled out to other parts now as they actually need something better than they currently have and once FTTH is done, it's pretty much infinitely up-gradable...the fibre simply has almost no attenuation to worry about and critically causes nor is subject to electromagnetic interference, so speeds can probably be pushed way way higher than 1Gb by upgrading the terminal equipment as new technologies become available.

KeRbDoG

Did Eircom release any details on how they play to run FTTH? I would throw a guess that they will only be running FTTH in estates/built-up-areas and rural folks will miss out but would like to see details if they exist

rob808

KeRbDoG wrote: »

Did Eircom release any details on how they play to run FTTH? I would throw a guess that they will only be running FTTH in estates/built-up-areas and rural folks will miss out but would like to see details if they exist

Well rural areas will miss out sadly we have to wait until the second half of 2016 for NBP first areas to be fibre enable.The question is who will win the contract it either be one bidder or two.it could go ESB/Vodafone or maybe Eircom/ESB the second one would be strange as long as no wireless company win it cough 3.

KeRbDoG

rob808 wrote: »

Well rural areas will miss out sadly we have to wait until the second half of 2016 for NBP first areas to be fibre enable.The question is who will win the contract it either be one bidder or two.it could go ESB/Vodafone or maybe Eircom/ESB the second one would be strange as long as no wireless company win it cough 3.

There are already rural areas which have FTTC so I would be referring to those locations, asking how they plan to (if they even do) do the FTTH runs in rural areas.

rob808

KeRbDoG wrote: »

There are already rural areas which have FTTC so I would be referring to those locations, asking how they plan to (if they even do) do the FTTH runs in rural areas.

I was talking about red ribbon rural areas because most rural towns will get FTTC but Eircom could do FTTH In any place it has FTTC.They will replace the copper with Fibre but gonna take years and alot of money so there gona have to be big demand for higher speed broadband.They would do it over the poles in rural locations they did in belcarra Mayo I look at it on google earth it barely a town.

KeRbDoG

rob808 wrote: »

I was talking about red ribbon rural areas because most rural towns will get FTTC but Eircom could do FTTH In any place it has FTTC.They will replace the copper with Fibre but gonna take years and alot of money so there gona have to be big demand for higher speed broadband.They would do it over the poles in rural locations they did in belcarra Mayo I look at it on google earth it barely a town.

Good stuff - and linky for others to see an overview type video of the installation

Don't think they would be replacing the copper already ran, but looking forward to this in 2016

rob808

KeRbDoG wrote: »

Good stuff - and linky for others to see an overview type video of the installation

Don't think they would be replacing the copper already ran, but looking forward to this in 2016

There gona do more trails in different locations but there no info as of were so some luck rural location will get FTTH.I love if was were I lived .They do because you see them running the fibre and putting on the poles in the video but if copper buried underground into the house they could use G.fast.

MajesticDonkey

KeRbDoG wrote: »

Don't think they would be replacing the copper already ran, but looking forward to this in 2016

Look at the NBP thread. All the big telcos have said FTTH is the only solution for rural Ireland, so that's what they'll probably roll out should they win the contract.

bk

hfallada wrote: »

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

Err... UPC has been reducing their prices and are by far the cheapest.

Just two months ago they reduced their prices as so:

- 120Mb from €44 to €40
- 200Mb, increased to 240Mb + unlimited mobile calls from €55 to €45, really incredible value for money.

The prices they have been increasing is TV services. But that is mostly driven by wholesale prices increases from TV channel companies like Sky and is largely outside of UPC's control.

tv221 wrote: »

Yes UPC have stopped expanding. I can think of numerous area's with hundreds of houses within a few meters of existing network that don't cross busy roads or other such hindrances that have not be cabled as they can't be bothered. Didn't their CEO say they wouldn't look outside current footprint.

So far they aren't expanding outside their current footprint. However they are doing infill within their footprint. For instance just one year ago, my own apartment building was retrofitted with UPC.

However it should be noted that two weeks ago, UPC Irelands parent company, Virgin Media announced a massive expansion in the UK. They are going to spend £3 Billion to expand out to 5 million new homes. So the same could happen here too.

I'd say it will depend on the ESB/Vodafones FTTH plans. If the ESB goes ahead with their rollout, targeting non-UPC urban areas, then there would be little point with UPC expanding into these areas, trying to compete with both ESB FTTH and Eircom FTTC/FTTH.

You don't seem to understand the history behind UPC's entry into the Irish market and the reasons for doing what they did, which actually make a great deal of business and financial sense.

When UPC bought NTL Ireland and Chorus, they found that the existing cable network was in bits. Much of it was built in the 70's and could barely handle digital TV services, never mind high speed broadband. Their first property was to completely rip up and replace this entire network, yes even the coax cables to every home, with a modern hybrid fiber coax network.

The reason this made sense, was that it would allow them to deliver a better TV experience to their existing customers and thus retain them in the face of strong new competition from Sky and then upsell these customers on lovely high speed broadband. It is much easier to up sell to existing customers that you already have a relationship with (billing, etc.) then try and win completely new customers.

This upgrade work is still ongoing, it only makes sense for UPC to start thinking about expanding into new areas, once this work is complete.

Also you seem to be making a mistake in thinking that Eircom are expanding FTTH into rural areas. They aren't.

What they are planning to do is expand FTTH into high density towns around Ireland. If you live a few km outside of these towns, then no, you won't be getting FTTH, either from Eircom or ESB/Vodafone.

It simply doesn't make economic sense for any commercial company, Eircom, ESB or UPC to expand into low density rural areas.

These areas will require subsidies to make it happen, which will hopefully come as part of the NBP.

murphaph wrote: »

Long term that's potentially a dangerous business model of course (expand or die etc.). It allows Eircom/ESB to just walk in to non-UPC estates and hook customers up to FTTH. Nobody will move backwards from FTTH to coax cable, so these customers will be extremely difficult to win over to UPC (and only then with FTTH as no matter how fast UPC can sweat their coax, the ESB or Eircom can just push their FTTH up to 11 and it will always be able to go to 11)

Eircom and the ESB will gradually go around rolling out FTTH avoiding UPC but in a few years they will run out of "alternative areas" and will start targeting UPC areas with FTTH (if UPC haven't already upgraded to FTTH themselves, but of course they have the best copper network that has far more bandwidth than a phone line so they are naturally going to be the least inclined to push FTTH the last bit. Maybe the'll look at a coax equivalent of G.Fast, which would allow them to replace the coax running along the fascia board or outside in the duct to be replaced with fibre and the last 10 feet with (what is a very high bandwidth) coax cable.

Hugely interesting times ahead.

It many ways UPC's existing Hybrid Fiber Coax (HFC) network is already like G.Fast. UPC's HFC network brings fiber much closer to peoples homes then Eircoms FTTC cabinets generally do.

With the high quality coax network and DOCSIS 3.1, UPC will easily be able to hit 1Gb/s on their existing network.

And they will able to do this without an expensive FTTH rollout. I believe that UPC's game plan will involve bringing up to 1Gb/s speeds to people for about €10 to €20 per month cheaper then FTTH and without the high install charge of FTTH. That should be more then good enough for most people and should keep them very competitive versus FTTH.

If UPC were to do what you suggest and bring fiber within 10 meters of peoples homes, they could hit 10Gb/s over the existing coax!

Though I don't expect they will do that. If you bring the fiber within 10 meters of the house, then you might as well go all the way and run it right into the house, specially given the way UPC strings coax cable from house to house along the eaves. They can easily do the same with FTTH.

Also Eircom opening up their ducts could really help UPC with this.

This is why the ESB are largely avoiding UPC areas, UPC are very well placed to fend off any competition. Though I do expect Eircom will target these UPC areas with FTTH to stem the flow of customers to UPC and maybe even win some back.

Random_Name wrote: »

They'll need to seriously improve their routers! I'm using the ubee one at the moment. Things are bad when the Sky Hub 1.0 was better. A discussion for another thread though probably

Agreed, UPC CPE (Customer Premises Equipment), both broadband and TV, is very poor, which is surprising given how good their network is and that is the hard part!

However their is hope, UPC Ireland is now part of Virgin Media and VM have by far the best CPE gear of any ISP. Their broadband routers are superb, dual radio, dual band models with excellent wireless performance and full support for bridging. They even have a new 802.11ac model in testing at the moment!

On the TV side they use the superb and highly regarded TiVo box. Both their broadband routers and TiVo box are considered by far the best in the UK market.

Hopefully this partnership will have a positive effect on UPC Ireland's CPE.

dxhound2005 wrote: »

I'm sorry if you think I missed the point and that it is amusing for you. My question was what was the motivation for Eircom to continue upgrading the service available to me and hundreds of thousands of others who never got any offer from UPC.

The point of Eircom upgrading their network is largely a defensive one. If they upgrade the network where they have a monopoly and they lock people into new 18 month contracts and people are happy with these new FTTC/FTTH services, then is makes it much less likely that UPC or ESB will decide to expand into these areas and steal 50% of Eircoms customers like they have done in areas where UPC operate.

In particular it was the ESB's announcement that they were going to rollout FTTH into urban non-UPC areas over the next 3 years, that seems to have spurred Eircom into action, rolling out FTTC/H as a defensive move in these areas.

dxhound2005 wrote: »

When are they going into Co Donegal for instance?

No one is, including Eircom! It just isn't economic for any commercial company, including Eircom to rollout new services in very low density areas.

It will take government subsidies as part of the National Broadband Plan to get such places done.

PixelTrawler wrote: »

Bad idea for UPC to sit still though.

When you look at the maps here and the plans of ESB/Vodafone, it would appear so - I presume we'll be looking to UPC to turn up the dial

Yup, UPC already have, offering 240Mb/s for very competitive prices. And I fully expect them to go even higher with DOCSIS 3.1.

In fact, as exciting as all this FTTH talk is, I expect UPC will deliver >500Mb/s much quicker and two more people in Ireland quicker then either ESB or Eircom will do with their FTTH rollouts.

That isn't to criticise Eircom/ESB, their FTTH rollouts are very important, as it will bring 1Gb/s speeds to the rest of Ireland who can't get UPC. But don't underestimate UPC's abilities. They are the ones who have been pushing broadband speeds up in Ireland over the last 10 years and I don't expect that to stop or change.

bk

Interesting point made in this article about G.Fast:

http://www.huawei.com/en/solutions/broader-smarter/hw-364940.htm

Total G.fast bandwidth is over 1 Gbit/s, which is the sum of upstream and downstream bandwidth.

.....

With G.fast, the upstream/downstream bandwidth ratio can be flexibly set to a value between 1:9 and 1:1 (for example, 900M downstream and 100M upstream; or 500M downstream and 500M upstream).

By comparison with real FTTH, a speed of 1000M down, 1000M up, simultaneously is possible. A definite disadvantage of G.Fast.

rob808

Well it true no rural area will get FTTH only with NBP and in areas were they have FTTC they can do FTTH at anytime.The thing is FTTC will do small towns for a good while even in towns on NBP will most likely be FTTC.

rob808

bk wrote: »

Interesting point made in this article about G.Fast:

http://www.huawei.com/en/solutions/broader-smarter/hw-364940.htm



By comparison with real FTTH, a speed of 1000M down, 1000M up, simultaneously is possible. A definite disadvantage of G.Fast.

There developing 5GBB which is the next up of G.fast but won't be seen until 2020 it can give up to 5GB it on that website.