Eir to replace copper with fibre in urban areas

Tigerandahalf

https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/news/eir-signals-end-of-copper-landline-in-ireland-with-1bn-fibre-line-plan-37281247.html

I am not sure if this was mentioned elsewhere.
How would copper going into various premises be replaced given that much of it would be going through internal channels not easily accessed?
Left there with fibre run whereever?

tsue921i8wljb3

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/news/eir-signals-end-of-copper-landline-in-ireland-with-1bn-fibre-line-plan-37281247.html

I am not sure if this was mentioned elsewhere.
How would copper going into various premises be replaced given that much of it would be going through internal channels not easily accessed?
Left there with fibre run whereever?

People are getting way ahead of themselves. There is no way copper will be gone in five years. What's likely us they enable high density urban areas for FTTH then sell it like they have done in rural areas.

As you say the path to the premises is going to be the issue. Ducting, if it is there at all, may have collapsed or be blocked. Siro have run into these issues and have resorted to tacking the cables to the facades of buildings.

Tigerandahalf

Jett Agreeable Suburb wrote: »

People are getting way ahead of themselves. There is no way copper will be gone in five years. What's likely us they enable high density urban areas for FTTH then sell it like they have done in rural areas.

As you say the path to the premises is going to be the issue. Ducting, if it is there at all, may have collapsed or be blocked. Siro have run into these issues and have resorted to tacking the cables to the facades of buildings.

There is definitely a big market there in urban areas for eir to tackle - a lot of apartment blocks and high density estates that would want access to ffth. I do think you could see it being run across the facade of houses and apartment blocks. I presume there is no obligation for them to put it through ducting.

Whose property are Virgin using when expanding into new urban areas. They seem to dig up the side of streets and paths to lay their fibre. Is that council/esb/openeir property?

EdgeCase

It's relatively straight forward wiring. They already laid loads of fibre to all the FTTC cabinets and they've plenty of physical exchange buildings in urban areas that can quite easily house aggregation nodes and so on and it's just a matter of building on that.

If they don't move on this rapidly, Virgin will 'own' most of urban Ireland other than the few pockets of cities that can't get cable.

tsue921i8wljb3

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

There is definitely a big market there in urban areas for eir to tackle - a lot of apartment blocks and high density estates that would want access to ffth. I do think you could see it being run across the facade of houses and apartment blocks. I presume there is no obligation for them to put it through ducting.

Whose property are Virgin using when expanding into new urban areas. They seem to dig up the side of streets and paths to lay their fibre. Is that council/esb/openeir property?

Digging up the pavements would be council property and Virgin have announced recently that they are scaling back on their building in Ireland as the local authority fees are adding up to 24% on the cost of building.

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=107828322&postcount=119

One would assume that most eir ducting to cabinets is relatively clear as they have deployed fibre to these cabs recently. The issues will be from the cabs to the premises.

There us no way they have anything close to 1.4 million premises done in five years.

fritzelly

Said in another thread that that can be read 2 ways
As I read it no they are not gonna replace every copper line but they are saying no more copper lines will be installed and it will be all fibre for new lines - it's all talk with enough ambiguity
As navi said above there is no way in hell they could replace every copper line in the country with fibre - look at the fibre rollout to get an idea of how ludicrous it is. And apart from that it would sure as hell be a complete waste of money (and well beyond 1 billion) to even contemplate replacing copper with fibre - how much has the fibre rollout cost...

ED E

EdgeCase wrote: »

If they don't move on this rapidly, Virgin will 'own' most of urban Ireland other than the few pockets of cities that can't get cable.

Virgin have 800k odd premises. They're practically not expanding at all. OpenEir still have huge share outside cities. SIRO is the potential threat, not VM.

fritzelly

ED E wrote: »

Virgin have 800k odd premises. They're practically not expanding at all. OpenEir still have huge share outside cities. SIRO is the potential threat, not VM.

Really? Siro is just over 100k premises passed (not connected mind)
I highly doubt eir see Siro as a real threat, but VM are expanding out, or at least the last press release I saw from them they were. And when VM go into an area they tend to just get on with it without any real delays.
But both companies are only really interested in high density areas - can eir survive on serving those more remote connections where cost vs return isnt that great whilst losing the more urban areas to other competitors

ED E

SIRO have gone from 0-100 in the last 24 months. VM have probably added 10k in the same period. Officially they're expanding but adding one user a month is "expanding".

tsue921i8wljb3

Siro are closer to 200000 premises passed.

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/siro-fibre-home-network-roll-out

fritzelly

ED E wrote: »

SIRO have gone from 0-100 in the last 24 months. VM have probably added 10k in the same period. Officially they're expanding but adding one user a month is "expanding".

But what are the actual figures for people connected rather than the massaged figures - too late for googling, need sleep. Eir use those passed figures as well while in reality...

fritzelly

Jett Agreeable Suburb wrote: »

Siro are closer to 200000 premises passed.

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/siro-fibre-home-network-roll-out

Perfect, 25,000 homes connected so far. Doesn't sound so great when you say that.

tsue921i8wljb3

fritzelly wrote: »

But what are the actual connections for people connected rather than the massaged figures - too late for googling, need sleep. Eir use those passed figures as well while in reality...

Probably less than 35000 though expect a jump in the coming months as they have heavily discounted the 1Gb service to entice customers to the platform.

ED E

Cable can be taken as VM as they own 99.9% of the DOCSIS in the country.





Virgin are glacial. If SIRO overcome their issues and continue to push hard (which is a big if at the minute) they could eclipse VM.

EdgeCase

To be fair to Eir, the rollout of FTTC was very rapid, far more so than I would have expected based on the glacial speed they rolled out ADSL.

If they're being driven by the kinds of policies that have pushed things forward in France with fibre, now that they're owned by a French telco, it could see some very big changes.

It's quite a different beast when owned by an actual telco as opposed to being owned by speculative venture capital funds.

Atlantic Dawn

To cut the concrete and run the cables through each driveway and footpath, will it not cost an absolute fortune that will mean a payback in more than 5 years plus?

tsue921i8wljb3

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

To cut the concrete and run the cables through each driveway and footpath, will it not cost an absolute fortune that will mean a payback in more than 5 years plus?

Yes it would which is why they will be hoping that their existing copper duct infrastructure is in a decent state. If it is not, as Siro have discovered, the delays and costs start mounting up.

Tigerandahalf

To me it seems a bit mad having different private companies covering the same area. Could you not have a single fibre cable with any provider then able to access it. This stuff is too important to be left in private hands.

But I suppose the government is not in a financial position to take on this kind of investment. You would think some sort of ppp scheme could have been done with end users being charged a flat fee like cars using a toll booth.

I guess Siro are in a very good position to put fibre straight into the premises via the esb network which would be a threat to eir especially if the siro product is price equivalent to eir. How long can eir make ground by relying on copper at the premises.

ED E

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

To me it seems a bit mad having different private companies covering the same area. Could you not have a single fibre cable with any provider then able to access it. This stuff is too important to be left in private hands.

No, its not.

If you have a single wholesale provider there's no wholesale competition so theres zero incentive for them not to be totally ****. Thats how you get 3wks-3months to repair a fault.

Bob24

EdgeCase wrote: »

If they're being driven by the kinds of policies that have pushed things forward in France with fibre, now that they're owned by a French telco, it could see some very big changes.

It's quite a different beast when owned by an actual telco as opposed to being owned by speculative venture capital funds.

For reference the French company which owns Eir has been the worst performer in terms of fiber rollout in France. Since their inception as a dial-up ISP their strategy has always been to invest as little as possible to cut costs and offer the cheapest prices on the market. They basically take advantage of all the options given to them by the regulatory framework to leverage existing infrastructure from other companies, and only deploy their own stuff when the technology has became dirt cheap or when forced by the national regulator.

I don’t know what their strategy will be in Ireland and it obviously a different market, but we’d better hope they don’t mirror what they are doing in France!

oscarBravo

fritzelly wrote: »

But what are the actual figures for people connected rather than the massaged figures...

I don't think it's fair to describe the premises passed figure as "massaged", or to suggest that premises connected is a better indicator. A wholesale operator can build a network to someone's house - it can't make them connect to it.

Tigerandahalf

ED E wrote: »

No, its not.

If you have a single wholesale provider there's no wholesale competition so theres zero incentive for them not to be totally ****. Thats how you get 3wks-3months to repair a fault.

You can still have competition if you have different companies contracted to maintain the wholesale network.

As for the premises being passed it is not a good indicator as you don't know how difficult or costly it will to connect into the premises.

We have seen on the eir ftth thread the difficulties with connecting with collapsed ducts and other issues.

jay0109

I'm based in an urban area in Sth Dub, about 4km's from the Spire. I'm stuck with Virgin for bband as my landline speed is low- 20 Mbps using EVDSL technology launched from a cabinet circa 800 metres away.
My area is labeled as requiring 'urban infill' by eir but as yet they have no plans to get to these areas as their resources are being targeted towards Roscommon these days for some reason!

What does a plan like this mean for the likes of me? Probably nothing but no harm in asking

Tigerandahalf

jay0109 wrote: »

I'm based in an urban area in Sth Dub, about 4km's from the Spire. I'm stuck with Virgin for bband as my landline speed is low- 20 Mbps using EVDSL technology launched from a cabinet circa 800 metres away.
My area is labeled as requiring 'urban infill' by eir but as yet they have no plans to get to these areas as their resources are being targeted towards Roscommon these days for some reason!

What does a plan like this mean for the likes of me? Probably nothing but no harm in asking

Well eir are out of the NBP so presumably eir are free to target those urban areas - areas that would be a lot more profitable.

EdgeCase

Bob24 wrote: »

For reference the French company which owns Eir has been the worst performer in terms of fiber rollout in France. Since their inception as a dial-up ISP their strategy has always been to invest as little as possible to cut costs and offer the cheapest prices on the market. They basically take advantage of all the options given to them by the regulatory framework to leverage existing infrastructure from other companies, and only deploy their own stuff when the technology has became dirt cheap or when forced by the national regulator.

I don’t know what their strategy will be in Ireland and it obviously a different market, but we’d better hope they don’t mirror what they are doing in France!

They're not an infrastructure operator in France though. They did unbundled DSL for years and fairly successfully. Their main impact was Free Mobile which really did shake up the market.

Bob24

EdgeCase wrote: »

They're not an infrastructure operator in France though. They did unbundled DSL for years and fairly successfully. Their main impact was Free Mobile which really did shake up the market.

Oh yes they definitly are. They have their own national backbone and DSL network.

They relied on Orange as the beginning though as the legislation was forcing Orange to rent out their infrastructure to Free at a regulated price. They only started to massively deploy their own DSL network when it was very cheap and the regulator was pushing them. Same think is now happening with fiber. Free has deployed a few locations to be part of the regulatory framework allowing them of access shared infrastructure deployed by others (mostly Orange), but the number of locations and investment figures are nothing like what others are doing.

They also have a (deserved) reputation for having very poor peerings due to being cheap with bandwidth. I experienced that myself using them in France a few years ago: you would get a DSL lined synchronised at 20Mps, but YouTube videos would only start playing in their lowest quality after minutes of buffering (same type of issue with App Store downloads, and going through a VPN located somewhere they have good peering with would magically solve all the issues).

EdgeCase

It'll be interesting to see how they play it as Eir's not in the role of cheap end market disruptor. They're the incumbent and comparable to Orange in France, but only for fixed lines.

In the mobile space, they are very much in the disruptor position due to their having sold off Eircell to Vodafone and reentered by buying out Meteor.

Eir will have to seriously up its game over the next few years in terms of rolling out fibre to home and also making sure that Eir Mobile makes use of that too with 5G and integration of the two operations from a technical point of view.

If you own a huge fibre network, you can hang 5G off it and fully integrate the two networks. It's pretty much where vendors like Ericsson and Nokia are driving all of these telcos.

Bob24

EdgeCase wrote: »

It'll be interesting to see how they play it as Eir's not in the role of cheap end market disruptor. They're the incumbent and comparable to Orange in France, but only for fixed lines.

In the mobile space, they are very much in the disruptor position due to their having sold off Eircell to Vodafone and reentered by buying out Meteor.

Eir will have to seriously up its game over the next few years in terms of rolling out fibre to home and also making sure that Eir Mobile makes use of that too with 5G and integration of the two operations from a technical point of view.

If you own a huge fibre network, you can hang 5G off it and fully integrate the two networks. It's pretty much where vendors like Ericsson and Nokia are driving all of these telcos.

Yeah they are indeed in a very different situation compared to France so they can’t have the exact same strategy. But having said that it is very much in the company and in the CEO’s DNA to be a budget provider, so I am not too hopefull (even though I agree with you that the best mid/long term strategy for Eir is to be a more premium provider, if they don’t up there game they will have to start lowering their price or seeing their customer base shrink).

What might make sense for them in term of rationalisation but I hope they won’t do is routing all of Eir’s international traffic through Illiad’s core network in France. I’l pretty sure if they did people would immediately see a degradation in their service.

Marlow

fritzelly wrote: »

But what are the actual figures for people connected rather than the massaged figures - too late for googling, need sleep. Eir use those passed figures as well while in reality...

SIRO is north of 40k premises connected across all providers.

/M

EdgeCase

Bob24 wrote: »

Yeah they are indeed in a very different situation compared to France so they can’t have the exact same strategy. But having said that it is very much in the company and in the CEO’s DNA to be a budget provider, so I am not too hopefull (even though I agree with you that the best mid/long term strategy for Eir is to be a more premium provider, if they don’t up there game they will have to start lowering their price or seeing their customer base shrink).

What might make sense for them in term of rationalisation but I hope they won’t do is routing all of Eir’s international traffic through Illiad’s core network in France. I’l pretty sure if they did people would immediately see a degradation in their service.

If they did that they'd lose all their corporate customers too!

See what happened when O2 became 3 and didn't really change strategy...

Bob24

EdgeCase wrote: »

If they did that they'd lose all their corporate customers too!

See what happened when O2 became 3 and didn't really change strategy...

True.

But to be fair a version of their French strategy could also work: cut costs across the board (including investments), introduce an Internet+TV+landline package for 30 euros which would pressure the competition a lot and rely on profits based on large volumes and lean operations on the consumer market (with a lesser service than competitors in terms of internet speed, but for such price A LOT of people would become very forgiving and for many users as long as Speedtest.net reports a large figure they’ll assume they get that speed for everything and not blame their ISP for problems). That is exactly what worked for Free in France back in the days with that 30 euros figure for the package while other providers where changing 50-60 euros for internet only.

Not the kind of company I would be a customer of, but possibly as successful business model.

So in short they can’t keep their current fairly high prices without improving their network. But the only option is not to improve the network, another one is to turn into a mass market budget provider.

EdgeCase

I'd doubt it somehow.

They've no real need to do that as they're the incumbent and also an open access network / wholesale provider.

To maintain and grow their market they have to produce a better product than Virgin Media. They won't manage to do that with low investment and this announcement sounds like they're not planning to skimp on rollout or tech.

Iliad is also being taken private, which will remove the quarterly results cycle and allow longer term strategy. Their positioning in Italy is quite different to France and the Iliad brand is also being used more for non cheapo products.

If Eir doesn't get into urban fibre soon, it will end up as the provider of low profit margin services and will just not make money. At present Virgin is picking off the low hanging fruit.

Also pitching a viable competitor to that awful Horizon TV platform shouldn't be too technically challenging.

Realistically, urban fibre has to be successful and profitable to support any major rural fibre rollouts.

I find some of the commentary trying to pitch this rural Vs urban is utter nonsense. If Eir isn't making money in urban Ireland they're not going to have enough resources to do anything in rural Ireland. Some of the rural rollout is just going to have to be state subsided and treated like rural electrification. I can't see how it can be achieved any other way. It's not commercially viable on a totally for profit basis.

It'll be interesting to see where it goes but I do think Eir is better owned by a Telco than by a bunch of profit hungry investment funds who were trying to turn a quick buck and had no idea how the industry worked.

fritzelly

Bob24 wrote: »

True.

But to be fair a version of their French strategy could also work: cut costs across the board (including investments), introduce an Internet+TV+landline package for 30 euros which would pressure the competition a lot and rely on profits based on large volumes and lean operations on the consumer market (with a lesser service than competitors in terms of internet speed, but for such price A LOT of people would become very forgiving and for many users as long as Speedtest.net reports a large figure they’ll assume they get that speed for everything and not blame their ISP for problems). That is exactly what worked for Free in France back in the days with that 30 euros figure for the package while other providers where changing 50-60 euros for internet only.

Not the kind of company I would be a customer of, but possibly as successful business model.

So in short they can’t keep their current fairly high prices without improving their network. But the only option is not to improve the network, another one is to turn into a mass market budget provider.

Wouldn't work - they would be losing money hand over fist on the retail side
Remember OE set the access prices. Eir retail is run as a seperate business
If they tried that where one company is losing money for the sake of getting customers knowing that at the end of the day the group is still making money the competition authority would hit them with a sledgehammer.

EdgeCase wrote: »

If Eir doesn't get into urban fibre soon, it will end up as the provider of low profit margin services and will just not make money. At present Virgin is picking off the low hanging fruit.

Exactly, something has to pay for the investment and urban is the only quick profit turnaround

EdgeCase

They've also got significant issues around the corner with legacy narrowband technology that is rapidly approaching or has already passed its planned end of life. In common with most traditional telcos, they've a fleet of TDM switches still in services providing fixed line voice and ISDN etc and those are in urgent need of replacement.

Cutting over to fibre and VoIP isn't actually something that is a luxury or optional in the medium term. You can't just keep equipment in service for long periods of time after the companies that made it withdraw support.

Eir are actually quite late in removing TDM switches. That transition is complete in Belgium, well underway in Franve and BT UK has set 2020 as the last date you'll be able to order PSTN or ISDN services. Eir are also in the odd position of being one of the earliest wide adopters of digital switching technology in the very early 1980s. So they've some ancient equipment still going strong!

That means that they've a whole edge layer / access network of Telecom Éireann voice / ISDN era stuff to replace over the next few years.

Their next generation access (NGA) network - fibre to the cabinet and fibre to the home networks were built in parallel to the PSTN and don't really interact with it, other than sharing the copper wiring, but that old gear will have to be replaced before it becomes completely obsolete.

Basically, urban FTTH isn't really something they can drag their feet on. They need to make the compete transition from being a phone company that provides broadband, to a broadband company that has telephone services as an application on their network.

You're really looking at a once in a generation technology shift that's an even bigger deal than the introduction of digital technology 40 years ago as it complete changes what these companies do.

fritzelly

Edgecase makes a good point about it not being a phone provider any more, that's pretty much ancillary now. Its now about providing an "Internet" service

tsue921i8wljb3

I wonder how all this ties in with their proposed Supervectoring rollout which is supposed to start in 2019? They are hardly going to spend lots of money on new CPEs and cabinet equipment only to then abandon it soon after. The transition to VoIP can still take place on the VDSL system.

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=107873522&postcount=2580

Carolan Lennon's actual quote in the article was:

In the future, copper will be removed.

Adrian Weckler seems to have mangled that quote into an article about how all urban copper will be gone in five years. The guy hasn't a clue.

babi-hrse

The guy hasn't a clue is right. Management in eir have no idea compared to the tech in the field.
If the higher ups actually talked to the techs they might actually see why some ideas are feasible and others not.
Fibre is only being rolled out in new housing estates. However I did see eir crews in the city center putting fibre ducting through the ground in some ancient parts of Dublin. (Maybe a demolition order is out for one and will be able to get fibre)
Ducts are nearly always blocked it doesn't take long for sediment to build up in one.
The best way to get fibre into apartment blocks would be to have a common restricted access plant room with multiple sockets and a duct to the dp or even install the dp in there, then the fibre can be brought in and do installed in the plant room with a cat5 cable going from the goon to apartment.
I have seen one case in naas of a block of apartments with a fibre enabled cabinet less than 120m from all the apartments and fibre DPS in the ground the copper from the cabinet is in the apartments
The fibre in the dp has no way (and I mean no route at all) to the apartments. So the fibre DPs are sitting in the ground and they will never be used probably included those numbers in the rollout and all.
Shocking carry on.
At this point it's up to the developer of the properties to duct to the apartments and install power outlets as it's not possible to pull fibre to each apartment through multiple floors and concrete walls.
But the fibre came after the apartments so how was the developer to know he needed to make a route for this.

EdgeCase

Super vectoring may well be as simple as a firmware update or an additional card on those DSLAMs in the cabinets and may not be that expensive and fill FTTH rollout will take several years.

Super vectoring also isn't a great solution as the line speed drop off is very steep as you move away from the cabinet. in many cases in urban areas it will make very little or even no difference to those who are even less then 1km or wiring from the cabinet.

It's a reasonable stop gap technology that will give them time to switch over to FTTH and keep the wolf (Virgin) from the door.

The FTTC cabinets were also provided with a lot of spare fibre, planned for use as the backhaul for an eventual FTTH rollout.

CPE equipment isn't that expensive and I would assume that they'll just source a new access gateway to generally replace the F2000 modems they're using now.

Any of the other VDSL providers will have to do the same if they intend to use it.

Super vectoring is also entirely backwards compatible with existing CPE so, they (and all the other retail users of the network) will only need to replace Niven's as people order it and will probably supply new customers with compatible modems from the start.

Where there's a will there a way and FTTH rollout has gone ahead in other countries with not that much difficulty.

I've seen it being rollout out in France and in very similar suburban areas to Ireland. Much of French suburbia is absolutely not dense apartments. There are loads of single one-off designed suburban houses and so on and plenty of flakey old duct infrastructure that is probably at least as old if not older than much of what you would encounter here.

Ducts were simply unblocked and cleared or replaced and a lot of overhead fibre is used too.

Eir isn't a monopoly, nor is Orange in France and neither of them can sit on their hands saying "blocked ducts! Can't be done!"

If they do, it's basically a road to being entirely replaced by their cable (hybrid fibre cable) competitors - Liberty Global aka Virgin Media here and SFR Numericable there.

This is a case of do or die.

Tigerandahalf

With Virgin, how are they accessing the final run to houses and apartments if the ducting is underground (possibly on private property) or in duct channels through blocks. I would be thinking the cheap solution of just running the fibre along the facade of buildings will be a real possibility. Why would they bother going to the expense of digging and finding a way through ducting when a cheaper solution could be done, and a desperate home owner will oblige who wants to get the fibre setup sorted.

Many modern estates have common areas and the question arises of who owns the common ground and the issue of digging/getting access to these areas.

oscarBravo

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

With Virgin, how are they accessing the final run to houses and apartments if the ducting is underground (possibly on private property) or in duct channels through blocks. I would be thinking the cheap solution of just running the fibre along the facade of buildings will be a real possibility.

Virgin did a lot of digging in Castlebar recently, installing completely new duct infrastructure.

Why would they bother going to the expense of digging and finding a way through ducting when a cheaper solution could be done, and a desperate home owner will oblige who wants to get the fibre setup sorted.

The desperate homeowner will oblige, but will her neighbour?

tsue921i8wljb3

Just to be clear I'm not arguing against the need to move to fibre or the fact that they will actually begin deploying urban FTTH. What I do take issue with is the proposed number of premises to be completed in five years. eir have shown time and again that their predictions are not to be trusted. 66 towns to have FTTH by end 2017, 100k premises passed by March 2017, 300K premises passed by end 2018. All deadlines missed. This combined with the delays SIRO have encountered in urban areas (supposed to have 500000 premises by end 2018 and will likely have half that) would lead me to take their announcement with a grain of salt.

KOR101

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

With Virgin, how are they accessing the final run to houses and apartments if the ducting is underground (possibly on private property) or in duct channels through blocks. I would be thinking the cheap solution of just running the fibre along the facade of buildings will be a real possibility. Why would they bother going to the expense of digging and finding a way through ducting when a cheaper solution could be done, and a desperate home owner will oblige who wants to get the fibre setup sorted.

Many modern estates have common areas and the question arises of who owns the common ground and the issue of digging/getting access to these areas.

My estate was built around 2000 to 2004 and had ducting for TV and a box at every house. This is what Virgin Media used. They had a minimal amount of digging to do whereas SIRO had to almost rebuild the estate.

EdgeCase

I'd also suspect Eir's ducting may be a lot more fibre-friendly as there would be nothing in it other than thin copper phone lines. ESB ducts were never intended to run communications cabling and are occupied by big heavy copper power cables.

Also bear in mind that Eir's ducting in a lot of cases isn't all that old. Ireland's landline infrastructure developed quite late as we had quite low uptake of telephone services until the 1980s.

The physical wiring and ducting infrastructure may well be newer than it is in the UK and US and even France etc in many parts of Irish towns and cities.

ESB ducting, on the other hand, may date back to the early and mid 20th century in some places and was never really designed with the notion of pulling thin cables through it.

Eir didn't really have that much issue rolling out FTTC and it happened very rapidly. In most cases the only civil engineering work that was needed was to get 230V AC power to the cabinets from an ESB pillar. The fibre and copper aspects were pretty straight forward through existing ducts using micro ducts to carry the fibres.

The only big issue you're likely to encounter is where there's direct-buried phone lines and I have no idea if that was used all that much.

A significant % of eir's urban infrastructure's also not buried at all for the last bit. A lot of it in older areas is duct to pole and then the final bit of distribution is done with aerial lines. Plenty of that around parts of Dublin and Cork for example.

Marlow

EdgeCase wrote: »

A significant % of eir's urban infrastructure's also not buried at all for the last bit. A lot of it in older areas is duct to pole and then the final bit of distribution is done with aerial lines. Plenty of that around parts of Dublin and Cork for example.

Also ... a couple things to consider: wherever SIRO hit either direct buried power lines or collapsed ducts that were not reparable, they've actually left premises out, if no alternatives were available (like surface retractable solutions). The civils were too expensive to connect them.

Also, a lot OpenEIRs urban copper network comes ducts, to manholes, to DPs that are surface mounted. Copper lines are distributed from there.

But yes, everything is ducted and has comparable little blockages.

/M

Tigerandahalf

KOR101 wrote: »

My estate was built around 2000 to 2004 and had ducting for TV and a box at every house. This is what Virgin Media used. They had a minimal amount of digging to do whereas SIRO had to almost rebuild the estate.

So why wouldn't siro or eir not use the same ducting instead of stringing stuff along poles? Virgin don't own that ducting?

Marlow

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

So why wouldn't siro or eir not use the same ducting instead of stringing stuff along poles? Virgin don't own that ducting?

That depends on, what agreements were made and if whoever planned the build knew the ownership circumstances. That and that neither OpenEir nor Virgin like to share.

It's politically, most of the time.

/M

KOR101

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

So why wouldn't siro or eir not use the same ducting instead of stringing stuff along poles? Virgin don't own that ducting?

That's a good question, but SIRO did use the ESB ducts in the estate and the Electricity box outside the house. What exact problems they ran into with those ducts I don't know. In at least 20 places in the estate they had to dig up the pavement whereas I only saw one small trench run by VM. Incidentally SIRO did a class job repairing the pavements. They seem like class opeartors from start to finish.

KOR101

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

So why wouldn't siro or eir not use the same ducting instead of stringing stuff along poles? Virgin don't own that ducting?

Actually, VM might own them. there are two blocks of apartments in the estate, so maybe they did a deal with the developer.

Marlow

KOR101 wrote: »

Incidentally SIRO did a class job repairing the pavements. They seem like class opeartors from start to finish.

SIRO are extremely brand conscious and have in general put a lot of policies in place, that put them miles ahead than other access networks.

For example, every non-ducted installation is treated a 2 man job by default.

Also, if there is a long enough gap between order and installation, a pre-install crew may be out to sort the cabling all the way to the meter.

Those are just examples.

Compare that with OpenEir, where a lot of jobs need 2 visits because a) the duct was blocked or trees need to be trimmed (And the customer is left to their own devices) or b) they find out it's a 2 man job.

OpenEir can't even manage to time their civils with another operator, even if you give then the date, when the road will be opened. They come around 3 months later and rip the road open again.

/M

ipodrocker

I live in Dublin in a new estate but eir didn't install fibre to any of the houses, the cabinet is new and trying find out when eir will roll out FFTH seems impossible when I enquire eir push to place an order when. I know there are no fibre cables in ducts!!

Anyone know a means to get this looked at or will I be stuck with virgin for a good while?

Marlow

ipodrocker wrote: »

I live in Dublin in a new estate but eir didn't install fibre to any of the houses, the cabinet is new and trying find out when eir will roll out FFTH seems impossible when I enquire eir push to place an order when. I know there are no fibre cables in ducts!!

Anyone know a means to get this looked at or will I be stuck with virgin for a good while?

It's very very difficult to know with all the current changes in Eir. But honestly, given that you have Virgin, you're better off than a LOT of other people that either have nothing or under 3 Mbit/s.

/M