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.