Smoke signals versus rural broadband - better bang for buck?

Agricola

Reminds me of the Bertiebowl. It's like a weird Irish traditional. We'll cobble along for years with the substandard, and then when we decide to do a thing, it must be the biggest and the bestest the whole world, even if it absolutely beggars us.

The notion of providing fibre to every cottage on every mountain is a farce. Certainly they should make every effort to provide it to small towns and villages but after that the investment should go into subsidizing wireless providers. I'm not in a particular backward part of the south east but I am 3 miles from the nearest town and there isn't a hope of me getting anything other than fixed wireless. Ive had it since 2010 and it's been a revelation. Up until then I was still on dialup. I fully understand that it may not be future proofed against 16k Netflix and internet fridges and toasters in 10 years time but my service would allow anyone to operate a rural business easily today.

facehugger99

The high horse brigade wrote: »

My uncles house, my grandfather's house was built in the 30s, what do you want him and his family to do?

Join a circus troupe and tour the world.

The Cush

Agricola wrote: »

I fully understand that it may not be future proofed against 16k Netflix and internet fridges and toasters in 10 years time but my service would allow anyone to operate a rural business easily today.

I'm on less than 3 Mbps wireless, barely does SD Netflix let alone fridges/toasters/regular internet use. I'm just 750m from the end of eir's existing fibre line, roll on the NBP.

realdanbreen

kneemos wrote: »

Will they need to dig up driveways to get it from the road to your house?

Oh no! I'm off to get my Hi-Vis jacket and get Paul Murphy to mobilise a mob!
We can't be having any of that digging.

chris_ie

I've seen a few people mention that the is a low take up eir's rural roll out. A big reason for that is a lot of people don't even know they can get it. I have a neighbour who works from home when he's not down the country and has a lot of conferences via Skype etc. I asked his wife if they got fiber in and she said no as its not available out here yet. We've had it installed since November and their house is on the roll out. She was surprised and they have had satellite broadband installed. The same for another neighbour two doors down, he was complaining one day about the speeds and again, didn't know he could get fiber.

Fiber has been advertised for so long, when it wasn't fiber to the home. So people may have seen adverts in the past for fast fiber broadband, tried to get it only to be told they were too far from the exchange or cabinet as it was fiber to the cabinet (FTTC) and not fiber to the home (FTTH). I guess many still see these adverts and just think its the same thing and they wont be able to get it.

SirGerryAdams

SirGerryAdams wrote: »

I'm not from a remote place but the internet is awful. I get download speeds of .7mb. I can't even watch a youtube video. I live in Dublin and work there. I could work remotely if I had fast internet.

Broadband infrastructure should be made available to anyone with 0.7 Mbps speeds, assuming that what you're describing is typical, and not an anomaly.

However, it does appear to be well-below average, even for the slowest parts of the country

https://www.speedtest.net/reports/ireland/

On the other end of the spectrum, Ireland’s two slowest counties are in Connaught: Leitrim with a mobile download speed of 13.45 Mbps and Mayo at 14.78 Mbps. Munster’s Tipperary is third slowest. The fourth and fifth slowest counties, County Donegal (15.48 Mbps) and Cavan (15.94 Mbps) are both in Ulster.
Specifically, if we compare some of the city councils with their related counties, we see how much speeds degrade in areas outside cities. At 17.96 Mbps, County Cork is 23.4% slower than Cork City. County Galway at 16.85 Mbps is 23.3% slower than Galway City’s 21.98 Mbps. And separating the historic Waterford City council from County Waterford would yield a 16.14 Mbps mobile download speed for Waterford County, 15.4% slower than historic Waterford City’s 19.08 Mbps.

I know why people are against it, because they won't benefit from it. I bet there's no one in rural Ireland against this. Most ones against it are probably living in the cities and are pissed because they'd rather get that 2bn spent on them instead. I have no doubts that if tomorrow the metro was announced to cost 2bn extra then people would say "it's worth it to get it done, it's badly needed"

I spend a lot of time in rural Ireland, including for work. Although I live in Dublin, my home-area is extremely rural; my county is noted in the above link as having the third-slowest speeds, on average, in Ireland. Everyone in my house has a Netflix or a Spotify account; the last DVD shops in the local towns and villages closed-down years ago.

I think this debate is being polarised by people who genuinely think there is no decent internet to be had in rural Ireland, or people who are trying to convey that idea.

Lets not forget, also, that private companies are already rolling-out further high-speed internet plans for rural Ireland.

In my own townland, Eir are working on the provision of fibre broadband and it should be up and running within twelve months. In the next-nearest village, fibre broadband is already available within the village and its immediate surrounds.

I have no objection, in principle, to the Taxpayer funding rural broadband.

But not when Government policy is to then gift all of the infrastructure to a private company, and not when the policy is to compete with private firms who are already delivering high-speed rural broadband. And not to a company as unreliable as Granahan McCourt.

Agricola

Agricola wrote: »

Reminds me of the Bertiebowl. It's like a weird Irish traditional. We'll cobble along for years with the substandard, and then when we decide to do a thing, it must be the biggest and the bestest the whole world, even if it absolutely beggars us.

The notion of providing fibre to every cottage on every mountain is a farce. Certainly they should make every effort to provide it to small towns and villages but after that the investment should go into subsidizing wireless providers. I'm not in a particular backward part of the south east but I am 3 miles from the nearest town and there isn't a hope of me getting anything other than fixed wireless. Ive had it since 2010 and it's been a revelation. Up until then I was still on dialup. I fully understand that it may not be future proofed against 16k Netflix and internet fridges and toasters in 10 years time but my service would allow anyone to operate a rural business easily today.

The thing is though that eir have rolled out fiber to very rural areas but imo only to enough houses to make it unviable for any other operator to do so bar the NBP. As I said earlier in the thread they have ran it down the road to my house which is a road that two cars cannot pass each other on to give you an idea of how country side it is. They only went in about 500m though which means about half the houses in the road got it while our house and many other on the second 500m of the road didn’t. The cost would have been minimal to finish it but no, we have to wait for the NBP for this vital bit if infrastructure which is long overdue considering the level of taxes we pay. Meanwhile we have a crowd of jackeens complaining about it as they simply want every cent spent in Dublin an and feck the rest of the country.

This is all around my area where the fibres are ran by eir all around on the main roads and are connecting houses on the main roads and a few on the byroads and then leaving and not running the fibres all the way down roads etc. It would be disgraceful not to at least complete this out as the fibre is already there to splice it into. It will be so simple and quick to connect up the large number of houses left out.

The high horse brigade

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

Lets not forget, also, that private companies are already rolling-out further high-speed internet plans for rural Ireland. In my own area, Eir are claready working on the provision of fibre broadband and it should be up and running within twelve months. In the next-nearest village, fibre broadband is already available in the village and its immediate surroundings (although not our farm).

None of those areas you mention are in the NBS. The NBS is areas where commercial operators like Open Eir have no plans to cover as they say it's not commercially viable.

cursai

Broadband is not essential like water or electricity, which provide light and water to live. Broadband doesn't fill your belly.
Arguments like this can't be taken seriously.
Essential....me arse.

The high horse brigade

cursai wrote: »

Broadband is not essential like water or electricity, which provide light and water to live. Broadband doesn't fill your belly.
Arguments like this can't be taken seriously.
Essential....me arse.

That's not what the EU says. It also says we're well behind
http://publications.europa.eu/webpub/eca/special-reports/broadband-12-2018/en/

cursai

The high horse brigade wrote: »

That's not what the EU says. It also says we're well behind
http://publications.europa.eu/webpub/eca/special-reports/broadband-12-2018/en/

The EU is common sense though

Capt'n Midnight

cursai wrote: »

Broadband is not essential like water or electricity, which provide light and water to live. Broadband doesn't fill your belly.
Arguments like this can't be taken seriously.
Essential....me arse.

There isn't universal provision of water.

Electricity is costly to install if you are off the beaten track.

The Black Valley in Kerry was one of the last places to get electricity but now has Broadband

A 100mbps link on the Aran Islands
it's not on the NBP rollout yet.



ESB rollout history
https://esbarchives.ie/2017/09/18/electrifying-ireland-how-esb-connected-one-million-irish-homes-to-the-national-grid-1929-1978/

Nice write up on the ESB rollout , all of the issues have happened before. Rolling out the to areas with most signups first. Low sign up in some areas, asking for discounts, letters to TD's. Nothing new
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/let-there-be-light-the-day-all-ireland-went-electric-1.2845679