The hunt for Eir CITY Fibre!!!!

Windowsnut

So we decided to move over to Sky broadband last week, in my new (secondhand) house, literally smack bang in the middle of Dublin 12!!

Installer came out to fit the socket, however he ran out the door when he saw the 1950's era twisted copper wire coming out the side of the ESB meter board in the hallway. I was promptly told to call KN Networks who work on behalf of Eir to get a new line!

3 days later the KN technician called promptly at the allotted time to install the new line, I was told he needed to fit an entire line from the pole outside the building, "Oh am I getting Fibre I exclaimed!".

No such luck, a brand new copper wire was subsequently installed from the pole to the house - I have to say, I was annoyed by this given the fact I am in the middle of a densely populated Dublin suburb - surely Eir is rolling out broadband to Dublin first?????

My brother also moved into a new house a month ago, in new a brand new Dublin development of over 1500 homes, I called him and found he too had copper cabling installed in his Eir Duct.

Why in this day and age are Eir still installing copper in the capital city, never mind rural Ireland!

Has anyone in Dublin actually got Eir Fibre to the building broadband??????

When your councillors call to the door tonight, ask them where your fibre broadband is!!!!

tsue921i8wljb3

Very limited availability of FTTH in Dublin both from eir and SIRO. Check out this link for numbers of premises by area.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jrY15Y8mZKWKgDQUZ9W5G92R2vY7Lda-Kbi-NT544m4/edit?usp=sharing

This situation should improve over the next five years as eir are launching a large urban FTTH project.

Windowsnut

Its absolutely shocking the state of this network - I was in a 1920's apartment building in Marbella for a weeks holiday last year, there was Fibre broadband in the apartment and from the grubbiness of the modem, it looked like it had been there for a few years!!!

The minister for communications has a lot to answer for !!

tsue921i8wljb3

Windowsnut wrote: »

Its absolutely shocking the state of this network - I was in a 1920's apartment building in Marbella for a weeks holiday last year, there was Fibre broadband in the apartment and from the grubbiness of the modem, it looked like it had been there for a few years!!!

The minister for communications has a lot to answer for !!

Spain are probably the most advanced nation in Europe in regards to FTTH. We are a fair way behind but hopefully can close the gap over the coming years.

ED E

Spain also were behind the curve for years. They had a late starter advantage.

boardzz

I think Eir still have a legal requirement to provide copper phone line to every premises

ED E

boardzz wrote: »

I think Eir still have a legal requirement to provide copper phone line to every premises

Nope.

recyclebin

What cabling do virgin media use in Dublin for broadband?

ED E

Coax, often along the facia.

Anteayer

The reason for widespread fibre to home rollout in Spain is simple: almost 2/3 of the population live in high density apartments. It's very easy to roll FTTH out when you've those densities.

Ireland's barely got 5% of the population in that kind of housing and has extremely low densities, even in what we describe as suburban environment.

Costs of rollout of FTTH here are huge compared to Spain, hence the later start and slower rollout.
You can get huge % of homes covered very quickly if most homes are tightly packed.

In general in Ireland urban FTTH is only starting this year on any scale.
SIRO's rollout in Cork City's probably the biggest to date and is only a few months into the rollout so far. Meanwhile OpenEir's yet to really start any significant FTTH in cities. To date, most FTTH in Ireland is rural / ribbon development or outer suburban. The Cork Siro project is the first dense / older city housing being retrofitted with FTTH on any serious scale. OpenEir is expected to start serious urban fibre rollout from mid summer, so that situations should start improving.

So far it's mostly FTTC (up to 100mbit/s on current vectoring and up to about 250mbit/s realistically on 35b over copper). Virgin's a hybrid fibre coax network. It's connected to end users on Coax and they currently sell 500Mbit/s. The network supports gigabit broadband in theory without going FTTH - it's fibre to a point very close to your house though.

Your copper line is running from the house to a local cabinet which contains fibre connected DSLAM. That's capable of providing up to 100mbit/s and will see faster speeds when the next vectoring update happens. There's one of those cabinets typically within 1km of pretty much every urban home and they've already been provisioned with enough fibres to form the basis of the FTTH rollout.

Virgin's product right now will give you pretty serious speed and is widely available in the cities. There are a few random blackspot, if you're unfortunate enough to be on a non-cabled street or something but mostly it's nearly universally available.

Gonzo

Anteayer wrote: »

The reason for widespread fibre to home rollout in Spain is simple: almost 2/3 of the population live in high density apartments. It's very easy to roll FTTH out when you've those densities.

That is true for tourist parts of Spain (mostly coastal areas along with south and east coasts), Another thing about Spain is when it comes to development, they build networks in record time over there compared to here.

In the 1980s, Spain's road network was nearly as bad as Irelands, with only a few stretches of dual carrigageways and very little motorway. In the late 90s and early 2000's they transformed Spain's motorway network in record time, motorways everywhere, they have a very dense network of motorways there now and have had for over a decade at this stage.

Same with their FTTH rollout, they rolled out FTTH really quickly and almost everywhere. I've only been to larger urban areas like Fuengirola, Torrevieja and Malaga but the scale and time in which they rolled out was very impressive. Their wiring leaves alot of be desired tho, with black wires and cables hanging everywhere across Villas, shops and up the sides of high rise blocks.

Obviously Ireland is very different, but even given the distribution of population here compared to Spain, we still operate at a much slower pace of development compared to them.

Anteayer

To be fair, Ireland did rather similar, just on a much smaller and less dense population scale. Spain has two really large cities and quite a few that are at least Dublin sized, with larger metropolitan areas.

The vast majority of our motorways were built extremely rapidly, in a few years in the early 2000s. Before that we only had a few, very limited stretches.

Marlow

Currently less than 20% of OpenEirs rollout nationwide is fibre to the home. Nearly all of it rural.

When they sell you fibre .. they call it eFibre .. it is VDSL .. that is FTTC ... and yes .. that is fancy copper to you.

Their Urban fibre rollout is not launching until August .. maybe September.

/M

Anteayer

They took the cheap option in urban areas and paid the price by losing vast numbers of customers to Liberty Global aka UPC and now called Virgin Media. I know plenty of households in Dublin and Cork who'd the choice of long line VDSL that maybe gets 40-50 Mbits or 500mbits on Virgin.

Selling 'up to' speeds on unshielded cooper last mile when your main competitor can guarantee speeds on shielded coax and has capabilities of easily going to gigabit service is a bit of a joke.

It's similar in the UK BT/OpenReach took the same cheap option and were allowed to claim FTTC was fibre service.

WaitingFTTH

Reopening this thread.

I'm moving back to Dublin in the new year and have an apartment in Dublin 4.

Searching for fibre service I see that the only option is FTTC or Virgin DOCSIS (best avoided).

I can't believe this in 2023 but having read various threads it seems like major parts of Dublin have not been upgraded.

Can anyone provide an insight as to what the plans are for upgrades in D4?

pizzahead77

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121425577#Comment_121425577

No need tobe reopening a 4 year thread - better off posting in a new thread. Virgin Media Cable (DOCSIS) can be very stable - I had it for over 10 years with very few issues. I was able to switch to OpenEIr fibre this year for the first time in January this year.

Virgin are now installing Fibre in a lot of areas but I don't know if your apartment is on their new network yet or not