NBP part II

The high horse brigade

user1842 wrote: »

Im just waiting for EIR to say they will do an extra 200,000 homes in addition to their 300,000+ roll-out.

Yeah I'm convinced they'll do something like that

Ush1

Emmanuel Lemon Louse wrote: »

110 deployment areas of 5000 premises each. Works to commence in all counties within the first 12 months is the plan.

Would this include urban areas?

ArrBee

wexfordman2 wrote: »

But what constitutes an easy win ?

I suspect, my area for example, where we have about 15 houses on a 1 mile stretch of road, islanded by eirs rural fibre deployment. We are less than a mile from fibre, but its eir rural fibre, and if my understanding is correct, they wont be extending on from this, but running new fibre from distribution point many miles away, so low return for large effort. Frustrating, but I suspect areas like this will be nearly the last to be done.

In in the same position and I suspect that you might be right but there are likely other factors to add to that equation which could produce a different outcome.

1. Could the start of intervention activities prompt eir to continue to the low fruit they strategically left quickly before nbi is available? That switching fee could be lucrative if they manage to connect a house.

2. Given that nbi are tackling the intervention area only, how many houses will be close to where their build out starts? Like will there be many houses that are actually easier for them?
The press release send to say that all counties would start end of 2019 so I guess the prioritisation happens withing the county rather than at a national level...

Mortelaro

These reels have appeared on ESB poles in Arklow all over the place,they're hardly Siro are they?

Mortelaro

user1842 wrote: »

Im just waiting for EIR to say they will do an extra 200,000 homes in addition to their 300,000+ roll-out.

They'd be guaranteed the 5 houses beside me and me,only 2kms of this road not done,makes perfect sense in my opinion

rodge123

I also fear Eir are gonna announce another batch they will cover is order to scupper it further. The governments snails pace of movement on the whole process is allowing Eir stay ahead of them.

heavydawson

The press release from the DCCAE has some interesting data:

The NBI network will involve:


Over 1.5 million poles
Over 15,000 km underground ducts
Up to 146,000 km new fibre cable
Running along 100,000 km of the road network
150Mbps broadband product available for consumers upgraded to 300Mbps by year 6 and 500Mbps by year 10
Up to 1Gbps products for businesses, also upgraded to 2 Gbps by year 11 and incrementally beyond that.
Primarily FTTH will be deployed, with circa 2% premises via a high standard wireless connection which will also be upgraded over time.

Source: https://www.dccae.gov.ie/en-ie/news-and-media/press-releases/Pages/Press-Release-Minister-Bruton-Updates-Government-on-the-National-Broadband-Plan.aspx

There's no indication that the 150mbps speed is a minimum. If anything it appears to be a single product offering.
This is further re-inforced by the explicit use of the "Up to 1Gbps products for businesses", so after 11 years, businesses will only be able to get up to 2gbps?

This is troubling. Has anyone got any information to counter this? Is there any official documentation to suggest:
1. There is more than one consumer offering on day one
2. If (1), that there would be a 1gbps consumer offering

The high horse brigade

heavydawson wrote: »

The press release from the DCCAE has some interesting data:



Source: https://www.dccae.gov.ie/en-ie/news-and-media/press-releases/Pages/Press-Release-Minister-Bruton-Updates-Government-on-the-National-Broadband-Plan.aspx

There's no indication that the 150mbps speed is a minimum. If anything it appears to be a single product offering.
This is further re-inforced by the explicit use of the "Up to 1Gbps products for businesses", so after 11 years, businesses will only be able to get up to 2gbps?

This is troubling. Has anyone got any information to counter this? Is there any official documentation to suggest:
1. There is more than one consumer offering on day one
2. If (1), that there would be a 1gbps consumer offering

The existing offerings on fibre are up to 1gbps why would this be any different. There has never been a mention of a maximum speed nor will there as 10gbps+ is very possible in future with new optics

heavydawson

The high horse brigade wrote: »

The existing offerings on fibre are up to 1gbps why would this be any different. There has never been a mention of a maximum speed nor will there as 10gbps+ is very possible in future with new optics

The existing _commercial_ offerings on fibre are up to 1gbps. If I recall, the terms of reference for the NBP are only such that the price of the NBP product should be equivalent to that to that in the non-intervention area.

i.e., NBI are only obliged to offer their product(s) at the same price as other similar products outside the intervention area. There aren't that many products at that specific speed (Imagines 5G-Ready does come to mind though).

The government does not stipulate (that I can tell), that NBI must offer the full range of products that OpenEir offer, including 1gbps offerings for the consumer.

It would also suggest that NBI are keeping backhaul/bandwidth purchasing requirements low by capping the throughput that each premise can receive.

I hope I'm wrong and the press release is just misleading.

The high horse brigade

heavydawson wrote: »

The existing _commercial_ offerings on fibre are up to 1gbps. If I recall, the terms of reference for the NBP are only such that the price of the NBP product should be equivalent to that to that in the non-intervention area.

i.e., NBI are only obliged to offer their product(s) at the same price as other similar products outside the intervention area. There aren't that many products at that specific speed (Imagines 5G-Ready does come to mind though).

The government does not stipulate (that I can tell), that NBI must offer the full range of products that OpenEir offer, including 1gbps offerings for the consumer.

It would also suggest that NBI are keeping backhaul/bandwidth purchasing requirements low by capping the throughput that each premise can receive.

I hope I'm wrong and the press release is just misleading.

Now that's a conspiracy theory!

heavydawson

The high horse brigade wrote: »

Now that's a conspiracy theory!

I wouldn't go that far. Here's who decides which speeds the current Fibre providers can supply to end-users:
https://www.openeir.ie/Products/Broadband/Next_Generation_Access/

NBI will be operating in the same space as OpenEir (wholesale), so their NGA-equivalent product(s) appear to be:
1. 150mbps (Consumer)
2. 1gbps (Business)

So they're clearly differentiating between the two, probably offering higher SLAs for the business product, etc.

NBI still ultimately has to buy all of those Xbps from someone, so it's not a conspiracy theory to suggest they're controlling costs.

Also, still waiting for someone to point me to DCCAE/NBP documentation showing a mandated "up to" 1gbps and/or multiple consumer products on day one.


The wholesale costs for fibre from OpenEir are:

NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 150Mbps 31/08/2015 31/08/2016 20.50
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 150Mbps 01/09/2016 30/06/2019 23.50
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 150Mbps 01/07/2019 30/06/2020 29.34
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 150Mbps 10/07/2020 30/0602021 29.49
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 300Mbps 31/08/2015 31/08/2016 25.50
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 300Mbps 01/09/2016 30/06/2019 28.50
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 300Mbps 01/07/2019 30/06/2020 34.34
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 300Mbps 10/07/2020 30/0602021 34.49
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 1000Mbps 31/08/2015 31/08/2016 35.50
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 1000Mbps 01/09/2016 30/06/2019 38.50
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 1000Mbps 01/07/2019 30/06/2020 44.34
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 1000Mbps 10/07/2020 30/0602021 44.49

Source: https://www.openeir.ie/Reference_Offers/?selectedtab=wbaro

Drawing some comparisons to pricing structure here, we can assume that NBI will have similar wholesale product prices, where 1gbps is ~ 50% more expensive than 150mbps. If NBI wanted to offer that 1gbps to all 540k, they'd have to purchase upstream capacity, without any guarantee that it would be used.
By focussing on the 150mbps:
1. they're minimising their upstream costs
2. they're offering a product that matches the other major wholesale operator
3. they're minimising their exposure to a lot of unused bandwidth due to low uptake

They may have to continue to match OpenEirs offerings (on the low end NGA product) as they change over time, but perhaps that's their only obligation?

clohamon

Looking at the RISPA plan, the assumptions and costings (rounded) seem to be as follows.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4unlmidavv4n09v/Submission%20to%20Communications%20Committee.pdf?dl=0


Equipment:
Expected to be available by Q1 2020
Claimed downlink 150Mb/s (see provisioning below)

Coverage:
Coverage modelled as 5km hexagons (86.6Kms2)
Ireland completely flat
No obstructions or vegetation
Site available at the centre of each hexagon
69K Kms2 / 86.6Kms2 = 795 sites

Provisioning:
Eircom roll-out to extra 150k premises.
Eircom to disclose which premises they’re going to cover.
Existing 125k WISP excluded and do not overlap with Eircom 150K
542K - 150K -125K = 267K
267K / 6360 base stations = 42 premises/ base station

Costs:
Free fibre backhaul capex to all sites.
Backhaul fibre regulated to <€0.30/metre (State MSE)
Free 96 MHz spectrum in 700MHz band.
Free 100 MHz spectrum in 2.1, or 2.3 or 2.6GHz band
6360 base stations x €5,300 = €34M
267K premises x €495 CPE = €132M
Rollout costs €166M x 1.5 = 248M
Total Costs = €166M + €248M = €414M

Funding:
€500M @ 2.5% for 5 yrs
Voucher scheme = €414M / 267K = €1550/premises

oscarBravo

heavydawson wrote: »

Also, still waiting for someone to point me to DCCAE/NBP documentation showing a mandated "up to" 1gbps and/or multiple consumer products on day one.

NBI held service provider briefings this week, at which they said that they'd be offering 150/30, 300/50 and 1000/100 products at launch.

heavydawson

oscarBravo wrote: »

NBI held service provider briefings this week, at which they said that they'd be offering 150/30, 300/50 and 1000/100 products at launch.

oscarBravo, I salute you! Thanks for clarifying. Where are you getting this info? Are you in the industry?
Also, just to clarify....the 1gbps we knew they were offering for business. Do you know if it applies to consumer also?

heavydawson

clohamon wrote: »

Looking at the RISPA plan, the assumptions and costings (rounded) seem to be as follows.

Equipment:
Expected to be available by Q1 2020
Claimed downlink 150Mb/s (see provisioning below)

Coverage:
Coverage modelled as 5km hexagons (86.6Kms2)
Ireland completely flat
No obstructions or vegetation
Site available at the centre of each hexagon
69K Kms2 / 86.6Kms2 = 795 sites

Provisioning:
Eircom roll-out to extra 150k premises.
Eircom to disclose which premises they’re going to cover.
Existing 125k WISP excluded and do not overlap with Eircom 150K
542K - 150K -125K = 267K
267K / 6360 base stations = 42 premises/ base station

Costs:
Free fibre backhaul capex to all sites.
Backhaul fibre regulated to <€0.30/metre (State MSE)
Free 96 MHz spectrum in 700MHz band.
Free 100 MHz spectrum in 2.1, or 2.3 or 2.6GHz band
6360 base stations x €5,300 = €34M
267K premises x €495 CPE = €132M
Rollout costs €166M x 1.5 = 248M
Total Costs = €166M + €248M = €414M

Funding:
€500M @ 2.5% for 5 yrs
Voucher scheme = €414M / 267K = €1550/premises

Any chance of a link to the source doc?
"Ireland completely flat" / "Free fibre backhaul capex to all sites." :-D

oscarBravo

heavydawson wrote: »

Are you in the industry?

Yup.

Also, just to clarify....the 1gbps we knew they were offering for business. Do you know if it applies to consumer also?

It does. Those are the consumer products, and there will be business products as well as symmetric Ethernet products available separately.

heavydawson

oscarBravo wrote: »

Yup. It does. Those are the consumer products, and there will be business products as well as symmetric Ethernet products available separately.

Fantastic. Very happy to be making incorrect assumptions in this case. :-D

tsue921i8wljb3

clohamon wrote: »

Looking at the RISPA plan, the assumptions and costings (rounded) seem to be as follows.

Equipment:
Expected to be available by Q1 2020
Claimed downlink 150Mb/s (see provisioning below)

Coverage:
Coverage modelled as 5km hexagons (86.6Kms2)
Ireland completely flat
No obstructions or vegetation
Site available at the centre of each hexagon
69K Kms2 / 86.6Kms2 = 795 sites

Provisioning:
Eircom roll-out to extra 150k premises.
Eircom to disclose which premises they’re going to cover.
Existing 125k WISP excluded and do not overlap with Eircom 150K
542K - 150K -125K = 267K
267K / 6360 base stations = 42 premises/ base station

Costs:
Free fibre backhaul capex to all sites.
Backhaul fibre regulated to <€0.30/metre (State MSE)
Free 96 MHz spectrum in 700MHz band.
Free 100 MHz spectrum in 2.1, or 2.3 or 2.6GHz band
6360 base stations x €5,300 = €34M
267K premises x €495 CPE = €132M
Rollout costs €166M x 1.5 = 248M
Total Costs = €166M + €248M = €414M

Funding:
€500M @ 2.5% for 5 yrs
Voucher scheme = €414M / 267K = €1550/premises

It was poorly proofread disingenuous ****e. They should have been laughed out of the Committee.

Orebro

clohamon wrote: »

Looking at the RISPA plan, the assumptions and costings (rounded) seem to be as follows.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4unlmidavv4n09v/Submission%20to%20Communications%20Committee.pdf?dl=0


Equipment:
Expected to be available by Q1 2020
Claimed downlink 150Mb/s (see provisioning below)

Coverage:
Coverage modelled as 5km hexagons (86.6Kms2)
Ireland completely flat
No obstructions or vegetation
Site available at the centre of each hexagon
69K Kms2 / 86.6Kms2 = 795 sites

Provisioning:
Eircom roll-out to extra 150k premises.
Eircom to disclose which premises they’re going to cover.
Existing 125k WISP excluded and do not overlap with Eircom 150K
542K - 150K -125K = 267K
267K / 6360 base stations = 42 premises/ base station

Costs:
Free fibre backhaul capex to all sites.
Backhaul fibre regulated to <€0.30/metre (State MSE)
Free 96 MHz spectrum in 700MHz band.
Free 100 MHz spectrum in 2.1, or 2.3 or 2.6GHz band
6360 base stations x €5,300 = €34M
267K premises x €495 CPE = €132M
Rollout costs €166M x 1.5 = 248M
Total Costs = €166M + €248M = €414M

Funding:
€500M @ 2.5% for 5 yrs
Voucher scheme = €414M / 267K = €1550/premises

Thats just shocking - did they really think this would be taken seriously? The sooner contracts get signed and this madness is put to an end the better. The next thing we'll have Johnny and Mick from the local mobile phone shop in front of the committee saying they can do it for €200k.

clohamon

Emmanuel Lemon Louse wrote: »

It was poorly proofread disingenuous ****e. They should have been laughed out of the Committee.

Justine McCarthy of the Sunday Times was sitting in the audience. Not sure what she made of it.

heavydawson wrote: »

Any chance of a link to the source doc?
"Ireland completely flat" / "Free fibre backhaul capex to all sites." :-D

Facetious on geography; coverage modelling looks a bit simplistic.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4unlmidavv4n09v/Submission%20to%20Communications%20Committee.pdf?dl=0

oscarBravo

clohamon wrote: »

Justine McCarthy of the Sunday Times was sitting in the audience. Not sure what she made of it.

That's who that was. I knew I recognised her, but couldn't place her.

plodder

The taoiseach was on Sean O'Rourke this morning and the NBP came up. He repeated the line about Eir not making an offer, what they were proposing being inferior, and wanting the best for rural Ireland etc. It looks like nobody in the media, or the commentators who were previously opposed to the NBP, are stepping up to question this line. He also said when asked should consultants be asked to look at the Eir proposal, that there were very few consultants who haven't looked at it.

So, it looks to me like Eir's gambit has failed and the plan will go ahead. I wonder now if Eir simply over-priced the dark fibre product, as two of the bidders claimed it was cheaper for them to not use it, and maybe that explains why their NBP bid was so expensive. If so, was this a serious miscalculation by Eir?

tsue921i8wljb3

Ush1 wrote: »

Would this include urban areas?

I assume it would include some (all) of the urban premises that are in the intervention area.

tsue921i8wljb3

Some NBI job vacancies appearing including Network Design Manager and Network Build Manager both of which have been online for only two weeks.

https://ie.linkedin.com/jobs/search?keywords=NBI&location=Ireland

fieldofsheep

Meanwhile in Australia...

https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/blame-the-government-not-netflix-for-nbn-failure,12909

An example of what happens when an all-fibre (or close to all-fibre) rollout gets diluted down to a hodge-podge of technical solutions, most of them sub-par.  I think the government were put in an uneviable situation when what looked like the two major players (SIRO and Eir) dropped out of the procurement process, but I think they've done well to stay the course in repsonse to Eir and Rispa responses that they could do it cheaper by gutting the spec (when Eir had already submitted an indicative price similar to the GMC offer)

I think the government could benefit from carrying out and publishing some research into what sort of society we could build with a reliable high speed fibre network across the country, similar to what the Australians did a few years back when they set up the Institute for a Broadband Enabled Society:  https://networkedsociety.unimelb.edu.au/archived-pages/ibes

babi-hrse

Mortelaro wrote: »

These reels have appeared on ESB poles in Arklow all over the place,they're hardly Siro are they?

They would be siro

tsue921i8wljb3

Eir remind me of a spoiled child when they get a sweet. When they get the sweet, the child doesn’t want it and when you give the sweet to somebody else the child starts crying and wants the sweet back

Let's start taunting them Michael. That seems a good idea. What could possibly go wrong.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/eir-behaviour-in-rural-broadband-like-that-of-spoiled-child-says-ring-1.3960921

Pique

He has a point.

Although I always called that the "dog with a bone" scenario.

The Cush

plodder wrote: »

The taoiseach was on Sean O'Rourke this morning and the NBP came up. He repeated the line about Eir not making an offer, what they were proposing being inferior, and wanting the best for rural Ireland etc. It looks like nobody in the media, or the commentators who were previously opposed to the NBP, are stepping up to question this line. He also said when asked should consultants be asked to look at the Eir proposal, that there were very few consultants who haven't looked at it.

So, it looks to me like Eir's gambit has failed and the plan will go ahead. I wonder now if Eir simply over-priced the dark fibre product, as two of the bidders claimed it was cheaper for them to not use it, and maybe that explains why their NBP bid was so expensive. If so, was this a serious miscalculation by Eir?

Timmy was on Morning Ireland earlier that morning, still pushing the eir proposal and that the Dept should've done a more in depth analysis using outside consultants, a question which was put to Leo later that morning by Sean O'Rourke.

Timmy appears resigned to the fact that his committee's investigation will have no effect on the on going NBP process, looks like the government encouraged them to proceed with the investigation - down a one-way cul-de-sac -, to keep them occupied/distracted, while the real work of contract negotiation was continuing back on the main road.

Have they invited anyone else for next week, the committee meets again next Tue at 2pm, no details yet.

https://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/html5/#/radio1/21587660

Leo on with SOR (NBP discussion starts 29:50mins) - https://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/html5/#/radio1/21589032

KOR101

Is any legislation needed? Or, can they just sign the contract.

He challenged Fianna Fail party leader Michael Martin to state whether the party was going to support the Fine Gael-led government when they sign the contract.

“We’re about to sign that contract. Are they going to support us on that contract,” he asked.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/michael-ring-eir-behaving-like-spoiled-child-over-rural-broadband-contract-938056.html