Eir ruraltel mast replacements

dollylama

I see a number of the old eir rural telephone masts are being replaced in the Midlands and North West of the country. These were the old glorified timber poles in the middle of nowhere where houses had a radio link back to for telephone service. I think it was called ruraltel way back when but I might be wrong there

A contractor I spoke to says eir have to be off the old system shortly so I assume the spectrum this system was running on is no longer available? Needless to say, any of the infrastructure I've seen this past few years was rotting so I'd be surprised if much of it was still functioning

Does anyone know the details? The masts going in their place look to be proper steel monopole with cabinet space below. Is eir replacing these themselves or are they hopping on with one of the tower crowds, possibly co-locating mobile service on the new masts?

The Cush

2307 MHz – 2327 MHz was licensed to Eir for its RurTel network which provided universal service obligation (USO) services at a small number of locations in the Donegal, Galway and Kerry regions.

In the MBSA2 auction eir won 60 MHz of spectrum in the lower part of the 2300 MHz band. Imagine Broadband won the upper 40 MHz.

Have they still got customers in Donegal

2019 Comreg info

as of May 2019, Eir holds 34 licences (compared with 45 at the time of publication of Document 18/60) in the 2.3 GHz Band (in the range 2307-2327 MHz) for its Rurtel network which, as at December 2018, supports telephony services for 87 customers.

The total number of active RurTel customers is now just 87, being comprised of:
- 2 active customers in the area of Kerry, who are supported by 6 licences. ComReg understands that this consists of 8 repeater stations and 2 customer stations;
- 8 active customers in the area of Galway, who are supported by 7 licences. ComReg understand that this consists of 5 repeater stations and 6 customer stations with; and
- 77 active customers in the area of Donegal who are supported by 21 licences. ComReg understands that this is more complex network consisting of a number of repeater stations and customer stations.

2020 info

decommissioning of the Kerry RurTel network in 2019 and the non-renewal of RurTel licences in Galway from 31 January
2021

2021

RurTel means the Point to Multi-Point Radio Link system used to provide fixed telephony services in parts of county Donegal using the frequency ranges 2307 - 2327 MHz and 2401 - 2421 MHz;

L1011

I'm fairly sure that some of the Ruraltel customers in Donegal are on the islands between Arranmore and Burtonport (Arranmore has its own microwave backlink from a conventional exchange) - these islands now have NBI fibre (and as of now, Arranmore does not!)

Does the presence of NBI remove any remaining PSO requirements?

dollylama

I would have thought there were many more customers on rurtel than the figures quoted!

I wouldn't be aware of the locations of many of the base stations but I have passed through areas where the odd house had a telephone pole with a large white cabinet and an antenna on top so you'd know there was a rurtel network operating. I'm almost certain too that I saw a rurtel setup some years ago on the side of a country road connected to a run of phone lines... were the phone lines feeding the base station or was the base station feeding the phone lines I'm not sure

I imagine this must have been a very expensive setup for TE at the time and likely wasn't easy to maintain giving it's late 80's / 90's tech. Will they continue running rurtel on a different frequency or are there plans to move the remaining users over to GSM or equivalent? The replacement masts would imply they intend to continue a wireless service of sorts