Northern Ireland hits Broadband Milestone

damien

Same geography, same population density, not the same regulator or Government though.


This is taken from the BT website:

Northern Ireland today became the first UK region, outside of London, to have every one of its exchanges enabled for broadband. The announcement was made by BT Northern Ireland in association with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) and the Building Sustainable Prosperity programme. The final nine telephone exchanges have now been enabled with ADSL technology taking broadband availability to 98.5 per cent in the region. This has helped the UK become the most extensive broadband market in the G7 according to a report from telecoms analysts Ovum on Monday.

Bill Murphy Managing Director of BT Regions said: " This is a truly fantastic occasion for everyone in Northern Ireland; we have led Europe in the charge of the roll out of broadband and contributed to the UK achieving its status of having the most extensive market in the G7. The citizens of Northern Ireland and BT people should be proud of what it has achieved and enjoy the benefits of what all 191 enabled ADSL exchanges will bring. " Businesses and consumers can now benefit from the widespread availability and we must encourage people to take advantage of this information superhighway, experience the groundbreaking technology and recognise the difference that it will make to their lives. Northern Ireland has the fastest growth rate for uptake of broadband across all the UK regions. " Our partnership with the DETI has resulted in a smooth determined rollout with each milestone being consistently achieved. It has put us at the forefront of Europe: ultimately this is great news for Northern Ireland plc."

Mr Barry Gardiner, DETI Minister said: " Northern Ireland now has a first-class telecommunications infrastructure, allowing our businesses to compete in the global marketplace and enabling all citizens to make full use of the possibilities of the internet." The North East of England is following hot on the heels of Northern Ireland with work at the final 12 exchanges to be completed on February 28. All 182 BT exchanges in North East England will then offer ADSL broadband services.

The £10 million broadband partnership between BT and One Northeast, the regional development agency for North East England, will reach completion just 12 months after it was announced, and within a matter of days of the completion of the programme in Northern Ireland. More than 100 small, rural exchanges across the North East - serving on average less than 1400 households and businesses each - will have benefited from the programme.

SkepticOne

A very different approach, of course, is needed in Ireland.

damien

Mike, care to elaborate. Be interested in hearing what you think is needed, as well as everyone elses views. Be nice to have a "big picture' discussion.

Sponge Bob

I would not give Eircom a penny , why should the taxpayer subsidise an unholy alliance of Index Tracking funds, greedy ex Civil Servants who think we owe them a living , Top management who get their bonuses for not investing and for lying all the time and Vulture capitalists .

If there is to be a National Universal BB provisioning contract why accept Eircoms argument that with 220 exchanges done and 200 more to do ......the taxpayer must fund all the remaining 680 exchanges because Eircom will not so do .

Lest assume they will never be done and proceed to provisioning an advanced Wireless alternative in those (rural mainly) areas.

Once we are (as a nation) satisfied with the progress made we can consider whether we relieve Eircom of their burdensome but largely meaningless and unenforced USO and forever relieve the taxpayer of the burden of paying some 20% of all line rental charges in the country as part of Pension and Social Welfare schemes .

We give Eircom plenty already, we paid to build the network that this scum has cannibalised and degraded for the past 10 years or so .

Let Them Eat Balloons:)

http://www.skylinc.co.uk/tech.php?ifr=ifr/tech.html

SkepticOne

damien.m wrote:

Mike, care to elaborate. Be interested in hearing what you think is needed, as well as everyone elses views. Be nice to have a "big picture' discussion.

Overall, I think they are making a mistake in NI with giving the broadband monopoly (outside cities) to one company. The propblems will occur further down the line when technologies appear elsewhere but not in NI due to lack of competition.

In addition to this NI is a very small part of BTs overall network. They can take a hit and do a good deal there for PR reasons. We can see them milking this in the PR statement above. Like Eircom, they want to be seen as the only realistic option for broadband in their country.

What I think is being suggested when PR statements from BT are used here is that the Government should sit down with Eircom and do a deal of this sort for the whole of Ireland along the lines of the tax payer paying Eircom to upgrade exchanges.

If Eircom upgrade a small rural exchange, this means that those on that excange are now totally dependent on Eircom to maintain their lines. Those on pair gains or remote access concentrators effectively have no chance of getting broadband and Eircom have demonstrated time and time again that they have no interest in fixing these issues. Furthermore, when that exchance is upgraded, there is far less interest from competing wireless operators to move in to that area and these are the one factor that might give Eircom an incentive to do something about maintaining lines - the fact that people have the option of leaving Eircom altogether.

Therefore, paying Eircom to upgrade exchanges is counter productive. It is largely unnecessary to pay Eircom to upgrade exchanges anyway. All you need to do is make it in their interest by providing competition.

We have already seen this in action in Ireland. When Eircom announced that they were upgrading all exchanges in towns with populations over 1,500 everyone knew that the reason for this was an attempt to halt the Government's fibre ring programme which coincidentally was also aimed at towns over 1,500. Eircom need to offer services in these towns because the threat of competition is greater there.

The GBS schemes, though small in scale, also provide this competitive threat. They show Eircom that if Eircom don't want to do the job, people are willing to bypass them. This is the one thing Eircom can't tolerate. Their whole attraction to shareholders is that they are the monopoly in Ireland. Overall, far more has been achieved than would have been if the Government were to pay the monopolist Eircom to upgrade exchanges directly.

DCMNR can be cricised for doing too little too late with regard to stimulating competition, but they can't be criticised for not doing a deal with an entrenched monopolist which would only dig Ireland into a deeper hole.

Moriarty

Just throwing an idea out there.. instead of paying eircom to upgrade the remaining exchanges, why not form an MSE alá the MANs and get them to unbundle the rest of the exchanges and provide wholesale services to telcos over that? Hell, you could go the whole hog and give 'em enough to unbundle every exchange in the country if you wanted and hey presto, it's a totally seperate nationwide DSL network.

I still remain totally unconvinced on the potential of wireless to help to any significant degree in this country. It certainly shouldn't be our primary solution imo.

Urban Weigl

SkepticOne wrote:

Overall, I think they are making a mistake in NI with giving the broadband monopoly (outside cities) to one company.

It went out to tender, and BT was able to do it cheapest. In return, they have to provide a minimum 512k broadband service to 100% of the population (where DSL absolutely doesn't work, they must install an Alvarian wireless solution for the same price instead). If you look at the figures, BT is paying for most of the project.

But I agree, with the amount of feet-dragging here, the state should not contribute one more cent to Eircom.

SkepticOne

Moriarty wrote:

Just throwing an idea out there.. instead of paying eircom to upgrade the remaining exchanges, why not form an MSE alá the MANs and get them to unbundle the rest of the exchanges and provide wholesale services to telcos over that? Hell, you could go the whole hog and give 'em enough to unbundle every exchange in the country if you wanted and hey presto, it's a totally seperate nationwide DSL network.

I would argue that this is not the best way to go for rural areas. One of the problems that comes up again and again is that Eircom has very little incentive to maintain infrastructure and appears to be installing pair gains (or digital carrier systems as they are calling them) as a matter of policy. Putting third-party DSLAMs in Eircom exchanges further encourages Eircom to encumber the line, install more pair gains, put more lines on remote access concentrators etc, since doing so ensures that business can't be taken away from them. Moreover, they know in advance which exchanges are being upgraded and can set to work pro-actively installing these devices. Previously they were a way of saving money; now they have the addition advantage (to Eircom) of fighting competition without passing on any benefit to the consumer.

I still remain totally unconvinced on the potential of wireless to help to any significant degree in this country. It certainly shouldn't be our primary solution imo.

I only said wireless because that is the most likely option at present. Whatever technology can do the job should be considered. It appears to be mainly wireless companies that are the most active in rural areas and to a certain extent you need to build on what you have got. The point is that wireless companies are in the best position to provide competition to Eircom at the lowest level not that wireless is fundamentally better than any other technology. Competition is necessary at the lowest level because competition over Eircoms infrastructure is subject potential interference from Eircom and does not provide any incentive for that company to do anything about its infrastructure or provide decent services.

Now, the opposing argument to this is that regulation should be used to ensure investment an provide good services to consumers. However going down this route is attacking the problem at its hardest point since the monopolist is far better placed to fight back and this fighting back does not involve Eircom competing and thereby providing better services to the consumer but rather hindering the operation of the operator using Eircom's infrastructure and potentially leaving the consumer worse off.

Every course of action has its negative consequences. Eircom upgrading a town for broadband is good for those whose line will pass but those for whom line doesn't pass and where Eircom are the only operator might be in the worst position of all since the likelihood of alternatives is very much reduced and Eircom can relax and install pair gains and line encumberances at will.

An MSE installing DSLAMs in an excange is also good for those whose lines pass but the same problem occurs. There is some provision for action to be taken to remove certain types of encumberance but there are also get out clauses which we can confidently predict Eircom will exploit to the max.

In general LLU is a good thing but it makes the need for competition outside of the infrastructure over which LLU is offered even greater while at the same time making that competition less likely.

Both of these solutions from the fact that the underlying infrastructure overwhich the competing services are offered is still monopolised. This forces the burden to do something about it onto the regulator. This is a great course of action if you are looking for someone to blame and complain about for years to come, but when you are choosing which way to proceed you need to take into account what organisations like ComReg will do and not merely what they shoud do.