Smart Report in Todays Irish Times , 4 Dublin Exchanges 'Live'

Sponge Bob

From the IT Business section today.

Smart have so far acknowleged 16k out of their 100k 'discount rate' signups which leves the rest of us plenty of time to fill the forms.

Apparently they can now provision LLU customers on 4 Dublin exchanges.

Ship St.
Summerhill
Dolphins Barn
Clondalkin

Those lucky readers could get in contact with Smart right now but otherwise

THERE ARE NO LIVE DATES MENTIONED

so don't bother till they tell you its live....or tell the Times first.

Drapper

Sponge Bob wrote:

From the IT Business section today.

Smart have so far acknowleged 16k out of their 100k 'discount rate' signups which leves the rest of us plenty of time to fill the forms.

Apparently they can now provision LLU customers on 4 Dublin exchanges.

Ship St.
Summerhill
Dolphins Barn
Clondalkin

Those lucky readers could get in contact with Smart right now but otherwise

THERE ARE NO LIVE DATES MENTIONED

so don't bother till they tell you its live....or tell the Times first.

I have 3 words :- 48:1 Contention

dub45

Sponge Bob wrote:

From the IT Business section today.

................

Full article below:

Five-month delay for Smart clients
Jamie Smyth, Technology Reporter

More than 16,000 people have signed up for a new broadband service offered by Smart Telecom that may not be available for up to five months.


The company disclosed yesterday that it had received the applications along with customers' direct debit details for its €35 broadband and line rental offer.


The service, which was publicised three weeks ago by the company, offers customers a broadband connection at speeds of two megabytes per second and their regular line rental for the flat fee.


Smart Telecom chief executive Oisín Fanning said customer demand had been phenomenal since the offer started.


He said the first few customers were connected last week and the other customers would be connected when the nearest telephone exchanges were unbundled. This process would take up to five months to complete for some customers as the firm had to place its equipment in Eircom's telephone exchanges.


Smart Telecom, which has raised about €50 million since it was founded in 2000, is the first competitor to Eircom to aggressively seek to unbundle "the local loop" - opening the last mile of an incumbent telecom operator's network for use by rival firms.


Mr Fanning said that the firm had successfully unbundled four of Eircom's telephone exchanges in Clondalkin, Dolphin's Barn, Ship Street and Summerhill. He said another 62 would be unbundled by July or August.


People who signed up for the offer would be connected as soon as their local exchange was opened to Smart Telecom and Eircom transferred their line.


Mr Fanning said that Eircom had agreed to transfer up to 5,000 customers per month using the company's manual processes but said that he hoped an automated transfer process would be introduced shortly to help customers transfer.


Smart Telecom has attracted 80,000 telephone customers, of which 55,000 had also signed up to have their line rental managed by the firm, added Mr Fanning.

K1

It seem like good news but what do people make of this
http://www.enn.ie/news.html?code=9588234

Slutmonkey57b

Drapper wrote:

I have 3 words :- 48:1 Contention

Smart's system doesn't work on end-user ratio throttling, like eircom's does.

AdMMM

Comon Waterford

dave oc

Good news im supposed to be connected march/april

halenger

2 megabytes per second? I'm sold. :rolleyes:

But seriously. I'm not sure how good or bad the news is. I'll wait and see more. 5 month delay sounds like a lot. I'll contnue to wait and see how many of the March/April exchanges go live and definately waiting on reports from users of Smart broadband...

Moriarty

There's no delay, just useless journalism.

He's talking about the spread in time from when the first planned exchange goes live to the last. Thats the April -> August spread that Garfield gave for the different exchanges around the country.

Ol' Jamie should go look up the word 'delay' in the dictionary.

CyberGhost

Sponge Bob wrote:

From the IT Business section today.

Smart have so far acknowleged 16k out of their 100k 'discount rate' signups which leves the rest of us plenty of time to fill the forms.

Apparently they can now provision LLU customers on 4 Dublin exchanges.

Ship St.
Summerhill
Dolphins Barn
Clondalkin

Those lucky readers could get in contact with Smart right now but otherwise

THERE ARE NO LIVE DATES MENTIONED

so don't bother till they tell you its live....or tell the Times first.

Clondalkin? it's not available here, what a hell are they talking about?
the line checker says, they don't even know when they will be here

murphaph

CyberGhost wrote:

Clondalkin? it's not available here, what a hell are they talking about?
the line checker says, they don't even know when they will be here

Nangor Rd. Exchange is enabled.

padraigf

Lol, i love when technology journalists dont know the difference between a bit and a byte! Classic....... Where do the newspapers pick up these wastes of skin ?

sluice44

The Irish Times printed a correction in the paper today (Saturday). Too lazy to dig it out now but it was something along the lines that Smart have a rolling rollout program and the majority of (their) exchanges will be done within 5 months.

CyberGhost

murphaph wrote:

Nangor Rd. Exchange is enabled.

Do'H that's my damn luck, now everyone around me will get a BB and I will be without one urhhh..

vishal

the newlands exchange probably won't be enabled for a long while, garfield said, cos it was not near there fibre.

Blaster99

At least that journo managed to make it megabytes per second. Most just write "the speed is one megabyte". Even Silicon Republic did this recently and they should surely know better.

Marcopolo85

Drapper wrote:

I have 3 words :- 48:1 Contention

That's actually three numbers, a colon, and a word..........

dub45

Blaster99 wrote:

At least that journo managed to make it megabytes per second. Most just write "the speed is one megabyte". Even Silicon Republic did this recently and they should surely know better.

Smart do it.

Raoul Duke

Drapper wrote:

I have 3 words :- 48:1 Contention

Someone mentioned that to me recently as well. Said he was talking with Smart. He wouldn't go into it further though.

So what do you know? Spill the beans.

halenger

SMART's rep answered that in the main thread on it. Gave a nice full explanation of it too. I'm sure you'll find it. I'd be more helpful if I wasn't sick...

Esel

Marcopolo85 wrote:

That's actually three numbers, a colon, and a word..........

Count my words: Forty eight to one contention.

Random

Blaster99 wrote:

At least that journo managed to make it megabytes per second. Most just write "the speed is one megabyte". Even Silicon Republic did this recently and they should surely know better.

bit
Mb
Megabit


BIT BIT BIT

Superman

halenger wrote:

2 megabytes per second? I'm sold. :rolleyes:

But seriously. I'm not sure how good or bad the news is. I'll wait and see more. 5 month delay sounds like a lot. I'll contnue to wait and see how many of the March/April exchanges go live and definately waiting on reports from users of Smart broadband...

2 megabits! - 8 bits in a byte +1 for header = 256kilobytes (ish, usually 10-20% fall-off)

CyberGhost

double post, sorry!

CyberGhost

Superman wrote:

2 megabits! - 8 bits in a byte +1 for header = 256kilobytes (ish, usually 10-20% fall-off)

no no, you are wrong there, 2mb = 2048 bytes = 204.8 kb/s = you will get approx ... 210kb/s

Hedgehoggski

CyberGhost wrote:

no no, you are wrong there, 2mb = 2048 bytes = 204.8 kb/s = you will get approx ... 210kb/s

Yeeks! :eek:

Ok, it seems there are those who could use my 2c

First of all, I think the following use of letters is a "bit" of a convention :
Mb=megabit
MB=megabyte
Kb=kilobit
KB=kilobyte

also:
8 bits = 1 byte
1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte
1024 kilobytes = 1 megabyte

(in bit talk, kilo means 1024 rather than 1000 since 1024 is a power of 2 and 1000 is not. )

now from the above
512 kilobits = 512 x 1024 bits = 524288 bits = 524288/8 bytes = (524288/8)/1024 kilobytes = 64 kilobytes

similarly
1024 kilobits = 1024 x 1024 bits = 1048576 bits = 1048576/8 bytes = (1048576/8)/1024 kilobytes = 128 kilobytes

and
2048 kilobits = 2048 x 1024 bits = 2097152 bits = 2097152 / 8 bytes = (2097152 / 8)/1024 kilobytes = 256 kilobytes

in other words,
your 56Kb connection can download a theoretical max of 7KB per second
your 512Mb connection can download a theoretical max of 64KB per second
your 1024Mb connection can download a theoretical max of 128KB per second
your 2048Mb connection can download a theoretical max of 256KB per second

Hope the above helps clarify matters a little.

HH

BobTheBeat

Hedgehoggski wrote:

Yeeks! :eek:

Ok, it seems there are those who could use my 2c

First of all,...

HH

Well done to you Hedgehoggski, thats probably the most straightforward explanation of conversions I have ever seen. Even after four years of telecommuncations!

However, 512Mb does not equal 64KB, Surely its 512Kb equals 64 KB ?

Esel

Just a slight correction to the Kilo and Mega explanation above.

In telecommunications, *unlike* computing:

K = kilo = 1,000

M = Mega = 1,000,000

Someone posted this link in a previous discussion. It explains in detail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix

Also, your conversions from bit rates to Byte rates (/8) is a bit simplistic. You also need to allow for parity bits and other 'system' overheads.

WizZard

Hedgehoggski wrote:

[...]
Mb=megabit
[...]
your 512Mb connection can download a theoretical max of 64KB per second
your 1024Mb connection can download a theoretical max of 128KB per second
your 2048Mb connection can download a theoretical max of 256KB per second

Hope the above helps clarify matters a little.

These should be kb. Welcome to boards. Good first post

carbsy

WizZard wrote:

These should be kb. Welcome to boards. Good first post

No Wizzard - he's correct with KB.

WizZard

I meant the 512Mb parts

carbsy

WizZard wrote:

I meant the 512Mb parts

Oh yeah, wasn't looking over there.

CyberGhost

Hedgehoggski wrote:

Yeeks! :eek:

Ok, it seems there are those who could use my 2c

First of all, I think the following use of letters is a "bit" of a convention :
Mb=megabit
MB=megabyte
Kb=kilobit
KB=kilobyte

also:
8 bits = 1 byte
1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte
1024 kilobytes = 1 megabyte

(in bit talk, kilo means 1024 rather than 1000 since 1024 is a power of 2 and 1000 is not. )

now from the above
512 kilobits = 512 x 1024 bits = 524288 bits = 524288/8 bytes = (524288/8)/1024 kilobytes = 64 kilobytes

similarly
1024 kilobits = 1024 x 1024 bits = 1048576 bits = 1048576/8 bytes = (1048576/8)/1024 kilobytes = 128 kilobytes

and
2048 kilobits = 2048 x 1024 bits = 2097152 bits = 2097152 / 8 bytes = (2097152 / 8)/1024 kilobytes = 256 kilobytes

in other words,
your 56Kb connection can download a theoretical max of 7KB per second
your 512Mb connection can download a theoretical max of 64KB per second
your 1024Mb connection can download a theoretical max of 128KB per second
your 2048Mb connection can download a theoretical max of 256KB per second

Hope the above helps clarify matters a little.

HH

nice explanation! Thanks

but I still think there is no way we will download at 256KB/s

215-220, being max

I hope I'm wrong again though

Stephen

That's correct, as you have to take the PPPoE/ATM overheads into account. You'll never actually download at the max theoretical line speed.

OFDM

2Mbps = 2,000,000 bps
8 bits = 1 byte

2,000,000 bps / 8 = 250,000 bytes per second (B/s)
1 kB = 1024 bytes

=> 250,000 B/s / 1024 = 244.14 kB/s

That's the theoretical download limit BEFORE headers, so estimates of 215-220 in previous posts are correct.

Hedgehoggski

Yeah, oops.. meant Kb instead of Mb on the left column
stupid late night finger trouble! Thanks for the correction and for being very welcoming and nice about what was a rather careless error folks!

Sorry for delay in getting back(!). Been busy!

Of course as others rightly pointed out, all these figures are before any necessary overhead such as error correction bits, and other metadata in the frames which in practice would reduce the actual max user data transfer possible. It is difficult to quantify the size of the average "bite" these housekeeping bits would take out of your data stream as amongst other things, it is dependent on your individual settings, but 215-221KB for every 256KB sent is probably as good a guess as any.

I'm not certain telecoms companies use K=1000. It's likely they do though as it's in their favour. It sneakily Puffs up their data rates a bit by mixing up the use of the conventions of K=1024 (for good reasons!) in the computer world and K=1000 in the "selling services and hardware to computer users" world

Naturally if they do then revise post accordingly by replacing each "1024" by "1000" . The proper user calculation should produce a result in computer KB though, i.e. K=1024, because every KB of the files you send and recieve from a computer uses K=1024 as it's convention

Unfortunately Hard drive companies certainly do use K=1000 though so beware!

Stokolan

Hedgehoggski wrote: »

Sorry for delay in getting back(!). Been busy!

Must have been real busy.. 5 years between posts :eek:

PogMoThoin

Whoa, 5 yr necro

Cabaal

Good god people,
die feck'in zombie's die!