[SiliconRepublic] Govt 'prepared to intervene' on broadband

damien

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single4823

13.05.2005 - The Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Noel Dempsey TD, has warned the Irish telecoms industry that the Government will intervene if broadband coverage is not improved, particularly in rural areas.
Speaking at the National Broadband Conference in Galway this morning, he said the Government was ready to take action where it felt the market was failing to provide the necessary competition.

"I want to make it clear to industry that I am prepared to intervene in the broadband market where market failure is impacting on key strategic Government objectives such as balanced regional development, participation in the information economy and improved international competitiveness," he said.

"The challenge for the industry is to build on this Fianna Fáil-led Government's contribution to the metropolitan area networks [MANs], the Group Broadband Scheme and schools programmes.

"However, where market forces or private investment are unable, or unwilling, to meet broader economic and social requirements, I will intervene on an operator-neutral basis in the market to promote competition and choice for the Irish consumer.”

He continued: "Currently there are certain bottlenecks in this market, which are making cheap broadband in the regions unsustainable. This undermines the prospects for employment growth in regional and rural Ireland. This is a strategic weakness for Ireland that we ignore at our peril. If the market does not deliver, I will have no alternative but to examine all available options to resolve this difficulty.”

Despite the threat to the telecoms industry implicit in the minister’s remarks, David McRedmond, commercial director of Eircom, who had been at the conference, reacted positively to the speech. “It came across as quite a balanced view,” he remarked. “He was saying that good progress had been made but more needs to be done. He’s saying what the industry is saying: we need to go on and get the job done. We need to complete the job of getting 100pc availability of broadband. It’s happening in Northern Ireland and Scotland and we need it to happen here.”

McRedmond said he interpreted the “operator neutral” comments of the minister to mean the Government would be prepared to put out to tender a contract to build additional infrastructure in remote areas, in the same way it had built the MANs.

McRedmond felt the best way to address the broadband deficit in rural regions would be to broadband enable those 10pc of exchanges that Eircom had not been able to for reasons of commercial unviability. He felt that the Group Broadband Scheme (GBS), which was attempting to do this by aggregating demand, was only a “piecemeal” approach. “Why not roll up all that [GBS] money into a big tender to do the last 10pc? If the Government gave us money [to do that] we’d meet it part of the way. But we’re not looking for a load of government money to make this happen. It’s simply so you can get the job done.”

He added: “Even in a year’s time, 10pc of the population will still live in places where they can’t get broadband because there’s no economic case for broadband enabling those exchanges. In Northern Ireland and Scotland the government has given money to BT to enable those exchanges."

Wow that's handy. For eircom. Let's take bets now to see whether the bulk of the GBS money will in fact be used for one large tender for the rural population. I wonder who'll win the tender. Which telco currently has copper going into all the rural homes ?

SkepticOne

Can't see giving money to Eircom to upgrade exchanges as being a solution tbh. Throwing good money after bad. Where is the incentive for them sort out their copper plant. Upgrading exchanges would mean that they establish their broadband monopoly in an area and then start demanding more money to fix lines, remove splitters etc.

We have been so brainwashed by Eircom, that people think that upgrading exchanges is the bulk of the job. In fact, the 200 exchanges that Eircom recently announced will only bring broadband to an extra 10% or so of the population given the poor quality and long distances of lines in rural areas.

Solair

SkepticOne wrote:

Can't see giving money to Eircom to upgrade exchanges as being a solution tbh. Throwing good money after bad. Where is the incentive for them sort out their copper plant. Upgrading exchanges would mean that they establish their broadband monopoly in an area and then start demanding more money to fix lines, remove splitters etc.

We have been so brainwashed by Eircom, that people think that upgrading exchanges is the bulk of the job. In fact, the 200 exchanges that Eircom recently announced will only bring broadband to an extra 10% or so of the population given the poor quality and long distances of lines in rural areas.

Eircom's stuck in language of the 1980s when upgrading exchanges was the big deal and the way forward. The cost of upgrading the last few (mostly tiny) exchanges can't be THAT high. The "upgrades" aren't that complex compared to the kind of work that had to be carried out in the Telecom Eireann days when things were moved from analogue to digital.

I'd be in favour of renationalising the last mile of the network. i.e. create a semi-state company that owns and manages the local loops. Surely it's be possible to do some form of compulsary purchase order in the "national interest"

The deregulation of the power industry is following a MUCH more logical path. ESB was split into 3 business units:

ESB Power Generation (owns and operates the ESB power plants)
ESB Networks (Owns and operates the medium and low voltage distribution networks i.e. the copper cables and transformers in local areas)
ESB Customer Supply (The company that sells customers electricity)

and the national grid was taken out of ESB completely, it's now a state owned company called EirGrid.

Surely this was the path to follow for the privatisation of Telecom Eireann and the opening of the telco market rather than creating one behemoth that retained total market dominance and force other operators to play on a totally uneven playing field.

I wonder if it's even fixable at this stage.

We're a remote island nation that depends totally on having a good communications system. This was the logic behind the multibillion euro investment that went ahead through the 1980s and saw Ireland's telecommunications infrastructure move from being one of the worst networks in Europe to being one of the best in the world. Unfortunately, that momentum is totally lost. The second generation (telephone) infrastructure's as good as it gets, but we've totally missed the boat when it comes to 3rd generation fixed line communications (i.e. DSL & other broadband technologies).

dahamsta

Solair wrote:

I'd be in favour of renationalising the last mile of the network. i.e. create a semi-state company that owns and manages the local loops. Surely it's be possible to do some form of compulsary purchase order in the "national interest"

The local loop is the core of Eircom's business, th stick they use to beat everyone else. They'd be delighted to sell it, but for a ludicrous amount. If Gov.ie tries to set a lower figure for compulsory purchase, Eircom would fight it all the way to the Four Goldmines, and then to Europe. And they'd probably win, Europe wouldn't be mad about the idea.

adam

Moriarty

Eircom may win if it was the government planning to fully renationalise it, but I suspect the government could have a strong case if they decided to just cut the local loop - or better yet the entire network operations side - out of eircom and tender that out to a competing company.

Both the government and the EU have recognised that the problem of incumbents needs to be fixed once and for all at some point. The only long term solution to the problem is splitting the incumbents up. I think a number of countries and the EU are coming around to that realisation now. I suspect it hasn't quite hit home over here yet, though.

Blaster99

I'm not really sure how this thread got into all this gloom about Eircom getting lots of money. That's Eircom's spin. Our fine minister didn't seem to say that at all. For instance "I will intervene on an operator-neutral basis in the market to promote competition and choice for the Irish consumer".

Mr_Man

I saw some comments from the head of Verizon, delivered to the broadband conference in Galway, which basically said they were now having to roll out fibre to homes in the US to compete with the cable companies. Now while the situation isn't the same in Ireland regarding competition from cable, I think that new technologies like the one outlined below will make the copper network largely irrelevant in the next 5 to 10 years. If this is the case why waste the time an effort taking on Eircom, why not cut them out of the loop literally, and continue to foster an environment where there can be a fast rollout of new technologies?

JOHN DVORAK'S SECOND OPINION
Cisco takes both sides in standards fight
Commentary: Can't lose in wireless networking battle
By John C. Dvorak
Last Update: 12:01 AM ET May 11, 2005

BERKELEY, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- In the next few years a revolution in wireless networking will take the world by storm.

It's all because of an invention called MIMO, which stands for multiple inputs, multiple outputs. It promises much faster and more reliable data transfers between computers, cell phones and other electronic gadgets

But as usual there is a massive debate as to what specific methodologies will be employed to make this a standard -- to be dubbed 802.11n.

There are two distinct camps. Somehow Cisco Systems has managed to embed itself in both in such a way that it can't lose. Nobody seems to have noticed.

To describe how MIMO works would take a couple of books, but essentially, in its purest form, it's the ability to transmit two or more distinct signals over the same (in this case) 802.11 radio channel at the same time with no interference.

In theory when you do this you should have a jumble but apparently not. The primary inventor of this technology is a start-up called Silicon valley-based Airgo Networks http://www.airgonetworks.com.

Airgo leads the 17-company standards pressure group called WWiSE (World Wide Spectrum Efficiency) http://www.wwise.org. Included in its ranks are Broadcom, Motorola, Nokia, France Telecom, Hughes, TI and NTT.

On the other side of the debate are 22 companies led by Intel, Atheros Communications, Nortel, Samsung, Sony, Qualcomm, Philips and Panasonic. Their group is called TGn Sync (Task Group 'n' synchronization) http://www.tgnsync.org/home.

We're talking about a major battle of the titans here.

Right now the TGn Sync has the edge in the 802.11n standards war, but not with enough votes to take control of the process.

Here's why the tables may turn. If you read enough about these competing versions of MIMO you discover that WWiSE has an edge with single antenna implementations that apply directly to mobile/cell phones.

Everyone who follows the trends in cellular technology expects that most mobile phones will incorporate WiFi capabilities in the years ahead. Already some phones are available that do this.

The idea is that such a phone can use both VOIP internet connections and standard cellular network connections as needed. With a wireless 802.11 grid already emerging from all this technology, the new mobile phones can do a lot more Internet-related activity if they are 802.11 capable. And the MIMO system proposed by WWiSE works better in the mobile phone environment.

Back to Cisco. So in the standards battle Cisco is on the committee promoting TGn Sync. But at the same time its spunky daughter company Linksys is actually shipping a MIMO router and wireless network card utilizing the Airgo (WWiSE) technology and chipsets.

This is where I come in. I have used small office gateways from all the major vendors and have never encountered one as slick as the Linksys Wireless-G SRX device. It penetrates walls and goes further than any other device I've owned. The litany of MIMO technology says that at the same wattage you get more distance, more speed and more reliability. No argument from me.

And this is in a mixed environment, mind you. I've read reports that the Airgo designs do not do well in mixed environments (different 802.11 systems mixed with different vendors). I don't see it. In fact it seems to improve all 802.11b connections.

To see what a standardized environment was like I threw a Linksys 802.11-g SRX PCBus card into a laptop. Through five walls, one floor, two outside walls and down to a remote room I got a solid throughput of 108 Mbps from the SRX router. In the process my laptop found two other solid 802.11g networks in the neighborhood and easily connected to them at 54 Mbps making the SRX add-in card a poachers dream come true.

Cisco isn't making a lot of noise about it one way or the other and prefers to bide its time until the standards disputes are resolved. In the meantime this particular SRX gear from Linksys is what I'd be buying right now while looking closely at the Cisco stock.

And who is going to win the standards battle? It will depend on whether Samsung and perhaps Sony see that it is in their best interest as mobile phone makers to change sides. I'd be surprised it they didn't. I'd put my money on WWiSE if I were a betting man.

M.

damien

Dempsey was on the Last Word tonight on Today FM. I was in the car and only got the tail end. He said that all the telcos are doing enough for the broadband rollout. He skirted around the availability percentages and said he is more interested in quality of the broadband more than the availability. He was saying that 512k isn't good enough and that people need 1mb and 2mb connections. Is it 20o5 already Noel ? I'm trying to get a transcript.

SkepticOne

Solair wrote:

Eircom's stuck in language of the 1980s when upgrading exchanges was the big deal and the way forward. The cost of upgrading the last few (mostly tiny) exchanges can't be THAT high. The "upgrades" aren't that complex compared to the kind of work that had to be carried out in the Telecom Eireann days when things were moved from analogue to digital.

Yeah. However, depending on how you define exchange there could be quite a lot of them. Regardless, it has become fairly obvious over the past couple of years that the real problem is our over-dependence on the copper "local loop". When Eircom complete the 200 exchanges over the next year, the majority of those who can't avail of broadband will be connected to "enabled" exchanges - including significant numbers in large cities. Paying Eircom to upgrade more exchanges (as McRedmond suggests) would not solve many problems and may make the situation worse.

Note McRedmond's new spin: "Areas that can get broadband" meaning that an exchange in the area has a DSLAM.

eircomtribunal

SkepticOne wrote:

Note McRedmond's new spin: "Areas that can get broadband" meaning that an exchange in the area has a DSLAM.

We have to try to get knowledge about this misinformation across to our journalists. End-user availability is the only figure we want to hear about. End-user availability was as well in the DCMNR's April 2004 policy directive to ComReg.
David McRedmond did the same misinformation in yesterday's Galway speech and slides: talking of 80 bb coverage, of soon 90% of lines broadband enabled – and the government should pay them for enabling the last 10%. He also wants money to deal with the pair-gain issue, as this is a technical issue that is costly to resolve and not a fault of Eircom.

As I mentioned in another thread, David showed in his slide that BT got 14 million euros to bb enable NI.

P.

Mr_Man

If Pair Gains are not Eircom's fault who does McRedmond think is responsible, the Tooth Fairy ?

M.

eircomtribunal

Mr_Man wrote:

the Tooth Fairy ?

M.

According to David McRedmond the regulator wanted them.
P.

eircomtribunal

eircomtribunal wrote:

According to David McRedmond the regulator wanted them.
P.

And David is not so far off reality.
After this article, published end 2002, I got a tel call from the regulator to withdraw the article as it was highly incorrect. I was told that Eircom had every right to build in carrier devices. I was told that in the UK "BT was installing pair gain devices left, right and centre" and that a network simply could not do without those devices to increase coverage.
P.

Solair

As I've said in another post there are ways and means to keep pairgains yet get DSL by simply being a bit more creative and "juggling" lines around a bit so that people who want DSL get a raw copper pair and their pair gain is moved to a voice-only line.

It's not rocket science! It's just about better management of resources.

There's nothing wrong with modern pairgain as a means of providing voice and modem service (the newers systems DONT interfere with 56K modems)
It's a perfectly legitimate part of any telephone network. However, if someone want's a high speed DSL line they should be able to avail of a dedicated copper pair and someone who doesn't want DSL should be given the multiplexed pairgain line instead. The reality of it is they won't notice any deteoriation or change in their service if the pairgain equipment used is uptodate.

eircom however decided to pre-fail all of the pairgain lines as it was easier than sending someone out to swap the number to a different copper pair.

When you test a line it should give you one of three results:

PASS
PAIRGAIN --- Will require work.
NOT AVAILABLE - no DSLAM in your area, but please try again when we upgrade your area... perhaps an indication of when this might happen etc.

or FAIL (due to genuine line problems i.e. your line is too long, you're located too far from the exchange etc)

The current system is just stupid... you either PASS or FAIL and there's no explaination.

Mr_Man

It seems to me that there are two issues here. The first would seem to be a weak regulator who allows a monopoly to get away with charging one of the highest line rentals in Europe while at the same time defining a low level of service which incluides the ability to inflict pairgains on people.

The second issue is that Eircom are taking the cheap way out and splitting the lines in the full knowledge of the impact this will have on line performance and durability over the longer term.

While Eircom's view is short sighted and distinctly consumer unfriendly the laxness of the regulator is more of a concern (something we all know already).

M.

Solair

The problem's pretty simple. Eircom revenue is still mostly circuit switched telephone traffic (PSTN). Broadband and data services don't make up that much of its business.

However, we're starting to see that balance change. PSTN traffic's less profitable than it used to be in the days when they could charge us a tenner for a call from Cork to Dublin. The mobile phone sector's eating into their market share too and eircom risks loosing a hell of a lot of traffic to them over the next few years.

So, I'd guess that as broadband and data services become a larger part of eircom's revenue stream, they'll start to focus more on them.

We saw a HUGE shift in attitude to DSL once flat-rate internet made dial up less profitable.

I'd suspect as competition in the voice market hots up with the addition of VoIP etc we'll see eircom trying to go all multimedia. Only then will you see them having any interest in fixing lines.

ComReg or some other state body actually decided to block eircom from providing interactive TV back in the early days of DSL. They had planned to dive right into high end DSL products and had trialled them using a 3rd generation plaform from alcatel. However, someone decided that the would be monopolising the cable tv market again, so blocked it!

So eircom pretty much launched a bog-standard DSL product at a signifigantly reduced cost and have had relatively little interest in the technology until recently.

Meanwhile, the cable sector promised the world and delivered 15 fuzzy channels that only work on tuesdays and wednesdays if there's no interference from a full moon.

Once again, comes down to pathetic regulation and a complete lack of any understanding of the telecoms sector at government level.

---

As for the high line rentals..

Ireland's unique in Europe in so far as we have one of the highest levels of cable tv penitrations but one of the oldest and most basic cable networks you'll come across. The fundemental problem is that cable tv here sold on the basis that it gave you access to UK tv channels. In other countries it launched much later, availed of better technology and sold on the basis that it could give you access to a wider range of TV products, cheaper phone lines and internet access.

Our cable industry still basically sells on the basis that it offers access to channels that arn't available on sat (UTV and C4) and it's showing no sign of being able to compete with eircom in terms of the provision of telephone lines or internet access.

So, eircom's in a rather odd position of retaining a total monopoly on last mile access to the telecommunications network.

Their line rental's ridiculously high, but unless they force through unbundling much more rapidly there's nothing you can do about it!

eircomtribunal

Solair wrote:

We saw a HUGE shift in attitude to DSL once flat-rate internet made dial up less profitable.

I am not convinced that this was the cause. There was no HUGE shift in attitude either. Eircom had delayed to (realistically) offer dsl for so many years now, under the pathetic excuse of testing it, that it had eventually to offer it at least to some customers.
Flat-rate was a failure, as it was not introduced as the ministerial directive had demanded. We only got pre-paid Internet hours, that consequently were a market flop. The latest ComReg Trendwatch figures show FRIACO as having only 6% of the Internet access market, when the obsolete "net subscription" rip-off is still at 9% – which equals over 130 000 users paying over the odds as victims of an Eircom misinformation racket! FRIACO port prices and consequently the end-user prices are way to expensive!

ComReg or some other state body actually decided to block eircom from providing interactive TV back in the early days of DSL.
Once again, comes down to pathetic regulation and a complete lack of any understanding of the telecoms sector at government level.

Would fully agree on the second claim. The other one about the ODTR blocking Eircom's TV and thus causing the delay of dsl is a myth, only recently warmed up by David McRedmond. At that time dsl was nowhere else used for TV. Eircom went for the wrong gear first. When they tested alcatel gear that would have allowed to rival the cable operators' tv offerings, they quickly found out that their ****ty patched-up network did not support it.
Would like to get hard information about the regulator stopping them to go for TV and what impact that had.

Ireland's unique in Europe...
So, eircom's in a rather odd position of retaining a total monopoly on last mile access to the telecommunications network.
Their line rental's ridiculously high, but unless they force through unbundling much more rapidly there's nothing you can do about it!

ODTR, ComReg, Dermot Ahern and Noel Dempsey (although he reluctantly/firmly blamed the dotcom crash – no idea how anybody could come up with the notion that this dotcom crash would only effect Ireland!?! – for Ireland's Internet/broadband malaise in yesterdays last word interview) all claim the lack of a cable competition for our failure.
In fact two countries with no cable competition are world leaders with broadband (Denmark and Japan) and another one (Germany) is in the middle field.
It is true that in many countries strong cable competition brought about a good dls roll-out without the need of intelligent or effective regulation, but that is no justification to blame the lack of competing cable for our failure.
Because we had no cable competition we needed a regulator to compensate for the lack. We did not have that. We can blame Mary O'Rourke, and we certainly should, but we have to keep in mind that she is gone, but the mandarins in the Department who really made the abysmal policies are still in place.

P.

damien

damien.m wrote:

Dempsey was on the Last Word tonight on Today FM.

http://www.radioireland.ie/lastword/1352005-17.wmv

I think it's about the last 10 mins of that feed where Dempsey comes in.