DSL out to 20KM in Australia

cgarvey

Could this be the answer for remote villages and housing clusters, etc? If it was viable, it'd certainly answer some of the last 10% problem.

bk

http://whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm/1529?show=replies

Telestra in Australia has developed a technology called DSL Extenders to allow it to offer DSL to customers at distances up to 20KM.

Australias network is in much worse shape then Ireland with many customers being up to 20km from exchanges and many exchanges being full of splitters. However Telestra are at least trying to develop technology to reach most of their customers.

Now Eircom has no excuse for reaching 100% of customers, with this sort of technology even the most rural customers should be able to get BB. However a word of warning, this technology won't be able to offer the higher speeds of ADSL2+ so a divide between urban and rural customers could still develop, however at least rural customers would be able to get on the net, with many having poor 56k connections, never mind BB.

dahamsta

Jinx! Touch wood!

Sponge Bob

I was told that Comreg have refused to consider advocating these ' Pairgain From Hell ' solutions , even if they use existing copper plant to multiplex DSL the way the existing Pairgains are multiplexed. DSL extenders never made it into their 2005 - 2007 strategy did it

You could run Gigabit ethernet over the bonded pairs if you really wanted to and break out to ADSL2 at the multiplexer .

BlueShaun

I posted about these techniques ages ago, good(no great!) to see they actually work !!

However, I live in a village about 200metres from the exchange. So its not actually a problem of distance in this case. If they are not willing to upgrade the exchange for regular dsl, hardly likely that this(which presumably costs more) will ever get used.

Cant we just give in, and buy eircom off for 100% coverage? i wouldnt resent beer being 50% more expensive here than 2km down the road in N.Iron quite as much then!

Edit: Begin sentence with "and" :mad:

Sponge Bob

BlueShaun wrote:

Cant we just give in, and buy eircom off for 100% coverage? i wouldnt resent beer being 50% more expensive here than 2km down the road in N.Iron quite as much then!

That technology would extend equally well across the border

It has been estimated that there are some 700 exchanges not in a DSL upgrade program of any sort.

We know from experience that the whole lot could be done for €70m Tops (€100k each) as Eircom did some very rural ones for that price last year. At €50m it may well be a very good deal .

The cost of building decent N grade roads is about €5m per KM to put it in perspective. The whole lot would cost roughly the same as a proper road from Manorhamilton to Belcoo.

Nevertheless Eircom wants about €500m to do it, without justifying any of their figures and will give no assurances as to coverage .....meaing that they will not remove any pairgains or put in a few bits of copper here and there. I would not give them a penny unless 80% of lines within 8km of every exchange in the program passed for BB on day one after the install ....otherwise its a total waste of public money firing DSL into rubbishy pairgained lines .

cgarvey

Agreed totally .. any money given to eircom should be under very strict performance conditions, with no stupid loopwholes like "where possible" bull. I think it's not necessarily a bad idea to give them money for the last few percent, but it should be equally offered to WISPs, etc., and under similar stringent circumstances.. like SB's 80% on day 1 .. 95% 6 months later and 100% a year later .. or whatever is reasonable.

BlueShaun

Sponge Bob wrote:

That technology would extend equally well across the border

True, but there is no line locally to carry it.

Sponge Bob wrote:

The cost of building decent N grade roads is about €5m per KM to put it in perspective. The whole lot would cost roughly the same as a proper road from Manorhamilton to Belcoo.

Please dont touch that, its a brilliant road :-) Pity i dont get to drive it more. OT but it has a 100k speed limit, wheras almost straight roads, which are wider have 80ks, due to the R number :mad:

Sponge Bob wrote:

Nevertheless Eircom wants about €500m to do it, without justifying any of their figures and will give no assurances as to coverage .....meaing that they will not remove any pairgains or put in a few bits of copper here and there. I would not give them a penny unless 80% of lines within 8km of every exchange in the program passed for BB on day one after the install ....otherwise its a total waste of public money firing DSL into rubbishy pairgained lines .

I would be willing to pay them for example €200m. Thats for 100% guaranteed coverage, as they have in the north, with no bull****. If the line is **** replace it, its far to expensive for rental anyhow.

€200m is a bargain considering money being wasted on tall ships, city of culture, VSAT for schools, paying the people at comreg etc.

Look at yesterdays Indo jobs section, Engineering: Civil, Manufacturing. and 1 or 2 mech. We cant keep making stuff(china doesnt have >€8 min wage) or building stuff(houses all round the country are empty, but we keep giving the tax breaks.......why?)and the forever building roads argument doesnt stack up if the first item is correct.

I think having this infastructure is the very least we can do when it comes to the impending transition.

<putin_mode> Lets invent a fake tax bill for eircom, and sieze control of the company, and put all management in jail for 20 years. Turn the whole thing over to BT or somebody for free, provided they put fibre to every town/village. Wifimax or dsl can take car of the rest</putin_mode>

lucernarian

I have heard that Eircom have recieved submissions for these "ADSL pairgains" in their recent pairgain tender. It seems that there is hope yet for people failing the test.

Sponge Bob

what tender ?

this gear was around in 2001 , when Ireland did not want Broadband according to Eircom

http://telephonyonline.com/mag/telecom_shifting_gears/

lucernarian

I was not told by the man when this tender was issued, he just said "recent" and that was 2 months ago. He gave me basic details of the proposals at the time, stuff like attaching a mini DSLAM to a pole which then uses up to 4 pairs bonded for backhaul and the need of repeaters etc. That was all really.

zuma

Sponge Bob wrote:

what tender ?

this gear was around in 2001 , when Ireland did not want Broadband according to Eircom

http://telephonyonline.com/mag/telecom_shifting_gears/

And it appears Ireland still dosent want Broadband...thus the low takeup...according to eircom anyway!!!

This 20km DSL extension business appears to be a short term solution to a long term problem.
As it cant carry ADSL2/2+ in 5-to-10 years time when(hopefully) at least 20Mbit connection are common in towns/cities there will be a large gap again when people on these extenders are stuck on 1/2Mbit.

In the US they built mini exchanges to house their equipment....couldnt the government fund these instead of GBS schemes???

Sponge Bob

ADSL2+ is a tad better than the 12Kbit rubbish thats up on the pole at the moment in many rural areas.

You miss the point a bit Zuma, these modern pairgains are so small they fit on a telephone pole, hence no mini exchange needed any more.

viking

Sponge Bob wrote:

these modern pairgains are so small they fit on a telephone pole, hence no mini exchange needed any more.

ah good ole' SCHLUP?

Sponge Bob

SCHLUP is but an Irish acronym for rural Irish circumstances , we need to extend out to maybe 12km max not 20km

bk

zuma wrote:

This 20km DSL extension business appears to be a short term solution to a long term problem.
As it cant carry ADSL2/2+ in 5-to-10 years time when(hopefully) at least 20Mbit connection are common in towns/cities there will be a large gap again when people on these extenders are stuck on 1/2Mbit.

Personally I don't think it is that big of a deal. ADSL2+ is only going to get you about 8 - 10 Mbit/s in Ireland (urban areas) due to the quality of the lines and distances invloved, this was reported by the guys from Smart who are using ADSL2+.

IMO the jump from 1/2M to 8/10M is far less significant then the jump from 12k to 1/2M. I think it is much more important to get people started on BB and off dial up, so they can take advantage of always-on, fixed billing, relatively high speed, useable internet access. There is very little extra to be gained by residential users with 8/10M, sure things will download a little faster, but nothing amazing. Personally I've barely noticed the difference between my old 512k DSL connection and my new 3m NTL connection.

A significant gap will only happen when FTTH and FTTC is rolled out in Urban areas and we get 25Mbit/s and greater speeds, however even that isn't a big deal as those speeds will be mostly used for video services like VoD and BoD. People in rural areas will have alternatives to this with Satellite TV and DTT.

Of course I'm not saying that in an ideal world everyone shouldn't be able to get the same high speeds. However I think it will always be the case that rural areas will be playing catch up with urban areas. However once they have some form of decent BB, I will be satisfied.

lucernarian

originally posted by bk

A significant gap will only happen when FTTH and FTTC is rolled out in Urban areas and we get 25Mbit/s and greater speeds, however even that isn't a big deal as those speeds will be mostly used for video services like VoD and BoD. People in rural areas will have alternatives to this with Satellite TV and DTT.

What is DTT?

Anyway if FTTC solutions are not economically viable (I don't even see FTTH happening in rural Ireland), then it looks like wireless would be the final long-term solution in rural Ireland, but even that is less economical then using fibre in urban areas (if the fibre is laid during construction of housing/apartment developments).

It's true that the extenders and mini DSLAMs are a short-term solution but for people like me, a soultion is better than none at all.

bk

To_be_confirmed wrote:

What is DTT?

Digital Terrestrial Television, basically Digital quality TV transmitted over the air waves, with some limited interactivity. However it doesn't have the same capaiblities as cable.

To_be_confirmed wrote:

Anyway if FTTC solutions are not economically viable (I don't even see FTTH happening in rural Ireland), then it looks like wireless would be the final long-term solution in rural Ireland, but even that is less economical then using fibre in urban areas (if the fibre is laid during construction of housing/apartment developments).

It's true that the extenders and mini DSLAMs are a short-term solution but for people like me, a soultion is better than none at all.

Agreed

Blaster99

I would say the world will move to universal broadband access at some stage in the not so distant future. If we can provide telephony, power, and water to practically everyone, there's no real reason why you can't give everyone fibre. It will obviously happen in other countries 10-20 years before it happens here, but Ireland usually figures it out eventually. In the meantime, let's do what it takes to maximise the existing copper plant.

BlueShaun

Blaster99 wrote:

but Ireland usually figures it out eventually.

Apparently we still havnt figured out that buring peat to generate electricity is stupid. low thermal efficiency, high co2 output, massive cost compared to gas.

zuma

BlueShaun wrote:

Apparently we still havnt figured out that buring peat to generate electricity is stupid. low thermal efficiency, high co2 output, massive cost compared to gas.

As C.J.Haughey once said...."an Irish solution to an Irish problem"

Those peat generators were leftover from WW2 and had to be put some some use.
These days they are being converted to oil burners though.....IMHO we really need nuclear reactors(preferable fusion if things progress nicely in France in the coming decades)!!!

Universal broadband!!!
How long again did it take the ESB to get electricity to everyone in Ireland again...????

BlueShaun

Was there not a peat plant built in Longford last year? a nice 39mill per year subsidy i believe.

Sponge Bob

Blaster99 wrote:

I would say the world will move to universal broadband access at some stage in the not so distant future.

The developed world, not Ireland where the network is cack. Frankly, reiterating some of what BK observed , it would be sensible to have 512k BB in the Universal Service Package . The problem is that once Comreg gets their hand on that Universal Service Directive from the EU they will redefine 512k BB as being functional at 0k like they did analogue lines.

Either that or the 'derogation' word will come back into vogue.

Comreg, in their out to 2007 strategy, had no specific plans or targets for the copper plant at all .

Zuma wrote:

How long again did it take the ESB to get electricity to everyone in Ireland again...????

98% of all households were wired within 8 years of 1948 when it got going , 40% (IIRC) of those were done from scratch and were not in towns which had electricity pre 1948 when the scheme started.

See these tables

http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/D/0152/D.0152.195507050026.html

http://www.oireachtas-debates.gov.ie/D/0173/D.0173.195903030032.html

You will note that more households got electric in the 1950s (per annum) than bb in this decade (relative to household number at the time) despite the greater complexity of the provisioning task.

BlueShaun

Dont think I actually said that, but the numbers prove that it should be "putinised" and O Reilly et al hung over the liffey, and left there as a warning. (the railway bridge is nice and visible, dont know its name though.)

Returning to topic, the misconception is that we cant get broadband because we are out in the sticks.
The truth is that most small places *have* got their own exchange, (those brown prefab looking buildings) so it is not a matter of distance, unless ur living in the middle of a 200 acre farm (or walled country estate, in which case buying fibre is not a problem)

There are also to the best of my knowledge less line splits?

oscarBravo

BlueShaun wrote:

the railway bridge is nice and visible, dont know its name though.

Loop line bridge, innit?

BlueShaun wrote:

The truth is that most small places *have* got their own exchange, (those brown prefab looking buildings) so it is not a matter of distance, unless ur living in the middle of a 200 acre farm (or walled country estate, in which case buying fibre is not a problem)

My local brown prefab-looking building is 4.5 miles and several pairgains away.

BlueShaun

oscarBravo wrote:

Loop line bridge, innit? My local brown prefab-looking building is 4.5 miles and several pairgains away.

Apart from the pairgains, DSL *should" go 6km, i often hear 11km.

The point was that a lot of sub 1500 places have exchanges, so its not a matter of distance. Obviously for 100% coverage this sort of technology is important.
A friend of mine in Fintona area (tyrone) is 9km from the exchange, and bt did a lot of work to get it sorted, but sorted it is, on regular dsl.

eircomtribunal

BlueShaun wrote:

A friend of mine in Fintona area (tyrone) is 9km from the exchange, and bt did a lot of work to get it sorted, but sorted it is, on regular dsl.

The citigroup report on eircom "explained" away a lot of the technical, demographic, geographic and what have you reasons for our dsl misery when it stated categorically:

eircom’s attempt to balance[sic] growth in broadband with the managed cannibalisation of its own dial-up internet base goes a long way to explaining this lacklustre [dsl] development – this is a different and potentially dangerous balancing act.

And let's not get distracted into false blame games: Eircom is only acting how our representatives in gov allow it to – just as Shell is not stealing our gas, but getting it as a present of Burke, Ahern, Dempsey and Co.

BT in the UK would not do what it is doing (bringing the UK to the better places in the EU broadband map), was it not for OFCOM.
The incumbent in Denmark, Belgium, Sweden or Japan would not do what they are doing was it not for gov and regulator action.
P.

BlueShaun

eircomtribunal wrote:

just as Shell is not stealing our gas, but getting it as a present of Burke, Ahern, Dempsey and Co.

Agreed. But we do need to at least try and get some form of energy independance. The uk imports oil/gas, and they are not going to go short to supply us.

eircomtribunal wrote:

BT in the UK would not do what it is doing (bringing the UK to the better places in the EU broadband map), was it not for OFCOM.
The incumbent in Denmark, Belgium, Sweden or Japan would not do what they are doing was it not for gov and regulator action.
P.

Couldnt agree more.

lucernarian

I think that, whatever about recieving money for adding DSLAMs to the smallest exchanges, there should be definetely no financial rewards for enabling lines connected to the exchange, pairgains or no pairgains. Over the last year I notice that eircom are starting to taking people off pairgains anyway, with no govt funding for it. But this bull about lines too long for DSL has got to end. With regulatory and government intervention if necessary. I cannot find out why the limit is set as it is but I have yet to hear a good reason. But even if 10 km loops can handle today's speeds, can they ever handle more than that? Not likely