Single Tandem FRIACO

Dustaz

This issue seems lost within the FRIACO Pricing thread and it seems of vital importance, so im going to give it its own topic (Please no talk of dsl or ot stuff).


Im still a little vague on this so could someone clarify for me (and others im sure) - Does the lack of the inclusion of tandem exchanges not render this whole thing useless? If i read the posts correctly (and i hope im wrong about this), an ISP would need to have banks of modems in every primary exchange in Ireland to offer an all-inclusive Flat Rate service.

If this is indeed the case, does this mean there is no way for ANY OLO (bar maybe esat) to offer the service and the entire thing is just a massive red herring?

im in need of clarification on this

De Rebel

Annex 1 will allow operators connected at Tandem level to offer an equivalent service to those connected at primary level by utilising Interconnect Extension Circuits.

The above appears as part of Section 1 (Background) of D1/03

There is also a diagrammatic representation of the connection in Appendix III of Annex 1 - (FRIACO Product Description)

My interpretation of these is as follows:

If an OLO is connected at tandem level, then it can use IEC (Interconnect Extension Circuits) to service all the Primary Nodes directly connected to the Tandem.

Therefore, an OLO could provide a national service by being connected to the 16 Tandem Exchanges, enabling it to service the 48 Primary Exchanges.

So, to provide a national service will require either connections to every one of the 48 Primary Exchanges or connections to every one of the 16 Tandem Exchanges or some combination. Almost ruling out new entrants at national level.

In the following, from the same section of the document, it is clear that the OLOs requested Single Tandem, and that Eircom blocked it.

In reviewing the draft product description containing the OLO requirements, some serious technical difficulties surrounding the implementation of Single Tandem FRIACO were identified. These difficulties could potentially adversely affect the integrity of the eircom network to the detriment of other users. eircom proposed an alternative, but this proposed solution was not economically efficient.

The restrictions required to ensure network integrity in the proposed product description for the implementation of Single Tandem FRIACO would have led to a product offering which would have prohibited new entrants from availing of the service. The necessary commercial constraints which the product description would have imposed would have made the product non-commercially viable

Looks like the very best we will get is a “triopoly”

Interestingly, this document never mentions ISP. I’ve read it 9 or 10 times at this stage, and with each reading more questions come to light.

But I still have faith……………

crawler

De Rebel is correct.....my guess is that new entrants would problbly only go for the usual suspect exchanges anyway, i.e. Dublin , Cork , Limerick , Galway etc.... Existing OLO's who have good interconnect may offer a wholesale offering to new entrants though , so it's not all bad!