86% of Eircom Exchanges will NOT have Broadband before September 2004

spongebob

The Eircom Press Release on Thursday 230103 stated that 150 out of a total of 1100 Eircom exchanges in Ireland, will have Broadband (ADSL) by September 2004 See Text Of Press Release , (look at the year )

This means 950 exchanges will NOT have Broadband by September 2004

Thats 86% of all Eircom exchanges.

Thats fabulous news. Is this part of the National Spacer Strategy or something ???????

crawler

Muck - you have a big brain.

Which of course makes a wholesale offering equally useless....if it's eircom offering at wholesale prices.

I'm still mulling this over but am coming to the conclusion - THIS HAS BEEN A BIG MEDIA SPIN FOR A COMPANY THAT WANTS TO BE SEEN AS OFFERING THE SUN MOON AND STARS BUT ACTUALLY OFFERING VERY LITTLE.

But I'm still trying very very hard to be optimistic - Dustaz has set the standard.

DeVore

This is the Octopus approach.... If an enemy gets near, squirt out ink and disturb the sand so that noone can tell whats going on and then make your escape...

*yawn*

DeV.

Victor

Originally posted by Muck
out of a total of 1100 Eircom exchanges in Ireland

Is there that many (full) exchanges?

Is there a list anywhere?

De Rebel

Originally posted by DeVore
This is the Octopus approach.... If an enemy gets near, squirt out ink and disturb the sand so that noone can tell whats going on and then make your escape...

*yawn*

DeV.

lol, but ya gotta admire them, when they bought the book of "Every Known Trick" they went for the Deluxe edition.

spongebob

can go **** themselves......more like.

The profits will continue to go to New York

Originally posted by Victor
Is there that many (full) exchanges?

Is there a list anywhere?

No there's no list, ask around to find out where yours is.

M

crawler

Surely Comreg can not support this type of mass market carpet bombing with little or no actual delivery?

This is more of a disgrace than not actually delivering the product itself - there is little to no content in the press release apart form saying rubbish about "leading Ireland forward...ohhh look at us , we are great....errr but you cant actually have anything... and if you can we dont know what the final price will be coz we have to get in a deliberate bun fight first"

Sorry Dustaz but someone just stole my cola bottles and my mood has not improved.....I'm waiting for a real offering from someone.

kamobe

They said EVERY town with a population of 2,000+ will be upgraded by September. If the 150 exchanges cover that, then I don't see the problem? Do you expect them to start in the smallest village and work into the city? Most ppl (it's fair to say) will be in a town of 2,000+. It's not the percentage of land they cover that matters, it's the percentage of the population. And I'm sure it isnt even worth their while to upgrade any exchange with less then 2,000 ppl, unless the takeup elsewhere is HUGE. I've been fairly critical of them, and will remain so. But it's common sense to start off where the most money can be made....

spongebob

Originally posted by kamobe
They said EVERY town with a population of 2,000+ will be upgraded by September.

The wording is a BIT subtle Kamobe.

Notes!

September 2004

They said towns with 2000+ Lines . the average household has 3 so that means 6000 People and you can be sure that an ISDN counts as 2 lines.

There are only about 120 towns in Ireland with a population of over 6000 PEOPLE so maybe I should say 88% and not 86%

M

gurramok

We will only know when a full list of actual exchanges that exist is 'discovered/released/found/disclosed under some 'Dail Secrets Act' and then which areas they cover as Kamobe stated.

But if they say a million lines will be covered, can 150 exchanges cover a million lines ? !

kamobe

They said towns with 2000+ Lines

Okay

I stand by my point though...

Dustaz

Originally posted by crawler

Sorry Dustaz but someone just stole my cola bottles and my mood has not improved.....I'm waiting for a real offering from someone.

err, reducing the price of broadband by 50% can really put me in a bad mood sometimes as well :P

Muck, what percentage of people do those 87% of exchanges service? From the very start of the rollout, their plan has been to get to population centres first and work thier way down. It hasnt been the smoothest plan but its very similar to BT in the UK.
There are also fairly large swathes of America unserviced by DSL.

People seem to be failing to see the enourmous importance of the announcement today. Eircom are reacting to competition. This new service is not because Ireland Offline asked them to do it, its a direct response to ESAT. Extrapolating from this, prices should continue to drop and new markets develop (new exchanges brought online quicker).

DMC

What kamobe said.

How much of the population will be covered once the 150 exchanges are wired? Virtually every large town.

The actual percentage you should be concerned about is population coverage. A rough guess would say that around 60-70% would be covered by these 150 exchanges. That figure also include those people who are on a DSL exchange and wont pass a line test.

There are lots of exchanges in small areas, serving only a couple of hundred users.

Victor

Originally posted by gurramok
But if they say a million lines will be covered, can 150 exchanges cover a million lines ? !

Technically yes, whether it applies in this case, I don't know.

[edit] From the statement "eircom's DSL roll-out currently extends to 70 telephone exchanges and this will increase to approximately 110 exchanges by December 2003. This will equate to one million telephone lines covering the greater Dublin commuter area, provincial cities and large provincial towns. It will also cover all towns included in the government’s national spatial strategy. " So 110 exchanges = 1m lines (enabled but not activated for ADSL).[/edit]

highlight

For God's sake, there are only a minuscule number of exchanges with large pops - for example Esat's 40 exchanges cover 25% of the number oif lines

SkepticOne

Originally posted by DMC
The actual percentage you should be concerned about is population coverage. A rough guess would say that around 60-70% would be covered by these 150 exchanges. That figure also include those people who are on a DSL exchange and wont pass a line test.

Eircom in their press release say that 1 million lines will be covered. There are 1.6 million lines in the country so the 60 - 70 % would be approximately right.

spongebob

In March 2002 Mary O'Rourke announced that there would be a 3 phase government plan to roll out Broaband to 67 Towns, the infamous Fibre Rings plan. In fairness , Eircom never committed to it in the first place.

The Eircom announcement today is that Broadband will be provided (slowly) to ALL towns named in the National Spacer Strategy which is summarised Here. (420k PDF)

The National Spacer Strategy mentions 22 Towns Only.

Most unusual Captain, we have lost 45 towns between government strategies. Bye Bye to Gaoth Dobhair, Carlow, Portlaoise, Nenagh, Kildare, Bray, Naas, Navan, Drogheda,Greystones, Arklow, Carrick on Shannon and Loughrea
to name a few that weren't villages last time I looked.

Here is the List of what they committed to.

Dublin
Cork
Galway
Limerick
Waterford
Dundalk
Sligo
Letterkenny
Athlone

and!

Tuam
Ballina
Castlebar
Cavan
Monaghan
Mullingar
Tullamore
Kilkenny
Wexford
Mallow
Killarney
Tralkee
Ennis

That is the FULL list from €ircon until the end of September 2004 .

DMC

The eircom press release says

By September 2004 the roll-out will extend to approximately 150 exchanges covering towns throughout Ireland with more than 2000 telephone lines.

Now there are more than 22 towns with 2000 phone lines.

Ardmore

Originally posted by Muck
In March 2002 Mary O'Rourke announced that there would be a 3 phase government plan to roll out Broaband to 67 Towns
The Eircom announcement today is that Broadband will be provided (slowly) to ALL towns named in the National Spacer Strategy

Mary O'Rourkes (spit) announcement was about getting fibre to the towns. Like just about everything O'Rourke has to do, it was all form, and no function (I was going to say all style and no substance, but after seeing this I can't use style in the same sentence as MoR!).

Eircoms announcemnts is about getting broadband to the _customer_.

That's a big difference.

Quotes I'd like to see:
Mary O'Rourke: "Fibre Optics? Isn't that the stuff they use to make those shiny christmas trees with the coloured lights?"

spongebob

Originally posted by DMC
The eircom press release says

Now there are more than 22 towns with 2000 phone lines.

Some have more ISDN PRI's than others, is that 1, 2, 15 or 30 lines then ?

And they did 40 exchanges in Dublin alone ........so far........ that will go up to 70 by the end of september 2004......

leaving max 80 exchanges for the whole of the Bog.

dahamsta

Guys, you're concentrating too hard on the line numbers. Look at the date. September 2004. That's 20 months away. Over a year and a half. Two exchanges a month. Please don't tell me that - overstaffed as they are - Eircom can only manage to upgrade two exchanges a month. FFS, I don't even know how to install a DSLAM but if you send me one with a manual I'll do it on my tod faster than that.

adam

bk

Originally posted by dahamsta
Guys, you're concentrating too hard on the line numbers. Look at the date. September 2004. That's 20 months away. Over a year and a half. Two exchanges a month. Please don't tell me that - overstaffed as they are - Eircom can only manage to upgrade two exchanges a month. FFS, I don't even know how to install a DSLAM but if you send me one with a manual I'll do it on my tod faster than that.

adam

Believe it or not, but I was told that Eircom is actually under staffed in terms of qualified engineers, it is the biddies that they are over staffed on.

LFCFan

what about the exchanges that are installed for new estates? Tyrrelstown for example is a new estate and a new exchange was build for it. There is no way there will be over 2000 lines in the near futrure so does that mean we won't have DSL?

fabien

Hi guys,

Does anyone know if Roscrea, Co. Tipp. has more than 2,000 lines installed? Or is there anyway to find out?

Thanks

De Rebel

Originally posted by fabien
Hi guys,

Does anyone know if Roscrea, Co. Tipp. has more than 2,000 lines installed? Or is there anyway to find out?

Thanks

Earlier in the thread Muck suggested multiplying the number of lines by 3 to get the population of the towns which will be included. So 2000 lines = towns of approx 6000 people. When I googled "Roscrea" and "Population" it seems the population is somewhere between 4400 and 5200 (can't find it on www.cso.ie). So it suggests that the town is borderline. Depends on where the borders are i suppose. And I can't imagine that Glanbia/Ashbourne/Miza-Antigen have that many lines, not like you had a call centre or something.

Fingers crossed for you.

byte

Originally posted by Muck
Here is the List of what they committed to.

Dublin
Cork
Galway
Limerick
Waterford
Dundalk
Sligo
Letterkenny
Athlone

and!

Tuam
Ballina
Castlebar
Cavan
Monaghan
Mullingar
Tullamore
Kilkenny
Wexford
Mallow
Killarney
Tralkee
Ennis

That is the FULL list from €ircon until the end of September 2004 .

It's a bit pathetic, to be honest. Letterkenny is the only town to get it in Co Donegal. Pfft :mad:

DMC

Pay no attention to that. The press release clearly stats that

This will equate to one million telephone lines covering the greater Dublin commuter area, provincial cities and large provincial towns. It will also cover all towns included in the government?s national spatial strategy.

Its going to cover all those towns in the Spatial Stategy, and more.

Now, you could split infinitives as to what the definition of a line, but to the lay man, I would hold them to the fact that I have a telephone line. I don't care or understand how many twisted pairs of copper wire I have, I have a telephone line. So, if that is the case, and I would read it as that, places like Ardee, Castleblaney, really 4 or 5 towns per average sized county will be getting ADSL in that time frame. All would have one exchange per town.

Pimp Ninja

Originally posted by De Rebel
lol, but ya gotta admire them, when they bought the book of "Every Known Trick" they went for the Deluxe edition.

LOL PLd Rebel.. thats brilliant stuff.

In other news I recently found out that the exchange I am located on is actually DSL Enabled, and has been for at least a year. This is the Clontarf Exchange near to Clontarf Castle.

Every time I have rang eircom (about 4 times over the last year) I have been told that it has not been, and there are no plans to upgrade it. However I found out from the PC supplier of a local business that Wankcom came along, about a year ago, and installed a free DLS line into their premises.

All of their equipment was set up for their existing ISDN connections, and at the time there was no equivelant equipment to hook them up over DSL. OK their probably was, but it was too expensive for this business at that time. So the business basically told eircom that they didnt have a use for DSL at that time.

OK I dont know distances, but that business is about a 3 min walk from my home, and If you continue walking in the same direction, for a further 6 mins, you will reach the Clontarf exchange. Yes that business is on a straight line (road, almost as the crow flies) between my home and the local exchange. And I'm still told that it's not upgraded.

fabien

Originally posted by De Rebel
Earlier in the thread Muck suggested multiplying the number of lines by 3 to get the population of the towns which will be included. So 2000 lines = towns of approx 6000 people. When I googled "Roscrea" and "Population" it seems the population is somewhere between 4400 and 5200 (can't find it on www.cso.ie). So it suggests that the town is borderline. Depends on where the borders are i suppose. And I can't imagine that Glanbia/Ashbourne/Miza-Antigen have that many lines, not like you had a call centre or something.

Fingers crossed for you.

Thanks Muck, I eventually found the CSO figures, Roscrea Town has 5,478 souls in 2002, an increase of...288 in 6 years !! Anyway this definitely means "borderline"...I'll try to find out more about the number of lines.

If anyone wants to look up their town or city's population, there's a good list on the CSO website at http://www.cso.ie/census/excel%20tables/Table2.xls

spongebob

Originally posted by DMC
Pay no attention to that. The press release clearly stats that

Its going to cover all those towns in the Spatial Stategy, and more.

So, if that is the case, and I would read it as that, places like Ardee, Castleblaney, really 4 or 5 towns per average sized county will be getting ADSL in that time frame. All would have one exchange per town.

Ardee and Castleblaney You are an optimist alright DMC .

Ardee Urban Area 3568 persons (6071 including Rural) marginal !
Castlebaney Urban Area 1884 persons including Rural.

You could prudently add the rural and the urban from Fabiens link below as they would be within 5km of the exchange in Ardee ........usually. You will then find that Eircom will not count the rurals districts around many of these towns because thats where they tend to deploy most of their pairgains along boreens.

Fabien Kindly Linked the Census Figures (jeez I spent ages on the CSO site thanks Fabien).

if your town has 6000 persons or so in an URBAN district according to the figures above you may start to feel a glimmer of optimism.

Here's Galway County

Athenry 2906 NO!
Loughrea (Urban and Rural) 4832 NO!
Tuam (on the list) (Urban and Rural) 6560 Yes
Ballinasloe 5997 YES ...ESAT not Eircom
Barna/Furbo (includes a bit of Knocknacarra) 7000 odd Probably

I left the rest out as they are not within an asses roar. Looks like the 6000 rule of thumb applies in Galway anyway.

This means that 2 Towns will benefit under the NEW arrangement in the whole of county Galway. Barna and Tuam. Galway City and Ballinasloe already had DSL.

M

DMC

I'm very much a realist, and you are being very, very pesimistic, although in truth Blaney is too small, but I still hold it from the Press Release 150 exchanges is totally achieveable and is Eircom's goal!

If you look at this list here, based on the census of last year, it shows clearly that there are around 90-100 towns with a population of around 2000 or more. Some of these are already done.

Now lets to some real math.

40 exchanges in Dublin,
2 in Cork
2 in Galway
1 a piece in Sligo, Athlone, Killarney, Tralee etc.
Each town has an exchange........

50 or so wired, 100 to go? Thats the plan!

Its hard to give up the IrelandOFFLine habit, Muck. :rolleyes:

spongebob

Originally posted by DMC

50 or so wired, 100 to go? Thats the plan!

1. 150 out of 1100 Nationally its 14% of exchanges, we both feel a warm glow for the other 950........ agreed.

2. You just linked a list of town with a POPULATION of 2000, Eircom are doing towns with 2000 LINES ....allegedly. I am operating a rough rule of thumb that sez

a) 3 people per house
b) one line per house ,
c) 2000 houses x 3 people = 6000 people.

KaChing!

3. Eircom know which exchanges/towns already have 2000 lines or are LIKELY to have 2000 lines by September 2004. They have known all along.

4. You correctly said that circa 50 exchanges are done out of 150 (5% of all the exchanges in Ireland now have DSL, like WOW aren't we the Tiger!)

Therefore ALL that Eircom had to do was to produce a Definitive list of 100 exchanges where they would Guarantee a DSL upgrade by 30/09/04 , thats a rolling plan of around 1.8 a week. Big Big Numbers.

They have NOT produced any such list. They have guaranteed the Spatial Strategy Towns will be done , thats all. 22 Towns.

If there is a Real plan to do 100 exchanges why will they not simply list them. If I was making a business location decision in Ireland in the next 6 months I would locate my ass beside them. So would most others. I Simply don't believe them, that press release said everything and nothing IMO.

M

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Muck
If there is a Real plan to do 100 exchanges why will they not simply list them. If I was making a business location decision in Ireland in the next 6 months I would locate my ass beside them. So would most others. I Simply don't believe them, that press release said everything and nothing IMO.

Yes, that would ensure that they have demand in advance of installing the service. The fact that they have not listed them (in fact I can't find any lists of their existing i-stream exchanges) is worrying and makes me wonder about the sincerity of their press release).

So far they have said that they would be covering their existing 0.5 million lines (according to their estimation) bringing it up to 1 million. That would be just less than two thirds of the lines in the country. My question is: is this consistant with their promise to upgrade towns with 2,000 or more lines? Are there enough towns of this size to make up this figure?

spongebob

Apart from the effect on business location decisions, wait till the greater unwashed finds out that Eircom are gonna cause absolute mayhem with the property market in the next 1.5 years or so. Thats gonna happen whether they publish the list of exchanges or not!

Its started Already if you look at the 4th or 5th post in this thread.

saik

That muck, or we all emigrate.

DMC

Again, you are missing the point that these 150 exchanges are covering a good amount of the population. A lot of exhanges cover small amounts of people.

You seem to be only looking at home users. You also have to take into account that there are pubs, shops, offices and businesses who'd like DSL. Some of these have 2 or 3 lines, coming into their premises. Larger places, of course, may have more. It is not impossible to reason that the figure you use could be doubled.

Maybe one of the reasons they dont list the exchanges in public is that they have to submit them to Comreg? Yes, you guessed it, we'll have to wait.

Son of Blam

Originally posted by Muck

Most unusual Captain, we have lost 45 towns between government strategies. Bye Bye to Gaoth Dobhair, Carlow, Portlaoise, Nenagh, Kildare, Bray, Naas, Navan, Drogheda,Greystones, Arklow, Carrick on Shannon and Loughrea
to name a few that weren't villages last time I looked.

Bray has been upgraded for DSL already (there are people on I-Stream in Bray). Greystones, Navan and Drogheda have been upgraded for Esat's DSL. (It's on the list of upgraded exchanges on Esat's homepage: http://www.esatbt.com/esatcom/homepage/products_solutions/access/dsl/dsl-listofexchanges.htm). Some parts of Kildare are in the 01 area, I dunno anybody there with DSL yet, any Kildarians reading?

As for Carlow not being a village.....well.....that's for another board.

DMC

Celbridge is already up on Eircom's DSL.

spongebob

Ahhhh

The list by stealth approach.

Is this one of the 40 in Dublin you mentioned earlier ?

/me cranks up Excel and waits !

saik

15,000 at least in both Naas and Newbridge. Is there DSL available there yet?

spongebob

ring 1800 503303 and ask them

AFAIK No.

SkepticOne

I would actually be surprised if they get around to 1m lines by September as per the press release. September 2004 is plenty of time to think up excuses - investment climate changed, not enough demand, etc. It would not be the first time.

vorbis

christ this is more cynicism than miscrosoft would receive.
it says 2000 lines. A someone else stated, this would include businesses as they would be the main users of dsl. a typical it business could have say 3 dsl lines so the figures would balance out roughly into having a town of 3000. A couple of exchanges could handle a small city. Their figures are feasible. Whether they'll reach them, we don't know yet. However, an objective approach would help some people here.

Victor

The figure of 6,000 is misleading on a number of grounds ((1)it doesn't include people outside the town and in nearby villages, but on the same exchange (2) of variances in the population:line ratio).

1.6m lines : 3.9m people = 2,000 lines : 4,875 people

And seeing as most businesses will be in the medium / bigger towns they will have a better population:line ratio, that number will drop more.

spongebob

I concede

5000-6000 persons is the entry level for DSL.

Now where is that list, 100 exchanges are to be done in the next year and a half, there must be a list somewhere .....not a very long list either.

Puhhhhlease

M

DMC

No one knows what this list is going to be, Muck, but the link that I provided earlier, I'll link it here shows around 100 of Irelands biggest towns. If you are within 2 miles of the exchange, (and would cover a lot of people too who dont directly live in the town, as Victor said), then you stand a good chance. Only in really large towns or cities will you have they have 2 exchanges, and these have already been targetted first.

If 100 exchanges more are to be wired, then this list would be as good a guide as we'll get from Eircom for now.