Eir rural FTTH thread

Gonzo wrote: »

If Eir decide to halt the 300k premises half way through the project, what happens then to the rest of the premises? What happens to the NBP, the map would have to be redrawn again possibly delayed the NBP by another year or two?

If this all pans out as being speculated here then I for one will disconnect from eir completely.

I would prefer to use a second-rate wireless service than to support eir under those circumstances.

tsue921i8wljb3

Gonzo wrote: »

I think Eir may have also in recent times abandoned their 66 towns scheme or at least put most of the planned towns on hold. I think about 20 towns got their FTTH in the end and at that only small sections of those towns? If Eir do abandon the rural FTTH scheme then the backlash will get very ugly and rightly so.

Ironically enough the deadline for the urban project is in four days time. I don't think any planned numbers were ever published so it's hard to say how much was done but definitely 66 towns were not completed.

Allison Puny Appetite wrote: »

I presume the map would have to be redrawn. How long this would take I don't know.

I'm not sure though that I believe eir will renege on the commitment contract. Surely it would be a PR disaster for them and damaging to the brand. Is there any precedent for a company abandoning a government contract midway through? The only vaguely similar situation I can think of is the developer Bernard McNamara pulling out of a PPP scheme with Dublin City Council in 2008.

I think Eir may have also in recent times abandoned their 66 towns scheme or at least put most of the planned towns on hold. I think about 20 towns got their FTTH in the end and at that only small sections of those towns? If Eir do abandon the rural FTTH scheme then the backlash will get very ugly and rightly so.

Dev84

Allison Puny Appetite wrote: »

I presume the map would have to be redrawn. How long this would take I don't know.

I'm not sure though that I believe eir will renege on the commitment contract. Surely it would be a PR disaster for them and damaging to the brand. Is there any precedent for a company abandoning a government contract midway through? The only vaguely similar situation I can think of is the developer Bernard McNamara pulling out of a PPP scheme with Dublin City Council in 2008.

Money is more important than pr. Eir have a monopoly so it wont hurt them to much. Its simple maths on their behalf.

In an urban setting they can hit 50 houses for the same money as hitting 2 in rural locations thus generating a much greater return for them.

tsue921i8wljb3

Gonzo wrote: »

If Eir decide to halt the 300k premises half way through the project, what happens then to the rest of the premises? What happens to the NBP, the map would have to be redrawn again possibly delayed the NBP by another year or two?

I presume the map would have to be redrawn. How long this would take I don't know.

I'm not sure though that I believe eir will renege on the commitment contract. Surely it would be a PR disaster for them and damaging to the brand. Is there any precedent for a company abandoning a government contract midway through? The only vaguely similar situation I can think of is the developer Bernard McNamara pulling out of a PPP scheme with Dublin City Council in 2008.

If Eir decide to halt the 300k premises half way through the project, what happens then to the rest of the premises? What happens to the NBP, the map would have to be redrawn again possibly delayed the NBP by another year or two?

Dev84

Marlow wrote: »

The "equal to rural electrification" approach was already pushed to the minister. The dept still thinks, that LTE and mobile broadband is equal to any other broadband.

There are much bigger problems to be solved, before we even get near to the government actually getting into gear, nevermind Comreg.

/M

This.

If there was a chance of a multi nationals relocating to donegal or the back arse of kerry then broadband would be a priority.

Private companies dont care about social initiatives etc. Its all about the bottom line and it now looks as if eir have copped this.

Marlow

flaneur wrote: »

Trying to expect the market to provide uneconomic FTTH rollout in rural areas is a mug's game! The state needs to get behind this and treat it like the rollout of rural electrification or 1980s digital telephony in the old days.

It's not a commercially viable project, but it is a socially necessary one.

The "equal to rural electrification" approach was already pushed to the minister. The dept still thinks, that LTE and mobile broadband is equal to any other broadband.

There are much bigger problems to be solved, before we even get near to the government actually getting into gear, nevermind Comreg.

/M

flaneur

Trying to expect the market to provide uneconomic FTTH rollout in rural areas is a mug's game! The state needs to get behind this and treat it like the rollout of rural electrification or 1980s digital telephony in the old days.

It's not a commercially viable project, but it is a socially necessary one.

Marlow

oscarBravo wrote: »

It's completely untrue of Castlebar. There is no FTTH available in any of the industrial or commercial areas of the town.

It's partly true in Westport, where one industrial estate (more of a business park, really) got FTTH in the last few weeks.

That's what I figured. The same I've seen anywhere else. Athlone, Ennis, Galway ... any of the OpenEIR FTTH roll-out areas, even if they pass on the entry road to the business parks and industrial estates, they've completely bypassed them. Only FTTC available, when you're lucky.

And the biggest joke is the Blyry Industrial Estate in Athlone, that has an OpenEIR exchange IN the estate. Yet .. no FTTH and the exchange has no NGN or WEIL options either. Go figure. But FTTH is on the road .... 100m from the exchange ... that passes outside of the estate.

/M

oscarBravo

Marlow wrote: »

I can't talk about Castlebar, Westport and Sligo...

It's completely untrue of Castlebar. There is no FTTH available in any of the industrial or commercial areas of the town.

It's partly true in Westport, where one industrial estate (more of a business park, really) got FTTH in the last few weeks.

Marlow

Allison Puny Appetite wrote: »

EIR have aggressively rolled out fibre to counter SIRO on Industrial Estates in Castlebar, Westport and Sligo. Small deployments to key customers. They are reputedly doing the same in Athlone right now. These are not in the 300k rollout plan and resources are 'found' to do these rollouts.

No sign of Eir doing any of this. I can't talk about Castlebar, Westport and Sligo, but for Athlone that particular info you got there is nonsense.

Take the east side of Athlone, with the business parks around AIT and in Blyry, where OpenEIRs FTTH run actually passed from Ballinahown towards Glasson and down the Moydrum road. They have effectivly passed the industrial parks .... and NOT run any fiber at all into these estates. There's no sign of it happening any time soon either.

So if that's what Eir told people, then that's a blatant lie.

It gets even better. They've made a mess of their eircode database, which they heavily rely on for their FTTH rollout. So far that certain eircodes in these estates ( alot of them ) are referring to the wrong buildings. Often a road or two apart.

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

What about forcing eir to deliver fibre to everyone, under similar terms that the copper is presently? 'must provide'

Not going to happen. The universal supply agreement does not specify copper. It doesn't specify any media at all. It specifies "phoneline" .. as in "phone service". Not copper, not fiber. And it certainly doesn't include broadband.

Hence, why OpenEIR/EIR can deliver phonelines on the old crummy wireless systems, when it becomes too expensive to deliver it by copper.

So forcing OpenEIR to deliver on fiber is not possible, as the media on which OpenEIR delivers these lines to the customer is not specified and OpenEIR is left to choose and pick as they see fit.

Also the USA is an agreement, that was reached as part of the privatisation of Eircom. It refers to the infrastructure in place at that time. All the fiber build since then are not included and can't fall under that agreement. It's at OpenEIRs own peril, if they use that infrastructure.

KOR101 wrote: »

Any chance SIRO reentering the process? Faint.....what a mess.

Unlikely. SIRO have moved on and are focusing on urban areas and business estates now. Only e-net is left to fight OpenEIR on that one .. and I don't know which of the two is worse.

/M

Dev84

Its understandable that eir wouldnt want to spend money and divert resources to areas that wont have a decent return. Its just business.

KOR101

Eir are clearly going to pivot to the urban areas now and with the ceiling on capital expenditure the rural rollout numbers will be very interesting. I hadn't connected the storm to the recent disappointing rollout numbers.

I suppose if Eir do effectively pull out of the commitment contract it will take quite some time for it to be clear, although presumably then the NBP map gets redrawn again. Any chance SIRO reentering the process? Faint.....what a mess.

If Eir do decide to pull the plug on the rural rollout, the backlash from local politicians and people in effected areas will be huge, with plenty of negative publicity in the papers etc. I really hope it doesn't come to this. Any area that has had any sort of work started, would obviously have to be completed.

ACLFC7 wrote: »

HD TV with powerline? How does that work?

Not sure what you are asking ...... similar to Sat>IP ....... tv signals converted to IP and sent over power lines using PL Adapters, or over Cat5e LAN cable..

MBSnr

BarryM wrote: »

Is TP-link the best? I'd like to hear from those with specific experience, not broad brush criticism, the options.

TIA, Barry

Mine are TP-Link 600Mbps units on the downstairs ring main.

Down ( to remote unit) is 144Mbps = 18MB/s
Up (back to router) is 70Mbps = 8.75MB/s

If I move them about the house the speed stays about the same - even swapping units over, I get that same double difference in up/down speed.

As I said before - they run with 100Mbps LAN ports (12.5MB/s), so any down speed to the remote unit that's over 100Mbps is slightly irrelevant anyhow. At some point when my internet is finally FTTH, I will invest in 2000Mbps 1GB LAN port units.

What options do the government have?

First off, those who reckoned a cost of 500 mil for an NBP roll out were (deliberately?) under-costing it.
The more realistic estimates were always around 1 bil (+/- 25%).

If eir 'do the dirty' with their 300k roll out ..... 20 mil for delay is small ..... but given the reaction could the gov not use their powers to 'kick back'?

Comreg could easily make life a little difficult for eir (I do not believe Comreg is independent of political influence).
What about forcing eir to deliver fibre to everyone, under similar terms that the copper is presently? 'must provide'
That would force completion of the 300k in the first place ...... with fines for late deployment built in!

If eir get dirty I think they are not as well protected as one might think initially.

They are still in a monopoly situation and can be 'directed' and fined for non-compliance.

.... or so it seems to me ........

ACLFC7

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Using TrendNet (TPL-406e) here without problems ...... Full HD TV sent over wiring.

HD TV with powerline? How does that work?

BarryM wrote: »

Is TP-link the best? I'd like to hear from those with specific experience, not broad brush criticism, the options.

TIA, Barry

Using TrendNet (TPL-406e) here without problems ...... Full HD TV sent over wiring.

The internal wiring has a great effect on how well they work.
Also used one of my extension leads which slowed things somewhat ... yet other extension leads did not have any noticeable effect.

Allison Puny Appetite wrote: »

Just to cheer everyone up at Christmas my source has contacted me with their take on the Niel takeover. It does not make for pretty reading. I'm not sure I agree with it all but I said I'd post it to spark debate.

I asked about the eNet plan as I hadn't seen it mentioned previously.

Merry Christmas everyone!

That makes bleak reading, but it also makes total sense.

That fine is too low, so it makes perfect sense for eir to abandon the rural rollout for sure.

tsue921i8wljb3

KOR101 wrote: »

I think this is not good news.....

Eir buyer set to refocus investment on urban areas

https://www.independent.ie/business/irish/eir-buyer-set-to-refocus-investment-on-urban-areas-36434047.html

AidenL wrote: »

The alternative remaining bidder.

Just to cheer everyone up at Christmas my source has contacted me with their take on the Niel takeover. It does not make for pretty reading. I'm not sure I agree with it all but I said I'd post it to spark debate.

I was told some months ago that Niel thinks EIR are mad to spend scarce resources on Rural where there is no competition. EIR countered by pointing out that SIRO and Virgin are basically crap at execution in Urban Areas. But this will not last forever.

EIR have aggressively rolled out fibre to counter SIRO on Industrial Estates in Castlebar, Westport and Sligo. Small deployments to key customers. They are reputedly doing the same in Athlone right now. These are not in the 300k rollout plan and resources are 'found' to do these rollouts.

What does NOT change is the CAPEX envelope. Of the Q4 2017 capex half was diverted to repair Hurricane Ophelia damage in Cork and Waterford where 2000 poles were replaced, for example. I am not sure if the Active Optical gear in the exchanges is funded from NGA capex or Core capex either.

Now Niel wants a focus on Urban Areas, but the CAPEX is not increasing if he takes over EIR or else there are some millions ( not more than €100m total) and they will be spent where he wants not in Rural areas, especially poorer ones.

So what can EIR do. They can punt in a massive bid for the NBP and it seems that eNet are only putting in a 5g wireless plan of ultra dubious technical merit so Eir have a chance of winning it. It will be around €1bn to €1.3bn with full gap cost recovery. Gap funding means eir calculate that a €700 cost per premises is commercially recoverable and that they bill the government for all the rest.

If a house costs €2000 to reach the Gap is €1300. Full Gap Funding will cost around €1bn minimum across the 540k NBP premises and the NBP only has €275m allocated and ministers have entertained 'up to' €500m of a Gap bill. They are in for a shock so. The difference alone will be the cost of a Motorway from Limerick to Cork.

The 300k 'contract' is a separate issue. Currently EIR need to spend around €150-€180m to complete this zone (after Q4 2017)

If they abandon it right now at the end of Q4 2017 the fine is capped at €20m (or more likely €0) as the government can only recover 'up to' €20m if they contract out the 'missing' components of the 300k premises to another Operator. This means abandoning the 300k makes sense any time you like in 2018 as the fine cannot possibly exceed the capex required to finish the 300k rollout SAVE in the last quarter of the rollout, Q1 2019.

As the exchanges in what was the second tranche of 200k proposed in early 2016 ( for 2017-2020) are less dense than the 'first' 100k the best guess I have is that Eir will abandon the 300k rollout between Feb 2018 and April 2018 without telling anyone as the political consequences will be ferocious and the economic consequences will be tiny (€20m fine against €100m minimum CAPEX). But they will finish the eVDSL rollout some time in 2019 as a sop.

The Department of Finance will then be looking at a €1-€1.3bn NBP and cleaning up the mess in '300k contract land' at a cost of around €200m for a total spend of as much as €1.5bn. (minus the maximum €20m fine of course)

EIR won't give a **** and will blame the new boss who is an urban dude from France anyway.

I asked about the eNet plan as I hadn't seen it mentioned previously.

A little known outfit, Airspan Spectrum Holdings, acquired a lump of 3500mhz in May. They will lease that to anyone and the anyone who came calling was eNet it seems. While wireless is cheaper to deploy initially the running costs are fairly excruciating and the cost of wireless crosses over fibre after 7-10 years. In other words you might as well have fibred in the first place. Oak investment partners are the main player in Airspan and they also owned a lot of dark fibre operator Zayo pre IPO. Zayo are similar to eNet/

The temptation for the government is great if eNet come in with a much lower indicative price of around €500m instead of €1bn. . 2.3Ghz is finally to be cleared and auctioned in 2019 or so which will also be used for 'Fixed Mobile' TD-LTE rather than mobile mobile 4 or 5g. It suits eNet to put in a final tender absent a price on Dark Fibre on boreens being set.

Looking at France, FTTB/H has little penetration and is mainly B despite 4 or 5 operators and rollouts starting years back compared to us. On the FTTH Council Europe measure which is homes passed Ireland could even pass out France by Q2 2018 and we have already passed France out on FTTH...tis the buildings saved them. Where is Niels record there exactly?? Would he have passed even 0.5% of all French premises with his own network???

But I reckon eir will lose interest in rural rollout as soon as the tender goes in and if they lose the tenders they will abandon rapid. The government may split the contracts too of course, giving them 1 each. If eir won the North West you could see them continuing their blocking tactics in the South East while actually pulling resources out of the North West for a year or two. But Niel is bringing very little new cash with him so the Capex envelope for NGA will not change much unless the taxpayer fattens it up.

Merry Christmas everyone!

BarryM wrote: »

....and who would you suggest should get it?

The alternative remaining bidder.

rob808

BarryM wrote: »

Is TP-link the best? I'd like to hear from those with specific experience, not broad brush criticism, the options.

TIA, Barry

I have two TP-link there fine for most uses my nephew use one for his ps4 no problems and my brother for his laptop. There older versions but can pull 20mb down and 20mb up which isn't bad.

BarryM

AidenL wrote: »

Gonzo wrote: »

The 300k rural rollout should get completed within the next 12-18 months I reckon. They have a commitment to see this rollout finished, it may not be completed by 31 December 2018 but they will have to finish it during 2019.

In the meantime Eir would be planning another urban rollout, and Eir's plans always take a while before actual work starts on the ground. They will probably aim to start the urban rollout just as the rural one is finishing, so late 2018 or early 2019 could be when Eir start work on the urban rollout.

From 2019 Eir could be very busy finished the rural rollout and starting the urban, and if they win the NBP contract then that is yet another rollout.

I think having stated what they have, it might be much better if eir didn’t win the NBP.

....and who would you suggest should get it?

BarryM

MBSnr wrote: »

niallb wrote: »

How about if you have 4 of them?

For TP Link they share. I would imagine that applies to all manufacturers models.

http://uk.tp-link.com/faq-406.html

Q: If there are many powerline adapters in the same private network, how will the power line rate be of each device?

A: In the same private power line network, all devices share the whole bandwidth.

Q: Can several Powerline networks exist simultaneously in same power circuit?

A: Yes.The powerline networks can be separated by different network names. About how to change the network name, it can be made by the pair button or attached Utility. However, the overall throughput is shared by the multiple networks, please be informed of this. Please refer to the FAQ 258 to change the powerline network names.

Is TP-link the best? I'd like to hear from those with specific experience, not broad brush criticism, the options.

TIA, Barry

Gonzo wrote: »

The 300k rural rollout should get completed within the next 12-18 months I reckon. They have a commitment to see this rollout finished, it may not be completed by 31 December 2018 but they will have to finish it during 2019.

In the meantime Eir would be planning another urban rollout, and Eir's plans always take a while before actual work starts on the ground. They will probably aim to start the urban rollout just as the rural one is finishing, so late 2018 or early 2019 could be when Eir start work on the urban rollout.

From 2019 Eir could be very busy finished the rural rollout and starting the urban, and if they win the NBP contract then that is yet another rollout.

I think having stated what they have, it might be much better if eir didn’t win the NBP.

cnocbui wrote: »

No, just another example of of why neo-con economics sucks and Utilities should always be owned and operated by the state, to prevent such low-hanging-fruit cherry-picking.

That kind of statement might hurt their prospects when being evaluated for the NBP rollout.

I agree, last thing we need are a bunch of mega fast networks in the cities and the rest of the country falls into furtherd neglect.

I really do worry when the NBP will start, never mind be completed!