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NBP part II

oscarBravo

The old NBP thread had hit the 10,000-post threshold that makes the boards.ie hamsters cry, so here's a shiny new one.

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Marlow

heavydawson wrote: »

My understanding is that XGS-PON is the preferred deployment technology for NBP, which is 10gbps DOWN, 10gbps UP. (Symmetrical)

That is a choice. Not a requirement. And the entire OpenEir 300k which also was part of the NBP, until it got removed, is GPON.

Also .. even if it is XGS-PON, they could still have 128 subs per cluster. Which leaves you with the same 80 Mbit/s guaranteed per sub.

The requirement is still .. as it stands .. 30 Mbit/s now .. 100 Mbit/s by 2025.

/M

heavydawson

Marlow wrote: »

That is a choice. Not a requirement. And the entire OpenEir 300k which also was part of the NBP, until it got removed, is GPON.

Also .. even if it is XGS-PON, they could still have 128 subs per cluster. Which leaves you with the same 80 Mbit/s guaranteed per sub.

The requirement is still .. as it stands .. 30 Mbit/s now .. 100 Mbit/s by 2025.

/M

My understanding is it's 30Mbits DOWN as a VERY minimum, but:
from:
https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/seanad/2019-05-16/14/

The advantage of that model is being seen in that the minimum contract that we specified was a 30 Mbps service. This company will start on day one with 150 Mbps service and will, by year ten, deliver 500 Mbps of service. The private sector is recognising that if it is to operate this network successfully then the service will have to be future-proofed and it will have to deliver it to the highest standards that are required.

Also:
https://www.rte.ie/news/2019/0507/1048027-broadband-plan-what-next/

The original promise was that the NBP would deliver minimum download speeds of 30Mbps and minimum upload speeds of 6Mbps. But the winning bidder had committed to minimum download speeds of 150Mbps for homes in year one, rising to 500Mbps by year 11.

Businesses will be able to get 1Gbps from the very start. Upload speeds for residential properties will start at 30Mbps but rise over time, while businesses will get 1Gbps upload speeds from day one.

So my take on that is that the NBP spec is 30Mbps, but the final bidder has committed to 150mbps minimum. Happy to be corrected if wrong. Your point still stands Marlow BTW, its just that the final bidder has gone beyond the spec.

Orebro

Marlow wrote: »

That is a choice. Not a requirement. And the entire OpenEir 300k which also was part of the NBP, until it got removed, is GPON.

Also .. even if it is XGS-PON, they could still have 128 subs per cluster. Which leaves you with the same 80 Mbit/s guaranteed per sub.

The requirement is still .. as it stands .. 30 Mbit/s now .. 100 Mbit/s by 2025.

/M

So we only plan this until 2025? Then what, another NBP?

Gonzo

Orebro wrote: »

So we only plan this until 2025? Then what, another NBP?

If the NBP ends up being FTTH then no worries past 2025, the speeds can be upgraded with different and faster standards of FTTH without having to replace any lines in the ground.
e.g. the current 300k rural rollout is GPON, this can be upgraded to XGS-PON at any stage by OpenEir allowing for speeds for
10gbps DOWN, 10gbps UP.

If the NBP goes with wireless, something like Imagine, it is already outdated and not fit for purpose.

heavydawson

Orebro wrote: »

So we only plan this until 2025? Then what, another NBP?

No, at that point the infrastructure will be in place, and hopefully we'll have a healthy level of competition from the existing (currently urban) incumbents.
If the revenue stream from the wholesale operation is sustainable, then it will in their best interests to ensure they continue to provide the end-user retailers (VF/SKy,etc) with continual improvements to the underlying network.
The optical transmission technology will likely have evolved at that point from 10G UP/DOWN to 40G (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NG-PON2) or better

It's 500k new or added-revenue (say if already a VF customer) customers up for grabs. Which ISP wouldn't want a piece of that?

ArrBee

Marlow wrote: »

Actually it does. Not in the sense of never. But in the sense of it will take a whole generation, before a connection may or may not happen.

/M

lol.

So you are saying that "never" actually now means "during the current generation"
Even that is disingenuous in my opinion.
It is the technology generation that will drive adoption. but yes, it might be slow.

As there becomes a compelling reason to adopted, it will happen:
-stage one. the compelling reason exists for those without internet which meets their current need. You claim that this is small, I'd agree.
-stage two. as the usecase for connectivity evolves driving higher bandwidth and/or lower latency, or even more stable connections more people will find themselves without a connection "that meets their needs" and therefore take up a connection that does.
-stage 3, 4, 5..... stage 2 keeps happening until the only connections not made are by those who purposefully choose no connection at all.

This is what I mean by viewing it as an infrastructure.
The content or usecases can't exist before the infrastructure does. sure, technology PoCs might but no business can survive selling a service that requires a non-existent infrastructure and it is those commercial service offerings which will drive uptake.

BandMember

Marlow wrote: »

The talk in the pubs is that this whole NBP thing is going to give rural Ireland free fibre broadband (i kid you not !)

That is absolute bullshít and well you know it!!

You have a vested interest in this because of who you work for and are biased in your views because of this, but to go around spreading blatant lies like that is infuriating.

Then again, it's probably your cronies with similar vested interests that are fuelling that kind of alleged pub talk....

Marlow

Orebro wrote: »

So we only plan this until 2025? Then what, another NBP?

As I pointed out in a previous post. The investment in the GBS that was ran around 2004-2006 (can't remember the correct dates) which heavily relied on 3.5 GHz spectrum, where available, was completely invalidated in 2017 ... less than 15 years later, by them taking all licenses back and auctioning them off nationwide.

Generally, the political part of the department only thinks as far as the next election.

/M

Marlow

Gonzo wrote: »

If the NBP goes with wireless, something like Imagine, it is already outdated and not fit for purpose.

But this is one of the problems. In that case, the department should not even have considered 1% of having to be connected by wireless. By saying, that part of the NBP will be rolled out using wireless technologies, they diluted the NBP from the get go and made them open to challenge. They literally accepted, that wireless is NGA compliant under certain circumstances.

And that is exactly where for example the likes of Imagine are attacking the NBP.

/M

tsue921i8wljb3

Gonzo wrote: »

If the NBP ends up being FTTH then no worries past 2025, the speeds can be upgraded with different and faster standards of FTTH without having to replace any lines in the ground.
e.g. the current 300k rural rollout is GPON, this can be upgraded to XGS-PON at any stage by OpenEir allowing for speeds for
10gbps DOWN, 10gbps UP.

If the NBP goes with wireless, something like Imagine, it is already outdated and not fit for purpose.

If Marlow is correct in what he is saying, there will be no NBP. The business case cannot stand another several thousand premises being removed.

user1842

Emmanuel Lemon Louse wrote: »

If Marlow is correct in what he is saying, there will be no NBP. The business case cannot stand another several thousand premises being removed.

Let's see the results of the consultation.

tsue921i8wljb3

user1842 wrote: »

Let's see the results of the consultation.

I fully expect the Department to ignore all wireless submissions. Marlow has inferred that legal action will then follow. This again has the potential to severely delay if not end the project.

KOR101

Emmanuel Lemon Louse wrote: »

If Marlow is correct in what he is saying, there will be no NBP. The business case cannot stand another several thousand premises being removed.

The EU will judge any intervention in terms of whether their goals are already being met (or proposed and committed to) by commercial companies. A goal of 100mbit speeds by 2025 cannot be met by Imagine, and it's simply stupid to talk about potential speeds off peak. @Marlow is out on a limb on this and I have to say it's no wonder the WISPs were shown the door.

user1842

Emmanuel Lemon Louse wrote: »

I fully expect the Department to ignore all wireless submissions. Marlow has inferred that legal action will then follow. This again has the potential to severely delay if not end the project.

It is not the WISPs im worried about. Could the department ignore EIR?

Although EIR said they would not increase their rural FTTH roll-out, do you really trust them.

They could very easily propose that they will cover 100,000 more premises (although without a binding commitment on time-frame). This could not be ignored and would decimate any business case for the NBP. If I was in EIR this is what I would be suggesting.

heavydawson

KOR101 wrote: »

The EU will judge any intervention in terms of whether their goals are already being met (or proposed and committed to) by commercial companies. A goal of 100mbit speeds by 2025 cannot be met by Imagine, and it's simply stupid to talk about potential speeds off peak. @Marlow is out on a limb on this and I have to say it's no wonder the WISPs were shown the door.

The 100Mbits by 2025 isn't strictly speaking true. As Marlow has pointed out, the technology is there today for up to 250mbps on the 3.5ghz band under certain circumstances. There's no reason to believe that the encoding won't improve over time to allow higher bitrates on the same frequency allocation. We've been using 2.4Ghz/5Ghz for Wifi forever, and we've gone from 1mbps -> 9608 mpbs.

The problem isn't the technology per-se, it's the implementation, as many of you are aware. The ironic thing about using wireless for those last few hard-to-reach premises in the intervention area is that in them being remote, it means the masts will likely sparsely subscribed, and could very likely exceed what the WISPs would provide in their existing areas in terms of throughput

Another way to look at it is that WISPs will presumably place their masts where there is a good chance of filling the commercial subscription they'd need for a sustainable basis (with due regard to the limits on where those masts can be placed). On the other hand, the NBP will likely be placing masts to reach specific (and likely non-commercial) premises. So they're not looking to maximise mast subscription in that circumstance.

I'm not for Wireless as the NBP solution, but we shouldn't rush to dismiss its possibilities outside of the NBP context. I do think it's important that we draw a line between the wireless as it's currently being deployed by the WISPs and the likely wireless deployment we'll see within the NBP. I've no evidence to suggest what I describe above will come to pass, but it's worth consideration.

tsue921i8wljb3

Any premises served by wireless in the NBP is going to be remote, likely isolated and one off. Therefore they can use point to point wireless connections which are well capable of gigabit speeds if required. Point to point wireless products are very different to point to multipoint that a commercial WISP would be deploying. So to say that all forms of wireless are equal because they specified some amount of wireless in the plan is demonstrably false.

Orebro

Marlow wrote: »

And that is exactly where for example the likes of Imagine are attacking the NBP.

/M

No they’re attacking it by telling lies that would make a criminal blush. In an ideal world they’d be done for false advertising as their product does not in reality provide what they say it does. 5G ready my ass.

Johnboy1951

So we have about 50 wisps around the country. Have they banded together and proposed they all operate as a single entity for the sake of providing the service specified by the NBP (National is important in this respect).

What were the details of the proposal from that group (if it existed)?

Marlow

Let me point out the Devil in the detail: One thing to keep in mind that exactly these rural remote premises that are going to be covered using wireless may overlap with existing rural providers. Who may very well have invested in the technology to achieve NGA compliant speeds.

So if data exists, that proves that these regional providers already provide NGA compliant speeds in these areas, then the NBP becomes EU and government funded competition to these regional providers and that is against the rules of the EU funding. It's actually not legal full stop.

Should the data be ignored even though it was submitted, the entire NBP is put into question and the funding may be withdrawn. That leaves the irish government with legal retributions from the EU, the irish taxpayer with the entire bill and the NBP under legal challenge by these providers.

Alone that little bit of the contract can kill it all. And that is one more reason the consultation has not been all inclusive. When the department decided to roll a subset .. no matter how small .. out using wireless, it would have had to include and consult all operators registered with Comreg, that use these technologies. And they know who they are. However, they excluded them from the get go.

/M

Orebro

Is there a WISP in the country that can supply the full 50Mbps at peak times? I’ve used 3 and not one of them could break the 8 to 10Mbps in the evening, and most of the time were below 5. Please stop going on about them being part of the NBP solution, they’re simply not up to the task, as hundreds if not thousands of their subscribers will tell you (this is reality vs whatever tech specs are quoted).

Marlow

Orebro wrote: »

Is there a WISP in the country that can supply the full 50Mbps at peak times? I’ve used 3 and not one of them could break the 8 to 10Mbps in the evening, and most of the time were below 5. Please stop going on about them being part of the NBP solution, they’re simply not up to the task, as hundreds if not thousands of their subscribers will tell you (this is reality vs whatever tech specs are quoted).

Yes there is. If you go a few posts back, i outlined which technologies and have given examples of regional providers who use them and provide those speeds without overcontending their customers.

So you can not just judge them all by your experience. And it would be up to the department or Comreg to deal with the issues, if contention like that was present. But to be honest, there is even considerable contention of OpenEirs FTTH network on certain exchanges. While that currently only applies to users on Gbit connections it is there. And with an uptake of only approx 20% it will get worse.

/M

tsue921i8wljb3

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

So we have about 50 wisps around the country. Have they banded together and proposed they all operate as a single entity for the sake of providing the service specified by the NBP (National is important in this respect).

What were the details of the proposal from that group (if it existed)?

Behold! Not as a single entity though.

https://rispa.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Alternative-to-the-NBP.pdf

https://rispa.ie/publications/

https://rispa.ie/members/

allanpkr

cant wait for nbp to be signed off. so i wont have to read persons connected to w isps slouting how good it is, or to be honest they actually say its good enough who needs 50mbps at peak.

Pique

Emmanuel Lemon Louse wrote:

Behold! Not as a single entity though.

Oh god, think about the clusterfcuk the NBP would be with 50 WISPs around the country included as separate independent entities!

BandMember

On the subject of WISP's....

I have seen one such company advertising their satellite broadband service as "Air Fibre Broadband" (yes, that's not a typo folks!) whilst claiming X amount of years experience in technology. I know numerous people who have used this service over the years, all because there was nothing else available in their area and all said the same three things about it: there was always some issue with the service, the speeds were terrible and the service was constantly going down.

Oh, and if we're not supposed to judge WISP's on our own personal experience (as one previous post claimed), then how the hell are we supposed to judge them???

Word of mouth from a biased vested interest??? :rolleyes:

Johnboy1951

Emmanuel Lemon Louse wrote: »

Behold! Not as a single entity though.

https://rispa.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Alternative-to-the-NBP.pdf

https://rispa.ie/publications/

https://rispa.ie/members/

Aye ...... so no ONE entity to bid for the National Broadband Plan.
They could never be considered, and that is before their technical abilities come up for scrutiny.

Imagine the headache of dealing with 50 entities?

Marlow

BandMember wrote: »

Oh, and if we're not supposed to judge WISP's on our own personal experience (as one previous post claimed), then how the hell are we supposed to judge them??? Word of mouth from a biased vested interest??? :rolleyes:

One by one. You can't just throw them all into one pot.

If you don't like one operator using OpenEIRs infrastructure, do you condemn them all ? And hence never get a product based on OpenEIRs network again ?

/M

Marlow

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Aye ...... so no ONE entity to bid for the National Broadband Plan.

Not to bid ... that is correct. Even though one with nearly national coverage (and no .. it wasn't Imagine) tried. But with the ability to reduce the amount of premises convered under the NBP, certainly.

And to challenge the NBP, if it creates government funded competition to them, most certainly.

I'm just pointing the crux of it out ... and why the NBP is not as secured as people think.

/M

Marlow

BandMember wrote: »

I have seen one such company advertising their satellite broadband service as "Air Fibre Broadband"

BandMember wrote: »

Oh, and if we're not supposed to judge WISP's

What precisely does satellite broadband have to do with WISPs ? WISP means Wireless Internet Service Provider. So that's typically fixed wireless.

Satellite broadband is something entire different.

/M

westyIrl

Emmanuel Lemon Louse wrote: »

Any premises served by wireless in the NBP is going to be remote, likely isolated and one off. Therefore they can use point to point wireless connections which are well capable of gigabit speeds if required. Point to point wireless products are very different to point to multipoint that a commercial WISP would be deploying. So to say that all forms of wireless are equal because they specified some amount of wireless in the plan is demonstrably false.

I could not have expressed my own opinion any better than this. Ptp for remote premises ok but good luck to ptmp/4g/5g etc. being any part of NBP imho.