fibre to the cabinet, 12Mbps to the house?

magicbastarder · 07-01-2020 11:29AM #1

we were looking at switching from virgin, but checking the eir and vodafone offerings (and vodafone piggyback on eir here), they can only guarantee 12Mbps.
we can see the local cabinet from our front door - it's only four houses down, and we live on a busy road in dublin - and i was passing yesterday as two technicians were working on it, and one of them showed me the fibre patch panel in the cabinet. he said to ask eir about it.
i popped into an eir shop yesterday evening, and the chap i was talking to was able to confirm that yes, there's fibre to the cabinet, but they can only offer me 12Mpbs, and shrugged when i asked why; whether it's fibre to the cabinet and copper for the remaining 100m, he could not say.

so what gives? i've heard anecdotally that a neighbour i don't really know, has fibre, but is there some special codeword i need to know? or have eir genuinely gone to the trouble of fitting the cabinets with fibre, only to not offer it to the customer?

cheers

loyatemu · 07-01-2020 11:51AM

magicbastarder wrote: »

we were looking at switching from virgin, but checking the eir and vodafone offerings (and vodafone piggyback on eir here), they can only guarantee 12Mbps.
we can see the local cabinet from our front door - it's only four houses down, and we live on a busy road in dublin - and i was passing yesterday as two technicians were working on it, and one of them showed me the fibre patch panel in the cabinet. he said to ask eir about it.
i popped into an eir shop yesterday evening, and the chap i was talking to was able to confirm that yes, there's fibre to the cabinet, but they can only offer me 12Mpbs, and shrugged when i asked why; whether it's fibre to the cabinet and copper for the remaining 100m, he could not say.

so what gives? i've heard anecdotally that a neighbour i don't really know, has fibre, but is there some special codeword i need to know? or have eir genuinely gone to the trouble of fitting the cabinets with fibre, only to not offer it to the customer?

cheers

fibre to the cabinet is, as you say, only as far as the cabinet and then copper to the customer premises. the length of copper from the cabinet determines the speed ("up to 100Mb").

However just because there's a cab near your house doesn't mean that's where your phoneline goes, in older areas many houses are connected directly back to the exchange, which means longer copper, slower speeds.

Fibre-to-the-home is a different product, if it's available at your address then you will be able to get 1Gb regardless of distance, so you can assume you don't have it.

I'm in a similar situation, Virgin is the only option.

ED E · 08-01-2020 04:43PM

Main road = direct fed is very likely. As Loyatemu says you're probably bypassing the nearest cab, the exchange being about 1500-1800m away from the house would be my bet?

magicbastarder · 08-01-2020 04:47PM

cheers - is there a map of exchanges? i'm near DCU.

loyatemu · 08-01-2020 06:07PM

you can see the exchanges on Eir's fibre rollout map:
https://fibrerollout.ie/rollout-map/

KOR101 · 08-01-2020 07:03PM

magicbastarder wrote: »

cheers - is there a map of exchanges? i'm near DCU.

Actually, your best bet is to ask when you see someone working at a nearby cab. The engineer will know for sure. I'm in the same boat. Apartment at Leonard's corner.....direct to Dolphins Barn.

ArthurG · 10-01-2020 09:57PM

Same boat - Lucan Village, cabinet 20m from front door, connect direct to exchange up near woodies a few km away.

fibre to the cabinet, 12Mbps to the house?

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