Eir rural FTTH thread III

Well I don't know about current practices, but for the rural FTTH rollout, it was generally the property owners task to sort out the ducting if it proved to be blocked, which many were due to the unfathomable practice of not sealing the ends of ducts. KNN would have a go trying to get the cable through, but if they couldn't, the property owner had to sort it before a retry.

I knew my ducting was too narrow with too many bends so I dug it up before the install date so come the day it was a doddle to run the cable through the duct, leaving it for me to bury it later.

Seems so was pre order on NBI since end of may with no progress, we're about 1.1km from cabinet, looks like open eir swooped in and duplicated some of the work NBI had done too, 1st install date next Wednesdy, see a neighbour with a different civil team out this morning doing some path digging at their front door.

I was pre order with DigiWeb for NBI, and just kept checking online, for it going from Pre-Order to Order now and I'd not

heard from Digiweb with an update, Few neighbours had crews out attempting installations so I did some availability for

OpenEir fibre and it was available, I called Digiweb and told em to cancel the NBI order and I wanted the OpenEir fiber,

she did the order swop over and shipped out modem, this call was Wednesday 18th August, got an install text within

a few hours for Wednesday 25th August, crew arrived 8am and had found end of my duct within 10 mins, so I got lucky

as next door both have blocked ducts, small bit of tarmac dug up and chased cable into living room where current modem is,

a stupid cable ran under our living room door to master socket at front door, I headed off to work but son told me

2 guys where gone before 10am so good job allround.

Thrilled to bits to be honest, we're located in Ardnacrusha, part of the Limerick roll out for NBI and was due live during summer months,

think OpenEir have pulled of a coup and beat NBI to it, something they probably should have done years ago as its a Semi Rural estate

of about 160 houses so was low hanging fruit, but to go from 15mb to 500mb overnight is something I'd been dreaming of

Hi all. I am going to be renting a house in the countryside outside Kilkenny city. The OpenEir map says full 1GB broadband is available at the address. As far as I've seen the previous tenants were using mobile broadband.

My question is: if the fibre has never been brought to the house (it's a bungalow, probably built in the 70's or 80's), what is involved in getting that setup? Will they potentially need to dig up the driveway? What is the cost involved with that work?

Just trying to get a general idea of what I might be facing before I speak to the landlord about it.

I have no idea unfortunately, I've only been to the house once. Moving in next week.

Just to follow up on my own question:

I spoke to Digiweb, customer service who, at least in sales, seemed pretty good. They advised that FTTH is available to me and that if I order an engineer would come out to install and he may discover issues that would need to be dealt with. Primarily blocked ducting. They were advising that if there is a duct on my property, and the engineer says it's blocked, they can unblock it there and then for €100. Alternatively I could hire my own contractor to unblock it but that would cost much more so they were strongly advising that if it's blocked, pay the €100 to get it sorted there and then.

There was a whiff of shenanigans off this, who is anyone to say that the duct isn't blocked if they tell you it is? But I knew this house has no ducts anyway so it made no difference to me.

So I placed the order for 500mb on a Friday. Had the router/modem out in the post on Tuesday and the engineer called out last Friday morning.

The house is about 100m down from a crossroads. The fibre is on a pole the far side of the crossroads. Engineer says the fibre has to go from that pole, via a duct, to a pole across the road from my house. This pole is currently supporting the copper line that comes into the house through the fascia on the gable.

2 problems he says. First, the duct on the road is narrow and blocked. Second, they can't run the fibre to the fascia like the copper line is, it has to go to the concrete on the gable. The height distance (it's a bungalow) could leave the cable too low over the road. Also, if it was connected through the fascia there is a risk of it becoming detached and causing damage to passing traffic.

Solutions: Eir will have to come out and unblock the duct.

Then a pole will have to be erected on our side of the road to support the line. He said there may be a workaround for this by using a goose neck off the gable to support the cable up higher as it enters the house.

He says they can't log two problems at once so first thing is to get Eir out to unblock the duct.

Rang Digiweb for an update today as I hadn't heard anything since. They say that Eir have scheduled to get the duct unblocked no later than the 21st of October. Apparently this can take so long because it may necessitate obtaining a permit for road obstruction/closure.

PITA having to wait so long to get it all sorted but hopefully it'll be worth it in the end.

Oh, and it's all at no extra cost to me because the problems are not on my property.

Jesus, that is shocking. I won't be waiting that long anyway. I'll give them until the 21st and if there's no progress at that stage I'll cancel it.

If you haven't noticed a phone line strung through the air to the house, then it's coming through a duct. It seems very rare that ducts aren't blocked because the people who install via them originally, all never seem to think it might be a good idea to seal the ends after running the original cable.

BB providers all have a checker where you put in your eircode and they tell you what services you can get and what speeds. Fibre broadband isn't FTTH but if they can offer up to 1000 Mbps, then FTTH is available.

I have fibre and would say it is well worth getting ducts unblocked in order to get it, just seal the ends after they have finished. EVA foam wrapped tightly around the cable then compressed and pushed into the end of the duct is one very easy way.

This is a FTTH fibre DP, the upper box with a loop of fibre optic cable behind it. A fibre optic drop cable is connected to your premises from this box, spliced into the main cable from the exchange in the box. Speeds are up to 1 or 2 Gbps depending on the provider. Generally the DP must be within 100-150m of your premises to be connected and your premises must be part of their rollout plan.

Regarding your neighbour, are they on copper or fibre direct to the home (FTTH)? What speed is your neighbour getting? Can you post a pic of your neighbour's black box?

The fibre cables and infrastructure are owned by wholesale providers, there are 3 of them - open-eir, SIRO and NBI. They do not sell direct to the public, only via retail providers such as eir, vodafone, Sky, etc. etc., examples -

NBI retailers Who can I buy from? | NBI,

SIRO retailers SIRO – Ireland’s Ultrafast 100% Fibre Broadband, Built on ESB Network

My 150mb package is coming to an end.. thinking of upgrading to 1gb.. anyone have it and what speeds are you actually getting?

Thanks

Thanks Barra.. that's good, must be unbelievable for downloading files

game hosts like battle.net can saturate it fully but as you mention it varies from who you are downloading

that depends on the first year cost, how many users in household, type of bandwidth requirements etc

also, you can get 1gb for first year for 40e, so not sure if thats 168e of saving versus slower speeds

Except there is a big cost. The time and stress when trying to cancel at the end of the first year has to be factored in.

The other pole is ESB I assume, for which they have wayleave rights, not the sane for telecom poles.

Which pole is the DP on?

Do they want to place the new pole at the boundary fence or in the middle of the field across from the DP?

I am a retired Eircom Technician and dealt with many situations like this during my working years.Looking at the photo I don't understand why they want to put the pole on the other side of the hedge in farmers land and not in the corner of your lawn. I suggest you follow up on that and find out the reason. What they want you to do by digging a trench and putting down ducting is the correct way to give you service, but they positioning of the pole needs to be sorted. I also suggest you put 50mm wavin pipes in the trench and not hydrodare. Cable pulls much more freely in wavin. Don't do any digging until you have the pole sorted out.

Were I you, I would do all possible to clear the existing phone line duct as that is the best solution. Perhaps some company with expertise could do it if DIY fails.

At a guess it's hard to tell exactly where the ESB is in the middle of the air. But I'd say they said no to the telegraph pole being dropped at the front of the garden because the ESB line is directly overhead the desired pole location.

Another reason may be because they need the fibre line to sling below the ESB cable as it crossed the road and putting it too close to the crossing ESB cable makes the line have to be mounted lower on the pole making it suspectible to getting caught on passing traffic whereas they are hoping for the dip in the middle to be directly below the ESB cable and not the middle of the road.

Lads, has anyone here ever gotten a second phone line put in by Eir in order to get FTTH? I live in a village that will not be upgraded to FTTH anytime soon but my estate is next to a country road that has FTTH enabled. The nearest telephone pole to me, at the entrance of the estate( about 50ft from my house) does have fibre running to it, two poles away from that pole down that country road has the black DP box. I asked an Eir sales rep about it and they said they would install fibre to the house if I was to get a new line but they would not offer me the FTTH service. They then said I could not request a second phone line because that's not how it works. Not sure what they meant by that. I was hoping a new phone line, even if it meant paying for an additional phone line, would force the upgrade to FTTH