National Broadband Ireland : implementation and progress

@shmeee … and will be building a wardrobe around the ONT box.

Be sure to leave a means of accessing the ONT in case it needs to be power-cycled or replaced.

Hoping someone would be willing to sense check my thinking around getting a fiber connection to my parents house in a town estate in Co. Cork?

The house is already listed on airwire.ie as having FTTH availability up to 1GB via OpenEir (SIRO is not available), and we're able to place orders FTTH from all the major providers.

Since we've been with Vodafone for phone/VDSL (unusably bad VDSL, at that) for a long time we've been trying to order a 500mb fiber product through them for over 2 years now. After a bunch of failed orders with no feedback or reason provided by Vodafone, a complaint to Vodafone and to Comreg bought us some better communication. Our most recent order attempt still failed, but in this case we were given a reason: "there's no duct between the cabinet and the house, the phone line is just buried in the ground, so there's nothing to pull the fiber through". Ok, at least that's something.

Now, the house is in the NBI plan, and coincidentally around the same time as we finally got the feedback on the duct our "anticipated date for connection" with NBI got pulled forward about a year to July - Sept 2025.

So our options, as I see them, are:

A) Keep pushing on the OpenEir route via Vodafone or some other provider. Perhaps DigiWeb would be a better shout, since I've read that their customer service and communications are pretty good. Perhaps working with them might make it easier to get this over the line? Or is it likely that we would need to get some duct installed ourselves for us to have any chance of getting joy via that route?

B) Forget about the 2 year ordeal with Vodafone entirely, and just bank on getting connected via NBI. We'd be fine waiting until the end of the year if this route would guarantee us getting connected, but as far as I understand it's also Circet who do the work for NBI, so I'm concerned that after waiting they'll just hit similar issues to what we've previously experienced and we'll still be in the same situation.

Right now I'm leaning towards just waiting for NBI, and assuming that they'll figure out a way to get us connected one way or another. Is this the right choice, or is it worth continuing down the OpenEir route via a provider like Digiweb? Is there anything we can do to maximise our chances of getting a fiber connection as soon as possible (at least before the end of the year) through either route?

Thanks in advance!

Definitely wait on the NBI rollout. They will install the necessary infrastructure if the OpenEir ducting isn't there. The government subsidy covers the cost of doing this.

National Broadband Ireland has said that 65,000 homes, farms and businesses are being moved to an earlier completion date in 2025 than had been originally scheduled.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2025/0106/1489172-ireland-broadband/

I'm wondering how its going to be done.

I've got a telephone pole outside my front gate. A cable runs from the pole above my driveway to the gable of my house into the attic for an old landline we don't have connected anymore.

Will they just replace the cable and then whichever provider I sign up with will do the rest?

I have a similar problem in that my existing phone line seems to be just laid in the soil without being in any duct. Therefore, KN cannot get a fibre cable from the road chamber to my house. I have tried two different BB suppliers but as both of them use KN, it is the same result. I would prefer the underground option instead of overhead, but no progress with either, just a KN report back to BB suppliers saying no access through duct.

I was advised by Vodafone to wait for SIRO but I have been unable to find out if that will be rolled out in my area. I presume if OpenEir is currently outside my entrance, SIRO will not be coming here also.

Therefore, I would be very keen to hear of any evidence of customers getting new ducting installed by a supplier.

The issue right now is the lack of ducting from the cabinet to the vicinity of the house.

I would wait to see how NBI plan to get the main cable near to his house and then see how NBI will handle the cable to the house issue.

In an urban IA poles may not be allowed so NBI may have to run their own ducting.

Out of curiosity, how many ports do the black boxes they put up on the poles have and is there a maximum distance a fibre cable can run.

Say for instance if all the ports on the box closest to an infill site are used up at the closest box, could they run to the next box 3 poles down the road.

Logically it's just a matter of an upgrade of the box to one with more ports that fibre can be spliced to.

I had ducting installed by the NBI installer. He didn't want to use the existing as it seemed to be blocked and went directly into our hall. We don't have the small external telecom box on our 2003 build.

The duct he used is not much bigger than the fibre cable. He used a half moon spade type thing to make a slot in the grass from the house path to the pole, about 80 meters. Stuck down the duct and then pressed the ground closed over it again.

Agreed - and the tracking and communication between the different agents and third parties (e.g. Circet) seems to be particularly bad too. Regardless of what happens I think we'll be looking to switch to a better provider.

Has your area been surveyed yet?

If it has then NBI has a plan to get fibre to your house and that rollout will be paid for by the state subsidy. That's why I say wait a while longer and see how they'll do it.

I believe so, yes - we're have the "Network Build Underway" status, so I guess they already have a plan that they're working towards. I agree, waiting for NBI is probably my best option right now, so I'll go with that. I'll check in here again later in the year to let ye know what's ended up happening.

Thanks for the help!

They're around my area today cutting hedges, Abington side of Murroe village.

A lot of TLI peoples around lately too, looking at poles etc. Ducting crews around the Cappamore area too.

If it was me I'd put in something big enough so no matter what I wanted to do in the future there is room for more cables to be pulled down. Like cctv/electric gates or anything else that might need cable ran.

it won’t be underground if your eircodes aerial drop OP. If fibre is fitted on a pole it’s an overhead drop it can’t be done underground no matter how scenic your view.