National Broadband Scheme

This is a mickey mouse scheme which is delivered on a technology that cannot guarantee a reasonable quality of service by design. It is supposed to cover about 1/3 of the state where the most dispersed 10% of the population live ...by and large.

If you are relying on it delivering for you then don't. The main technical drawback of 3G is that whoever shouts loudest gets the best service. If you use a repeater and your neighbour does not then your shouting drowns their signal out . So they go get a repeater and you are back to square one again.

The scheme is not there to provide 100% coverage although Eamon Ryan has released press statements to that end.

The scheme is allegedly to provide 100% coverage across about 1/3rd of the state and teh other 2/3rds are supposedly served by the market.

The scheme is supposed to provide 95% coverage in each served electoral district using 3g . The remainder may be served using 2 way Satellite and the current provider of the satellite service is Tooway.

I understand that if an area is not 95% served by 3g by end 2010 then 3 may ask for an extension if there are planning issues or may ask to be released from the contract for those areas.

They got 1000 electoral districts to do and €80k to do each one. I would think the contract will be reduced pro rata for each area they say they cannot do and release back to the department. That is inevitable. They will not manage 95% coverage by 3g in all 1000.

The crapness of 3 in general is clearly explained in this document.

http://irelandoffline.org/wp-content/2009/02/irelandoffline-nbs_briefing_document.pdf

tech2 wrote: »

How much of the scheme is being funded by taxpayers money?

€40m taxpayer and €40m EU

SpongeBob how will the repeater help you get better download and upload speeds. The signal strength is not the most important aspect of the connection rather the amount of users on a cell, the weather conditions and the bandwidth of the cell?

The repeater makes your signal louder , louder signals get higher priority on 3G as they are assumed to be closer to the mast. However it takes very few users to max out a 3g cell.

It would be a better idea IMO to upgrade the exchanges in more urban areas to high speed broadband.

Well most urban lines are ADSL2 enabled by now.

LTE is marketing BS that he heard about from the 3g networks themselves. Ryan drops acronyms like this to sound like he actually knows something. He neither knows nor cares about teh comms part of his brief.

He is only concerned at ensuring that Ireland has the highest electricity prices in the world like we have the highest line rental in the world already

While the move from CDMA to Flash OFDM and MIMO _will_ improve matters ( from 2014/2015 when LTE is actually wwidely rolled out here that is ) it will not even guarantee the general latency and bandwidth of a 1mbit DSL line to each user in a sector.

So what if 3 peer in the INEX, they NAT 10000 users behind every public IP address and give them one return port

Another mickey mouse job. Too little and too late...guaranteed as always in Ireland.

The NBS is snakeoil, some math is in order.

eircom have about 1.6m lines connected to all their exchanges of which about 100,000 lines at most are connected to exchanges they do not intend to enable ...around 300 of them , generally sub 400 lines and mainly much smaller. They are very much in diminishing marginal return territory here.

You mentioned Galway Exchanges .

All the Connemara Red spots are sub 200 lines save Recess which is a tad more and Roundstone 300 Tully Cross Kilronan and and Cleggan 400 . Cornamona is enabled .

They average 200 lines between them . East Galway ones a bit more, maybe 300



One of the enduring peculiarities of the NBS scheme is that many NBS areas are covered or largely covered for DSL or are to be upgraded to DSL.

Even more peculiar is the fact that most of these NBS areas where DSL is available can get 'up to' 24mbits while most areas where the NBS was not deemed necessary can only get 'up to' 8mbits.

I did say that 5% of the population in ANY GIVEN Electoral District may be served by satellite.

However the remainder , 1000 rural electoral districts taking up 1/3 of the state are supposed to get mininum 1.2mbits at the cell edge now and 1.6mbits from July .

3 proposes to do this with 400 masts meaning each mast covers an average 2.5 electoral districts which themselves average just over 20km squared in size nationally ( and generally less in URBAN areas ) .

Consequently 3 imply that each mast will cover 50km squared in coverage and will only miss out 5% of the population in that served area .

To do this each mast must provide a 1.2megabit minimum service out to almost exactly 4km radius assuming they are perfectly spaced.

Yet when the Indians examined using this technology ( and with slightly flimsier walls than we have ) they reckoned it would only work at 2km unrepeatered. They looked at the crux which is building penetration at 2.1ghz and that is what a dongle must do.

http://www.ursi.org/Proceedings/ProcGA05/pdf/C01.2%2801660%29.pdf

HSDPA: RANGE IS THE CHALLENGE
As can be seen in the above table, the range of HSDPA is severely limited to around 2Km cells, as compared the current GSM/GPRS systems that have range that is one order of magnitude higher. This could mean that the current GSM/GPRS infrastructure is largely insufficient for HSDPA coverage, and significant additional capex may be required to deploy HSDPA into rural areas. The entire cost benefit gains of HSDPA due to its higher capacity could thus be offset due to the cost increase due to lower range.

Range is dependent on some key factors as discussed below:
· Frequency: Lower frequencies reach further. But it is highly unlikely that bandwidth in the 400 MHz
bands will be made available for HSDPA in India.
· Data rate: Lower rate transmissions can span a higher range. A 100Mbps transmission can be
coherently received over 200 metres, while for distances in kilometres, only 100 kbps transmission per
subscriber may be realisable. This may limit the kind of services that can be provided.
· Position of the terminal antenna: Rooftop antennae can provide a range of around 30 kms [5]. The table below summarises this.

· Using repeaters especially in rural areas, the range can be increased without substantially increasing
the cost. This is an active part of Release 6 recommendations [7].
Increasing the range of HSDPA is a key research problem that determines its success for rural India.

This is the repeater effect explained. Once you start using repeaters the shouting reduces the cell capacity dramatically . In fact one OUTDOOR REPEATER will take up a whole cell where you could stuff in 800 quiet and profitable urban dongles or 230 slightly noiser suburban dongles or 12 of the windowsill jobbies Three provide.

Gain Height Building loss Range Relative site count
Rooftop – LOS 10 dBi 8 m 0 dB > 30km
Rooftop NLOS 10 dBi 8 m 0 dB 6.2 km 1
Terminal - upstairs window 3 dBi 5 m 0 dB 1.8 km 12
Outdoor PCcard 0 dBi 1.5 m 0 dB 780 m 60
Indoor PCcard - Suburban 0 dBi 1.5 m 10 dB 410 m 230
Indoor PCcard - Urban 0 dBi 1.5 m 20 dB 210 m 800
All figures except LOS based on COST231-Hata model with 10dB shadow margin and no cable losses.

If we further dimension the network for the 3 sectors that each cell has we get a maximum capacity of

400 cells x 3 sectors each x 12 repeaters each = 14400 customers ...and yet 400,000 people live in NBS areas.

Snakeoil Ambrose, but smart green snakeoil of course

They should supply you with a repeater if in an NBS area AND over 1km from the mast. The suppliers have signed up with Boards if you have any questions just PM them

http://www.face.boards.ie/vbulletin/member.php?u=296295

But you must sign an NBS type contract or else they won't give you the repeater and will give you a normal dongle instead.

If within 1km of the mast you should not need one but if the signal is crap and you complain they will swap the dongle for the repeater.

If everyone gets a repeater then those furthest from the mast will lose their service because the repeaters nearer the mast 'shout' louder and drown out the repeaters further out.

malcox wrote: »

I am a bit confused i have a dongle thats the huawei yoke. I have the repeater too. They told me they were givin me another repeater that goes outside????? I asked was this satellite dish and she said no.. Sponge bob says that you get a repeater or dongle. Thanks for the nextivity link thread though

Actually you are right, you get the dongle and then you get the repeater sent out too if you are in a marginal signal area ( they know where these should be ) or if you complain a lot you get the repeater.

Did they come out with the repeater or send it out ???

malcox wrote: »

All the engineer had was a old nokia phone with a exterior antenna to see what coverage was there. I thought that was a foolish way to determine a hsdpa connection..

There is a free symbian app that tells you the Db ( signal) levels and that would run on an old high end Nokia.

You just gotta give them the right 'location' . The repeater guarantees you a mighty signal after that mast is built too