Eircom eFibre VDSL/FTTC rollout – plans to reach 1.6m premises by mid 2016

Sponge Bob wrote: »

In the UK they deploy MSANs ( a full miniexchange) where eircom only deploys a DSLAM outdoors and passes the voice telephony service from the cab back to the original exchange.

BT have a whole range of solutions depending on what they're up to in any given exchange area.
In a lot of cases, it's very similar to what eircom are doing here i.e. DSLAM cabinets with voice coming from a central exchange.

In other areas there may be MSAN cabinets which provide Voice and VDSL2.

Eircom's legacy voice network differs very substantially from BT's so, I think they're possibly in less of a rush to start ripping out exchanges if they can integrate them into an all-IP network.

Most of BT's old digital exchanges were custom-developed for BT in the 1980s/90s by GPT-Plessey and are known as System X. The platform was never really exported, and development ceased, as did the company that built them. So, BT really do need to replace them rather rapidly as they'll litterally run out of spare parts very soon.

In a lot of areas the MSAN is providing voice services from the BT exchange building only, not from the cabinets. So, effectively it's just an VoIP replacement for the telephone exchange, much like what Smart Telecom deployed here.

BT seem to use Fujitsu and Huawei MSANs which just provide access. However, all the control is done by an Ericsson AXE soft switch known as an iNode in BT's new network.

So, basically Ericsson AXE lives on in the IP world and remains very much a core part of the network.
Where as the old System X gear is finding its way to the nearest recycle centre.

I know BT/Openreach originally planned a lot of MSAN cabinets with voice services in the cabinet itself, but that seems to have now changed and they're holding onto voice exchange gear for longer than initially anticipated.

I'd say there's a reluctance to spend loads of money on something that may not even be of much use if everyone's using mobiles and VoIP devices in their own homes. Not a hell of a lot of an advantage to MSANs in boxes on the street really for voice anymore.


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As for Huawei vs ECI vs Alcatel-Lucent : Companies will swap around where they get the best deal. The technology they're offering all seems very similar.

Sponge Bob wrote: »

BT also used AXE gear like eircoms in parts. They call it System Y

That's so they could pass it off as British in the mid 80s when they realised they needed an alternative The first ones sold to them in the UK were 100% Ericsson technology, but locally manufactured by a Thorn-EMI / Ericsson joint venture. Shortly after that initial order, they just bought them straight from Ericsson. So, many of them would probably have originated in Athlone.

BT however have been removing old digital technology i.e. System X from any core parts of the network since the start of the 2000s.

Ireland actually had the first ever 100% digital AXE local switches. Athlone, Merview and one of the Limerick exchanges were on stream in 1981. Before that, there were still analogue electronic stages in AXE.

From what I can see, most operators though are aiming to have migrated completely to all-IP, including VoIP by the end of this decade.

I'm sure eircom's got plenty of ancient versions of AXE and E10 local switches hanging around too though that are long past their best before dates.

I'd guess though most people's voice services will be probably delivered over broadband to a phone/gateway in their living room rather than MSANs though, if they bother with voice at all.

With FTTH, there's no other way of doing it really without having fibre + a copper pair and also cable companies like UPC are proving that it's definitely not necessary.

In the early days of cable telephony in the UK and elsewhere, it was supplied using a pair of copper wires deployed with the coax and there were exchanges and all that stuff, much like a traditional telephone network.
They quickly realised that was totally unnecessary when proper VoIP arrived, I'd say eircom, BT etc will just follow suit.

I'm not sure you can really justify tens of millions of euro of rollout / retention costs just for the sake of things like battery back up from the local exchange. People have mobiles and battery back up for VDSL / fibre is possible for alarms and other essential services.

That being said, I've had more down time on my landline than I have ever had from the ESB in this area. We'd a few incidents of failed lines due to damage to underground cables, while I've only ever had a few hours of failed ESB power.

For alarms and stuff like that, I still think people put too much emphasis on how secure the PSTN is. It's anything but!
If someone's determined, they'll snip wires or do something to prevent dialling out.

If anything, that's probably a lot less complicated than attempting to jam mobile networks.

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Yes but t he problem with that is that all the smarts will be collapsed back to acore in Citywest and with no resilience or autonomy outside Dublin ( unlike the old AXE core which could survive a Dublin - Cork outage by rerouting elsewhere.

This means that the further away one gets from Dublin the more decidedly hideous the latency problems gets. I know someone who wanted to purchase a symmetrical ethernet product between 2 nearby towns in the west of Ireland and it had to transit the ethernet core in Dublin ( it took AGES to get eicom to admit this of course ) . He used a pair of STM1's instead...much lower latency despite the initial expense.

The likes of Cork Limerick and Galway are completely isolated and vulnerable in the NGN as they are no longer cross connected...and never mind the physical routing inefficiencies.

Thats before eircom ensures we have to go to Telehouse in London to connect to anywhere else bar google and akamai.

Well, if that's the case, that's just poor network design / implementation. It's nothing to do with the flaws in the technology.

Seems to be a fair few alternative routes possible there : http://www.nextgenerationnetwork.ie/eircom-fibre-network

If you look at the BT 21CN for example, it's got loads of redundancy built in.

I'd say it could also be a question of eircom's NGN only being sort of half-implemented too.

You'd have to have regional nodes much like the old network had.

ComReg really should be ensuring that the network's totally resilient and that ping times are acceptable.

Commercial companies will always tend towards what's most profitable.

IP, if anything should be capable of even more resilience than ATM based technologies.

IP evolved from US military networks ARPANET during the Cold War. So, self repairing and intelligent routing were a big part of it. Packet networks don't even necessarily send all the packets over the same route, all that matters is they all get reassembled at the far end into something sensible.

bealtine wrote: »

Did you hear the one about two ducks walk into a bar...

AFAIK, they still seem to think that 'functional internet access' = 28.8k dial up.

@arctan and @sponge_bob: My major concern about these kind of distributed networks is how secure, and well-maintained the cabinets will be in the medium/long term. There's a fair risk that some of them will have accidents with cars/vans backing into them, maybe get flooded in low lying areas, get penetrated by weeds/ivy/plants etc or might even get vandalised.

I've seen traditional cabinets around this area backed into by vans and one or two with doors hanging off them etc. It seems to be 'interaction with cars/trucks' rather than vandalism.

I've already noticed some VDSL cabinets in say Middle Glanmire Road are actually located on the road, not on the pavement. So, it's almost inevitable they'll get damaged at some stage.

For example a VDSL cabinet has gone in next to this misfortunate cabinet : http://url.ie/h4ue (Google Map link)

It's been repaired since then (in fact, if you move up to a slightly different view the doors have been replaced) but it just shows how they absolutely need to install some bollards / ensure they're not likely to be reversed into.
All it takes is a truck to go back too far and "crunch" bye-bye broadband.

When I was living in Brussels Belgacom was installing a different type of cabinet, but they were similarly located in on-street parking spaces and loads of them had been backed into and badly damaged. They had to install bollards around them to prevent cars smashing them.

Jackobyte wrote: »

Got a leaflet in Dooradoyle, Limerick that it would be available in my area soon. Are prices expected to jump with it, or will they remain the same, with this serving as an upgrade rather than a different package. Also, will other ISP's get access to this fibre to resell it, or will it be Eircom only?

It's a "wholesale access product" so, it's been designed from the ground up to be accessible to other providers.

They'll be able to use it in various wholesale arrangements for other networks much like ADSL at present.

Realistically, if they price it higher than UPC they won't win back any customers so, they'll have to stay competitive.

It's not the bad old days when eircom had a monopoly on access infrastructure, there are other ways of getting broadband apart from a phone line.

This product is supposed to compete with UPC.

Until they launch fibre into your home, they won't surpass UPCs speed ether. The best they can hope for is a price competition!