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SIRO - ESB/Vodafone Fibre To The Home

hallo dare

Esb to provide areas with broadband, limited info to start with, but i for one am looking forward to higher speeds!!!

http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0122/499525-esb-broadband/

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SpaceTime

Actually one issue that could get interesting a few years down the line is if UPC and ESB take enough market share, eircom might lose its significant market player status.

Gonzo

I really hope this works out for us all, I live 2km from dunshaughlin in a semi-rural area yet there is no plans for Eircom E-Fibre to stretch out this far from the town and not a hope in hell of ever having UPC appear anywhere near here. For me and many other people here, this ESB fibre plan is our only hope! It can't happen fast enough! If this came reality tomorrow I doubt there would be a single person left on Eircoms ADSL broadband in my area.

bealtine

Gonzo wrote: »

I really hope this works out for us all, I live 2km from dunshaughlin in a semi-rural area yet there is no plans for Eircom E-Fibre to stretch out this far from the town and not a hope in hell of ever having UPC appear anywhere near here. For me and many other people here, this ESB fibre plan is our only hope! It can't happen fast enough! If this came reality tomorrow I doubt there would be a single person left on Eircoms ADSL broadband in my area.

Exactly...for so many people this is the "big thing" the problem is though that the plan as stands is to only do villages of greater than 4000 premises where UPC is not available.

Perhaps in later phases there may be hope for the vast bulk of Ireland

SpaceTime

To be perfectly honest, I still think really good quality wireless is an excellent option in those kinds of areas.

It should be possible to locate transmitters along the ESB network and have them fibre connected to catch any one-off housing in the area that's not economic to connect up directly to fibre.

I'm not talking about 3G/4G mobile services, but using really serious fixed-wireless access sitting on a fast fibre network. So, you'd get low latency connections and decent speeds.

Ireland's quite unique in a European context given how low density our housing is once you get out side city core areas. Even other low density countries like Finland and Norway don't have the scatter of housing we do. It tends to be clusters and villages.

The only comparable places are parts of North America and they've similar problems with broadband in that kind of development.

Unless the Government are planning to subsidise the whole thing, I am not really seeing where the revenue streams would be high enough to justify wiring fibre to one-off-houses in the middle of the countryside.

You'd definitely be able to connect up town hinterlands and even clusters of houses in villages and remote housing developments, but where it's just one house and miles and miles of wiring, it's going to have to be either paid by the ISP, the householder or the state.

Really high quality fixed wireless is actually an excellent option and would be at least as good as e-fibre. It just needs to be the correct technology sitting on a proper fibre access network.
What we've had to date is 3G mobile technology without proper fibre backbones (i.e. highly congested and high latency) and some of the Wireless ISPs haven't really had the financing to setup wonderful networks so, they've often been relying on point-to-point microwave links between towers and it ends up congested / slow.

I think we're a little quick to write-off wireless in those kinds of situations. We just need to actually do proper wireless that's fit for purpose.

The technology has also moved a long a lot since the early 2000s so, there should be quite a lot more speed available.

ComReg really needs to allocate a suitably large block of frequencies to rural / semi-rural broadband and actually ban its use in towns and cities to prevent cable companies and other services getting lazy again and to maintain capacity for hinterlands / semi-rural spots that aren't serviceable by VDSL2, cable or FTTH.

My concern is that this ESB project will sound wonderful and will solve problems for a lot of small towns and villages but will still not address the really rural broadband / scatter development problem at all.
We need to face the reality that there is a significant % of housing in Ireland that is basically 'off grid'. So, fibre-backed wireless solutions need to be on the table.

One thing I thought might be a good idea would be to get wind energy projects in rural spots to co-fund build out of wireless broadband (and possibly use their turbines as high sites to host transmission gear. It's something that would be a win-win as the projects would at least be giving something back to the communities they're being built in in terms of local infrastructure.

bealtine wrote: »

Exactly...for so many people this is the "big thing" the problem is though that the plan as stands is to only do villages of greater than 4000 premises where UPC is not available.

Perhaps in later phases there may be hope for the vast bulk of Ireland

I think even this is very good news.

Getting fibre (either Eircom or ESB) to every town and village in Ireland is the key to cracking the nut of rural broadband in Ireland.

Even fibre enabling rural exchanges and upgrading them to ADSL2+ or VDSL will help greatly improve speeds to a few km around the town. It might only be in the 3 to 16mb/s range, but that would be a fantastic improvement over the sub 1mb/s speeds many rural people currently get and allow them at least a good stable broadband connection that can allow them do basic surfing, email, facebook and maybe even a little youtube and Netflix.

As SpaceTime mentions, this fibre can also be used to unblock the congestion at rural 3G/4G towers and even better enable fixed wireless ISP's (some community based) to run off this fibre and service the surrounding hinterland.

I think and hope that the ESB will be open to leaving their fibre be used in this way, at least they are more likely then Eircom.

Built off the back of all this fibre, we could see the happy re-emergence of community built broadband schemes, similar to the deflector schemes we had in the old days.

boardzz

From what I have read, this is identical to what Google are providing in three cities in the US. Running fibre along the pole and straight to the premises. Therefore the speeds would be capable of 1Gbps.

Cheerful Spring

iPhone. wrote: »

Living in a rural area myself but definitely not holding my breath.

The article seems to indicate that it is only a change in regulations to allow the ESB to provide Telecoms Services.

No guarantee it will ever come to anything, just allows the ESB to enter the market If they choose

ESB targeting rural areas isn't stupid 40% to 45& of the Irish population do not live in a city area.

Eircom and UPC are battling each other for customers in those urban areas (55% of the Irish population)

Eircom is the only one of the two expanding out to rural areas and they haven't really started yet!

ESB targeting rural areas first is the right strategy. So many customers ready to take up the service, only the service hasn't arrived yet. Eircom, i bet is worried

Nody

bk wrote: »

500,000 buildings at 400million is €800 per building. That is a little on the low side, I always estimated a figure of €1000, but maybe by using overhead poles, they can do it cheaper, so the figures are certainly in the right, doable ball park.

Very exciting times ahead

Seeing how you're paying 1k+ in cities I'd say that's far to low as a rural cost. Yes you don't have to dig it down but you need to draw it longer distances with more repeaters, more equipment to keep the signal going split over a lot fewer people and of course A LOT higher cost of maintaining it (they were not dug down because it would look ugly after all).

This is a graph for Austria on the cost of connecting houses by fibre and I'd expect a similar curve is applicable for Ireland.

With further details here. Basically once you hit around 90% of population you're hitting the cost wall were it's simply not worth the cost to connect the final 10% by fibre and instead go wireless in some form for them.

boardzz wrote: »

From what I have read, this is identical to what Google are providing in three cities in the US. Running fibre along the pole and straight to the premises. Therefore the speeds would be capable of 1Gbps.

There are different ways to use fibre and different protocols (using different lasers and different wavelengths).

The more wavelengths you support, the more expensive the lasers.

So no, not all FTTH are the same. ESB will likely be using GPON, which should give typical consumer speeds of about 150 to 200mb/s

Google are using a much newer and more expensive technology allowing them to do 1Gb/s speeds.

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

ESB targeting rural areas isn't stupid 40% to 45& of the Irish population do not live in a city area.

But that isn't what is happening with the ESB, at least not in the initial phase of the project.

They won't be targeting really remote, one off rural areas. Instead they will be targeting urban and semi-urban areas not currently serviced by UPC, down to towns of 4,000 people or more.

That is good, but not really rural like the Minister was claiming today. That might happen in the long term, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

The reality is that it is just way too expensive to service rural one off houses. The upfront costs for the companies is just too great.

Nody wrote:

Seeing how you're paying 1k+ in cities I'd say that's far to low as a rural cost.

Yes, in a report by the FTTH Council to the EU that was posted yesterday, they claim it costs €7,000 per home to do rural, one off houses!

The FTTH Council is an industry organisation setup to promote FTTH, so you would imagine they know the real figures and would perhaps even low ball them.

That is why the ESB aren't targeting real rural one off houses with this. Instead higher density towns and villages. This is more like a UPC for the rest of semi-urban Ireland, then FTTH for rural Ireland.

Cheerful Spring

bk wrote: »

They won't be targeting really remote, one off rural areas. Instead they will be targeting urban and semi-urban areas not currently serviced by UPC, down to towns of 4,000 people or more.

I can only go on what was said in the Independent!

ESB will roll out broadband to 500,000 homes throughout rural Ireland. Would that not rule out urban areas been first?

Maybe, your right, but we'll have to wait and see.

ED E

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

I can only go on what was said in the Independent!

ESB will roll out broadband to 500,000 homes throughout rural Ireland. Would that not rule out urban areas been first?

Maybe, your right, but we'll have to wait and see.

Already answered

bk wrote: »

Rumour has is that the ESB are going to roll out a Fibre To The Home (FTTH) network.

But initially this won't be targeted at really rural places, unlike what the article implies.

sparky63

An interesting link on how Broadband over power lines may work, if the problems providing the service can be overcome.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/bpl4.htm

White Heart Loon

sparky63 wrote: »

An interesting link on how Broadband over power lines may work, if the problems providing the service can be overcome.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/bpl4.htm

This isn't over power lines, it's fibre to the home

MrO

bk wrote: »

So no, not all FTTH are the same. ESB will likely be using GPON, which should give typical consumer speeds of about 150 to 200mb/s

Google are using a much newer and more expensive technology allowing them to do 1Gb/s speeds.

Actually Google and more recently other providers in the states are using plain old GPON to sell 1Gbit/s services.

Cheerful Spring

ED E wrote: »

Already answered

I do admit BK is more knowledgeable about this stuff than me, but its not fact we don't know for sure what the ESB is planning.

The next stage in the evolution of ESB’s telecoms offering comes with the recently announced “Fibre to the Building” project which will offer the highest broadband speeds available to Irish customers. Alongside our JV partner, we will roll out a 100% fibre network that will connect directly into .5 million homes, offering speeds in excess of 150Mb/s. These upload and download speeds are guaranteed because it is an end-to-end fibre network. This service will be available in 2014 through local broadband providers.

Available in 2014?

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

I can only go on what was said in the Independent!

I think you will find that the people here on this forum are far better informed then the hacks at the indo and other papers.

They are just recounting the rubbish feed to them by the Minister, who of course wants to make it look like they are doing something for rural Ireland.

The truth is very different. It will be hitting some rural villages, every rural village with 4,000 people or more, but not smaller villages and not one off houses. At least not in the initial phases.

sparky63 wrote: »

An interesting link on how Broadband over power lines may work, if the problems providing the service can be overcome.

That is Broadband over powerline and this has already been found to be a failed technology.

The ESB will be doing FTTH, just using the electricity poles. That is a very different thing.

MrO wrote: »

Actually Google and more recently other providers in the states are using plain old GPON to sell 1Gbit/s services.

It is more complicated then that, Google Fiber is using WDM-PON with Legacy GPON for every individual wavelength. Meaning every colorless GPON ONT in each premise will work as though it's a 1:1 dedicated homerun GPON line.

That means each home can get a dedicated 1.25Gb/s and it is a lot more expensive then vanilla GPON.

Standard GPON has only a total of 2.5Gb/s shared by at least 32 people. So if other ISP's are selling 1Gb/s with vanilla GPON, then it is quiet highly contended.

Available in 2014?

Rollout will start this year, but will likely take a few years to complete, and again this is only the 500,000 semi-urban homes, that will still leave 400,000 truly rural homes to do.

Colm R

With regard to rural connections, I wonder would they test the waters with the rural public about one off installation/set up costs.

Personally, I would be willing to spend a few hundred euro to get connected on a once off basis. Not sure how it would fly, though, as I'm sure someone will spin it as an attack on rural Ireland.

Colm R wrote: »

With regard to rural connections, I wonder would they test the waters with the rural public about one off installation/set up costs.

Personally, I would be willing to spend a few hundred euro to get connected on a once off basis. Not sure how it would fly, though, as I'm sure someone will spin it as an attack on rural Ireland.

I'm sure they would trial it. Rumour has it they are even trailing it at the moment.

However if you are paying for it yourself, expect the bill to be thousands, not hundreds!

MrO

bk wrote: »

It is more complicated then that, Google Fiber is using WDM-PON with Legacy GPON for every individual wavelength. Meaning every colorless GPON ONT in each premise will work as though it's a 1:1 dedicated homerun GPON line.

That means each home can get a dedicated 1.25Gb/s and it is a lot more expensive then vanilla GPON.

Standard GPON has only a total of 2.5Gb/s shared by at least 32 people. So if other ISP's are selling 1Gb/s with vanilla GPON, then it is quiet highly contended.

WDM-PON works by emulating a point a point network i.e. a grouping of a number of wavelengths e.g. 40 are pushed down a feeder core to a wavelength filter. The optics in the WDM-ONT can automatically sync at an unused lambda out of the 40 to provide a 'point-point' gig as far back as the WDM-PON node.

WDM-PON can co-exist with GPON to some extent as the wavelengths are different. However, at the splitting point in a GPON architecture you're using optical power splitting not optical wavelength filters (some type of bragg grating).

ISPs are selling Gigs to residential users using GPON. Until the actual (concurrent) utilisation of each user on a 32 way split exceeds the hard limit of ~74Mbit/s there are no congestion issues. You run your line test and you'll get a gig, everyone on the PON maxes out their connections at the same time - then you've got trouble.

If a business customer or very demanding home office user has high bandwidth symmetrical requirements they could be migrated to a WDM-PON or Point-Point service by being moved from the splitter architecture to a WDM or a straight through connection. However to do this you need to have a dual architecture in place.

The reality it is very difficult for everyone to max out their connection at the same time. The internet itself is still a bottle-neck!

MrO wrote: »

The reality it is very difficult for everyone to max out their connection at the same time. The internet itself is still a bottle-neck!

Yup, totally agree, 1Gb/s is totally mad and unnecessary for normal consumers.

However I could for-see problems coming up in future if people start streaming Ultra HD 4k video. You could quickly run into the 74mb/s hard limit of GPON in the evenings with lots of people watch telly at the same time!

Anyway, thanks for your post, very informative.

SpaceTime

The cost of some of this type of equipment has plummeted too.
So a lot of things are possible now that might have been ludicrously expensive a few years ago.

I'm not sure why people keep mentioning repeaters and distance issues. They won't be any issue. Even the most remote location should be easily reachable without signal loss. Ireland isn't THAT big and I can't realistically see any home being more than 20km from a node.

The expensive and technically complex bit is the optical splitters that would be needed to connect homes.

I'm not familiar enough with the technology to know exactly how that would be done.

In rural Ireland you'd ideally need a trunk and branch network. I can't see a radial layout being very practical in ribbon development housing that follows roads.

That's also why ADSL and even FTTC is pretty useless in really rural areas. Everyone is too far from the node / exchange. Normal network layouts are really designed for towns, villages, clusters of homes.

Cable TV networks are actually ideal fits for irish urban hinterland as you can run house to house like Xmas lights fed from a fibre node.
Much easier than phone lines.

irishfeen

What would be considered "truly rural"? - we live on a main enough road between two villages 5 miles apart (one village efibre, the other dial up (900 in village itself and a significant number of houses in between)) we stuck on the wrong side so Eircom have completely washed their hands of us ... I assume connecting gaps in the network would be a major part of ESB plans?

MrO

bk wrote: »

Yup, totally agree, 1Gb/s is totally mad and unnecessary for normal consumers.

However I could for-see problems coming up in future if people start streaming Ultra HD 4k video. You could quickly run into the 74mb/s hard limit of GPON in the evenings with lots of people watch telly at the same time!

Anyway, thanks for your post, very informative.

You're right, it is a little bit of a gamble for the ISPs but analytics are King (especially in somewhere like Google). When the see the average user footprint get close to congestion territory - maybe 60/70%, I suspect they'll push out an upgrade of hardware.

SpaceTime wrote: »

The cost of some of this type of equipment has plummeted too.
So a lot of things are possible now that might have been ludicrously expensive a few years ago.

While prices of the gear and optics have plummeted, some 70 to 80% of the cost is purely labour and civils. That is why the cost of FTTH hasn't really gotten cheaper over the years.

SpaceTime

irishfeen wrote: »

What would be considered "truly rural"? - we live on a main enough road between two villages 5 miles apart (one village efibre, the other dial up (900 in village itself and a significant number of houses in between)) we stuck on the wrong side so Eircom have completely washed their hands of us ... I assume connecting gaps in the network would be a major part of ESB plans?

Truely rural as in there is no village or town. Houses built along rural roads and one off scattered houses.

Small villages are much easier to connect up. You can put an FTTC cabinet in and connect radially to it.

Ireland is extremely unusual in that regard. A lot of housing is just built along roads and not in any type of cluster.

What you're describing is very typically Irish housing layout and it's extremely difficult to connect up to technologies that are designed for radial networks where a node or exchange sits in the middle of a cluster of users.

With ribbon development on roads something else needs to be thought up that allows trunks with users plugged into them along a single line.

Like an optical version of CATV.

Remember CATV was developed for low density US suburban housing. The trunk and tap system is ideal for that.

irishfeen

SpaceTime wrote: »

Truely rural as in there is no village or town. Houses built along rural roads and one off scattered houses.

Small villages are much easier to connect up. You can put an FTTC cabinet in and connect radially to it.

Ireland is extremely unusual in that regard. A lot of housing is just built along roads and not in any type of cluster.

In that case I suppose we would be technically considered semi rural so (4 houses in a row) but from the village (not connected) to where efibre starts is only 3 miles and we stuck between

SpaceTime

irishfeen wrote: »

In that case I suppose we would be technically considered semi rural so (4 houses in a row) but from the village (not connected) to where efibre starts is only 3 miles and we stuck between

That's fully rural and not economic for FTTC.

Using e fibre, eircom would have to install a cabinet costing at least €20 grand and extensive engineering works to get fibre to it. That would serve one km either direction. So maybe 5 or 10 houses.

They need at least 160+ homes per cabinet.

You can see why a commercial outfit wouldn't touch it.

It's not the right technology for that kind of housing.

irishfeen

SpaceTime wrote: »

That's fully rural and not economic for FTTC.

Using e fibre, eircom would have to install a cabinet costing at least €20 grand and extensive engineering works to get fibre to it. That would serve one km either direction. So maybe 5 or 10 houses.

They need at least 160+ homes per cabinet.

You can see why a commercial outfit wouldn't touch it.

It's not the right technology for that kind of housing.

Economically viable for EBS using FTTH?

TheDoc

Too little to late to be honest. I'm moving residence next month. While there is an arrival to the family forcing my hand quicker, I was planning to move out April in order to go somewhere that is UPC/Magnet Fibre enabled.

At present I'm with Magnet running Eircom resale, and it has been a soul destroying process coming from 150mb UPC Fibre. It's THAT important to me. And it's the first question I've been asking prospective landlords and estate agents. It's shocking the amount of built up areas in Dublin without fibre, nevermind rural areas

irishfeen wrote: »

Economically viable for EBS using FTTH?

No, the best you can hope for is that Eircom brings Fibre and a VDSL cab to the nearest town and that they then allow ADSL2+ connections off the cab. You might get speeds around 4mb/s then.

Alternatively maybe someone could do fixed wireless to you from one of the villages.