Rural Broadband - National Broadband Plan

Ok, so lets discuss rural broadband. Let me try and give people an idea of the issues with rural broadband and the real costs of it.

First of all people need to understand that most forms of high speed broadband are fundamentally distance constrained. For instance, VDSL2 only really gives you excellent speeds out to 1km and quickly falls off beyond that distance, beyond 2km it performs only the same as ADSL2+

The same with cable, which is why UPC doesn't typically operate outside of urban areas. Even wireless technology like 3G and 4G are distance limited and deteriorate quickly the further you are from the mast.

We also need to define exactly what "rural" means. Many people seem to think rural means a one off house on the top of the mountain. You will often hear people say that they are only 3km from the village and/or in a cluster of 30 homes.

But for most brodband technologies, that makes them very much rural, as I mentioned above VDSL really only operates out to 1 or 2km, beyond 2km from a village you really are rural. Also a cluster of 30 or even 60 homes often isn't economic to service. For instance Eircoms VDSL cabs can support 192 homes. Realistically Eircom doesn't expect 100% of homes to sign up, they are lucky to get 50% in the long term. So I expect Eircom needs about 400 homes to be in a serviceable distance of a VDSL cabinet to make it worth their while to install. So no, even your cluster of 30 or 60 homes, 3km outside a village, still makes it very rural.

The biggest problem is that Ireland has such a large and dispersed rural population. 40% of Irelands population is classed as rural, one of the highest percentages in Europe. For example in France, only 10% of the population is rural.

This high number, dispersed all over the country makes getting high speed broadband to everyone in rural Ireland a terribly difficult and expensive problem.

There is a shining light however and that is Fibre. Fibre is ideally suited to rural areas. Fibre doesn't suffer from the same deterioration of speeds of the other technologies we talked about above. Fibre can typically reach 20km at full speed and can be extended almost indefinitely with repeaters at every 20km.

If every home in Ireland had Fibre, we wouldn't be talking now, there wouldn't be a rural broadband problem.

The problem is that it is horribly expensive to install Fibre in rural areas. A 1km run of Fibre in urban areas will pass thousands of homes. A 1km run of fibre in rural Ireland will pass only tens of homes.

Because of this, the average cost of installing Fibre in urban areas is about €1,000 per home. The cost in rural areas, at least €10,000 per home!

To give you some idea, based on these figures it will cost in the region of €8 billion to connect every premises in Ireland with FTTH, with the bulk of that cost (about €6.5 billion) being the rural homes.

Realistically that just isn't going to be spent over night. To put it in perspective that would cost more then the entire motorway network!

People will often point out that we were able to bring electricity to every home in Ireland and a phone line too. But what they conveniently forget is that the electrification of Ireland project took 40 years to complete and the telephone network was likewise built over decades.

I absolutely believe that every home in Ireland will one day have FTTH and that should be our long term goal. But people need to be realistic and realise that it will likely take 40 years too! Just like the electrification of Ireland. The government aren't just going to spend 8 billion over night. However 8 billion spread over 40 years is 200 million a year, a much more achievable and affordable goal.

But of course that doesn't help people in rural Ireland who are crying out for decent broadband today. And I think we also need a short term, realistic goal. I think a more realistic short term goal is as follows:

- Bring fibre to every village in Ireland

- Use this fibre as backhaul to Eircoms exchanges and have Eircom bring VDSL to every exchange. The means all the people living in the villages and the businesses, schools, community centers, etc. will get up to 100mb/s speeds, a very welcome upgrade. Those people living between 2km and 5km from the village will see a jump to ADSL2+ type speeds, also a very welcome improvement for them.

- Also use this fibre to backhaul to 4G masts and fixed wireless access masts in the village which can help bring a decent quality wireless broadband to the homes lying further to the village.

By doing this, I believe it should be possible to bring a decent, stable, uncapped 30mb/s broadband connection to almost everyone in rural Ireland. And it would be very welcome.

I believe all of the above is probably doable for the 500 million proposed as part of the National Broadband Plan.

It should also be pointed out that bringing fibre to every village would be a pre-requiste to do FTTH in rural areas. Fibre to every village is the backbone on which future rural FTTH plans would be built.

MBSnr wrote: »

Interesting news release from the UK Gov here.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/superfast-broadband-reaches-1-million-more-homes-and-businesses

The UK is ahead of us by about 2 years with getting high speed broadband to everyone.

They are basically giving lots of money to BT to connect up as many homes as possible.

I expect the National Broadband Plan will do something similar here, giving lots of money to Eircom to hook up as many rural homes as possible. Though I hope they will also make money, expertise and licensing available to companies and communities to do quality fixed wireless access too. VDSL won't be good enough to reach all homes, FWA will likely need to be an important part of the mix too.

One positive thing about us being 2 years behind is that Eircom is using much newer and better VDSL2 and vectoring technology. Most people in the UK can only get a max of 40mb/s from VDSL, with a smaller number of people getting up to 70mb/s. No sign of them doing vectoring yet.

Interestingly we are also ahead of the UK for cable broadband. The max Virgin Media (now owned by UPC) offers in the UK is 150mb/s, compared to the 200mb/s we can get from UPC here.

Also no sign of a big FTTH rollout in the UK like the ESB are about to start here.

It is shocking that we have leap frogged the UK so quickly, at least in urban areas. We jsut need to do the same for rural Ireland now too.

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

I love to read such statements as .......

"It will reverse the digital divide between city and rural"

Now that is what I call positive for us rurals on 3MBs and less!

Well some people think anything outside of Dublin is rural!

But seriously, I think this is where a lot of the confusion comes from. Amongst the Irish civil service and politicians, I believe anything outside the big cities is considered rural.

Thus as the ESB bringing FTTH to 40 towns and villages outside of the big cities, it is thus bringing broadband to rural Ireland, at least by this definition and in the minds of politicians.

But that isn't really the definition we use for rural here in this forum and amongst the ISP industry. When we talk about the urban versus rural divide, I suppose we are really talking about a "high versus low population density divide".

Generally speaking * it is just as easy and economical to bring high quality broadband to a so called "rural" town which has a high enough population density such as Cavan Town as it is to a city.

* As long as the town isn't too far from the national fibre backhaul networks.

Yet somewhere in the countryside just 10km from Dublin might get no broadband due to being low density.

So yes, the ESB is helping bring high quality broadband to many parts of rural Ireland, but just the higher density parts. However I do hope the ESB's fibre will be opened up to be used as quality backhaul for Fixed wireless ISP's servicing areas around these towns.

In the long term, this project is very good news for rural Ireland.

celtic_oz wrote: »

When an article comes out that we highlight the lies , everyone rushes in to say how we are all mistaken, that rural FTTH is an expensive fallacy.

eh great.., now where is the plan for rural Ireland? Not vague .. well maybe we could do this or that but an actual plan.

Now that isn't fair, I think I and others have laid out a very workable plan for rural Ireland:

1) Carrier neutral fibre backhaul to every town and village in Ireland

2) Eircom to put VDSL in every rural exchange, using the fibre from step 1 above. Enabling every rural exchange may require some government subsidy to make up the difference.

This will give you 100mb/s speeds to everyone in the village, including shops, business, schools, community centers, etc. And it can deliver reasonable ADSL2+ speeds out to 4 to 5km from the village.

3) The fibre backhaul used to feed 3G/4G and most importantly Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) towers in the village to service the surrounding community for a few km's around the village.

With fibre backed FWA I believe it should be possible to service the majority of homes in rural Ireland with minimum 30mb/s no cap, quality broadband.

Maybe not 200mb/s UPC, but I think good enough for most people for the short to medium term.

It would also be good if Eircom looked into VDSL reach extenders, repeaters and mini VDSL cabs to help reach deeper into rural areas. i.e. get creative

We also need to support the FWA industry better with much cheaper and easier access to licensed frequencies for FWA in rural areas.

Finally I'd love to see either Eircom or the ESD running a scheme similar to the BT Fibre On Demand scheme they have in the UK. Where anyone in the country can order FTTH, but they pay the full costs of installation from the nearest VDSL cab (or Fibre connected village from step 1 above).

I'm hoping that this is what the National Broadband Plan will entail.

I'd love to hear if anyone disagrees with me and/or has alternative realistic suggestions.

MBSnr wrote: »

^^^
Question for the more knowledgeable here! Is there a restriction on running fibre cables using the existing Eircom poles? The reason I ask is that most cabinets in urban areas are fed by ducted fibre right? Therefore the cost is high as streets have to be dug etc. If a cabinet was placed in a rural location (assuming power was readily available) could it not be fed via fibre directly strung from the exchange via the existing poles? If so doesn't this dramatically reduce the installation cost?
I realise that the state of poles in a rural area are bad/leaning/falling down, but if a pole was damaged and/or a tree fell through lines, the net effect would be the same for those lines regardless if there was fibre or copper strung up there.

I don't know for a fact, but from what I hear many of Eircoms poles in rural areas are in bad condition and may not be able to take the extra weight of fibre additional fibre cables and mini cabs on them.

That is why Eircom have been making noise about getting access to the ESBs poles and ducts with the news of the ESB doing FTTH. The ESB poles are typically in a much better state and of a much better quality, thus more capable of carrying fibre and mini cabs, etc.

BTW it isn't true that Eircom have to dig in urban areas to lay fibre to VDSL cabs.
All of the VDSL cabs are being installed next to existing copper cable junction boxes. These junction boxes are almost all served by existing large underground ducts that run to the local exchange and contain large bundles of copper telephones cables. It is relatively trivial to blow fibre down these existing ducts from the exchange to the new VDSL cabs next to the junction boxes.

Certainly in all the VDSL/efibre installs I've seen in Cork and Dublin, it has all being just blowing fibre down existing ducts, no digging involved (other then max 1 meter between the existing junction box and the VDSL cab).

Ok there probably are the odd exception where a new junction box has been placed, but pretty rare.

It is MUCH cheaper to blow fibre down an existing duct, then string it along poles. It is also cheaper to maintain, less storm/weather damage, car hitting pole damage, farmers shotgun, etc.

Yes, digging a new duct is more expensive then running along poles, however most urban areas are already covered in ducts.

Interestingly when they finally decommission the copper network (at least the backhaul element between the VDSL cab and exchange) and pull out the copper cable, these ducts are going to be very empty as fibre will takes up a fractino of the space. Also these reclaimed copper cable could be worth a pretty penny to Eircom as recylced copper, which is currently at an all time high!

MajesticDonkey wrote: »

What are typical realistic ADSL2+ speeds, at 4-5km from the cab?

About 5mb/s at 4km. Which might not sound like much, but to a person on ADSL1 connected to a microwave linked bandwidth starved exchange and currently only getting 1 to .5mb/s, that would be a great jump.

But these are the vanilla VDSL2 speeds, I believe with various forms of vectoring and some other tricks like reach extenders, channel bonding, etc. they might be able to eck a few more mb/s out of it.

Even more exciting might be Eircom running fibre on their own or the ESB poles and using mini cabs (20 to 40 ports) to service people further out. They could then see jumps to proper VDSL speeds 40mb/s+

No indication of this happening yet, but the quality and speed of the VDSL2 + vectoring rollout caught many of us pleasantly off guard, so lets hope there are more pleasant surprises to come.

MajesticDonkey wrote: »

Also, I hope IrelandOffline are gonna be campaigning for everything you said in your post, because unless some national body makes noise, nothing will happen

Yes, but I think it is important for us to discuss it here first, to see if it is actually a good idea and if anyone has any better ideas?