Rural Broadband - National Broadband Plan

murphaph · 11-08-2014 09:20PM

Yes but Dunshaughlin village has VDSL. The priority has to be getting fibre itself to all the towns and villages in Ireland and working out from there. It's the fastest way to get the most people onto decent speeds. Once fibre has been pushed to all or most villages...then they should start penetrating deeper into the surrounding countryside. They should have some plan for this but implementation should follow only after fibre is pushed to all these VDSL less villages.

nilhg · 12-08-2014 12:19AM

bk wrote: »

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.

Just catching up with this thread, there's a lot I agree with here but also some statements and assumptions that don't seem to accord with facts on the ground or have any commonly quoted public data to back them up, the few bits I've bolded above struck me for a start, just a few comments on them in order.

My local exchange, Rathangan, Co. Kildare went live for VDSL last month and happily I'm one of the lucky one's who got connected, currently getting 40/8mb from the nearest cab to me. I really do seem to be one of the lucky ones though because I'm 3.5km out in the countryside from the village and my cab is 2.7km or so out, no matter what way I count I can only get to about 30 houses within 2km of the cab. In the village as a whole the Eircom wholesale site reports that VDSL is available to 730 premises, the thing is they have 9 cabs installed to provide that service. There are plenty of comparable town/villages scheduled on the map to have VDSL rolled out, TBH I can't see any of them having 400 premises per cab so maybe the economics for Eircom aren't quite as bad as your figures predict.

On the €10k per house for FTTH via the ESB poles network I've seen nothing official (could have missed it) from Irish sources to confirm this, there have been some quotes from sources abroad but local conditions and practices vary so much it must be hard to apply these to Ireland, hopefully some firm figures will come once the rollout starts in Ireland.

Ovbiously getting fibre into the villages and towns is essential but I was struck today while driving from home down to North Wexford and back home again via Carnew, Shillelagh, Tullow, Castledermot, Athy and Kildare town that none of them are (to my mind any way) are ideal sites for wireless base stations, almost all of them are in hollows in river valleys, located in rolling countryside. Some of the wind turbine sites in North Wexford/South Wicklow mightn't be bad though.

Just a few observations, not meant as criticism in any way I do appreciate the knowledge you and the other regular posters bring to this forum.

murphaph · 12-08-2014 08:33AM

Just shows how amazingly well Ireland's broadband is progressing...you essentially have the same speeds as I do in an apartment in Berlin, despite your rural location.

celtic_oz · 12-08-2014 09:51AM

bk wrote: »

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

Great..., is there a documented plan by a political party that aligns with any of these plans ? We need to know which way to vote ..

Fine Gael in 2011: "Investing in Next Generation Broadband: Fine Gael in Government will co-operate and co-invest with Eircom, UPC and other telecommunications companies to provide Next Generation Access (high-speed broadband) to every home and business in the State. This will be achieved by delivering fibre to the home or kerb for 90% of homes and businesses in Ireland with the remaining 10% provided with high-speed mobile or satellite broadband. "

MajesticDonkey · 12-08-2014 10:16AM

celtic_oz wrote: »

This will be achieved by delivering fibre to the home or kerb for 90% of homes and businesses in Ireland with the remaining 10% provided with high-speed mobile or satellite broadband. "

L.O.L. As if that was a solution. Do these people, that are still in government, actually know what they're doing?

same ol sh1te · 12-08-2014 10:33AM

MajesticDonkey wrote: »

L.O.L. As if that was a solution. Do these people, that are still in government, actually know what they're doing?

No, most of them are school teachers. They expect the public servants in the departments to advise them as to what's best so changing Govt in fact doesn't change anything. These public servants got influenced somehow and listened to the mobile companies dress up their technologies, this lead to the National Broadband Scheme.

This is why we need a long term plan, much longer than the 4 years any party is in power and we need it to be public so the mobile telecoms industry don't dress their technologies up to be better than they are and we get more of the same

Villain · 12-08-2014 11:11AM

nilhg wrote: »

Ovbiously getting fibre into the villages and towns is essential but I was struck today while driving from home down to North Wexford and back home again via Carnew, Shillelagh, Tullow, Castledermot, Athy and Kildare town that none of them are (to my mind any way) are ideal sites for wireless base stations, almost all of them are in hollows in river valleys, located in rolling countryside. Some of the wind turbine sites in North Wexford/South Wicklow mightn't be bad though.

Just a few observations, not meant as criticism in any way I do appreciate the knowledge you and the other regular posters bring to this forum.

Pretty good high sites around Tullow and Shillelagh anyway and while I support the concept of getting Fibre to towns like Tullow (my nearest) trying to deliver the last mile via wireless isn't really a long term solution.

The amount of spectrum is pretty small and there are already a lot of WISP providers fighting for it and now with AC devices coming available and 80Mhz channels when you push for throughput you eat a LOT of the available spectrum.

Comreg need to open the unlicensed spectrum more but that still is only going to buy you time. I would love to see rural communities coming together and finding solutions i.e. work with land owners to connect to fibre pops.

The B4RN project in the UK http://b4rn.org.uk/ is something to be admired. Sadly I think we may be one Generation away from achieving the same in Ireland.

same ol sh1te · 12-08-2014 11:22AM

Villain wrote: »

Pretty good high sites around Tullow and Shillelagh anyway and while I support the concept of getting Fibre to towns like Tullow (my nearest) trying to deliver the last mile via wireless isn't really a long term solution.

The amount of spectrum is pretty small and there are already a lot of WISP providers fighting for it and now with AC devices coming available and 80Mhz channels when you push for throughput you eat a LOT of the available spectrum.

Comreg need to open the unlicensed spectrum more but that still is only going to buy you time. I would love to see rural communities coming together and finding solutions i.e. work with land owners to connect to fibre pops.

The B4RN project in the UK http://b4rn.org.uk/ is something to be admired. Sadly I think we may be one Generation away from achieving the same in Ireland.

Unlicensed? It needs to be licensed, 3.5Mhz is perfect and isn't utilised to it's full potential, Comreg haven't really done a good job of allocating it. Imagine are also wasting 3.5 spectrum on mobile Wimax that doesn't work

Villain · 12-08-2014 11:31AM

same ol sh1te wrote: »

Unlicensed? It needs to be licensed, 3.5Mhz is perfect and isn't utilised to it's full potential, Comreg haven't really done a good job of allocating it. Imagine are also wasting 3.5 spectrum on mobile Wimax that doesn't work

Most WISP are sticking masts on farmers in exchange for connection etc, need to be removing costs not adding them.

Wireless is not the solution long term.

murphaph · 12-08-2014 11:35AM

Fixed wireless is the medium term solution that will have to do for several decades until FTTH has replaced copper everywhere. But that will take decades just as rural electrification and back then there were far fewer one off dwellings. That's a more recent phenomenon.

BeerWolf · 12-08-2014 11:39AM

Wonder if the they could introduce community planning for pooling a down payment, either in full or instalments, for having FTTC in a rural area... and further individual cost for FTTH from there.

There's plenty of people in the country where money isn't much of an issue to accomplish this surely ?

same ol sh1te · 12-08-2014 11:40AM

Villain wrote: »

Most WISP are sticking masts on farmers in exchange for connection etc, need to be removing costs not adding them.

Yes, because WISPs are starved of funding and have been ripped apart by the NBS with it's false promise of bringing broadband to everyone. Plenty of FWA customers disconnected working broadband connections to move to NBS. It costs money to go on or build masts. It also costs a huge annual fee to use licensed links, over €1000 per yr, where in the UK it's a 50 quid paper fee. Comreg are holding WISPs back by milking them for all they're worth, Comreg see it as a cash cow.

Villain wrote: »

Wireless is not the solution long term.

It's a perfect stop gap until we have fibre, 20-30mbit each way is easily possible if done right

Villain · 12-08-2014 11:45AM

murphaph wrote: »

Fixed wireless is the medium term solution that will have to do for several decades until FTTH has replaced copper everywhere. But that will take decades just as rural electrification and back then there were far fewer one off dwellings. That's a more recent phenomenon.

Sadly I agree with you and rural areas will be left scrapping for what they can get, the main mind shift that needs to occur is that land owners stop seeing digs laying ducting as a money earning exercises and start to think of their future and the communities around them.

Villain · 12-08-2014 11:52AM

same ol sh1te wrote: »

Yes, because WISPs are starved of funding and have been ripped apart by the NBS with it's false promise of bringing broadband to everyone. Plenty of FWA customers disconnected working broadband connections to move to NBS. It costs money to go on or build masts. It also costs a huge annual fee to use licensed links, over €1000 per yr, where in the UK it's a 50 quid paper fee. Comreg are holding WISPs back by milking them for all they're worth, Comreg see it as a cash cow.

It's a perfect stop gap until we have fibre, 20-30mbit each way is easily possible if done right

Oh I agree with you comreg are not helping this sector at all and it is a good stop gap as you say I just don't want to see it becoming a solution!

murphaph · 12-08-2014 12:41PM

Villain wrote: »

Sadly I agree with you and rural areas will be left scrapping for what they can get, the main mind shift that needs to occur is that land owners stop seeing digs laying ducting as a money earning exercises and start to think of their future and the communities around them.

To be fair eircom are pushing FTTC to little villages that could only dream of it here in Germany. Rural doesn't mean one off. An isolated village of 200 houses is rural too. Eircom are actually connecting such places to VDSL. I never thought I'd see that.

Villain · 12-08-2014 12:49PM

murphaph wrote: »

To be fair eircom are pushing FTTC to little villages that could only dream of it here in Germany. Rural doesn't mean one off. An isolated village of 200 houses is rural too. Eircom are actually connecting such places to VDSL. I never thought I'd see that.

True but they are only delivering VDSL within 2km of those villages and DSL up to about 5km but to be honest I don't think anything under 5mb should be considered "Broadband" in 2014. There are also still a lot of carrier lines and local issues which they can't afford to address.

OneEightSeven · 12-08-2014 01:23PM

Villain wrote: »

I don't think anything under 5mb should be considered "Broadband" in 2014.

Whether it's 50kb/s or 500kb/s, it's the technical name for the technology so it's not going to go away like dailup did. I'd call it "low-speed broadband" because then you'd get the point across that's it's obsolete.

I was doing some calculations yesterday and 5Mb would be good enough to stream live HD 720p for one person. In Australia, they're selling 25/5 fixed wireless so that sort of technology would be good enough for the vast majority of rural-dwellers.

Johnboy1951 · 12-08-2014 02:01PM

BeerWolf wrote: »

Wonder if the they could introduce community planning for pooling a down payment, either in full or instalments, for having FTTC in a rural area... and further individual cost for FTTH from there.

There's plenty of people in the country where money isn't much of an issue to accomplish this surely ?

If a local community outside a village paid for the fibre and cabinet in their locality, they would own that hardware and should have control over who uses it and how much it costs to connect to it etc.

I don't see that happening.

Neither do I see people paying a corporation the costs of putting in the hardware and handing ownership to the corporation.

MajesticDonkey · 12-08-2014 02:02PM

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

If a local community outside a village paid for the fibre and cabinet in their locality, they would own that hardware and should have control over who uses it and how much it costs to connect to it etc.

I don't see that happening.

Neither do I see people paying a corporation the costs of putting in the hardware and handing ownership to the corporation.

You'd be paying for the cost of installation, not hardware.

Johnboy1951 · 12-08-2014 02:05PM

OneEightSeven wrote: »

Whether it's 50kb/s or 500kb/s, it's the technical name for the technology so it's not going to go away like dailup did. I'd call it "low-speed broadband" because then you'd get the point across that's it's obsolete.

I was doing some calculations yesterday and 5Mb would be good enough to stream live HD 720p for one person. In Australia, they're selling 25/5 fixed wireless so that sort of technology would be good enough for the vast majority of rural-dwellers.

You reckon there is a difference between rural dwellers' and urban dwellers' needs, or that 25/5 is sufficient for 'the vast majority' regardless where located?

MajesticDonkey · 12-08-2014 02:08PM

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

25/5 is sufficient for 'the vast majority' regardless where located?

In reality, 25/5 is "enough" for most people in the country. Any more is a luxury.

Johnboy1951 · 12-08-2014 02:15PM

MajesticDonkey wrote: »

In reality, 25/5 is "enough" for most people in the country. Any more is a luxury.

Is that per person? ....... so a household of 5 would need 100+Mb/s ?

Where did those figures you quote come from?

Villain · 12-08-2014 02:20PM

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

If a local community outside a village paid for the fibre and cabinet in their locality, they would own that hardware and should have control over who uses it and how much it costs to connect to it etc.

I don't see that happening.

Neither do I see people paying a corporation the costs of putting in the hardware and handing ownership to the corporation.

Lots of ways for that to work but I would see it as a connection is secured in an area where it is available potentially a 1GB weil from Eircom and then install network kit in a location and pop as you go out to the rural locations.

bk · 12-08-2014 03:25PM

Lots of fantastic contributions here in this thread. Finally a decent conversation about rural broadband and not just pie in the sky stuff.

MajesticDonkey wrote: »

I think another important point is the price that these services will cost. People in towns/cities get these awesome packages, maybe phone and 100Mb broadband for €30-40/month, albeit understandably, particularly when there's plenty of competition. I'm currently paying €30/month for a 3Mb connection, and will probably upgrade to 5Mb when it becomes available, which will cost €40/month. Realistically, these prices would not want to go any higher than this as the speeds further increase.

A good point worth discussing.

The reality is that quality rural broadband costs a lot more to do then urban bb. Up to now, because Eircom is forced to charge the same for bb in urban areas as rural areas, it has resulted in them making the least effort possible in rural areas, thus resulting in pretty awful quality of bb in rural areas.

I think rural Ireland is going to have to get use to the idea that if they want quality broadband they are going to have to pay for it themselves. In much the same way as they pay more for ESB.

I don't think it is reasonable for people in urban areas to be expected to subsidise rural broadband. They just won't stand for it and Eircom can't compete in this way (remember UPC only operates in urban areas, so they aren't burdened with subisiding rural broadband and can thus undercut Eircom).

So I think the people of rural Ireland will have to ask themselves, are they willing to continue with crappy, slow but cheap best effort broadband or pay more for quality broadband.

Gonzo wrote: »

This is exactly what is needed up to 2/3km beyond the town boundary. This pole mounted vdsl solution would be perfect for my area, there are 60 houses or so in my area (most of them are side by side on both sides of 3 roads) and some of the houses are only 800 meters from the nearest cab but none of them are connected to the cab. A VSDL pole cab could easily be centrally located feeding all the houses. There are about 3 other locations with similar small distances away from Dunshaughlin each with about 40-70 houses, none of them have fibre. All in all there must be at least 200-300 houses just marginally beyond the town boundary around the town. 2 or 3 pole mounted VDSL installs would give everyone within 4km of the center of Dunshaughlin fibre broadband, where currently it's limited to some people within 600 meters radius of the town centre.

I agree with you and I hope Eircom will do exactly this.

But just to explain why they haven't yet. It will cost significantly more to reroute the lines from the exchanges to these closer mini cabs. That will be an awful lot of very expensive manual labour. Much more expensive then the current VDSL rollouts, so they are currently focusing on doing the much cheaper low hanging fruit.

BT in the UK is already doing this with something called Fibre To The Remote Node (FTTRN), however so far it doesn't seem to be working out so well and doesn't seem to be rolled out widely. Hopefully it will be easier to do here in Ireland:

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2014/03/north-yorkshire-moot-bt-trial-fibre-remote-node-broadband-tech.html

nilhg wrote: »

My local exchange, Rathangan, Co. Kildare went live for VDSL last month and happily I'm one of the lucky one's who got connected, currently getting 40/8mb from the nearest cab to me. I really do seem to be one of the lucky ones though because I'm 3.5km out in the countryside from the village and my cab is 2.7km or so out, no matter what way I count I can only get to about 30 houses within 2km of the cab. In the village as a whole the Eircom wholesale site reports that VDSL is available to 730 premises, the thing is they have 9 cabs installed to provide that service. There are plenty of comparable town/villages scheduled on the map to have VDSL rolled out, TBH I can't see any of them having 400 premises per cab so maybe the economics for Eircom aren't quite as bad as your figures predict.

Yes, there certainly seem to be exception to the rule, but I'm not sure why.

- Maybe they are trialling these villages to find out the real economics of it.
- Perhaps there is political pressure to do these particular villages, wouldn't surprise me at all, pretty much normal practise in Ireland.

It would be great news if I'm wrong, it would be fantastic if the economics worked out that Eircom could run fibre to every rural village and put a VDSL cab in the village. I'd love to be proven wrong on this.

nilhg wrote: »

On the €10k per house for FTTH via the ESB poles network I've seen nothing official (could have missed it) from Irish sources to confirm this, there have been some quotes from sources abroad but local conditions and practices vary so much it must be hard to apply these to Ireland, hopefully some firm figures will come once the rollout starts in Ireland.

There are no figures in Ireland, as no company has done it yet. Which should be indicative in its own right. If rural FTTH is so cheap, then why hasn't any company done it yet or even announced plans for it?

What conspiracy theory do you have for companies denying cheap FTTH to rural Ireland?

I think the reality is that the accountants and network planners at Eircom, ESB, Vodafone, UPC know perfectly well what the real cost would be.

While we have no figures for Ireland, multiple times I've given real figures supported by articles for UK and Europe.

The FTTH Council (remember a group made up of companies who sell FTTH gear, so very likely to low ball the figure) claim it costs €10,000 per home in Europe.

BT in the UK it is very transparent, anyone in the UK can order FTTH, but need to pay the full costs of it, which are:

- Monthly rental £99
- Once off connection charge £750
- Distance charge for the fibre run from home to nearest cab, £3.50 per meter

So 2km would cost €10,000 and a 4km run €18,000 plus €125 per month for service.

3.50 × 2000 = 7,000
7,000 + 750 gbp in euro = €9,740.18
3.50 × 4000 = 14,000
14,000 + 750 gbp in euro = €18,537.76

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2014/01/bt-openreach-hike-price-already-expensive-330mbps-fibre-demand.html

I don't know why people seem to think it is going to be some much cheaper in Ireland? Generally things like infrastructure (roads, Metros, etc.) tend to be more expensive in Ireland then mainland Europe not cheaper!

Ironically, some people seem to say it will be cheaper, but provide no evidence, nor any articles to proof it so, while I provide an abundance of evidence for my position. Wishful thinking I think.

nilhg wrote: »

Ovbiously getting fibre into the villages and towns is essential but I was struck today while driving from home down to North Wexford and back home again via Carnew, Shillelagh, Tullow, Castledermot, Athy and Kildare town that none of them are (to my mind any way) are ideal sites for wireless base stations, almost all of them are in hollows in river valleys, located in rolling countryside. Some of the wind turbine sites in North Wexford/South Wicklow mightn't be bad though.

Ah, but the fibre to the town can feed a point to point microwave link in the town to a tower on a hill overlooking the town, thus supplying a high quality broadband to a lot of the surrounding areas.

You can then bounce a point to point microwave link from tower to tower on neighbouring hills.

But there are two key issues.

1) Getting at least one of the towers connected to a high quality fibre backhaul link for an affordable cost.

2) Making sure these companies have access to affordable licensed spectrum.

same ol sh1te wrote: »

This is why we need a long term plan, much longer than the 4 years any party is in power and we need it to be public so the mobile telecoms industry don't dress their technologies up to be better than they are and we get more of the same

I agree completely, that is why we need a plan with short, medium and long term goals.

The long term plan (20 to 40 years) needs to be FTTH to every home. The short to medium term plan needs to be getting decent, dependable, low latency, unlimited minimum 25 mb/s BB to every home.

same ol sh1te wrote: »

Yes, because WISPs are starved of funding and have been ripped apart by the NBS with it's false promise of bringing broadband to everyone. Plenty of FWA customers disconnected working broadband connections to move to NBS. It costs money to go on or build masts. It also costs a huge annual fee to use licensed links, over €1000 per yr, where in the UK it's a 50 quid paper fee. Comreg are holding WISPs back by milking them for all they're worth, Comreg see it as a cash cow.

It's a perfect stop gap until we have fibre, 20-30mbit each way is easily possible if done right

Here, here , this is exactly what needs to be done IMO.

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

You reckon there is a difference between rural dwellers' and urban dwellers' needs, or that 25/5 is sufficient for 'the vast majority' regardless where located?

No, to be honest, 25/5 is fast enough for everyone.

I went from 16/0.5 ADSL2+ to 120/10 UPC. And to be honest I saw almost no difference. Before I was able to do Netflix HD and Youtube HD just fine and going to UPC has made no difference to these.

Sure very big downloads from well provisioned sites (Microsoft, Apple) come down quicker by UPC, but I've always done such updates and downloads offline anyway, so there is little real world difference.

The one area I've seen a very big welcome difference, that made UPC worth it was the 20 times jump in upload speed. A great help with uploading to cloud services, facebook, etc.

So yes, IMO 25/5 is good enough for most people and anything more is a luxury.

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Is that per person? ....... so a household of 5 would need 100+Mb/s ?

The average Irish home has 2.5 people living in it. 25/5 would be enough for that size home. 25mb/s would be fast enough for 3 HD streams (about 8mb/s).

5 people in a house is an exception. 25/5 might be a little strained with 5 high end users, but still should be just enough.

bk · 12-08-2014 03:34PM

One thing I left out of the plan that I outlined earlier.

When they are running fibre to every village. They should future proof it and run enough fibre pairs to every village to allow for a future upgrade to FTTH in the village and surrounding areas.

Fibre itself is actually cheap, it is the manual labour of installing it that costs and majority of the expensive. So do it right at first and you build a fantastic foundation to build FTTH to every home in the long term.

Plan ahead.

Villain · 12-08-2014 03:46PM

bk wrote: »

I went from 16/0.5 ADSL2+ to 120/10 UPC. And to be honest I saw almost no difference. Before I was able to do Netflix HD and Youtube HD just fine and going to UPC has made no difference to these.

Sure very big downloads from well provisioned sites (Microsoft, Apple) come down quicker by UPC, but I've always done such updates and downloads offline anyway, so there is little real world difference.

The one area I've seen a very big welcome difference, that made UPC worth it was the 20 times jump in upload speed. A great help with uploading to cloud services, facebook, etc.

So yes, IMO 25/5 is good enough for most people and anything more is a luxury.

One big issue is the stupid upload limits been applied to connections and this seems to be an industry hangover from Eircom trying to prevent VOIP and offering tiny upload speeds.

I was involved in a presentation lately where ENET and a WISP provider were trying to get buy in from 50% of local businesses in a large rural town to bring fibre to the premises and the starting package was 50mb/5mb why that can't be 50mb/50mb is beyond me.

If you have a ADSL2+ line close to an exchange you can't even max out your download speed because the upload is restricting it!

I would also say based on my experience on that ENET project we need a big push in educating people especially businesses as to why they should look for fibre connections in all towns and villages

marno21 · 12-08-2014 04:10PM

All of it is bullshít.

With regards to FWA, when MMDS is turned off it will create a lot of free spectrum in mainly rural areas. Existing MMDS beambenders can be used as FWA TX sites if needed.

bk · 12-08-2014 04:18PM

marno21 wrote: »

All of it is bullshít.

Thanks for the insightful input! :rolleyes:

Dero · 12-08-2014 04:48PM

This is a great thread. I'm in the same boat as many here; relying on FWA (8Mb/1Mb) because I'm just that bit too far for copper phone-line based technologies. I'm ~7km from my exchange, so too far for ADSL*, 1km physically from my nearest VDSL cabinet, but 3km from the nearest cabinet to which my line would pass. I am seriously considering the possibility of setting up my own PTP link to somewhere close to a VDSL cabinet...

So anyway, I was wondering about solutions for rural (for the purposes of connectivity) Ireland.

What do we know about the DECNR proposals for fibre intervention in select villages? I know it's early days, but for example, is it likely to be carrier neutral (and in which case who will run it? eNet?). Where in each village would it be terminated? Eircom exchanges seem logical, but not every village has one, and they're owned by Eircom in any case, so does that mean that other operators have to negotiate with Eircom regarding co-lo, especially for microwave links to nearby masts?

Also, what are the chances that it will be priced competitively for FWA operators? As already stated, most of them seem to exist on a shoestring as regards infrastructure, and are very much the poor relations in the eyes of Comreg. All the fibre in the world is of no use if nobody can afford to use it. I am with Ripplecom at the moment, and I can tell you, they could fix a myriad of problems on their network by feeding a few masts directly with fibre, rather than trying to aggregate everything over microwave links. The vast majority of the problems that I experience are due to issues on back-haul links, both licensed and un-licensed.

I'd love to think that companies like Ripplecom will jump at the chance to move a good chunk of their transit off microwave links and onto fibre, but is it realistic?

On the subject of VDSL cabinets vs. population density, my local village has a population of ~750 and has two VDSL cabinets and one more planned (for an estate with <10 houses). Of the extant cabinets, one is in the village proper, but the other one is on a country road, ~500m from the nearest estate.

Sorry for the incoherent rambling post. Hopefully threads like this can continue to clarify my thoughts. :-)

Villain · 12-08-2014 05:06PM

Dero wrote: »

This is a great thread. I'm in the same boat as many here; relying on FWA (8Mb/1Mb) because I'm just that bit too far for copper phone-line based technologies. I'm ~7km from my exchange, so too far for ADSL*, 1km physically from my nearest VDSL cabinet, but 3km from the nearest cabinet to which my line would pass. I am seriously considering the possibility of setting up my own PTP link to somewhere close to a VDSL cabinet...

So anyway, I was wondering about solutions for rural (for the purposes of connectivity) Ireland.

What do we know about the DECNR proposals for fibre intervention in select villages? I know it's early days, but for example, is it likely to be carrier neutral (and in which case who will run it? eNet?). Where in each village would it be terminated? Eircom exchanges seem logical, but not every village has one, and they're owned by Eircom in any case, so does that mean that other operators have to negotiate with Eircom regarding co-lo, especially for microwave links to nearby masts?

Also, what are the chances that it will be priced competitively for FWA operators? As already stated, most of them seem to exist on a shoestring as regards infrastructure, and are very much the poor relations in the eyes of Comreg. All the fibre in the world is of no use if nobody can afford to use it. I am with Ripplecom at the moment, and I can tell you, they could fix a myriad of problems on their network by feeding a few masts directly with fibre, rather than trying to aggregate everything over microwave links. The vast majority of the problems that I experience are due to issues on back-haul links, both licensed and un-licensed.

I'd love to think that companies like Ripplecom will jump at the chance to move a good chunk of their transit off microwave links and onto fibre, but is it realistic?

On the subject of VDSL cabinets vs. population density, my local village has a population of ~750 and has two VDSL cabinets and one more planned (for an estate with <10 houses). Of the extant cabinets, one is in the village proper, but the other one is on a country road, ~500m from the nearest estate.

Sorry for the incoherent rambling post. Hopefully threads like this can continue to clarify my thoughts. :-)

I'm in a very similar situation except the nearest cab will be over 5km.

A PTP link from a VDSL premises or house is best short term solution. For under €200 you can send 100mb 5km but you need LOS and cabling and power and connectivity etc.

Ripplecom certainly seem to be trying to push fibre, they are working with ENET to bring it to Loughrea and Ardee at the moment.

Fibre to high sites would certainly help but FWA should be considered as a last resort in the medium or long term even with Fibre to all high sites.

One thing we need to get away from is the thinking that fibre runs have to go via the road network. Going through agriculture land is far far cheaper.

Rural Broadband - National Broadband Plan

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