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

Gonzo · 01-09-2014 10:00pm

spix wrote: »

What annoys me the most is that my speeds are worse now than they were in 2005 even with all these nationwide broadband improvements over the years (Pretty sure I actually had 4mb at one point). Now in 2014 I can get a max of 2mb.

Welcome to rural Ireland! My speeds haven't gone lower but are the same as they were about 5 years ago. The divide between urban/town areas and the surrounding countryside grows with each and every day. Most of the broadband posts on this forum these days is all about rural broadband or the lack of it.

Im thinking of moving house at this stage, by the time Eircom finish rolling out efibre to villages/towns in 2016 (it will probably be more like 2018) leaving those beyond the urban boundary sitting on ancient ADSL, it will then take them years more to even think of moving beyond a little further out into the countryside. They will eventually start on maybe pole mounted solutions or wireless fibre but im thinking it could be into the 2020s before any of this will happen, it's getting to the stage where rural housing is not an option anymore if your thinking of running a business or like good internet. I am not prepared to wait another 10+ years for speeds greater than 8meg.

galtee boy · 01-09-2014 10:12pm

Gonzo wrote: »

Welcome to rural Ireland! My speeds haven't gone lower but are the same as they were about 5 years ago. The divide between urban/town areas and the surrounding countryside grows with each and every day. Most of the broadband posts on this forum these days is all about rural broadband or the lack of it.

Im thinking of moving house at this stage, by
the time Eircom finish rolling out efibre to villages/towns in 2016 (it will probably be morelike 2018) leaving those beyond the urbanboundary sitting on ancient ADSL, it willthen take them years more to even think ofmoving beyond a little further out into thecountryside. They will eventually start onmaybe pole mounted solutions or wirelessfibre but im thinking it could be into the2020s before any of this will happen, it'sgetting to the stage where rural housing isnotan option anymore if your thinking ofrunning a business or like good internet. I amnot prepared to wait another 10+ years forspeeds greater than 8me
.[/quot

How rural are you ? I live in a rural town, but Vodafone recently switched on 4G in the area and I'm now getting 30mb on my phone ! The town is near a motorway, so that my explain it, better coverage for motorists ?How far out into the countryside does a 4G signal go ?

galtee boy · 01-09-2014 10:12pm

Gonzo wrote: »

Welcome to rural Ireland! My speeds haven't gone lower but are the same as they were about 5 years ago. The divide between urban/town areas and the surrounding countryside grows with each and every day. Most of the broadband posts on this forum these days is all about rural broadband or the lack of it.

Im thinking of moving house at this stage, by
the time Eircom finish rolling out efibre to villages/towns in 2016 (it will probably be morelike 2018) leaving those beyond the urbanboundary sitting on ancient ADSL, it willthen take them years more to even think ofmoving beyond a little further out into thecountryside. They will eventually start onmaybe pole mounted solutions or wirelessfibre but im thinking it could be into the2020s before any of this will happen, it'sgetting to the stage where rural housing isnotan option anymore if your thinking ofrunning a business or like good internet. I amnot prepared to wait another 10+ years forspeeds greater than 8me
.[/quot

How rural are you ? I live in a rural town, but Vodafone recently switched on 4G in the area and I'm now getting 30mb on my phone ! The town is near a motorway, so that my explain it, better coverage for motorists ?How far out into the countryside does a 4G signal go ?

Gonzo · 02-09-2014 10:30am

I would classify myself as semi-rural, Im 1.4km from the boundary of Dunshaughlin urban district and 2km from Ratoath urban district. My own definition of proper rural is one off housing scattered more than 300meters apart.

Where I live between both villages/towns has alot of housing, but more of a ribbon development with houses side by side both sides of all the roads in the area.

Understandably this is more difficult to provide a fibre service than an urban housing estate scenario. The annoying thing is that Fibre can currently work up to 2km away and I am just within this distance from the nearest cab but of course the cabs are only working within the small housing estates and people more than 400/500meters away have nothing.

I have tested many numbers in the Dunshaughlin area and most people, even within the urban area are not passing for Fibre, seems to be hit and miss who can get fibre and who cannot.

Fibre will eventually come to my area but it could be at least 10 years before Eircom or some other company even decide to start pushing fibre beyond the town/urban boundarys.

Dcully · 02-09-2014 11:19am

I think i read on here cab prequals take place on the first Tuesday of the month ie today?
Im still on 70/20 profile but my stats show i should be well close to 100mb, support said once the prequal happens i will be automatically bumped up to a higher profile?

bk · 02-09-2014 2:30pm

galtee boy wrote: »

How rural are you ? I live in a rural town, but Vodafone recently switched on 4G in the area and I'm now getting 30mb on my phone ! The town is near a motorway, so that my explain it, better coverage for motorists ?How far out into the countryside does a 4G signal go ?

I think that is where people get confused a lot.

We don't really have a "rural versus urban divide"

We have a "low density population versus high density population divide" and we always will.

What I mean is that I think most people consider anything outside the big cities to be "rural", but many "rural" Irish towns and villages actually have high population densities, making them very suitable for high speed broadband, as long as you can get fibre backhaul to them at a reasonable cost.

That is why places like your town and other rural towns, places considered "rural" by most people, can actually get excellent, high speed service.

Meanwhile, places just a few short km from big cities and towns, where people commute to work every day and consider themselves urban, will have bad service as they are actually quite low population density and thus uneconomic to service.

Machinehead · 02-09-2014 3:57pm

bk wrote: »

Meanwhile, places just a few short km from big cities and towns, where people commute to work every day and consider themselves urban, will have bad service as they are actually quite low population density and thus uneconomic to service.

Well said. I live 5Km from the nearest town (Tralee). Fibre reaches a village midway from which I'm 2.2Km by road. In the 2.2Km distance from the nearest cabinet in the village (Blennerville, Co. Kerry) there are over 30 houses to my place. That being said, the area is primarily based on ribbon development with Eircom overhead wires scattered all over the place. Fibre is a long way away, if ever.

spix · 02-09-2014 4:49pm

Machinehead wrote: »

Grade F is awesome

Gonzo · 02-09-2014 6:57pm

spix wrote: »

Grade F is awesome

Like me, I think your only gonna get Fibre if you move house, or else face the connection you have now for the next 10-15 years at least. UPC/ESB/Vodaphone have no plans for rural homes and Eircom will only go beyond the urban boundary of towns/villages if they are forced to eventually or some magical cheaper alternative to providing fibre to rural locations arises.

spix · 02-09-2014 7:30pm

Gonzo wrote: »

Like me, I think your only gonna get Fibre if you move house, or else face the connection you have now for the next 10-15 years at least. UPC/ESB/Vodaphone have no plans for rural homes and Eircom will only go beyond the urban boundary of towns/villages if they are forced to eventually or some magical cheaper alternative to providing fibre to rural locations arises.

Even if my exchange gets fibre, there's no hope I'll get it as I'm 4km away.

The orange lines on this map are the fibre routes yes? http://fibrerollout.ie/where-and-when/

If so, there is one only 50 metres away from my house. The catch is its completely bypassing me and then goes to an exchange several miles away (which is meant to be enabled in October) Time for some DIY perhaps? Just kidding!

savic04 · 02-09-2014 8:23pm

is this good

only got it today
100mb package ,. this is tru wifi not ethernet

jca · 02-09-2014 8:29pm

savic04 wrote: »

is this good

only got it today
100mb package ,. this is tru wifi not ethernet

Very nice, where in the country are you? You must be very close to the cabinet.

nilhg · 02-09-2014 10:35pm

Gonzo wrote: »

Like me, I think your only gonna get Fibre if you move house, or else face the connection you have now for the next 10-15 years at least. UPC/ESB/Vodaphone have no plans for rural homes and Eircom will only go beyond the urban boundary of towns/villages if they are forced to eventually or some magical cheaper alternative to providing fibre to rural locations arises.

That's not strictly true, I'm proof of that, having followed the rollout here in my local area it seems that if there are old style distribution cabinets with ducting running out to them then the fibre will be installed even if there doesn't seem to be enough houses in the locality to make it economical (going by the received wisdom anyway). Have a look at the Eircom fibre rollout map and check out Monasterevin/Ballykelly Crossroads (MVN1_005), Kildare/Rathbride (KLE1_003) and Rathangan/Tullylust Xroads (RTN1_005) and even the cab I'm connected to Rathangan/Kilmoney Xroads (RTN1_006), You can count the houses in range of those cabs, all of them would have to be classified as rural I would have thought.

It seems to me that Eircom are more inclined now to maximise the amount of connections they can make, especially where they can reasonably expect to hold onto the custom long term, my feeling is that they will probably try to fill in the gaps after the current phases finish.

spix wrote: »

Even if my exchange gets fibre, there's no hope I'll get it as I'm 4km away.

The orange lines on this map are the fibre routes yes? http://fibrerollout.ie/where-and-when/

If so, there is one only 50 metres away from my house. The catch is its completely bypassing me and then goes to an exchange several miles away (which is meant to be enabled in October) Time for some DIY perhaps? Just kidding!

I don't think the orange lines are a factual representation of where the fibre lies, I'm pretty sure a lot of it is in ducts under/beside the roads not running straight across country.

spix · 03-09-2014 3:44am

nilhg wrote: »

even the cab I'm connected to Rathangan/Kilmoney Xroads (RTN1_006), You can count the houses in range of those cabs, all of them would have to be classified as rural I would have thought.

It must have been extremely easy and cheap for them to install fibre there. Now if you were in a rural area are that required some serious work, forget it.

nilhg · 03-09-2014 8:32am

spix wrote: »

It must have been extremely easy and cheap for them to install fibre there. Now if you were in a rural area are that required some serious work, forget it.

You're not really getting what I'm saying, it would have been very easy for them to say those 4 locations (I'm sure there are loads more around the place as well) won't be economic to service, and it wasn't by any means extremely easy, the crews were working for a solid week to bring it out to our local cab, ESB had to be installed but they went ahead and spent the money anyway. Past experience with Eircom was that they were extremely niggardly in rolling out any sort of BB to smaller areas, even still loads of exchanges haven't been enabled or are stuck with ADSL1, a lot of those are going to go straight to eFibre.

Obviously there is going to be more work to fill in the gaps to people who won't have any eFibre service once the current phases finish but I hope Eircom will finish the job (probably with aid from the Gov).

Again it's just my impression (coloured by getting eFibre, which TBH I didn't expect) but the penny does seem to have dropped with Eircom that broadband is their only future and that providing a decent service to people who are likely to stay with them long term (because UPC or ESB/Vodafone are unlikely to appear over the horizon) is the only way they will survive or prosper long term.

MBSnr · 03-09-2014 9:50am

nilhg wrote: »

I don't think the orange lines are a factual representation of where the fibre lies, I'm pretty sure a lot of it is in ducts under/beside the roads not running straight across country.

Defo - they are only representations of the network layout. The fibre out of my exchange is shown crossing a quarry.....

bk · 03-09-2014 1:33pm

nilhg is correct, Eircom are definitely rolling out eFibre in "rural" areas and yes even outside towns and villages.

You can easily see the prove right their on Eircoms rollout map.

Originally I and others thought they would only rollout eFibre to areas with relatively high enough density to fill enough of a cab.

However the good news seems to be that we were wrong and that Eircom seem to be dropping the cabs all over the place!

I'd guess the cabs themselves aren't really that expensive (for telco gear, still probably cost tens of thousands each) and are economical even with only a small percentage of lines connected.

Instead the defining point seems to be if their is ducting already in place and a distribution cabinet. They seem to be dropping eFibre cabs at almost every distribution cab in the country and running fibre to them (by pushing it through the existing ducts).

This is fantastic news, it will mean many "rural" homes will get a decent service.

Of course that doesn't mean all homes will get it and that might mean your home.

The interesting question is what will Eircom do if anything, to fill in the gaps once they finish putting the eFibe cabs at all distribution cabs.

They could look at rerouting telephone lines to closer cabs or even digging new ducting and putting new distribution cabs in closer to people, but all of that will cost a great deal of money, way more then just dropping a cab at an existing distribution cabinet. So I doubt Eircom will go to that expense, but I'd love to be proven wrong again.

Instead I hope Eircom will look to "novel" solutions to fill in these gaps more economically:

- VDSL range extenders
- Fibre being run along existing Eircom poles and ESB poles.
- Pole mounted mini VDSL DSLAMS
- Radio linked VDSL eFibre Cabs (something BT has been doing in the UK)
- Fixed wireless access service from eFibre cabs to houses further away.
- Fibre To The Distribution Point (FTTDp)

If you have the flexibility to move (renting) and are in desperate need in very fast broadband, then it maybe not a bad idea to move. But also don't give up hope, things are definitely changing for the better.

MBSnr · 03-09-2014 1:41pm

^^^
The big one for me is will direct exchange connections over 2Km be able to get VDSL? Being selfish but I live in eternal hope VDSL in the exchange, with vectoring, might allow 'up to' at least 2.5Km..... I guess it's just wait and see time....

Johnboy1951 · 03-09-2014 5:16pm

bk wrote: »

nilhg is correct, Eircom are definitely rolling out eFibre in "rural" areas and yes even outside towns and villages.

You can easily see the prove right their on Eircoms rollout map.

Originally I and others thought they would only rollout eFibre to areas with relatively high enough density to fill enough of a cab.

However the good news seems to be that we were wrong and that Eircom seem to be dropping the cabs all over the place!

I'd guess the cabs themselves aren't really that expensive (for telco gear, still probably cost tens of thousands each) and are economical even with only a small percentage of lines connected.

Instead the defining point seems to be if their is ducting already in place and a distribution cabinet. They seem to be dropping eFibre cabs at almost every distribution cab in the country and running fibre to them (by pushing it through the existing ducts).

This is fantastic news, it will mean many "rural" homes will get a decent service.

Of course that doesn't mean all homes will get it and that might mean your home.

<snip>

There is another scenario which you did not touch on, and which would affect me greatly .....

I am definitely rural, but there is ducting to an underground connection point at my location.
That ducting is coming from an existing cab about 2.5Kms away I think.

Their map shows they intend to drop a 'fibre cab' at the existing one, and come no further.

It would be 'relatively' cost effective to bring fibre to my location as the ducting exists, but there is no sign of that yet, as far as I am aware.

I live in hope that they do come up with some solution for such areas.

This cannot be an isolated case I guess, so there are likely quite a number of similar situations around the country.

Any speculation on what way they might go?

(In my dreams I see fibre to the home here. Eircom u/ground 'connections' are at actually on my property, with an ESB pole within 1 metre. It seems like an ideal situation to bring fibre to it ..... and then a fibre cable in my ducting, into the house

)

bk · 03-09-2014 5:26pm

Johnboy1951, I guess it depends on how many houses are near by you and how many lines are in the duct.

They could drop a new distribution cabinet somewhere along the duct if there are a lot of lines in the duct, push fibre in the duct as far as the distribution cab and drop a new eFibre cab there.

I believe they have put new distribution cabs + eFibre cabs in certain places, but so far I'm only aware of them doing so in high density areas. So really it depends upon if they want to spend money reconfiguring the network.

They could also do Fibre To The Distribution Point (FTTDp) along the duct to close to your home. This would be like FTTH, so I wouldn't expect them to do this for a few years.

arctan · 04-09-2014 8:47pm

bk wrote: »

They could look at rerouting telephone lines to closer cabs or even digging new ducting and putting new distribution cabs in closer to people, but all of that will cost a great deal of money, way more then just dropping a cab at an existing distribution cabinet

all this is already being done, main in urban areas to get rid of direct feeds where economically possible, but it will be extended to other areas

bk · 04-09-2014 9:40pm

arctan wrote: »

all this is already being done, main in urban areas to get rid of direct feeds where economically possible, but it will be extended to other areas

Yeah, I had seen it happening in some urban areas. Fantastic news that it is happening more widely and will be extended to other areas.

There is hope for many people in Ireland finally getting decent broadband.

lucernarian · 06-09-2014 6:07am

bk wrote: »

nilhg is correct, Eircom are definitely rolling out eFibre in "rural" areas and yes even outside towns and villages.

You can easily see the prove right their on Eircoms rollout map.

Originally I and others thought they would only rollout eFibre to areas with relatively high enough density to fill enough of a cab.

However the good news seems to be that we were wrong and that Eircom seem to be dropping the cabs all over the place!

I'd guess the cabs themselves aren't really that expensive (for telco gear, still probably cost tens of thousands each) and are economical even with only a small percentage of lines connected.

Instead the defining point seems to be if their is ducting already in place and a distribution cabinet. They seem to be dropping eFibre cabs at almost every distribution cab in the country and running fibre to them (by pushing it through the existing ducts).

This is fantastic news, it will mean many "rural" homes will get a decent service.

Of course that doesn't mean all homes will get it and that might mean your home.

The interesting question is what will Eircom do if anything, to fill in the gaps once they finish putting the eFibe cabs at all distribution cabs.

They could look at rerouting telephone lines to closer cabs or even digging new ducting and putting new distribution cabs in closer to people, but all of that will cost a great deal of money, way more then just dropping a cab at an existing distribution cabinet. So I doubt Eircom will go to that expense, but I'd love to be proven wrong again.

Instead I hope Eircom will look to "novel" solutions to fill in these gaps more economically:

- VDSL range extenders
- Fibre being run along existing Eircom poles and ESB poles.
- Pole mounted mini VDSL DSLAMS
- Radio linked VDSL eFibre Cabs (something BT has been doing in the UK)
- Fixed wireless access service from eFibre cabs to houses further away.
- Fibre To The Distribution Point (FTTDp)

If you have the flexibility to move (renting) and are in desperate need in very fast broadband, then it maybe not a bad idea to move. But also don't give up hope, things are definitely changing for the better.

The planned locations for some of the cabinets are sheer folly and Huawei must be laughing all the way to the bank. There is at least one cabinet that would serve a total of one business customer and 8 residential customers within 1 km, in Drogheda. There are other less dramatic examples. The cabinet above is dbc010 I think and it originally served the village of tullyallen, over 3km away. Tullyallen now has its own exchange which was built only to serve 2 housing estates and not the older estate or the village housing and businesses themselves. Even though maybe 100 properties are less than 500 metres away from the tullyallen cabinet, they are all "amber" lines as of less than a year ago and spending 30k on a cabinet 3km away is of f*** all use. Given there is already existing ducting through this village and the fibre route from Ardee to Drogheda is nearby, a fraction of that money could have remedied this accident of history. It's nothing beyond ineptitude to have spent it on DBC010. I would like to see proof of the cost of changing cross connect points vs VDSL enabling them, especially when ducting and cabling are in situ. In some of these cases you could argue opportunity costs and ancillary factors are explanations but the above example is inexcusable from any engineering or financial consideration.

And what about DLR004, I think its 4 anyway, which has maybe 30 or 40 houses within 1 km but the main village it serves lies 2 km away... The village also has ducting all the way from the cabinet but no existing fibre. What will happen there? Adsl2 would be very useful but can it coexist with VDSL vectoring? I forget...

lucernarian · 06-09-2014 6:15am

Furthermore, what of the numbers that eircom are throwing around?! They had the govt conned for years with the crap of 80% of lines served in 2005, when the reality was around 64%.any of the longer members will remember the work IrelandOffline had to do to dispel eircom coverage myths. How do we know that they're not counting rural hinterlands served by urban exchanges or even villages where the VDSL cabinet is actually in a larger neighbouring town?

ED E · 06-09-2014 7:22am

Nolars wrote: »

Any word on where the 200k premises will be? I take it they wont be doing any of the villages in the government plan?

Numbers are based on prequals, real lines tested and rated to be fibre viable. They're supplied to Comreg, Vodafone, Magnet Networks and Eircom retail. No way they can get away with "massaging" the figures.

jay93 · 08-09-2014 2:39pm

Whats the max distance from a cabinet that you can be to get this fibre broadband? I'm between 350m-391m from 2 the closest been 350 the second one been 390.

spix · 08-09-2014 2:48pm

jay93 wrote: »

Whats the max distance from a cabinet that you can be to get this fibre broadband? I'm between 350m-391m from 2 the closest been 350 the second one been 390.

1.5km I think

ED E · 08-09-2014 3:00pm

spix wrote: »

1.5km I think

They're doing up to 1.8/2km now.

Jay you should get pretty decent speeds.

Gonzo · 08-09-2014 5:13pm

If the cabinets in Dunshaughlin are anything to go by living more than 500meters from a cab and your out of luck as they are only serving the people living in the relatively small estates. I knew a few people living less than 1km from cabinets and they are not even connected as they are on direct fed lines instead. Living anywhere from 400meters - 2km from a cab does not guarantee that your going to be capable of receiving a fibre service.

murphaph · 08-09-2014 5:23pm

I own a property in an urban part of Lucan that can't get VDSL despite the nearest cabinet being about 50m away. It's direct fed as it's an old property surrounded by newer estates. Just the way it is. They'll cabinetise eventually.

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

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