Eircom to roll out 1Gb/s FTTH to 66 towns

MarkAnthony wrote: »

I can't see it tbh.

Netflix are delivering 4K on c.15Mbit (Less IIRC). There has been a call for a while to shift to higher frame rates, lets assume 100FPS and reasonable compression scaling thats maybe 50Mbit per stream.

A family of 6 all watching different shows, assuming a lightning fast uptake of the technology 300Mbits would be the maximum anyone needs for the next decade and that's an extreme example.

The only other use would be online gaming, allowing very large file sizes for downloadable games. Maybe, maybe this could be an application for about 0.1% of the time.

Other than that it's bulk file transfers maybe video editors, can't see even a prolific professional stills photographer needing much more than 100Mbit.

Ireland's issue isn't speed it's coverage. We rank something like 6th in the world for average broadband speed and something like 60th for coverage. I'm all for these amazing technologies, as long as it does not detract from getting 10Mbit+ reliable broadband out to 99% of the country.

if there was a move to higher framerates because of intra-frame compression (GOP, etc) moving to higher framerates actually wouldn't cause too big of a scaling in data-storage!

We've got bt.2020 (aka REC.2020) on the horizon though, which goes up to 120 progressive frames per second, non-subsampled chroma (4:4:4) at 8K resolution with 12 bits per sample either RGB or YCbCr.

That's about 270 gigaBytes per second uncompressed.

Even with a 500:1 compression ratio that's still ~4.3 gbit/s!

Obviously this is a long way a way, but we definitely can't deem netflix 4k hevc stream as the finishing point for high fidelity video over ip.


I'm not looking for an argument or anything by the way! I agree with you whole heartedly that every home having internet access is more important than some of the country moving from their current 100mbit to 1gbit while others are stuck with fixed wireless or 1 bar of 3G signal. And I agree that most homes will likely find it extremely hard to saturate even a 300mbit pipe (or even 100mbit in a lot of cases).

Realistically we have to all make the jump to fibre optics for our data communications needs. Copper is looking increasingly like nothing more than a burden. I am sure that Eircom now realise that getting rid of copper is what they need to do to progress as a data company (Eircom seems to get that they are now primarily a data company, not a telecoms provider).

Eugene Norman wrote: »

Yeah. Let's see if 4K takes off first.

4k has taken off by the way, not sure if you were joking.

Yes this is the main point of fibre too IMO. It's inexpensive stuff itself and yet is very low maintenance once installed. It's also not worth stealing as copper is. I can't wait to see the pricing for the FTTH product. It makes absolute sense to price the 150Mb one at around the same level as VDSL. They can view the 1Gb customers as their "business class" and charge them a hefty premium to subsidise the economy class. It works for the airline industry!

Eircom will not stop at 66 towns either. I am now pretty sure they will just carry on with FTTH from all their VDSL cabinets as they seemed to basically carry on installing VDSL cabinets beside every cabinet, even in seemingly illogical places There's no logic to drawing a line under an arbitrary 66 towns when they will have installed 5 thousand cabinets, all of which can be used as a springboard for FTTH.

Apologies for all of the messy quoting below..

Eugene Norman wrote: »

No I'm not. Take off means high market penetration. On TVs or devices that can handle it.

That's a very subjective view. The reality is that we've got rec 2020 to replace 709 which completely shapes broadcast technologies, and means that it's a case of when not if broadcast 4k starts. Many TV shows are being acquired at 4k+, and the majority of digitally shot theatrical films are in 4k+ (since august 07 when red made it affordable) film scanners are all essentially at a minimum of 4k now, and anything shot an an alexa is essentially 4k+ since it's antialiased non subsampled 2k. [in summary: we have years of film now being remastered in 4k waiting for release, and all new content is either natively in 4k or being captured on a medium which will end up being broadcast in 4k]

bk wrote: »

1 To be honest, I still think 24Mb/s (actually 24, not upto 24 but really getting 3Mb/s) is actually still perfectly fine for the majority of people.

2 I think we honestly are about to reach a plateau where we have more bandwidth then we actually need!


3 Not even 4k. First of all you can easily do 4K streaming with just 20Mb/s (like Netflix does), so you don't really need 1Gb/s for that.

4 Also I'm certain 4k will not take off with the average consumer. I think we have again hit the "good enough" plateau that PC's and DVD's hit. I see 4k largely having the same success as Bluray, popular with videophiles, but not having the mass uptake with the general consumer.


5 But when Bluray came out, there was much less excitement. All it could offer was better picture quality and for most people that just wasn't enough.


6 4k will largely suffer from the same fate as bluray, it can only offer better picture quality, not better form factor. And even the better picture quality is questionable if most people would even benefit from it. For a 4K TV (monitors are different) to make a noticeable difference, you have to have a very large TV, over 70", which will be expensive and might not fit well in most Irish living rooms.

7 I just don't see 4K gaining speedy mass uptake like HD did. Most people are going to be happy with HD for years to come.

1: 24 down 24 up would actually be a reasonable number for people at this very moment, probably, but as IPTV comes into the equation you're going to be severely limited if you've got a few people in the house

2: This is the kind of statement which will look funny in 5 years, until bandwith isn't the bottleneck any longer and it's a physical restriction of our hardware, we don't have more bandwith than we need

3: Netflix 4k is heavily compressed 4k 8bit 4:2:0 subsampled super low fidelity compared to the captured format. Yes it looks great but uncompressed footage from a red epic/dragon/cion/alexa/f65/55 looks breathtaking and until we get to broadcasting exactly what was captured, we shouldn't stop.

4: Your good enough point doesn't really stand as we've clearly seen HD broadcast and streaming replace SD DVDs.

5: Very subjective. It's not that people couldn't see the difference or care, as we've seen with the uptake of netflix etc as above, people clearly wanted higher quality, but the marketing and rocky launch of bluray, higher cost, and it still being a physical medium is what hampered bluray.

6: 4k isn't just about resolution. With bt.2020 there's the much bigger colour space. You're really looking at this in a very simplified way, talking about TV's being too big for rooms. We've seen how higher density displays are a big selling point for mobile phones, with most of the current phones having larger than 1080 screens in a 5~inch size. Content will change when everyone has higher pixel count displays. There was a time when soccer teams had to wear contrasting colours for black and white broadcast.

7: People have been gaming at greater than hd resolutions for years and it's only now that single GPUs are really looking like single screens at 4k with high enough frames per second will happen. The happy years of HD have already passed.

bk wrote: »

Having said all of the above. I agree 100% that the future is fiber. etc

Copper was the technology for the last 100 years, fiber will be the technology for the next 100 years.

Not only is fiber much faster and offers vast upgradability potential, but it is also much cheaper to run and maintain then a copper network. For this reason alone, I can see Eircom quickly moving to fiber as quickly as possible.

I'm just waiting for them to launch a VoIP product and watch as they start with this transformation as they start removing copper between the VDSL cabs and the exchanges.

Fiber is crucial for rural Ireland. Not because it can offer 1Gb/s today and potentially 40Gb/s in future, no those are the cherry on top. The reason why rural Ireland needs fiber is because it isn't effected by distance.

All other broadband technologies copper (xDSL), coax, 3G/4G are all quickly slow down when you get more then 1km away. Non of them can offer even a consistent 30Mb/s over the long distances found in rural Ireland.

Only fiber can. Fiber isn't effected by distance. It can deliver 30Mb/s to 1Gb/s and beyond out to even 20km (and beyond with simple repeaters). It is the perfect and really only technology to close the rural divide.

completely agree with this, fibre as a medium for internet connectivity is the only way forward for ireland. Anything else would only be a temporary fix. Whether anyone needs the bandwidth is irrelevant, 1gbps is as low as we should go, and people can have their connection limited at a lower rate if they want a cheaper bill, but at this point we should be looking for as fast as we can get since we don't want to be replacing exchanges in 2-3 years when we find out that we need 1gbps to every home for real


I don't want to look like I'm being mean/confrontational or anything just I'm fairly passionate about the fact that we shouldn't gimp the countries internet because 1gig/s seems excessive today. It's one thing when a crazy new technology comes from nowhere and requires huge bandwith (like digital video did) but we can clearly see from where we stand that there are standards in place telling us exactly what is coming in terms of the changes of current technologies, and we should try keep up, this is our chance to become up to date by having FTTH at the highest possible speed.

Danny Boy wrote: »

http://www.eircomwholesale.ie/news/FTTH_Pricing/

I'd add 20 quid or so onto these to get the retail prices

asymmetric, much sad

POTS is some acronym for bundling, right?

Curiosity got the better of me and I decided to check out the location of the FTTH run to Glendale Manor in Letterkenny.

Glandale Manor, Letterkenny.jpg

The cabinet which I suspect is serving the estate is LKY1_027. It has a new mini-cab on top of the pre-existing one.

LK1_27_A_B.jpg

The estate is served by eircom sub-duct installed when the estate was built some years ago.

I wonder if this min-cab is the drop point for FTTH for this estate?

The cab is only 130m from the estate at it's nearest point and 3Km approx. from the local exchange as the crow flies.

ED E wrote: »

Thats the first time I've seen the B suffix being used. I'd wager you're correct, thats a GPON node.

If it is indeed the GPON node if will give us a marker to watch out for as the FTTH is implemented. I'm only 180m or so from the cab but my drop point will be up that pole 30ft from the house - GPON or G.Fast, it'll be a toss up. It's coming though and so much more quickly that I ever expected.

Glendale Manor was mentioned in one of the most recent eicrom videos(can't get the damn link at the minute).

Oh I really hope that is a reliable marker for GPON. Makes things easier for us nerds to keep track of progress.

jimmad wrote: »

I'm pretty sure the cabinet at thorndale has the same mini-cab ontop. ill check again this evening.

One at the top of New Line Road as well - LKY1_002. Spoke with one of the KN lads yesterday who was unsure what it was as he hadn't worked on them. Must take a run about the town to check what I can.

ED E wrote: »

Turns out the B isnt significant. Its just a riser on the VDSL cab vs on the CCP Cab (that doesnt require a new identifier) for more VDSL ports.

Thinking on it further, the OLTs may still be housed at the exchange, theres no huge benefit in fitting them at cabs as the distance is negligible and it would mean far less plant on streets requiring power pedestals and being susceptible to damage and power cuts. Makes sense that they'd just split out from the ducting in the underground cavity and into 32 home runs. So you probably wont "see" anything new when they start doing (like they commented on in the video).

correct its just more ports for areas with large uptake, ive seen quite a few now around drogheda

heres my local one posted from steptember last year http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=92157835&postcount=976