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

lucernarian wrote: »

It is true, not "may be" true, at least in many reported cases and according to insiders posting here. Another poster said the range from the cabinet is 1000 metres when there's plenty of people who have efibre at distances greater than 1000 metres. It's also true that some people have lost speed as a result of moving to efibre but that's beside the point, the range of VDSL2 cabinets is still up to 2km line length.

2000 metres, VDSL has a range of 2000m, eVDSL is lower, it's 1800m

damienirel wrote: »

Also afaik Verizon only operates out of a few east coast states it only covers a % so if you want to do fair comparisons you would need to start there.
Overall my point is before we get carried away with Eircom marketing we are pretty far behind. That is all.

Verizon's PSTN serves an area of about 27 million households. Of which about 5 million are on FiOS.

Also FiOS isn't exclusively FTTH, they're using vectored VDSL2 in some installations, similar to eircom's efibre. This happens especially in apartment buildings where rewiring is complex.

Standard 25 Mbit/s 25 Mbit/s
Quantum 50 Mbit/s 50 Mbit/s
Quantum 75 Mbit/s 75 Mbit/s
Quantum 150 Mbit/s 150 Mbit/s
Quantum 300 Mbit/300 Mbit/s
Quantum 500 Mbit/s 500 Mbit/s

Meanwhile AT&T Uverse is predominately VDSL2 FTTN.

Realistically, comparisons with the U.S. leave Ireland looking fairly well positioned, especially when you consider the low densities. UPC also knocks the socks off Comcast! I've recently experienced both! UPC internet is much better.

MBSnr wrote: »

The exch is supposedly already fibre enabled and has been for a long time - although it still slows down at peak times.

Do you know if Eircom have plans to move ADSL2 equipment into ADSL1 exchanges or is this just wistful thinking on our part?

It certainly doesn't make sense to having it sitting in exchanges as a comfortable home for spiders and it's just rack-mounted gear, so it's easy enough to move.

I would say it's a case of needing to ensure that a certain % of users have moved to FTTC before they can move anything. Then it's just a case of actually physically moving the equipment and setting it up.

Also it's more complicated than just ripping out the line cards and moving them somewhere else. There are different vendors involved and you also have to keep the ADSL2+ services running at the donor exchange. These things need routers, servers and other gear to keep them running. So, just moving some of the gear might not be possible.

In some cases, it might be possible ... there are just lots of variables much anything else!

Also, equipment costs have dropped, so it might even make more sense to just buy new gear for the small exchange. It'd certainly be newer, smaller, less problematic etc.

In a lot of smaller rural exchanges, it's not lack of ADSL2+ equipment that's the bottle neck, it's their link to the core network that's the issue. They need modern high capacity, properly IP based fibre links added.

There may well be ADSL2+ capable gear already in some of those exchanges that hast just never been switched into that mode as there's insufficient capacity to support it anyway.

Bear in mind, that eircom has been using fibre since the 1980s. There are plenty of fibre-linked exchanges that would have very limited capacity as they're possibly still using 1990s technology.

In the early days of ADSL (1st generation) most phone companies (including Eircom and BT in the UK) just plugged it into their existing ATM network. As speeds increased and demand went up they had to move to all IP networks.

Effectively the technologies have switched places. The first generation had IP for internet products running over legacy ATM networks on virtual circuits. The current situation is that the ATM/TDM gear is connected over all IP networks on virtual circuits.

This is a bit like the period when they were changing from analogue to digital in the 80s and early 90s. You've two parallel but interconnected networks working side by side - In the network today you've a a modern all-IP core network, and most nodes already all-IP and some nodes that are still connected on legacy non-IP networks using ATM over radio and fibre.

You've also got legacy equipment sitting on top of the modern core network using various forms of virtualisation and adaptation to keep things running smoothly even though the technologies have moved on. These networks are too fundamental, complex and too valuable as capital investments to just rip out and replace in one go. So, they're being replaced bit by bit.

The voice network is most likely being virtualised and turned into some kind of hybrid of VoIP and PSTN. I know they've been replacing elements of the traditional TDM circuit switching network (exchanges that provide voice/ISDN) with blade-clusters hosting soft switches. So, basically the intelligent bits of the network are very modern, even if your local voice exchange is older tech.

Also bear in mind that a lot of small rural exchanges have fewer customers than 1 efibre cabinet in a housing estate! This is why we definitely need alternative technologies and subsidisation of rural broadband. Otherwise, it just won't work.

It's going to have to be driven more effectively by government rather than leaving it up to commercial providers like eircom and UPC, who seem uninterested in it generally because it's not profitable.

lucernarian wrote: »

The PSTN network is not footprint, which is at over 18 million households by Q3 2013, of which 5.9 million are FiOS subscribers (http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/verizons-shammo-doubts-google-fiber-will-build-fios-areas/2013-05-30, http://www.fiercecable.com/story/verizon-gains-135k-fios-tv-and-173k-fios-internet-subs-q3-2013/2013-10-17)
It's hard to find out what proportion of FiOS customers are using VDSL2 for the final, customer-side connection but if we assume it's a moderate proportion then still, at least of their total subscriber base has immediate access to GPON based services. That still surpasses either eircom's or Vodafone/ESB plans as a proportion of households after completion of each rollout's phase 1. But we're starting at a low point so obviously an ISP with ten year's headstart will have the advantage, and Verizon's areas include New York.

How's the PSTN footprint not the footprint?
I mean, that's like saying only efibre areas are eircom's required covered footprint.

Verizon runs the PSTN exchanges for 27m customers. Are they abandoning some areas?

bk wrote: »

lucernarian, Verizon FiOS only covers a small percentage of the US, so you aren't making a like to like comparison.

There are 117 million homes in the US, so Verizons 6 million homes represents just 17% of US homes.

Outside of Verizon FiOS and Google Fiber, the majority of the US is serviced by AT&T, Comcast and TWC and things are far from rosy with these companies.

As a comparison, once complete, both Eircoms and ESB phase 1 rollouts, will cover about 40% of homes.

And you seem to be ignoring the ridiculously high prices of the Verizon FiOS services, between 2 and 4 times more expensive then here.

On the whole, the Irish broadband market is looking a lot healthier then the US.

Can you explain how it's "healthier"? Also this:

bk wrote:

Netindex.com, places the US 26th in the world with an average download speed of 36Mb/s and Ireland not far behind in 40th with an average download speed of 27Mb/s

So if we're in a race and you come 26th and I come 40th? - that's a whole 14 places behind.

Everything being claimed here is based on when Eircom and Esb complete. Can you not afford the same to Verizon comcast et al? Maybe when they're complete they'll be a lot healthier too?

lucernarian wrote: »

It's not like the baby bells can simply start expanding their footprint into each other's turf but I accept the point about the US market as a whole being in a weak situation. But it's a heavily fragmented country with many operators and evidence from the US "as a whole" likewise doesn't necessarily offer proof of such technological superiority. They just aren't easily comparable. When I make a more specific comparison between any one American operator and any one Irish operator, the American one could have more advanced services than the Irish one in some cases. I don't think it can be flatly claimed that Irish broadband services are superior to U.S. ones when some operators have extensive GPON availability in the areas they operate while other ones don't.

Well, it's s bit like talking about the EU market ... You go from high density FTTH to dial up speeds depending on the specific circumstances.

In general comparisons with small dense markets like HK aren't very realistic though.

So far, Ireland basically has no serious FTTH other than a couple of plans.

UPC is decent and eircom FTTC isn't bad.

Ireland definitely compares well to the UK now but it's going to take widespread FTTH deployment to make a big impact.

Incidentally, there's nothing stopping UPC from going to full fibre too ... They've fibres running very close to end users. I'm sure if they wanted to offer gigabit connectivity they could just start direct connecting end users