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

Deagol · 10-09-2015 03:58PM

ECO_Mental wrote: »

What you will find is yes they will only be rolling out to only a certain number of estates mainly the newer ones where the houses have good underground infrastucture. This is becauses they can easly pull the fibre to the nearest manhole and then to your front door. They wont be installing it as far as know to houses where you get your phone line from a pole. ESB and Vodafone are doing it this way

That's the thing, off the main road from the cabinet are 4 estates (at least). None of them are fed via poles, there are none anywhere near here. My line comes all the way to my front door via ducting. And yet when I check numbers in the four estates only one is showing.

I've also checked other estates in Ennis that are new (~10-15 yrs) and most likely to have good ducts and none of them are showing either. I'm now pretty convinced this whole thing is a bit of a BS exercise from Eircon to extract money from naive goverment twits by trumpeting a product that is only available to a very small number of people.

ct5amr2ig1nfhp · 10-09-2015 04:10PM

Thanks for that. Is it on the eircom website somewhere?

ECO_Mental wrote: »

18 months

damienirel · 10-09-2015 04:30PM

ECO_Mental wrote: »

They wont be installing it as far as know to houses where you get your phone line from a pole. ESB and Vodafone are doing it this way

Where did you hear that?

damienirel · 10-09-2015 04:36PM

bk wrote: »

I'm sure Eircom will also eventually do drops from poles and/or use G.Fast to service these houses. But you are correct in that they are likely to focus on the low hanging fruit first.

Yeah I'm in a pole drop area and I'm pretty sure it's in the plan for FTTH - but I hope you're wrong in that it's low hanging fruit first, surely they were already catered for with FTTC at this stage?

ECO_Mental · 10-09-2015 04:49PM

Francesca Icy Bed wrote: »

Thanks for that. Is it on the eircom website somewhere?

I was going to post the link but it seems that the Ultrafast webpage is down atm. Anyway I think if you click on the Buy Now button it will come up on the next page on the right had side where you add phone etc. I would post the link but its down now.:(

ECO_Mental · 10-09-2015 04:55PM

bk wrote: »

But then you would have to ask yourself if you actually need it and would you see any real world difference?

I know that when I went from 120Mb/s to 200Mb/s to 240Mb/s on UPC, to be honest I didn't really notice any real world difference and I'm a heavy user!

I only upgraded with UPC as they offered the higher speeds for the same price. To be honest, had they charged €20 more, I wouldn't have bothered and I wouldn't be missing out.

On the other hand I could see the 150Mb/s FTTH for €9 more being attractive for anyone who is getting less then say 50Mb/s from their VDSL. But the 300 and 1000 product look like a bit of a stretch.

I know and I would deffo not go anyway near using that bandwidth Netflix, xbox gaming the missues works from home at times using remote desktop so it might help her but you are forgetting one big thing here

its 1,000 mb

:p...you are better off looking at it, than looking for it.

jimmad · 10-09-2015 05:01PM

I've been having issues with my fibre all week, raised a fault yesterday, back down to 70/20 for the time being, had over 3 million FEC errors in an hour with a couple thousand CRC , the line kept dropping, the two very helpful guys eventually changed the port so fingers crossed.

They mentioned that the cabinets have been plagued by moisture causing alot of faults and in a related note, the eircom techs out in the house said they will be doing poll drops, mentioned they were going on a 25 hour course next week for it in Sligo.

bk · 10-09-2015 05:07PM

damienirel wrote: »

Yeah I'm in a pole drop area and I'm pretty sure it's in the plan for FTTH - but I hope you're wrong in that it's low hanging fruit first, surely they were already catered for with FTTC at this stage?

Yes, obviously FTTC was the initial low hanging fruit. But now that they are starting to do FTTH, there well could be a whole new round of low hanging fruit.

Rolling out FTTH to the entire country is going to take many years, much longer then the FTTC rollout, so obviously they are going to phase it in an order that makes sense for them financially and strategically.

DoYouEvenLift · 10-09-2015 06:50PM

To be fair, €87 is a pretty high price but it's a starting price so it's good knowing it'll more than likely come down to a pretty reasonable price over time, hopefully as soon as Vodafone offer it even cheaper. €60 would be a fair price.

AlmightyCushion · 10-09-2015 06:59PM

ECO_Mental wrote: »

Called Eircom no TV bundles atm with Ultrsfast the rep is going to email me back with more deals if they are availbale. I realy want to get rid of Sky even more now as I called them to see if I was in contract and I' not but when explaining why I might want to cancel the rep tried to convince me that there is no such thing as 1000mb down :rolleyes: "I hate to bring you bad news but there is no such thing as 1000mb down" these sky peeps hate you leaving dont they.

What is the Eircom eVision TV package like anyway, I heard it can be hit and miss and its no Sky.

On another note I discovered that I have nearly ten months left with Vodafone and to exit the contract it would cost me nealry 500 euros:eek: this makes me sad.....I cannot and will not wait nearly another year. I am in a very lucky position to have it available and I owe to to God and country to get it.

Just wait for Vodafone to start reselling it. They will probably let you change your package without having to pay a cancellation fee.

PeadarB · 10-09-2015 07:20PM

jimmad wrote: »

I've been having issues with my fibre all week, raised a fault yesterday, back down to 70/20 for the time being, had over 3 million FEC errors in an hour with a couple thousand CRC , the line kept dropping, the two very helpful guys eventually changed the port so fingers crossed.

They mentioned that the cabinets have been plagued by moisture causing alot of faults and in a related note, the eircom techs out in the house said they will be doing poll drops, mentioned they were going on a 25 hour course next week for it in Sligo.

yes Jimmad I'm relieved to hear that. The techs who were splicing fibre at New Line Road and at the cab at the junction near Dr. McGinley road a few weeks ago had suggested putting in my own sub-duct!!!

If they can do it in Belcarra surely they can do it elsewhere. As I previously posted I was informed by an eircom employee that in excess of 60% of premises in Letterkenny are served by pole drops. Obviously the means to do so are there it's just that I would expect it to be quite expensive to run out compared to provisioning via sub-duct.

My attainables dropped about six months ago and have recovered to 85/20 from 100/20 earlier. Someone had disturbed a connection in the older cab.

The pole connection seems straight forward enough.

Belcarra pole mounted DP.jpg

satguy · 10-09-2015 07:42PM

€87 per month is too much, and while eircom is not now a semi state company, they still got some tax money to roll this out.

Now we see that the price is high, they will bundle a land line, but not TV or mobile, funny,, really funny. Where do they expect someone paying €87 per month to get their TV from, UPC ? .. Sneaky, they are only in areas without UPC, sneaky, very sneaky..

These ISP's will rob us blind if we let them, and if we do take our eye off the ball, we can end like the USA, it's so bad over there that Google had to step in..

murphaph · 10-09-2015 07:45PM

Great to see a proper commercial launch. Did any of us think we'd see 1Gb in Letterkenny in our lifetimes?? Unreal the progress being made and those out in the sticks should be delighted that ftth is becoming a run of the mill product in urban areas. If urban areas weren't fibre enabled, isolated houses had no chance!

kaerobe · 10-09-2015 07:58PM

DerMutt wrote: »

Checked the ultrafast page and it says Carrigaline is live. Tried the line-checker and looks like I'm still stuck on eVDSL

not for me in Carrig either!

jd · 10-09-2015 08:10PM

satguy wrote: »

€87 per month is too much, and while eircom is not now a semi state company, they still got some tax money to roll this out.

For this roll out? Source? I think you're mixing it up with the proposed National Broadband Plan.

ECO_Mental · 10-09-2015 08:24PM

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Just wait for Vodafone to start reselling it. They will probably let you change your package without having to pay a cancellation fee.

Don't think they are going to resell soon though, is there any plans for them to do this in the short term.

guil · 10-09-2015 09:18PM

Nearly certain I saw kn blowing fibre in Naas today. Big reel of blue or yellow cable going through a box that was connected to some sort of air compressor.

AlmightyCushion · 10-09-2015 09:54PM

satguy wrote: »

€87 per month is too much, and while eircom is not now a semi state company, they still got some tax money to roll this out.

Now we see that the price is high, they will bundle a land line, but not TV or mobile, funny,, really funny. Where do they expect someone paying €87 per month to get their TV from, UPC ? .. Sneaky, they are only in areas without UPC, sneaky, very sneaky..

These ISP's will rob us blind if we let them, and if we do take our eye off the ball, we can end like the USA, it's so bad over there that Google had to step in..

Well for a start this is available in Sligo which also has UPC so Eircom are competing with them there at least. Secondly, we are in a much better position than the US. Verizon over there charge over $200 a month for a 500Mbps connection. If you offered Verizon customers (and I imagine the other broadband providers customers) 1Gbps broadband for €87 they'd bite your hand off. That's why people are begging Google Fibre to come to their cities. When you do the conversion and add in VAT, Eircom are only about a tenner more expensive than Google Fibre. This is considered expensive because UPC offer 240Mbps broadband for €45 and for most people they wouldn't notice much difference between the two.

Anyways, I don't see this pricing as that bad yet. We have to remember that Eircom have always been expensive (I remember reading before that ComReg actually force them to set their prices high to encourage people to move and reduce their monopoly) and the resellers like Vodafone and Sky are where the real value is found. Look at efibre. It's €58 with Eircom and you have to take a phone line. It's only €38 with Vodafone without the landline. That's a big difference. If that price gap was the same for this then Vodafone would be charging only €67 for 1Gbps broadband without the landline which is hell of a lot more compelling. That figure is just pulled from my arse so they could charge more than that but you get my point. We really need to see what the resellers are charging before we write this off.

AlmightyCushion · 10-09-2015 09:57PM

ECO_Mental wrote: »

Don't think they are going to resell soon though, is there any plans for them to do this in the short term.

Positron said earlier in the thread that a Vodafone rep told him they'd be offering it in November. Those reps have been known to not have a clue what they're talking about in the past so take it with a huge lump of salt. I can't imagine them leaving it too long mind.

DoYouEvenLift · 10-09-2015 10:02PM

Aren't UPC planning to test 500Mbps somewhere in Europe with the aim of launching it in Ireland as well?

AlmightyCushion · 10-09-2015 10:05PM

DoYouEvenLift wrote: »

Aren't UPC planning to test 500Mbps somewhere in Europe with the aim of launching it in Ireland as well?

They already offer 500Mbps for businesses here. I don't know the price but I'd say it's pricey. Those business packages are usually a very different offering to their home packages in more than just speed though.

ECO_Mental · 10-09-2015 10:38PM

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Positron said earlier in the thread that a Vodafone rep told him they'd be offering it in November. Those reps have been known to not have a clue what they're talking about in the past so take it with a huge lump of salt. I can't imagine them leaving it too long mind.

Fingers crossed, might give them a few days and push them again the rep I was talking today said they weren't. But as you say they are winging it most of the time anyway

bk · 10-09-2015 11:08PM

DoYouEvenLift wrote: »

Aren't UPC planning to test 500Mbps somewhere in Europe with the aim of launching it in Ireland as well?

They already have 500Mb/s available in a couple of Polish and Romanian cities. However I believe it requires a new DOCSIS 3.0 modem.

UPC is likely to be getting 1Gb/s DOCSIS 3.1 next year.

KOR101 · 10-09-2015 11:14PM

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Anyways, I don't see this pricing as that bad yet. We have to remember that Eircom have always been expensive (I remember reading before that ComReg actually force them to set their prices high to encourage people to move and reduce their monopoly) and the resellers like Vodafone and Sky are where the real value is found. Look at efibre. It's €58 with Eircom and you have to take a phone line. It's only €38 with Vodafone without the landline. That's a big difference. If that price gap was the same for this then Vodafone would be charging only €67 for 1Gbps broadband without the landline which is hell of a lot more compelling.

I agree with you.

But, I also think you can put the two complaints about the high price and the poor actual availability in the listed towns together. If it's impractical to roll out FTTH to huge numbers of houses in a short period of time, then it makes perfect sense to price the product so high, that demand is limited.

yammagamma · 10-09-2015 11:58PM

lucky buggers all of yea with your upc and ftth. my eircom line cant handle 1.2mb/s and eircom said no plans to upgrade exchange for at least 2 years even though i live 15 mins drive from UL and raheen industrial estate with dell and analog there and way closer as crow flies..so my dragon 32k still does me here as its as high spec as my broadband..

damienirel · 11-09-2015 12:00AM

Paying 46 quid at the moment for line rental and 2.5mb.
87 quid for 1000mb sounds fair enough to me right now, although I would expect that to drop over time as more people take it up.
If eircom roll this out in my area soon(as in next month or 2) I'll never say a bad word about them again.

Thor · 11-09-2015 12:03AM

Pricing will definitely drop in the future, but 87 for 100Mb upload is not to shabby (to start). 1000Mb down is nice, but I care more about upload speed now than I do download.

damienirel · 11-09-2015 12:06AM

yammagamma wrote: »

lucky buggers all of yea with your upc and ftth. my eircom line cant handle 1.2mb/s and eircom said no plans to upgrade exchange for at least 2 years even though i live 15 mins drive from UL and raheen industrial estate with dell and analog there and way closer as crow flies..so my dragon 32k still does me here as its as high spec as my broadband..

I have to agree there - I'm just outside limerick also and about 15 mins from UL too. It's terrible at the minute seems like we were left behind - I'm hoping it improves quickly.

satguy · 11-09-2015 01:29AM

I am with UPC at the moment, and pay €84 per month for 240MB and landline and TV with the HD recording box thing..

I never use the landline, but my wife does, mostly calls to her sister in Coventry, Calls to UK are included in the package. While it would be really nice to have 1GB down, but at €87 even if this does include a landline, it is still too much. There is also the question of finding a TV provider, and then to add that cost on top of the €87.

It is strange to see a Quad Play capable provider not pushing Quad services now that they have the 1GB lines in place.

If they are looking to worry UPC, they might need to look at their sales strategy.

ED E · 11-09-2015 06:27AM

Eircom and UPC both offer quad play. Sky do triple but only using terrestrial sat for the TV portion, no IPTV. Vodafone are the ones falling behind in that regard.

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

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