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SIRO - ESB/Vodafone Fibre To The Home

24567…159

Comments

  • #52
    SpaceTime
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,088 ✭✭✭SpaceTime


    The cost of some of this type of equipment has plummeted too.
    So a lot of things are possible now that might have been ludicrously expensive a few years ago.

    I'm not sure why people keep mentioning repeaters and distance issues. They won't be any issue. Even the most remote location should be easily reachable without signal loss. Ireland isn't THAT big and I can't realistically see any home being more than 20km from a node.

    The expensive and technically complex bit is the optical splitters that would be needed to connect homes.

    I'm not familiar enough with the technology to know exactly how that would be done.

    In rural Ireland you'd ideally need a trunk and branch network. I can't see a radial layout being very practical in ribbon development housing that follows roads.

    That's also why ADSL and even FTTC is pretty useless in really rural areas. Everyone is too far from the node / exchange. Normal network layouts are really designed for towns, villages, clusters of homes.

    Cable TV networks are actually ideal fits for irish urban hinterland as you can run house to house like Xmas lights fed from a fibre node.
    Much easier than phone lines.


  • #53
    irishfeen
    Registered Users Posts: 8,061 ✭✭✭irishfeen


    What would be considered "truly rural"? - we live on a main enough road between two villages 5 miles apart (one village efibre, the other dial up (900 in village itself and a significant number of houses in between)) we stuck on the wrong side so Eircom have completely washed their hands of us ... I assume connecting gaps in the network would be a major part of ESB plans?


  • #54
    MrO
    Registered Users Posts: 193 ✭✭MrO


    bk wrote: »
    Yup, totally agree, 1Gb/s is totally mad and unnecessary for normal consumers.

    However I could for-see problems coming up in future if people start streaming Ultra HD 4k video. You could quickly run into the 74mb/s hard limit of GPON in the evenings with lots of people watch telly at the same time!

    Anyway, thanks for your post, very informative.

    You're right, it is a little bit of a gamble for the ISPs but analytics are King (especially in somewhere like Google). When the see the average user footprint get close to congestion territory - maybe 60/70%, I suspect they'll push out an upgrade of hardware.


  • #55
    bk
    Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,984 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    SpaceTime wrote: »
    The cost of some of this type of equipment has plummeted too.
    So a lot of things are possible now that might have been ludicrously expensive a few years ago.

    While prices of the gear and optics have plummeted, some 70 to 80% of the cost is purely labour and civils. That is why the cost of FTTH hasn't really gotten cheaper over the years.


  • #56
    SpaceTime
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,088 ✭✭✭SpaceTime


    irishfeen wrote: »
    What would be considered "truly rural"? - we live on a main enough road between two villages 5 miles apart (one village efibre, the other dial up (900 in village itself and a significant number of houses in between)) we stuck on the wrong side so Eircom have completely washed their hands of us ... I assume connecting gaps in the network would be a major part of ESB plans?

    Truely rural as in there is no village or town. Houses built along rural roads and one off scattered houses.

    Small villages are much easier to connect up. You can put an FTTC cabinet in and connect radially to it.

    Ireland is extremely unusual in that regard. A lot of housing is just built along roads and not in any type of cluster.

    What you're describing is very typically Irish housing layout and it's extremely difficult to connect up to technologies that are designed for radial networks where a node or exchange sits in the middle of a cluster of users.

    With ribbon development on roads something else needs to be thought up that allows trunks with users plugged into them along a single line.

    Like an optical version of CATV.

    Remember CATV was developed for low density US suburban housing. The trunk and tap system is ideal for that.


  • #57
    irishfeen
    Registered Users Posts: 8,061 ✭✭✭irishfeen


    SpaceTime wrote: »
    Truely rural as in there is no village or town. Houses built along rural roads and one off scattered houses.

    Small villages are much easier to connect up. You can put an FTTC cabinet in and connect radially to it.

    Ireland is extremely unusual in that regard. A lot of housing is just built along roads and not in any type of cluster.
    In that case I suppose we would be technically considered semi rural so (4 houses in a row) but from the village (not connected) to where efibre starts is only 3 miles and we stuck between :(


  • #58
    SpaceTime
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,088 ✭✭✭SpaceTime


    irishfeen wrote: »
    In that case I suppose we would be technically considered semi rural so (4 houses in a row) but from the village (not connected) to where efibre starts is only 3 miles and we stuck between :(

    That's fully rural and not economic for FTTC.

    Using e fibre, eircom would have to install a cabinet costing at least €20 grand and extensive engineering works to get fibre to it. That would serve one km either direction. So maybe 5 or 10 houses.

    They need at least 160+ homes per cabinet.

    You can see why a commercial outfit wouldn't touch it.

    It's not the right technology for that kind of housing.


  • #59
    irishfeen
    Registered Users Posts: 8,061 ✭✭✭irishfeen


    SpaceTime wrote: »
    That's fully rural and not economic for FTTC.

    Using e fibre, eircom would have to install a cabinet costing at least €20 grand and extensive engineering works to get fibre to it. That would serve one km either direction. So maybe 5 or 10 houses.

    They need at least 160+ homes per cabinet.

    You can see why a commercial outfit wouldn't touch it.

    It's not the right technology for that kind of housing.
    Economically viable for EBS using FTTH?


  • #60
    TheDoc
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 23,137 ✭✭✭✭TheDoc


    Too little to late to be honest. I'm moving residence next month. While there is an arrival to the family forcing my hand quicker, I was planning to move out April in order to go somewhere that is UPC/Magnet Fibre enabled.

    At present I'm with Magnet running Eircom resale, and it has been a soul destroying process coming from 150mb UPC Fibre. It's THAT important to me. And it's the first question I've been asking prospective landlords and estate agents. It's shocking the amount of built up areas in Dublin without fibre, nevermind rural areas


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  • #61
    bk
    Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,984 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    irishfeen wrote: »
    Economically viable for EBS using FTTH?

    No, the best you can hope for is that Eircom brings Fibre and a VDSL cab to the nearest town and that they then allow ADSL2+ connections off the cab. You might get speeds around 4mb/s then.

    Alternatively maybe someone could do fixed wireless to you from one of the villages.


  • #62
    SpaceTime
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,088 ✭✭✭SpaceTime


    irishfeen wrote: »
    Economically viable for EBS using FTTH?

    Only ESB could tell you that as they've given no information on what they plan to do.

    The only way I could see it making sense is if they could basically run it in the same trunk and branch layout as their own power network.

    You can do that with a FTTH system where you've 'beam splitters' (optical taps) along a single trunk.

    So, effectively you'd have one wire running along side the ESB line and multiple homes all tapped into it along the route, much like cable TV only with fibres instead of coax and with optical instead of electronic signals.

    Most examples of FTTH that I've seen built e.g. BT in the UK in the limited locations they're using the technology are radial with each customer going back to an optical splitter node.

    Running individual lines from a node to every house in a ribbon development wouldn't be practical at all.

    Eircom typically handles ribbon development housing by running a fat multicore cable along their poles or in a duct at the side of the road. Each house is connected to a twisted pair which runs the whole way back to the exchange. So, you end up with very long lines and a lot of complicated wiring.

    Where they run out of lines, they end up using pair-gain (splitters) to put several lines down one pair of copper wires.

    A trunk and branch system using fibre might be a FAR better setup.

    The only downside is that you've a single point of failure. If the trunk fibre on your road is damaged, all connected customers go down.

    The upside with ESB is that it'd be quite likely attached to high voltage lines, so you'd want to be an idiot to tamper with it :D
    20kV (or even 230V) on a bare overhead line's not very safe to get near. So, no risk of anyone going up to snip your fibres.


  • #63
    irishfeen
    Registered Users Posts: 8,061 ✭✭✭irishfeen


    bk wrote: »
    No, the best you can hope for is that Eircom brings Fibre and a VDSL cab to the nearest town and that they then allow ADSL2+ connections off the cab. You might get speeds around 4mb/s then.

    Alternatively maybe someone could do fixed wireless to you from one of the villages.
    But in our case being on a main road you would be looking at 40 houses won the road or within a mile off the road.... how many houses would make such a system economically viable?


  • #64
    SpaceTime
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,088 ✭✭✭SpaceTime


    irishfeen wrote: »
    But in our case being on a main road you would be looking at 40 houses won the road or within a mile off the road.... how many houses would make such a system economically viable?

    It would depend on the cost of the system.
    Until the ESB release details of what they plan to do and how they plan to fund it, we simply don't know.

    It might be somewhat more viable than with FTTC and ADSL technologies. But, without details of what they're doing I can't really give any opinion at all.

    Low density housing is however a *LOT* more expensive to connect up than a housing estate, a town, a village etc.

    ESB should probably begin installing fibre with any new overhead or underground supply cables from this point on anyway. The work involved wouldn't be much different installing the two together as installing just the power line.


  • #65
    bk
    Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,984 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    irishfeen wrote: »
    But in our case being on a main road you would be looking at 40 houses won the road or within a mile off the road.... how many houses would make such a system economically viable?

    The problem is I'm assuming the 40 houses are spread out along the road.

    That means that they would need to run an individual fibre along the length of the road back to one of the villages, where they could then have a splitter.

    It is the distance of each fibre run that makes all of this difficult and expensive.

    The thing people fail to understand, rural in itself isn't necessary the problem. Lots of people live in rural France, but they almost all live in a village. So it is pretty easy to run one fibre to the village and then put a FTTC cab in place that can service the whole village.

    It is the rural ribbon development along a road that is pretty much the worst case scenario for broadband. It means long and very expensive cable runs.

    In some ways Co-ax cable and technology used by UPC would actually be better then fibre for such rural developments as you can simply loop one cable from house to house along the road. Unfortunately, but understandably, it seems UPC aren't interested in doing this.


  • #66
    SpaceTime
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,088 ✭✭✭SpaceTime


    Unfortunately, this kind of thing is one of the side effects of the choices we've made as a nation in terms of planning.

    The laws of physics tend to mitigate against you no matter what technology you try to use if everything's scattered along the side of roads at incredibly low density.

    Same issues apply to water and sewage and is the main reason that we've ended up with things like major lake pollution and the Galway water contamination issues i.e. too many homes depending on septic tanks and main sewer connection to every home being not economically viable due to the very low densities.

    In other countries a very much smaller % of homes would be using septic tanks.

    Getting water and power to those kinds of homes isn't easy either.

    Our housing spread's probably reflected in our ESB bills too.

    I'm not saying it's wrong, we as a nation have made a choice through election of parties that pursued this kind of development. However, the consequences of that choice are bad utilities in low density housing. The upside is you've big gardens, lots of space etc.

    Some kind of a unique solution to the problem may work for broadband like a mix of FTTH and wireless. But, it doesn't change the fact that rural areas will always have this issue and have to keep coming up with innovative work arounds.

    I would suggest something like this:

    Rural roads with significant numbers of homes along them get a fibre from ESB + taps to each home (that's within reasonable distance of the road like 200m max).

    Villages : fibre (FTTH or FTTC or both)
    Housing estates: fibre (FTTH or FTTC or both)

    Everywhere else: fibre supported radio/microwave system.


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  • #67
    bk
    Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,984 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    SpaceTime wrote: »
    Rural roads with significant numbers of homes along them get a fibre from ESB + taps to each home (that's within reasonable distance of the road like 200m max).

    Unfortunately it is the "taps" bit that is very expensive and hard to do!

    You can't just "tap" fibre like you can copper. Fibre is an intrinsically point to point technology. Each "tap" would in fact be an optical splitter, which is expensive and which would require expensive fibre cutting and splicing.

    It would probably be cheaper to actually have the splitter in the village and then run an individual fibre to each of the 40 homes along the road.

    But that would be very expensive to do, which goes to show why the Irish style ribbon development is so hard to service with Broadband. There is almost no really good, economic solution to it!


  • #68
    nilhg
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,160 ✭✭✭nilhg


    SpaceTime wrote: »
    That's fully rural and not economic for FTTC.

    Using e fibre, eircom would have to install a cabinet costing at least €20 grand and extensive engineering works to get fibre to it. That would serve one km either direction. So maybe 5 or 10 houses.

    They need at least 160+ homes per cabinet.

    You can see why a commercial outfit wouldn't touch it.

    It's not the right technology for that kind of housing.

    This week KN networks started running the ducting for fibre out to the nearest cabinet to me, about 3km from the local exchange, while I'm delighted (I'm about 700m away and should get decent enough speeds I hope) I find it hard to understand the economics of it, I reckon there are about 30 houses inside 1km range for VDSL, the only thing I can think of is that it will possibly enable them to offer adsl to houses farther on out, some of the lines could be up to 8km before this.

    Have a look for yourself, the cabinet is located here,

    https://goo.gl/maps/PQvwd


  • #69
    ctlsleh
    Registered Users Posts: 784 ✭✭✭ctlsleh


    Google do use GPON, they use higher end ONTs that are capable of delivering 1G symetrical vs cheap chinese/taiwanese ONTs that cant suport a 1G throughput.


  • #70
    ctlsleh
    Registered Users Posts: 784 ✭✭✭ctlsleh


    bk wrote: »
    The problem is I'm assuming the 40 houses are spread out along the road.

    That means that they would need to run an individual fibre along the length of the road back to one of the villages, where they could then have a splitter.

    It is the distance of each fibre run that makes all of this difficult and expensive.

    The thing people fail to understand, rural in itself isn't necessary the problem. Lots of people live in rural France, but they almost all live in a village. So it is pretty easy to run one fibre to the village and then put a FTTC cab in place that can service the whole village.

    It is the rural ribbon development along a road that is pretty much the worst case scenario for broadband. It means long and very expensive cable runs.

    In some ways Co-ax cable and technology used by UPC would actually be better then fibre for such rural developments as you can simply loop one cable from house to house along the road. Unfortunately, but understandably, it seems UPC aren't interested in doing this.

    Coax will always be limited to 300Mb max..... you pay the CAPEX to deploy a fibre once and you effectively have infinite Bandwidth forever.....its a very long term investment compared to coax which costs the same to put down in terms of the civil works.......albeit physical fibre is cheaper than coax


  • #71
    sparky63
    Registered Users Posts: 160 ✭✭sparky63


    White Heart Loon wrote: »
    This isn't over power lines, it's fibre to the home

    No its not FTTH but it is a more realistic possibility than FTTH by the ESB. While the ESB can wind fibre along power lines along the pylon route to reach towns, the cost to feed sparsely situated rural houses by fibre is enormous coupled with the fact the return on investment would take years. Even employing GPON, they would be looking at providing Tv services to recoup the investment. But judging by the price of bundled packages available to major cities, the cost of providing FTTH would still not be viable. There is some mention of other operators being able to offer there services over the fibre, but this is piggybacking still with huge setup costs to the ESB. Not to mention if they became the dominant player, regulation would ensue to open the network on a "level playing field". Interesting to note that prior to Eircoms fibre layout, they invited all the other operators to invest in a fibre network for Ireland. How many do you think got involved, not one was even willing to attend the meeting. If the ESB goes ahead we can look forward to heavy increases in our ESB bills to fund even part of this.


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  • #72
    ED E
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 36,169 ✭✭✭✭ED E


    ctlsleh wrote: »
    Coax will always be limited to 300Mb max..... you pay the CAPEX to deploy a fibre once and you effectively have infinite Bandwidth forever.....its a very long term investment compared to coax which costs the same to put down in terms of the civil works.......albeit physical fibre is cheaper than coax

    400+ with DOCSIS3.1


  • #73
    lucernarian
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,235 ✭✭✭lucernarian


    SpaceTime wrote: »
    Only ESB could tell you that as they've given no information on what they plan to do.

    The only way I could see it making sense is if they could basically run it in the same trunk and branch layout as their own power network.

    You can do that with a FTTH system where you've 'beam splitters' (optical taps) along a single trunk.

    So, effectively you'd have one wire running along side the ESB line and multiple homes all tapped into it along the route, much like cable TV only with fibres instead of coax and with optical instead of electronic signals.
    This is exactly why GPON technology could offer so much for fibre connectivity in rural Ireland. The trend in the past ten years has been that optical components have enjoyed steep falls in prices along with cable and other switching equipment too, or in the latter, they have advanced considerably in their capabilities and speed capacity.


  • #74
    lucernarian
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,235 ✭✭✭lucernarian


    sparky63 wrote: »
    No its not FTTH but it is a more realistic possibility than FTTH by the ESB. While the ESB can wind fibre along power lines along the pylon route to reach towns, the cost to feed sparsely situated rural houses by fibre is enormous coupled with the fact the return on investment would take years. Even employing GPON, they would be looking at providing Tv services to recoup the investment. But judging by the price of bundled packages available to major cities, the cost of providing FTTH would still not be viable. There is some mention of other operators being able to offer there services over the fibre, but this is piggybacking still with huge setup costs to the ESB. Not to mention if they became the dominant player, regulation would ensue to open the network on a "level playing field". Interesting to note that prior to Eircoms fibre layout, they invited all the other operators to invest in a fibre network for Ireland. How many do you think got involved, not one was even willing to attend the meeting. If the ESB goes ahead we can look forward to heavy increases in our ESB bills to fund even part of this.
    There's some very spurious claims in there. For starters, eircom spent a couple of years at least going cap in hand to the govt. to pay for a commercial rollout of FTTC across a variety of urban areas. Yet mysteriously, after they get a a substantial debt haircut and after UPC complete their rollout across most of Ireland's largest urban areas, eircom are in a position to invest in a FTTC rollout encompassing over half the population within the next couple of years. I could certainly symphatise with the likes of BT and Vodafone not wanting to pony up to pay for what eircom should have invested, not asset stripped or allowed to be tied up in leveraged takeovers (as approved and to the mutual gain of their ESOT). And let's not even start into the laughable approach that was taken to LLU and the repeated press releases from BT et al. over the state of unbundling and eircom's approach to it.

    Furthermore, eircom being designated as having significant market power pretty much played into their hands with a host of frequently-ignored performance targets (like how An Post behaves now) and this country having the second-highest line rental in the world complimentary of ComReg approving this without reservation on a number of occasions over the 2000s and even including an absence of any definition of functional internet access! (Have a look at this thread from 2004 for an appropriate reminder http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=188895) so if anything, it would probably benefit ESB to be told they have SMP by our glorious regulator!!

    The big ambiguity in all this is the cost of winding said fibre around the entirety of our MV and some of our LV network in terms of fibre costs and labour costs. Now the trial in Cavan will tell everyone much in this respect over the next couple of years and it's quite telling thatunlike for eircom, the ESB are going ahead with this alongside a willing Joint Venture partner (who if I remember correctly is Vodafone Ireland) and seem happy to start trials of this in rural Cavan.


  • #75
    Grab All Association
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,921 ✭✭✭Grab All Association


    Mr. G wrote: »
    What's even more bizarre is that UPC cannot be gotten anywhere in Ennis, but can be gotten in Shannon. Ennis has VDSL (eFibre) and no doubt it would be serviced by ESB if they came into the market. It is bigger than Clonmel, yet you can get it there.

    I believe Chorus was going to roll out to Ennis, Nenagh and a few other towns in the early 2000s but there was planning issues or something. 2000/1 they rolled out in Clonmel and Thurles and they left the streets in quite a mess I remember.


  • #76
    bk
    Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,984 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    ctlsleh wrote: »
    Coax will always be limited to 300Mb max..... you pay the CAPEX to deploy a fibre once and you effectively have infinite Bandwidth forever.....its a very long term investment compared to coax which costs the same to put down in terms of the civil works.......albeit physical fibre is cheaper than coax

    First of all, UPC's Coax and modem is capable of 400mb/s today!

    With DOCSIS 3.1 consumer speeds of 1Gb/s will be possible on UPCs coax.


  • #77
    SpaceTime
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,088 ✭✭✭SpaceTime


    Any new entrant to the access market is a very welcome development.

    Remember too that ESB are fully kitted up to climb poles and regularly re-lay and re-wire long runs of far more difficult to deal with heavy copper overhead wires.

    Stringing a bit of fibre along existing routes is unlikely to be something that will pose them a huge engineering or practical challenge and is also unlikely to require them to do any outsourcing. They already have the staff, the equipment and the expertise in house, permanently employed. They won't need to actually get contractors in other than to do the telecommunications bit and they will probably hire people in house if they plan to do this on a large scale anyway.

    So, it could be a lot more cost effective than you'd think.

    They may even be able to rollout fibre along with planned work on power cabling e.g. inspection, maintenance or upgrading projects.


  • #78
    bk
    Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,984 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    SpaceTime, while ESB crews are very experienced, they wouldn't have any training and experience or equipment needed to do fibre cutting and splicing.

    At the very least they would have to be trained up in this. I'd also expect that they will be using someone like KN Networks, with extensive experience in fibre.

    Also as this company is meant to be separate from the ESB, I'd assume they would have to pay for the use of the ESB crews. Finally I'd doubt the ESB would have enough staff to handle such a major rollout. I would assume the ESB have just enough crews and staff to cover maintenance and repair of the existing electric network and that would remain the priority.

    However, once the initial rollout is complete, the existing crews could then take over maintenance, as you wouldn't expect too many failures with a fibre network.


  • #79
    SpaceTime
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,088 ✭✭✭SpaceTime


    Except when a tree falls on it :)

    You'd still have a situation though where crews would be able to run lots of fibre along the existing network and leave it ready to be spliced.
    Then bring in KN or whoever to do that.

    They've been doing splicing in-house since at least 2003 btw

    http://www.esbelectricmail.com/_archives/em_archive/archives/index245a.html?id=232&cat=1

    They also own their own 96-fibre route from Ireland to Britain and have access to a large fibre network in the UK with a partner company.


  • #80
    ED E
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 36,169 ✭✭✭✭ED E


    Another aspect to consider is ESB staff are paid A FORTUNE. For every one ESB lines man you could hire 2.5-3 KNN ones. Much easier to contract out.


  • #81
    km79
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 48,254 ✭✭✭✭km79


    Sorry if these questions are stupid :-)
    I live in NBS scheme currently serviced by 3 (extremely poor ) and don't have a phone line.Is one required for this and is it likely to service rural areas?
    Thanks


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  • #82
    ctlsleh
    Registered Users Posts: 784 ✭✭✭ctlsleh


    bk wrote: »
    First of all, UPC's Coax and modem is capable of 400mb/s today!

    With DOCSIS 3.1 consumer speeds of 1Gb/s will be possible on UPCs coax.

    it is not physically possible to deliver 1Gb service over coax over any distance.......that's why all the large cable TV companies in the US are moving to GPON also, its also the only way they can compete with Google and now all the other players that offer 1Gb service (over GPON) and yes 400Mb down on DOCSIS 3.1 (typo), but only 100Mb up MAX. there is no business case for digging coax fullstop when compared to digging fibre.


  • #83
    hallo dare
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,787 ✭✭✭hallo dare


    ED E wrote: »
    Another aspect to consider is ESB staff are paid A FORTUNE. For every one ESB lines man you could hire 2.5-3 KNN ones. Much easier to contract out.

    Lets not start bringing this attitude into the thread please. This was set up to talk about ESB Broadband, not salaries.
    Thanks


  • #84
    Mr. G
    Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 4,621 Mod ✭✭✭✭Mr. G


    km79 wrote: »
    Sorry if these questions are stupid :-)
    I live in NBS scheme currently serviced by 3 (extremely poor ) and don't have a phone line.Is one required for this and is it likely to service rural areas?
    Thanks

    No. ESB's plan is to roll out a FTTH (Fibre to the Home) network. This does not use a telephone line, instead it literally has fibre going to the home. ESB are only trialling it first in Cavan as mentioned above. It would be rolled out in Urban to Semi Urban towns where UPC do not currently operate I would imagine. And if anything it would be a few years before it would be available to 500,000 homes. You would be unlikely to be able to get it if you're on top of a mountain in the sticks unfortunately.

    Eircom have claimed that by July 2016, their FTTC (using a telephone line) will provide high speed fibre to the cabinet broadband to I think 1.4 million homes. There is a list of all areas planned for the VDSL service on their NGB website. Google it and you will find it.


  • #85
    km79
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 48,254 ✭✭✭✭km79


    Mr. G wrote: »
    No. ESB's plan is to roll out a FTTH (Fibre to the Home) network. This does not use a telephone line, instead it literally has fibre going to the home. ESB are only trialling it first in Cavan as mentioned above. It would be rolled out in Urban to Semi Urban towns where UPC do not currently operate I would imagine. And if anything it would be a few years before it would be available to 500,000 homes. You would be unlikely to be able to get it if you're on top of a mountain in the sticks unfortunately.

    Eircom have claimed that by July 2016, their FTTC (using a telephone line) will provide high speed fibre to the cabinet broadband to I think 1.4 million homes. There is a list of all areas planned for the VDSL service on their NGB website. Google it and you will find it.
    Thanks. There is a bit of hope so.....


  • #86
    hallo dare
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,787 ✭✭✭hallo dare


    I wonder is there something preventing the ESB from making announcements about it all?

    You'd imagine it would be good publicity for them to even announce that they are doing trials in Cavan or wherever and pending results of that, they would be able to give a definitive yes or no in relation to this plan working successfully or not.


  • #87
    ED E
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 36,169 ✭✭✭✭ED E


    hallo dare wrote: »
    Lets not start bringing this attitude into the thread please. This was set up to talk about ESB Broadband, not salaries.
    Thanks

    The whole issue with implementing faster technologies is cost, and manpower is a big part of that. So its very relevant.


  • #88
    Bill Shock
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 49 ✭Bill Shock


    Wonder how long it will be before the inevitable cohort of objectors emerge.....refusing access to land or bullsh*tting about the health and safety issues of fibre-optic cables (of which there are none)

    Really hope land-owners are not going to hold this project to ransom....


  • #89
    bk
    Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,984 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    ctlsleh wrote: »
    it is not physically possible to deliver 1Gb service over coax over any distance.......that's why all the large cable TV companies in the US are moving to GPON also, its also the only way they can compete with Google and now all the other players that offer 1Gb service (over GPON) and yes 400Mb down on DOCSIS 3.1 (typo), but only 100Mb up MAX. there is no business case for digging coax fullstop when compared to digging fibre.

    I'm afraid you are very wrong, please read these:

    http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/CableLabs-Releases-DOCSIS-31-Specification-126437
    http://www.lightreading.com/cable-video/docsis/docsis-31-makes-debut/d/d-id/706378
    http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/why-comcast-and-other-cable-isps-arent-selling-you-gigabit-internet/

    1Gb/s service coming to cable with DOCSIS 3.1

    Coax is well able to carry gigabit speeds, it is even capable of doing it with DOCSIS 3.0, it is just a case of bonding more channels. A 860Mhz UPC cable has a total of 5Gb/s worth of bandwidth available to it:

    http://fastnetnews.com/docsisreport/163-c/4272-virgin-15-gigabit-cable-is-not-a-typo

    With DOCSIS3.1 that increases to 10Gb/s worth of bandwidth on a 860Mhz cable!

    Also I've not heard of a single cable company in the US move to GPON, yes some sell Fibre products to business from their HFC network, just as UPC does here, but not a single US cable company is moving to GPON for consumer BB.


  • #90
    bk
    Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,984 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    Bill Shock wrote: »
    Wonder how long it will be before the inevitable cohort of objectors emerge.....refusing access to land or bullsh*tting about the health and safety issues of fibre-optic cables (of which there are none)

    Really hope land-owners are not going to hold this project to ransom....

    As it will be run across overhead cables, I don't believe there will be any objections.


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  • #91
    SpaceTime
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,088 ✭✭✭SpaceTime


    UPC's actually in a very different position to its smaller Irish predecessors who were passive purchasers of technology. For the first time in Ireland we actually have a really huge player that is involved in R&D and product development and it is genuinely standardising its networks across the EU too.

    They're the world's largest international cable operator (the vast majority of its operations are in Europe (>23m customers) with a couple of networks in Latin America too about 1m customers) and have revenues of over $17bn and it's just added Virgin Media to the fold and taken over several other quite large European cable companies this year. Telenet in Belgium for example will become UPC fairly soon too.

    They're quite heavily involved in R&D and are pushing the boundaries of what you can do over a HFC network.

    It demonstrated that it can deliver 1.4Gbit/s quite comfortably over the HFC network here in Ireland. http://www.techcentral.ie/upc-doubles-internet-entry-speeds-to-50mbs/

    They've pretty seriously huge bandwidth on that network and it's very deeply penetrated with fibre. The fibre nodes are a lot smaller than eircom's. They're often housed in existing amp cabinets in Cork or in Dublin and elsewhere may be just on the end of buildings.
    That kind of stuff has allowed them to get fibre pretty much down to a single street level in the upgraded parts of their network.

    There were major advances in HFC technology since the 1990s and a lot of the assumptions you'll see about HFC networks tend to be based on the 'state of the art' as of about 1999 which was about 500 subscribers per optical node. That's been cut way way down as newer technologies allowed them to put in more optical nodes by using existing fibre more efficiently using wave-length division technology (or adding new fibre in UPC in some areas). So, they can really get down to very small segments fed by each node.

    Comparing it with eircom's FTTC is like comparing chalk and cheese really.

    HFC can actually match most current GPON networks and even outperform many of the earlier GPON installations!


  • #92
    hallo dare
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,787 ✭✭✭hallo dare


    ED E wrote: »
    The whole issue with implementing faster technologies is cost, and manpower is a big part of that. So its very relevant.

    Same can be said for any company supplying a service, that's not the point, the point of this thread was to see about every home in Ireland finally getting quality BB. Not the whole ESB lads make this amout and that amount story all over again.

    It's like no matter what anyone tries to do in the Country there's always someone out there that has to drive a dirty nail, begrudgers. If the ESB are going to be able to provide me a quality service BB, then that's good enough for me. Lads having to climb poles and run extra cabling for this service deserve to be paid, like everyone else that's any good at their job, regardless if they are ESB staff or contractors. Enough already.

    There's other Threads about staff and wages if you want to moan.


  • #93
    ED E
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 36,169 ✭✭✭✭ED E


    hallo dare wrote: »
    Same can be said for any company supplying a service, that's not the point, the point of this thread was to see about every home in Ireland finally getting quality BB. Not the whole ESB lads make this amout and that amount story all over again.

    It's like no matter what anyone tries to do in the Country there's always someone out there that has to drive a dirty nail, begrudgers. If the ESB are going to be able to provide me a quality service BB, then that's good enough for me. Lads having to climb poles and run extra cabling for this service deserve to be paid, like everyone else that's any good at their job, regardless if they are ESB staff or contractors. Enough already.

    There's other Threads about staff and wages if you want to moan.

    It would appear you have an axe to grind here, I wasnt moaning. Eircom Field Techs get paid crazy money too. Thats ireland for you. Simply pointing out that it makes no sense for ESB to use their own staff for a more trivial role. They're heavily trained and follow very strict procedures, rightly so, and should be left to maintaining the grid.


  • #94
    SpaceTime
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,088 ✭✭✭SpaceTime


    Regardless of the internal machinations of ESB's union politics and pay rates, the fact remains it has a history of actually getting big, complicated infrastructure rolled out rather effectively and efficiently.

    I would have quite a bit of confidence that ESB could get this network rolled out rather effectively and rapidly once they sign off on a design.

    I was impressed with the speed of Eircom's FTTC rollout once they got rolling. It's the first time I've seen Eircom doing anything on that scale so quickly and effectively. The last time that they were doing something as large as that was probably as a semi-state in the 1980s when they pretty much rebuilt the voice network. Since then, most of the infrastructure just saw incremental updates.


  • #95
    hallo dare
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,787 ✭✭✭hallo dare


    ED E wrote: »
    It would appear you have an axe to grind here, I wasnt moaning. Eircom Field Techs get paid crazy money too. Thats ireland for you. Simply pointing out that it makes no sense for ESB to use their own staff for a more trivial role. They're heavily trained and follow very strict procedures, rightly so, and should be left to maintaining the grid.

    I can't see ESB staff doing any of this to a point. I'd guess that as far as ESB staff would get involved is in disconnection of the lines and safety aspect so the contractors can do the cable installation and such.

    May also be an opportunity that may suit the ESB in replacing many overhead lines as they go along.


  • #96
    bk
    Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,984 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    I think that is a little to strong hallo dare. Labour and civils make up 75 to 80% of the cost of rolling out Fibre, so ED E is right to point it out.

    This and the other reasons I mentioned (crews already tied up doing electric maintenance and lack of experience with Fibre and telcoms in general) make it unlikely ESB crews will be heavily involved in the FTTH rollout.

    They will need to be somewhat involved as work is going to be done close to power cables, but I guess subcontractors like KN will be heavily involved too.

    SpaceTime is also correct, UPC is now the largest cable company in the world (by customers) and one of the founding members of CableLabs, the developers of the DOCSIS standard and UPC have been leading the development of DOCSIS 3.1 They have been investing massively in R&D


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  • #97
    bk
    Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,984 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    SpaceTime wrote: »
    I was impressed with the speed of Eircom's FTTC rollout once they got rolling. It's the first time I've seen Eircom doing anything on that scale so quickly and effectively. The last time that they were doing something as large as that was probably as a semi-state in the 1980s when they pretty much rebuilt the voice network. Since then, most of the infrastructure just saw incremental updates.

    And I mean no disrespect in this, but part of the reason why it has gone so smoothly is because most of the work isn't been done by Eircom themselves, a great deal of it has been contracted out.

    Even the design of the network and placement of cabs has been done by Chinese engineers from Huawei. Most of the fibre laying and cab installation is being done by KN Networks and other subcontractors. Even a lot of the customer installs are being done by KN.

    Eircom wouldn't have been able to do this themselves, nor do I believe could the ESB (and UPC use KN and others too).


  • #98
    ED E
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 36,169 ✭✭✭✭ED E


    For most of the country at least all installs are being done by KNN. Eircom techs are only dispatched if theres a problem.


  • #99
    hallo dare
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,787 ✭✭✭hallo dare


    bk wrote: »
    I think that is a little to strong hallo dare. Labour and civils make up 75 to 80% of the cost of rolling out Fibre, so ED E is right to point it out.

    This and the other reasons I mentioned (crews already tied up doing electric maintenance and lack of experience with Fibre and telcoms in general) make it unlikely ESB crews will be heavily involved in the FTTH rollout.

    They will need to be somewhat involved as work is going to be done close to power cables, but I guess subcontractors like KN will be heavily involved too.

    SpaceTime is also correct, UPC is now the largest cable company in the world (by customers) and one of the founding members of CableLabs, the developers of the DOCSIS standard and UPC have been leading the development of DOCSIS 3.1 They have been investing massively in R&D

    Is what you are saying not excatly what i have already said in relation to contractors and minimal involvement from ESB staff?

    ESB have a telecoms dept. that are highly trained and experienced. I'd guess that they would be do the end terminations and have the contractors doing the line running.


  • #100
    ixiathor
    Registered Users Posts: 41 ✭ixiathor


    I agree this is probably the last chance for us in rural ireland to have any chance of decent broadband. I live c. 4k from my Eircom exchange and can only get 1.75Mb down / 0.2Mb up. No sign of this area ever going to be covered by the eFibre rollout - even Phase 5. Surrounding areas with small size towns (e.g. Enfield) are due to get done in Phase 5 but we look to be out in the cold.

    Even with eFibre our likely speeds will be low, but anything is better than current, although Eircom is at least better than mobile BB, which was costing a fortune with the low caps.

    I live 2km from the old N4 with a continuous string of houses from the N4 in .. ESB poles running alongside. Technically, we are defined as semi-rural.

    I'd like to see Pat Rabbitte actually make this happen for rural Ireland .. would be a novelty to have a promise of 30MBs by 2016 actually delivered. Why allow the same old competitors to rollout out better and better BB in the same old areas ? Make it real for rural Ireland - other countries can do it!


  • #101
    nilhg
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,160 ✭✭✭nilhg


    bk wrote: »
    As it will be run across overhead cables, I don't believe there will be any objections.

    Complications could possibly arise, the ESB have a wayleave arrangement with farmers and there is a small payment per pole on your land, if another service is going to be delivered then maybe there is a case for some adjustment of that payment, can't see it being a problem though.

    Physically getting access across the land may be a factor though, we have crops here so putting heavy machinery into fields is probably only feasable after harvest, though something like a quad could possibly be used to drag in cables until the crops grow tall in the spring.

    ESB are well used to working round stuff like that though.


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