Eir urban FTTH

Paul Tergat · 17-01-2020 5:02pm

The way this is being rolled out is a complete joke. All houses on my street are showing as Ftth available and from speaking to neighbours they actually have it installed. For whatever reason I am showing as not available and cannot speak to openeir as they won't talk to the public and the ISPs send an email and just accept an answer of there will be an update at month end.

Its so typical of the way things are done in such a half arsed manner and nobody is actually accountable for anything.

KOR101 · 17-01-2020 8:23pm

Paul Tergat wrote: »

The way this is being rolled out is a complete joke. All houses on my street are showing as Ftth available and from speaking to neighbours they actually have it installed. For whatever reason I am showing as not available and cannot speak to openeir as they won't talk to the public and the ISPs send an email and just accept an answer of there will be an update at month end.

Its so typical of the way things are done in such a half arsed manner and nobody is actually accountable for anything.

Try a small ISP like the one below. They are more likely to look into your case.

https://www.airwire.ie/

tuxy · 17-01-2020 8:29pm

Yes the large companies don't care as they have so many customers.
The smaller ones are willing to take the time to sort out individual problems.

Paul Tergat · 18-01-2020 11:08am

KOR101 wrote: »

Try a small ISP like the one below. They are more likely to look into your case.

https://www.airwire.ie/

Thanks and while I can see the great level of support they offer particularly here on boards I don't think they service my area!

Airwire: MartinL · 18-01-2020 12:15pm

Paul Tergat wrote: »

I don't think they service my area!

We offer OpenEIR NGA based products nationwide. Only SIRO and our fixed wireless coverage are limited geographically.

greyhill · 21-01-2020 3:32pm

My area is listed to get FTTH on Jan 22nd and an Eir rep called to the house last Friday evening to let us know. He estimated that if I signed up by yesterday (Monday) that the installation could take place this Friday or next Monday.

Marlow · 21-01-2020 3:56pm

greyhill wrote: »

My area is listed to get FTTH on Jan 22nd and an Eir rep called to the house last Friday evening to let us know. He estimated that if I signed up by yesterday (Monday) that the installation could take place this Friday or next Monday.

Monday the earliest. Orders placed with OpenEir today are scheduled for Friday. (4 workdays turnaround is minimum)

And providers can only place the order on the 22nd

/M

The Cush · 22-01-2020 11:22pm

The Cush wrote: »

IFN Phase 1 launching Jan 2020.

Huawei HN8250Ts XGS-PON bridging type ONT
10G LAN port 5 is the demarcation point
Split ratio 1:64 per OLT port
Existing three GPON “profiles” of 150Mb/s, 300Mb/s and 1Gb/s will be used initially

Latest release of open-eir's NGA Technical Handbook v.22, Appendix III - IFN Phase 1 ONT Connection Model, page 79

Huawei HN8250Ts XGS-PON bridging type ONT

Airwire: MartinL · 23-01-2020 2:43am

We have updated the database for OpenEIR FTTC/FTTH today.

It can be found at https://www.airwire.ie/avail

lotas · 23-01-2020 8:50am

So, am I getting my following maths correct? Existing FTTH is 16:1 ratio on a 1gb link, so minimum speed is 62.5mb/s. The new setup is 10gb split at 64:1, so, 156.25mb/s... those are minimums, as in everyone subscribed to the servers and going balls to the wall downloading everything, right? Or have I got a decimal place (or speed) wrong somehwere?

The Cush · 23-01-2020 8:52am

lotas wrote: »

So, am I getting my following maths correct? Existing FTTH is 16:1 ratio on a 1gb link,

Existing GPON split is up to 1:32

lotas · 23-01-2020 9:49am

The Cush wrote: »

Existing GPON split is up to 1:32

Ok, so that brings minimum available speed on existing to around 32mb/s... (31.25mb/s to be correct)... is it only 1gb that is split, cause i have seen some GPON gear (Ubiquiti UFiber [https://www.ui.com/ufiber/ufiber-olt/]) are 2.5gb/s down, 1.25gb/s up split between the end points... any idea what open eir split? same with the XSGPON... what is that splitting?

tuxy · 23-01-2020 9:56am

I think I remember someone saying that although 32:1 was possible that Open Eir actually use 31:1.
I could be completely wrong on that as the post was long ago and I can't really remember the details.

All public GPON services will be split, won't they? A line going from the exchange to every house would be insane.

The Cush · 23-01-2020 10:13am

tuxy wrote: »

I think I remember someone saying that although 32:1 was possible that Open Eir actually use 31:1.

Ed E mentioned the 1:31 split previously with the 32nd for test purposes. I was browsing thru an open-eir doc yesterday and they mention 1:32.

lotas · 23-01-2020 10:23am

tuxy wrote: »

All public GPON services will be split, won't they? A line going from the exchange to every house would be insane.

Insane, not sure... possible... not sure either... but the link between the cab and the exchange could be higher than 1Gb/2.5Gb/10Gb... 25/50/100 and even 400gb optics are in the market, and if you got, say, 100gb to the cab and then split that 64 ways to houses, that would be 125mb/s minimum with 10gb very possible... 400gb to the cab allows 500mb/s minimum and again, 10gb easily possible... with a LOT less possibiliy for congestion. and those numbers dont account for DWDM options either...

Yes, 1gb is not really needed in houses at the moment, and 10gb definatly wont be required for a while, but think of the possibilites that would afford...

Marlow · 23-01-2020 10:35am

lotas wrote: »

Insane, not sure... possible... not sure either... but the link between the cab and the exchange could be higher than 1Gb/2.5Gb/10Gb... 25/50/100 and even 400gb optics are in the market, and if you got, say, 100gb to the cab and then split that 64 ways to houses, that would be 125mb/s minimum with 10gb very possible... 400gb to the cab allows 500mb/s minimum and again, 10gb easily possible... with a LOT less possibiliy for congestion. and those numbers dont account for DWDM options either...

Yes, 1gb is not really needed in houses at the moment, and 10gb definatly wont be required for a while, but think of the possibilites that would afford...

You are mixing and matching here.

- cabinets have nothing to do with FTTH. They are for VDSL (FTTC) only.
- FTTH is passive and fed from the exchange. All the way.
- 32 premises per cluster on the rural 300k on GPON with 2.5 Gbit/s down, 1.25 Gbit/s results in approx 80 Mbit/s per premise uncontended.
- 64 premises per cluster on the urban IFN on XGS-PON with 10 Gbit/s down, 10 Gbit/s up results in approx 160 Mbit/s per premise uncontented.

So in theory, 150 Mbit/s circuits on the IFN (which is what the majority of people order) are uncontended ... but that's only on the last mile. Upstream from the exchange also plays in.

At the end of the day, it is a residential product and with the pricing it is sold at, no provider will give you FTTH speeds uncontended. It would be making them a loss.

/M

lotas · 23-01-2020 10:48am

Marlow wrote: »

- cabinets have nothing to do with FTTH. They are for VDSL (FTTC) only.

When i said cabnet, i was talking about the underground vault at the top of the road...

Marlow wrote: »

FTTH is passive and fed from the exchange. All the way.

if the fiber from my house goes all the way to the exchange uncontended, then, in theory, some provider *could* take that link and bring it all the way to a datacenter with no contention and a larger fee, right?

Marlow · 23-01-2020 11:26am

lotas wrote: »

if the fiber from my house goes all the way to the exchange uncontended, then, in theory, some provider *could* take that link and bring it all the way to a datacenter with no contention and a larger fee, right?

Correct. And with SIRO that is possible, for a premium. However with OpenEir that will never happen, because it would compete with their NGN products.

So they won't entertain that, even if a provider asks.

/M

lotas · 23-01-2020 12:35pm

Marlow wrote: »

Correct. And with SIRO that is possible, for a premium. However with OpenEir that will never happen, because it would compete with their NGN products.

So they won't entertain that, even if a provider asks.

/M

Wonder what the AirWire lads do... They have a Layer 2 option over FTTH... was asking questions about it, but cant remember off hand what the contention was... need to go digging (also, its not cheap... and there was no transit by default...)

Airwire: MartinL · 23-01-2020 12:37pm

lotas wrote: »

Wonder what the AirWire lads do... They have a Layer 2 option over FTTH... was asking questions about it, but cant remember off hand what the contention was... need to go digging (also, its not cheap... and there was no transit by default...)

Our layer2 product on FTTH also has contention specified. Due to the nature of how OpenEIR build their network, there is no way we can do this uncontended. On top of that, all FTTH profiles are asymetric on OpenEIR.

On the other hand, the pricing is a lot more affordable than our NGN based layer2 products.

lotas · 23-01-2020 12:57pm

Airwire: MartinL wrote: »

On the other hand, the pricing is a lot more affordable than our NGN based layer2 products.

Ohh, i fully agree... unfortunitly, its just out of my budget...

lotas · 23-01-2020 4:42pm

Just got off the phone with Eir Business after ordering... Will be installed next Wednesday. Area is showing with AirWire as available from the 22nd, so new build out. Will see if i get the new XSGPON device or the old stuff... will keep you updates. Fun part? Eir Sales still dont know what they are selling... Agent told me im getting 1000 GIGABYTE Broadband... 8Tbit/s would be nice, but would need a LOT of new hardware to run that...

Xertz · 25-01-2020 8:15pm

Has Open Eir actually started this rollout in any of the cities e.g. Dublin and Cork? So far it seems to be just the smaller urban areas / outer hinterlands and low hanging fruit like modern estates that already have ducting.

Where I am in Cork City we can't get CATV and are on VDSL2 from a cabinet which maxes out at about 52mbit/s and I know people both in Cork and Dublin (very close to the city centre) in worse situations where they can only get exchange launched VDSL and it's less than 20mbit/s. Quite large areas of Dublin 1 and 2 for example have fairly significant issues with slow internet connectivity as does the central island of Cork City.

Because those urban areas had telephone networks long before most of the rest of the country - automatic switching as far back as the 1920s and 30s, they were typically all wired underground to exchanges and didn't use junction cabinets. As a result, VDSL services are often poor as they need street cabinets. Some of those exchanges in the city centres have very few VDSL cabinets installed both due to the topology and due to lack of space to mount them on tight pavements etc.

Then because the business districts of cities had few houses, they tended not to have been cabled as the early cable networks were TV only. So, why bother?

You also get the odd housing estate that was never cabled and sometimes streets with older, non-developer led housing, especially in Cork.

You also get a lot of older estates that were underground-fed for phone service and have no breakout cabinets, so have no FTTC type VDSL.

To cut a long story short, I'm just surprised that Open Eir isn't more aggressively going after the areas that are poorly cabled and poorly served by VDSL in the cities. They'd make an absolute killing, as there are definitely islands of cities that have no access to Virgin Media and plenty of places that have very mediocre DSL services due to the network topology. You get huge uptake of gigabit internet / FTTH services in the city centres for example and in those skipped over houses and estates.

I'm absolutely amazed that Eir hasn't got full GPON coverage in central Cork and Dublin.

ED E · 26-01-2020 12:37am

Xertz wrote: »

Has Open Eir actually started this rollout in any of the cities e.g. Dublin and Cork? So far it seems to be just the smaller urban areas / outer hinterlands and low hanging fruit like modern estates that already have ducting.

Where I am in Cork City we can't get CATV and are on VDSL2 from a cabinet which maxes out at about 52mbit/s and I know people both in Cork and Dublin (very close to the city centre) in worse situations where they can only get exchange launched VDSL and it's less than 20mbit/s. Quite large areas of Dublin 1 and 2 for example have fairly significant issues with slow internet connectivity as does the central island of Cork City.

Because those urban areas had telephone networks long before most of the rest of the country - automatic switching as far back as the 1920s and 30s, they were typically all wired underground to exchanges and didn't use junction cabinets. As a result, VDSL services are often poor as they need street cabinets. Some of those exchanges in the city centres have very few VDSL cabinets installed both due to the topology and due to lack of space to mount them on tight pavements etc.

Then because the business districts of cities had few houses, they tended not to have been cabled as the early cable networks were TV only. So, why bother?

You also get the odd housing estate that was never cabled and sometimes streets with older, non-developer led housing, especially in Cork.

You also get a lot of older estates that were underground-fed for phone service and have no breakout cabinets, so have no FTTC type VDSL.

To cut a long story short, I'm just surprised that Open Eir isn't more aggressively going after the areas that are poorly cabled and poorly served by VDSL in the cities. They'd make an absolute killing, as there are definitely islands of cities that have no access to Virgin Media and plenty of places that have very mediocre DSL services due to the network topology. You get huge uptake of gigabit internet / FTTH services in the city centres for example and in those skipped over houses and estates.

I'm absolutely amazed that Eir hasn't got full GPON coverage in central Cork and Dublin.

Think about it.

PON in the countryside gets you new customers. PON in urban areas just converts existing customers - cost for little extra profit. The semi rural was always the low hanging fruit.

Xertz · 26-01-2020 2:20am

Well, it's actually been a dire strategy in the sense that in cable areas, Eir is no longer even the main access provider anymore. So, effectively they'll have a huge uphill battle to get back lucrative high-spend customers because they failed to invest.

KOR101 · 26-01-2020 8:46am

ED E wrote: »

Think about it.

PON in the countryside gets you new customers. PON in urban areas just converts existing customers - cost for little extra profit. The semi rural was always the low hanging fruit.

The focus seems to be on areas where SIRO and VM have expanded into. Balbriggan which is one of the places they have started is a case in point. It's defensive in nature.

There is a market in the cities where VM currently has no realistic competition but maybe apartments are just too difficult.

ED E · 26-01-2020 4:52pm

Xertz wrote: »

Well, it's actually been a dire strategy in the sense that in cable areas, Eir is no longer even the main access provider anymore. So, effectively they'll have a huge uphill battle to get back lucrative high-spend customers because they failed to invest.

Sorry but you don't know what you're talking about. If my memory serves me OE have over 2Mil active lines. VM around 0.8Mil. They're still dominating.

KOR101 wrote: »

The focus seems to be on areas where SIRO and VM have expanded into. Balbriggan which is one of the places they have started is a case in point. It's defensive in nature.

There is a market in the cities where VM currently has no realistic competition but maybe apartments are just too difficult.

Precisely, they've been firefighting while grabbing the low hanging rural fruit. Now that they've finished they'll be able to go to town on the urban rollout.

NB: On my way home last week passed 20 KNN vans working in South Dub. All over the place. Only one OE van but assume it was for them. Thats a big team, not for regular repairs. Gonna watch eircodes from that area on the APQs.

Xertz · 26-01-2020 6:11pm

I'm not sure what's with the tone of the response, but in dense urban areas with cable penetration, eir is no longer the dominant access provider. Failing to dominate areas with much higher spending power is generally not a great strategy for any business.

I was reading media references to statistics quite recently about the penetration of Virgin Media in Dublin in particular, where Virgin Media currently (late 2019) referencing that Virgin Media has approximately 60% of the broadband market in urban Dublin.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/eir-s-market-share-in-dublin-underscores-disaster-that-was-privatisation-1.3790164

It's also been a stated objective that Eir is planning to win back market share in the cities.

The facts are that in most urban areas VDSL from a technical point of view, is a far inferior product to Virgin's Hybrid fiber-coaxial DOCSIS setup, and is extremely poor on longer lines, which are a frequent issue in older urban areas.

There are currently 373,362 HFC cable broadband subs (none of which are outside urban areas due to nature of those networks) 630,529 VDSL subs (could be anywhere), 252,942 ADSL subs and 144,611 GPON/FTTP subs (predominantly rural and urban hinterlands)

Virgin have 26.2% of broadband subs and 24.3% of all fixed telephony.
Eir retail: 31.4% (obviously Open eir has a lot of indirect revenue beyond that)
Eir have about 45.3% of wholesale revenues.

For any company, ignoring what should be potentially your most high spend markets is not a very good strategy. The cities have a lot more spending power and there's serious revenue to be made by selling in services, particularly TV packages but also full triple play opportunities which Eir, Virgin and Vodafone are all geared up towards.

It just seems previous incarnations of Eir sat on their hands and let urban markets drift away from them.

Gonzo · 26-01-2020 6:36pm

Xertz wrote: »

It just seems previous incarnations of Eir sat on their hands and let urban markets drift away from them.

NTL/UPC/Virgin Media started building their Dublin network rapidly in the early 2000's when Eircom was still trying to peddle dial up and ISDN. By the time Eir had rolled out ADSL availability to most homes around 2004 or 2005, cable broadband was already available throughout most of Dublin and from 2007 onwards the speeds really started to jump regularly across the cable network. It wasn't till 2012 that Eir started offering speeds of more than 24megs, with many not getting VDSL till 2014 or 2015. By then cable was already offering speeds of over 100. Eir have their work cut out for them to try and undo and bring back a bigger audience from the cabled city areas.

Xertz · 26-01-2020 6:56pm

It looks like Eir's current management has genuinely changed the focus of the company. The vibe is very similar to when the cable companies suddenly realised they were actually broadband providers and not primarily selling cable tv anymore.

I guess being owned by a successful, non-incumbent telco might be causing a major cultural shift.
It took previous incarnations of Eir a very long time to fully wake up to the notion that the industry was opening up both because of major changes in how it was regulated and also due to complete transformation of the technologies involved.

It will be very interesting to see if they, in their current incarnation, are able to really transform their business into something far more modern and successful than it has been to-date. A lot of those former monopolies failed to recognise that times were a changing.

Just driving around Cork City, it's fairly obvious that Siro's also about to take a significant slice of the urban broadband pie and far more quickly than some might have imagined. There's loads of of fibre appearing on ESB poles in Cork and probably plenty more underground that's not visible.

greyhill · 27-01-2020 10:31am

KN are here and I'm getting the IFN connection and kit.

joe_99 · 27-01-2020 10:55am

greyhill wrote: »

KN are here and I'm getting the IFN connection and kit.

Thanks. Be interested to see the set up. Especially what the ONT looks like on the wall as it is quite large compared to the old one they used.

lotas · 27-01-2020 10:56am

greyhill wrote: »

KN are here and I'm getting the IFN connection and kit.

what provider are you using?

greyhill · 27-01-2020 11:19am

lotas wrote: »

what provider are you using?

Eir

lotas · 27-01-2020 11:21am

greyhill wrote: »

Eir

Is that the f2000 router they are putting in? Thats what they say im getting on business class on Wednesday... and do you have a choice of where you can get it installed?

The Cush · 27-01-2020 11:23am

greyhill wrote: »

KN are here and I'm getting the IFN connection and kit.

Where approx are you?

Last week I saw KN installing ducting in the Castletroy area of Limerick city, the area is already served by SIRO.

greyhill · 27-01-2020 11:25am

The Cush wrote: »

Where approx are you?

Last week I saw KN installing ducting in the Castletroy area of Limerick city, the area is already served by SIRO.

Mayo, installer said I am the first to get this in Connacht.

greyhill · 27-01-2020 11:28am

lotas wrote: »

Is that the f2000 router they are putting in? Thats what they say im getting on business class on Wednesday... and do you have a choice of where you can get it installed?

I haven't seen the kit yet. Getting the fibre through the duct is proving difficult, so we're not there yet. I'll post pictures as soon as its in. It'll be terminated where the phone connection came in to the house - I'm not looking for a new route or termination point.

greyhill · 27-01-2020 1:30pm

Installation is completed

lotas · 27-01-2020 8:01pm

How long in all did it take?

greyhill · 27-01-2020 8:07pm

lotas wrote: »

How long in all did it take?

A couple of hours. The main hold-up was getting the fibre through the duct, everything else was fast. I'd say it could be done in an hour in an ideal setting.

Xertz · 27-01-2020 10:30pm

The one thing I've never understood is why they can't just use a the existing phone line as a draw-line and use a fibre cable that carries a copper pair to replace it, if they've some regulatory obligation to preserve the copper path.

tuxy · 27-01-2020 11:06pm

Xertz wrote: »

The one thing I've never understood is why they can't just use a the existing phone line as a draw-line and use a fibre cable that carries a copper pair to replace it, if they've some regulatory obligation to preserve the copper path.

There is, legally they can't remove the copper phone line

tuxy · 27-01-2020 11:09pm

I admit that xgs pon ont is gigantic, there must have been a better choice than that.
Why did they go for one with so many ports?

lotas · 28-01-2020 8:02am

tuxy wrote: »

I admit that xgs pon ont is gigantic, there must have been a better choice than that.
Why did they go for one with so many ports?

probably the only one Huawei make at the moment without wifi (looks like there is a Wifi version of it too). Given that Eir's perfered partner for all this gear is Huawei, they probably wont be going to Nokia or any other provider for some gear, and Huawei for others... Plus, probably as easy to configure on their end, since its very simular to the existing GPON ONTs they have...

28-01-2020 11:44am

lotas wrote: »

probably the only one Huawei make at the moment without wifi (looks like there is a Wifi version of it too). Given that Eir's perfered partner for all this gear is Huawei, they probably wont be going to Nokia or any other provider for some gear, and Huawei for others... Plus, probably as easy to configure on their end, since its very simular to the existing GPON ONTs they have...

This is the one I got from Vodafone/OpenEir:

It's an ONT that slots into the fiber termination wall box. Very neat.

BarryM · 28-01-2020 12:18pm

MOD: Comments removed.

tuxy · 28-01-2020 12:36pm

ronoc wrote: »

This is the one I got from Vodafone/OpenEir:

It's an ONT that slots into the fiber termination wall box. Very neat.

That's not from their urban deployment though is it?
That ONT supports 1 Gbps not 10

lotas · 28-01-2020 2:21pm

BarryM wrote: »

MOD: Comments removed.

Looks like they just green lit their use in the 5G network... url]https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/28/boris-johnson-gives-green-light-for-huawei-5g-infrastructure-role[/url

28-01-2020 2:53pm

tuxy wrote: »

That's not from their urban deployment though is it?
That ONT supports 1 Gbps not 10

Yes it would be. Didn't realize they were doing 10gig ONTs?