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SIRO - ESB/Vodafone Fibre To The Home

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Comments

  • 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.


  • 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?


  • 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.


  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,439 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.


  • 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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  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,439 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!


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,112 ✭✭✭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


  • Registered Users Posts: 776 ✭✭✭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.


  • Registered Users Posts: 776 ✭✭✭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


  • Registered Users Posts: 160 ✭✭sparky63


    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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  • Registered Users Posts: 36,163 ✭✭✭✭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


  • Registered Users 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.


  • Registered Users 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.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,917 ✭✭✭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.


  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,439 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.


  • 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.


  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,439 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.


  • 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.


  • Registered Users Posts: 36,163 ✭✭✭✭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.


  • Registered Users Posts: 48,131 ✭✭✭✭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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  • Registered Users Posts: 776 ✭✭✭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.


  • 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


  • 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.


  • Registered Users Posts: 48,131 ✭✭✭✭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.....


  • 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.


  • Registered Users Posts: 36,163 ✭✭✭✭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.


  • Registered Users 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....


  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,439 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.


  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,439 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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  • 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!


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