NBP part II

I wonder how long before this one hits 10,000 posts

How many parts will we have before everyone sees fibre I wonder

Reminder that RISPA are on at 2:
https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/oireachtas-tv/cr1-live/

oscarBravo wrote: »

The old NBP thread had hit the 10,000-post threshold that makes the boards.ie hamsters cry, so here's a shiny new one.

You.....you killed my baby...you monster :pac:

Persiancowboy wrote: »

Think these goons commissioned economist Colm McCarthy to do some "analysis" on the NBP some years ago. He's one of the Doheny & Nesbitt School of Economics and one of these guys who thinks the world starts and stops at the Red Cow Roundabout.

Different group. That was Wispa. Rispa was only formed end last year.

/M

Marcus Matthews on Ivan Yates just now.

heavydawson wrote: »

Not a very convincing performance from either side today. The committee were poorly briefed on the wireless technology, and the one member who should be (Lawless) spent half his speaking time sympathising with them before outlining his concerns. They were repeatedly let assert that because the wireless technology would be used for 2% of the NBP, it satisfied the technological criteria for the other 98%. The chair was the only person who I believed was challenging the figures being thrown out.

Deputy Lawless had some previous with Imagine.
https://jameslawless.ie/coverage-announced-rural-broadband-kildare-north/

On speeds, it's only luck and a bit of finesse by the Dept that has raised the minimum to 150Mb/s. The NGA/DAE specification is still 30Mb/s (min).

They seemed to be hoping for a GBS type voucher scheme. Anyone that remembers the GBS will know that it got bogged down in bureaucracy and had to be abandoned.

RISPA's submission (the plan) to the Oireachtas Committee.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4unlmidavv4n09v/Submission%20to%20Communications%20Committee.pdf?dl=0

Emmanuel Lemon Louse wrote: »

Q4 2019 for rollout start.

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/government-sets-date-for-rollout-of-national-broadband-plan-38322370.html

Just piggy-backing on your post Navi. Press release by DCCAE today in relation to the above.

https://www.dccae.gov.ie/en-ie/news-and-media/press-releases/Pages/Press-Release-Minister-Bruton-Updates-Government-on-the-National-Broadband-Plan.aspx

I'm holding my breath for an Eir response that I hope won't come.

Jim

Emmanuel Lemon Louse wrote: »

Yep. I'm anticipating something similar myself.

Think they've had their chance. I'm sure theyl release something but the fear of them delaying the rollout has passed imo

ECO_Mental wrote: »

From the DCCAE website

"150Mbps broadband product available for consumers upgraded to 300Mbps by year 6 and 500Mbps by year 10"

Are they capping the DL speeds to 150mbs? this is enough for the vast majority of people, but I'd like the option of going to 1Gbs.

Thats minimums.

BandMember wrote: »

They're bound to go for a lot of easy wins first - it's all about optics and stats, need to get visible results quickly to kill any bad press and/or opposition (T.D.'s mainly) rumblings.

Yeah probably places in Donegal, remote parts of Kerry etc. It will all be about delivering positive PR after the sh1tstorm the WISP's managed to stir up against it.

BandMember wrote: »

theguzman wrote: »

It will be interesting to see what sort a strategy will they adapt once they finally start rolling it out. Will they target the worst areas first or will they start the build out from where EIR has left off. It seems they will be renting the poles from Eir and stringing the Fibre out using EIR's poles and ducts is the general consensus. I'm 2km from my local exchange on 12mb ADSL2+ 0.6mb upload. Alot of the areas which had absolutely nothing near me have got EIR's FTTH already but obviously concentrated along main roads etc.

They're bound to go for a lot of easy wins first - it's all about optics and stats, need to get visible results quickly to kill any bad press and/or opposition (T.D.'s mainly) rumblings.

But what constitutes an easy win ?

I suspect, my area for example, where we have about 15 houses on a 1 mile stretch of road, islanded by eirs rural fibre deployment. We are less than a mile from fibre, but its eir rural fibre, and if my understanding is correct, they wont be extending on from this, but running new fibre from distribution point many miles away, so low return for large effort. Frustrating, but I suspect areas like this will be nearly the last to be done.

wexfordman2 wrote: »

But what constitutes an easy win ?

I suspect, my area for example, where we have about 15 houses on a 1 mile stretch of road, islanded by eirs rural fibre deployment. We are less than a mile from fibre, but its eir rural fibre, and if my understanding is correct, they wont be extending on from this, but running new fibre from distribution point many miles away, so low return for large effort. Frustrating, but I suspect areas like this will be nearly the last to be done.

In in the same position and I suspect that you might be right but there are likely other factors to add to that equation which could produce a different outcome.

1. Could the start of intervention activities prompt eir to continue to the low fruit they strategically left quickly before nbi is available? That switching fee could be lucrative if they manage to connect a house.

2. Given that nbi are tackling the intervention area only, how many houses will be close to where their build out starts? Like will there be many houses that are actually easier for them?
The press release send to say that all counties would start end of 2019 so I guess the prioritisation happens withing the county rather than at a national level...

The press release from the DCCAE has some interesting data:

The NBI network will involve:


Over 1.5 million poles
Over 15,000 km underground ducts
Up to 146,000 km new fibre cable
Running along 100,000 km of the road network
150Mbps broadband product available for consumers upgraded to 300Mbps by year 6 and 500Mbps by year 10
Up to 1Gbps products for businesses, also upgraded to 2 Gbps by year 11 and incrementally beyond that.
Primarily FTTH will be deployed, with circa 2% premises via a high standard wireless connection which will also be upgraded over time.

Source: https://www.dccae.gov.ie/en-ie/news-and-media/press-releases/Pages/Press-Release-Minister-Bruton-Updates-Government-on-the-National-Broadband-Plan.aspx

There's no indication that the 150mbps speed is a minimum. If anything it appears to be a single product offering.
This is further re-inforced by the explicit use of the "Up to 1Gbps products for businesses", so after 11 years, businesses will only be able to get up to 2gbps?

This is troubling. Has anyone got any information to counter this? Is there any official documentation to suggest:
1. There is more than one consumer offering on day one
2. If (1), that there would be a 1gbps consumer offering

The high horse brigade wrote: »

The existing offerings on fibre are up to 1gbps why would this be any different. There has never been a mention of a maximum speed nor will there as 10gbps+ is very possible in future with new optics

The existing _commercial_ offerings on fibre are up to 1gbps. If I recall, the terms of reference for the NBP are only such that the price of the NBP product should be equivalent to that to that in the non-intervention area.

i.e., NBI are only obliged to offer their product(s) at the same price as other similar products outside the intervention area. There aren't that many products at that specific speed (Imagines 5G-Ready does come to mind though).

The government does not stipulate (that I can tell), that NBI must offer the full range of products that OpenEir offer, including 1gbps offerings for the consumer.

It would also suggest that NBI are keeping backhaul/bandwidth purchasing requirements low by capping the throughput that each premise can receive.

I hope I'm wrong and the press release is just misleading.

The high horse brigade wrote: »

Now that's a conspiracy theory!

I wouldn't go that far. Here's who decides which speeds the current Fibre providers can supply to end-users:
https://www.openeir.ie/Products/Broadband/Next_Generation_Access/

NBI will be operating in the same space as OpenEir (wholesale), so their NGA-equivalent product(s) appear to be:
1. 150mbps (Consumer)
2. 1gbps (Business)

So they're clearly differentiating between the two, probably offering higher SLAs for the business product, etc.

NBI still ultimately has to buy all of those Xbps from someone, so it's not a conspiracy theory to suggest they're controlling costs.

Also, still waiting for someone to point me to DCCAE/NBP documentation showing a mandated "up to" 1gbps and/or multiple consumer products on day one.


The wholesale costs for fibre from OpenEir are:

NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 150Mbps 31/08/2015 31/08/2016 20.50
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 150Mbps 01/09/2016 30/06/2019 23.50
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 150Mbps 01/07/2019 30/06/2020 29.34
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 150Mbps 10/07/2020 30/0602021 29.49
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 300Mbps 31/08/2015 31/08/2016 25.50
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 300Mbps 01/09/2016 30/06/2019 28.50
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 300Mbps 01/07/2019 30/06/2020 34.34
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 300Mbps 10/07/2020 30/0602021 34.49
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 1000Mbps 31/08/2015 31/08/2016 35.50
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 1000Mbps 01/09/2016 30/06/2019 38.50
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 1000Mbps 01/07/2019 30/06/2020 44.34
NGA Bitstream Plus Standalone 1000Mbps 10/07/2020 30/0602021 44.49

Source: https://www.openeir.ie/Reference_Offers/?selectedtab=wbaro

Drawing some comparisons to pricing structure here, we can assume that NBI will have similar wholesale product prices, where 1gbps is ~ 50% more expensive than 150mbps. If NBI wanted to offer that 1gbps to all 540k, they'd have to purchase upstream capacity, without any guarantee that it would be used.
By focussing on the 150mbps:
1. they're minimising their upstream costs
2. they're offering a product that matches the other major wholesale operator
3. they're minimising their exposure to a lot of unused bandwidth due to low uptake

They may have to continue to match OpenEirs offerings (on the low end NGA product) as they change over time, but perhaps that's their only obligation?

clohamon wrote: »

Looking at the RISPA plan, the assumptions and costings (rounded) seem to be as follows.

Equipment:
Expected to be available by Q1 2020
Claimed downlink 150Mb/s (see provisioning below)

Coverage:
Coverage modelled as 5km hexagons (86.6Kms2)
Ireland completely flat
No obstructions or vegetation
Site available at the centre of each hexagon
69K Kms2 / 86.6Kms2 = 795 sites

Provisioning:
Eircom roll-out to extra 150k premises.
Eircom to disclose which premises they’re going to cover.
Existing 125k WISP excluded and do not overlap with Eircom 150K
542K - 150K -125K = 267K
267K / 6360 base stations = 42 premises/ base station

Costs:
Free fibre backhaul capex to all sites.
Backhaul fibre regulated to <€0.30/metre (State MSE)
Free 96 MHz spectrum in 700MHz band.
Free 100 MHz spectrum in 2.1, or 2.3 or 2.6GHz band
6360 base stations x €5,300 = €34M
267K premises x €495 CPE = €132M
Rollout costs €166M x 1.5 = 248M
Total Costs = €166M + €248M = €414M

Funding:
€500M @ 2.5% for 5 yrs
Voucher scheme = €414M / 267K = €1550/premises

Any chance of a link to the source doc?
"Ireland completely flat" / "Free fibre backhaul capex to all sites." :-D

oscarBravo wrote: »

Yup. It does. Those are the consumer products, and there will be business products as well as symmetric Ethernet products available separately.

Fantastic. Very happy to be making incorrect assumptions in this case. :-D