Fixing Ireland’s telecommunications infrastructure mess

Ireland’s telecommunications regulatory mechanism is failing to address the realities of the ‘new’ telecommunications infrastructure, in an intelligent way.

Fiber to the premises (ie broadband internet) (FTTP, FTTH etc) is being needlessly duplicated – with at least two separate fiber grids – ie siro.ie and eir.ie. Virgin Media’s coaxial network is a third semi-fat pipe infrastructure. All three operators appear to me to be not very customer oriented. Most European countries, including IRL have electricity generation competition – but only one network which is shared among vendors. Similarly there is only one gas pipeline serving most premises and one water (originally was 'waster', a combo of water in and waste water out) pipe. Duplication and triplication is wasteful, and increases the fixed cost of installation and maintenance.

5G mobile will, in general rely on much higher air interface frequencies. High frequency radio means a short range. In urban areas, every country will need a 5G cellsite on ‘virtually every lamppost’. One might have 40 to 100 5G cellsites in time, per km2, in urban areas.

There are currently three mobile phone networks. In general, coverage is patchy, especially in non-urban areas and along railway lines and country roads. The same case can be made for a single 5G cellsite network. It avoids triplication not only in terms of cellsite investment and maintenance costs – but also in planning ugliness, which in turn offers poorer overall coverage of the entire country. A single 5G platform would offer the best overall coverage, at lowest cost.

Taking the two platforms together, 5G cellsites will require far more backhaul to the network core bandwidth (than legacy cellsites) because of the higher data speeds and volumes of data traffic. The volume of data transported is doubling every few years. If Ireland had a single fiber platform, it could provide FTTP internet/telephone directly to each premises in the state. The same fiber infrastructure could provide backhaul to all / most mobile phone cellsites.

A single air interface platform of cellsites could be shared among all mobile networks. In effect, their customers would be engaged in national roaming on the single national cellular platform. Existing legacy cellsites could be pooled into the new single 5G infrastructure.

The total cost of 5G and fiber to the premises infrastructure using a single platform concept would probably work out at about 50% or less (than the cost of 3 competing fiber and three competing cellular air interfaces).

There is also the issue of Eir’s legacy ‘plain old telephone service’ and ISDN system. The switching fabric is over thirty years old. Andorra has a single fiber to the premises platform, and it has replaced cable TV, competing internet infrastructures and conventional PSTN and ISDN phones. Telecom Andorra has been able to focus on a single fiber platform using SIP instead of old fashioned copper pair phones. Which means one less network to maintain, provide power to etc. Andorran homes that just require a landline are given a fiber box with sockets for telephones to be plugged into. Andorra started this transition over a decade ago, and is now reaping the benefit of rational planning having being well implemented.

Ireland could save customers a fortune by rationalising the delivery platforms for both fiber and mobile and deliver close to nation-wide coverage for both systems.

The cost of capital and the return on same is a key issue in terms of the scale and quality of coverage. The existing ramshackle triplication of ‘in the field’ network infrastructure will probably be economic in a few cities – albeit with the added visual and radiation pollution caused by the 5G infrastructure using higher frequencies. It will not be economic to build out three 5G networks on a national basis, with the result that rural areas, railway lines and country roads will be left with no service or patchy service, at best.