[mike65]

With the recent burst of upgrade announcements by eircom and BT is there any news about wireless providers uping thier game? (yes I'm a digiweb customer!).

Mike.

[weeder]

by recent you mean months ago?
edit: just seen other thread

[watty]

I think 10Mbps Metro upgrade was made available ages before eircom talked about upgrade past 3Mbps for DSL.

From 4th October 2007

Many Wicklow Businesses can now also experience the benefits the Metro service brings, with packages from 2Mb up to 10Mb.

http://media.digiweb.ie/category/pr/


On 17th Sept 2007

10Mb Broadband
Business Broadband Updates

As part of revising our Business Broadband services, we’ve responded to feedback from you, the customer, with some reshuffling of packages. Metro Broadband is now available in 5 new flavors, ranging from 2Mb to 10Mb, all of which are great value for Irish Businesses. For a full comparison of Business Metro services, Click Here

If you would like to upgrade your current Metro package to any of the new services, please contact the Business team on 1800 94 1000 or leave a callback request.

from http://media.digiweb.ie/newsletters/...dvice/#more-82

Also

Dedicated Business Service

- 1:1 Business Connectivity- - Up to 1000Mbps Fibre

There are also I think dedicated Buisness Wireless to replace leased line etc at about 20Mbps with no contention and no cap. But that obviously is more expensive than home broadband.

At higher speeds eircom may start enforcing caps on heavy users as the backhaul is a fixed resource.

Digiweb also has DSL and a Mobile system markedly better than the Mobile Phone Companies 3G/HSDPA. It's only in parts of Dublin today, but with the success of that it will be going nationwide soon.

[pjproby]

Watty
The question is whether Digiweb is likely to match the speed increases currently being spoken about by Eircom, or being delivered by Smart or BT.
I know Digiweb have faster products but they are prohibitively expensive.
Is the metro system capable of delivering faster speeds at a reasonable cost?

[Sponge Bob]

good question , especially in May or June when the upgrades kick in.

equally good question for IBB of course!

[mike65]

Indeed its 2mb for 1mb I'm thinking about - normal usage stuff - not business class.

Mike.

[Sponge Bob]

Digiweb are going to find the competition hotting up in the 1mbit space this year after the wholesale price cut. Now if they upped their entry level from 1mbit to 2mbit they could stand out a bit from the crowd.

[watty]

Only eircom makes any money out of DSL. Upto 3Mbps on DSL there is no difference in exhange to User cost, it's the backhaul only that costs eircom more.

For ALL wireless sytems the last link of the chain does cost more directly according to the speed as well as the backhaul cost.

On Wireless there is no line rental overhead.

If the wholesale DSL price is cut Digiweb DSL customers will benefit as much as anyone elses DSL customers. The bulk of wireless serves those whose lines fail on enabled exchanges (up to 40%) or those who have no line (31%) or who are not on DSL enabled exchange (10% according to eircom).

Many 512k to 2Mbps wireless products cost less than the eircom line rental, so they are hardly going to upgrade speed for free. You'll have to pay a different price for different packages.

Many DSL resellers make little or no profit. Some major Wireless operations have never really been profitable (not Digiweb , but YOU know who you are. Little money is made on LLU DSL, the major LLU player still needs to dramatically increase price to be profitable in a normal sense. They have lost a lot in the past.

Perlico lost 17m last year.

The fact is that given the high cost of dual channel ISDN and lack of any true flat rate dialup there is a substantial market for a cheap product even at 200Kbps.

While some people want more speed, many "ordinary" people only want fixed low cost and enough speed for daily email and odd web page look up / pay road tax etc..

I know lots of "occasional" users who regard DSL as too expensive. So four markets:

1. Casual user ( 200Kbps, needs cheap & fixed price)
2. Regular user (cap is not an issue, 1 to 3Mbps, wants more speed at same price)
3. Mad Downloader (Cap size is an issue)
4. Business Use (Leased Line replacement, self hosting, > 20 users etc)

Most of the population is (1) or (2).
Boards posters tend to be (2) or (3).
(4) is very badly served in Ireland. The basic Wireless or home Cable/ DSL packages are useless for major Business operations such as ebay, Intel, Dell, Sage, Microsoft, large schools or Colleges.


The strange fact is that there are about 10 times as many ISPs in Ireland as makes any commercial sense, and yet while we have generally the highest prices at lowest speeds, only about 20% of ISPs here are actually profitable.

Obviously eircom's Wholesale shouldn't be among the loss making operators.

[pjproby]

Watty,
i remember years ago asking a relative of mine, who works in eircom, when would they give us broadband and his reply was along the lines "do ye really need it".
Having read yours I am feeling guilty for using it and costing all those people who provide it all those losses they are incurring.
Was perlico sold recently?

[Wcool]

Let's say that in somewhere in the future (5? 10? or even more years), people everywhere in Ireland can avail of 20Mbps. Fibre or so.

Is there any room in wireless technology to go faster than 10Mb?

[Blaster99]

If we were to believe watty, there's no future in wireless other than picking up customers who can't get ADSL. Not exactly a business with a lot of prospect and a little surprising considering the Metro push by Digiweb, which by and large targets areas with many alternatives. I guess the wireless providers will have to fight for the 1Mbps users with lower margins, which will be difficult because I'm sure the equipment and installation overhead is quite significant. 1Mbps users are of course also a dying breed with the internet moving towards content that requires high-bandwidth. It looks like we need to look at UPC and the LLU providers for proper competition and innovation. Nothing new there as they are the providers who have been increasing speeds over the last couple of years.

[mike65]

Hmm UPC were through my letterbox again this week this thier 3 mb/phone/tv bundle.

Mike.

[watty]

Originally Posted by Blaster99

If we were to believe watty, there's no future in wireless other than picking up customers who can't get ADSL.

Not what I'm saying at all.

But many people can't get DSL. They may be on Wireless systems that never can do more than 2Mbps. Some systems have poor latency. The 90% DSL coverage is a lie. Only 69% have lines. Only 90% of those are enabled and in some areas up to 40% fail... to me that means that real DSL coverage is 35% to 60% of households. (The real figures are only known to eircom).

It's physics that the higher they enable the speed of the exchange the more lines fail and have to be set back to the lower speed. A significant proportion of DSL won't do more than 4Mbps.

The Digiweb Metro system though does have speeds and latency comparable with the best DSL & Cable. 10Mbps since September 2007. It's a viable high performance alternative even if you can get DSL.

But there is a huge variation in wireless technologies from systems with up to 2000ms ping (twice as bad as Satellite) and down to dialup speeds, to Business systems that can deliver 20Mbps at 30km. xDSL speed drops with exchange distance badly. Only people within 8km will ever get better than 8Mbps. Some wireless systems are limited only by Comreg Licence circle.

The operators that can't make money reselling eircom or can't do Wireless with 10Mbps performance are not going to last out. The DSL speed increases are no threat to Nationwide High Performance Wireless operator, nor to the small rural community operation where DSL is never going to reach.

[watty]

Originally Posted by Wcool

Let's say that in somewhere in the future (5? 10? or even more years), people everywhere in Ireland can avail of 20Mbps. Fibre or so.

Is there any room in wireless technology to go faster than 10Mb?

Yes.
You can get 1Gbps wireless. (not for home users today).

Today 10Mbps Home package and 20Mbs to 1000Mbps business packages.

If you pay for two home packages it's possible to aggregate with a Linux Gateway to a total of 20Mbps to serve say 40 PCs in a School or business. There is little need for a single user to have more than 2Mbps. IPTV does of course need 4Mbps peak standard Definition and 20Mbps peak HDTV, to give equivalent to Sky BBC quality. But IPTV is going to be on a separate QOS (Quality of Service) managed port that has priority over your download, so on a 8Mps connection your speed will vary dropping to less than 4Mbps when TV peaks at 4Mbps. Also the IPTV part would be 1:1 contention and the "ordinary" connection at usual 10:1 to 48:1 contention depending on how much you pay.

In the UK higher advertised speeds have resulted in higher contention such that the majority of people only see 1/3rd to 1/2 of their advertised "up to" speed. Ofcom is looking into it

[watty]

Unless there is some kind of revolution where people selling home fibre modems take over you are NEVER EVER* going to see universal fibre or anything like more than 15% of people on 20Mbps + xDSL.

(* well NEVER EVER is maybe too long a time scale, what does Sponge Bob think of Cold Fronts on the hot place and porcine Aviators in relation to universal 20Mbps via wires or fibre?).