Eircom to expand broadband speeds four-fold
Sunday, November 04, 2007 - By Adrian Weckler
Eircom plans to upgrade up to a third of its broadband lines to facilitate speeds of 25 megabits per second (Mbs) - more than four times the speed of its current highest home service - by 2010, according to its chief technology officer.

Geoff Shakespeare said that 37 exchanges - representing almost 600,000 working phone lines - have been earmarked for the upgrade.

He also said that, in the next three years, more than half of all the company's phone lines are planned to be upgraded to facilitate speeds of 12Mbs. The upgrades represent a €60 million investment in the company's “core network'‘, according to Shakespeare.

He said towns with at least 2,000 working lines will be prioritised for the build-out and that the services will have “no contention ratio'‘, meaning speeds will not vary depending on how many others are on the line at the same time.

“It's being driven by decentralisation, demands by enterprise and also competition from cable companies,” said Shakespeare.

However, until then, most users will only see “incremental'‘ speed increases of up to 6Mbs over the next two years, he said.

Shakespeare said that Eircom's investment in creating a ‘next generation network' will be based on both very high speed digital subscriber lines (VDSL) and ADSL 2 technology.

“Theoretically, VDSL can get you 100Mbs, but 25 is more realistic. We have 37 exchanges initially marked for VDSL and are waiting for the business case for enabling them to be signed off. ADSL 2 is ideally up to 24Mbs, but on our network you're looking at about 12Mbs.

“But that's just up to 1 kilometre from the exchange. After that, it begins to drop off. Putting VDSL into our cabinets and driving that from there is our plan.”

Shakespeare said that eliminating the speed of contention and backhaul would boost users' broadband experience.

“In the current environment, up to 6Mbs is as much as our lines will take,” he said.

“The goal now is to take the contention out of the network and take backhaul out of the network. Our current average loop length is about 2.7 kilometres, but some are as long as eight to nine kilometres. The longer it is, the more speeds drops off the line in the current environment.”

Shakespeare said faster speeds will enable Eircom to enter new markets, such as television. He said the company was about to launch a trial in Temple Bar showing TV and film content over broadband lines. This will be among a test audience of up to 100 people, he said.

The service will entail ‘on-demand' programmes and films, where users can pick programmes from any part of listed TV schedules and pause, fast-forward or rewind through the broadcast. Content could include films such as Die Hard 4.0, as well as hundreds of hours of BBC, ITV and RTE content.

Eircom is currently obtaining the temporary rights from TV stations' rights holders to switch the service on. The service is the first shot in Eircom's pursuit of becoming a ‘triple play’ operator, providing telephone, broadband and television over one phone line.

Shakespeare said that Eircom is following models used in other European countries.

“The proof is in Holland, Belgium, France and Britain,” he said. “At a certain point, exchange-based copper will become uncompetitive.”

Shakespeare said that Eircom will also provide a new home-fibre broadband service - with a speed of 24Mbs - to 100 apartments in Sandyford, most of which are social housing units. He said that the trial will be free for a year for the residents.

“Whereas before we took the view that broadband was purely demand led, we're now taking a punt on broadband in the future,” he said.