The Irish Times reports that Eircom invests €100m in broadband - I can't help having a giggle at this news. I have berated Eircom many times in this blog, and some Eircom folks have actually read my posts and reacted to them.
Eircom's new announcement is welcome news for Ireland, but I'm certain that it will have absolutely no impact on their service to my house. Their new fibre to the home (FTTH) technology is expected to support speeds of up to 150Mbps. This is about 100 times faster than they are currently supplying me. I feel as if the Government has just announced a new motorway costing millions that will carry thousands of vehicles, but the road outside my house is full of potholes. Who needs 150mbps at home? Some day of course Eircom see themselves providing TV and video-on-demand online - naturally they want to be in a position with their network to capitalise on this.
My own thoughts are that it is a mistake to spend millions on fixed cable - inevitably it will go out of date and need to be upgraded again in the future. I feel that wireless is the best way to go - much easier to upgrade, more attractive for consumers who are using more and more wireless devices, and less digging up of the streets.
Eircom's new announcement is welcome news for Ireland, but I'm certain that it will have absolutely no impact on their service to my house. Their new fibre to the home (FTTH) technology is expected to support speeds of up to 150Mbps. This is about 100 times faster than they are currently supplying me. I feel as if the Government has just announced a new motorway costing millions that will carry thousands of vehicles, but the road outside my house is full of potholes. Who needs 150mbps at home? Some day of course Eircom see themselves providing TV and video-on-demand online - naturally they want to be in a position with their network to capitalise on this.
My own thoughts are that it is a mistake to spend millions on fixed cable - inevitably it will go out of date and need to be upgraded again in the future. I feel that wireless is the best way to go - much easier to upgrade, more attractive for consumers who are using more and more wireless devices, and less digging up of the streets.
Hi there,
ReplyDeletePicked up your link on Twitter. Installing fibre is a bit like buying spectrum for mobile service. You can continually upgrade the electronics at either end to increase speed and use new technologies. So I don't think it will risk becoming out of date.
As for mobile, the ever increasing demand for mobile data is one of the reasons the fibre roll-out is needed. There is only Li.ogre capacity over the air so the data needs transporting from the base station by fibre. 4G will demand huge amounts of fibre and is expected to be a big driver of demand for the new network.
Hope that's useful comment.
Stephen Beynon
Eircom