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Story's about National Broadband Scheme, ADSL roll out etc in Ireland and industry commentary are welcome.

Exchanges being upgraded to ADSL 2+

From the Eircom website, here's a list of exchanges due to be upgraded to ADSL 2+
From eircom website:

(Tuesday, 22nd July 2008) eircom is currently implementing a series of DSL broadband speed upgrades which will significantly increase Internet speeds available to a large portion of eircom's retail and wholesale customers.


The upgrade programme consists of two stages:
1. The installation of ADSL2+ equipment in 117 of the largest exchanges in Ireland.
2. An automated software upgrade for the majority of eircom retail and wholesale customers currently on 2Mb or 3Mb broadband.


Stage 1 - ADSL2+ Upgrade
The installation of ADSL2+ equipment to our largest telephone exchanges allows eircom to offer speeds of up to 12Mb on its network. This process has been completed in more than 100 exchanges to date. Existing broadband customers, previously on 4Mb or 6Mb broadband, that have a line which qualifies for the faster speeds and who are connected to one of the following exchanges are in the process of being upgraded to 10Mb and 12Mb respectively.

List Of Completed Exchanges

Stage 2 - Automated Software Upgrades
The automated software upgrade for eircom retail and wholesale DSL customers is underway and will take place over a number of phases. Customers on the 2Mb product, whose lines pre-qualify will be upgraded to 3Mb and customers on the 3Mb product whose lines pre-qualify will be upgraded to 7.6Mb.

Phase 1

Qualifying customers in these areas have already been upgraded

Phase 2 - July

Exchanges scheduled for upgrade over the weekend of 26th July

Phase 2 - August

Exchanges scheduled for upgrade over the weekend of 9th August


A schedule for broadband upgrades for all remaining exchanges will be published as soon as it has been finalised and other operators have been informed.

Documents are in PDF format, you'll need Adobe Acrobat to read them

True ADSL choice....your kidding me right?

So who exactly re-sells Eircom Wholesales Bit-Stream ADSL product, well here's a short list: (if I'm missing anyone drop me a e-mail)

- Eircom Retail
- BT
- Imagine
- Perlico
- Vodafone
- UTV
- TalkTalk
- Digiweb
- Irish Broadband
- IFA Telecom

Some of these providers also may have their own LLU (Local Loop Unbundled) ADSL or ADSL2+ services but you'll find that the vast majority of their home/consumer ADSL services are likely provided via Eircom Wholesales offering.

This is often all new to some people and it really shows how limited true choice for a different ADSL package in Ireland really is, especially when compared to the packages that the likes of a true LLU provider like Smart Telecom provide.

In short you'll find that basically all the package the above providers provide are more or less the same...yet another reason why Eircom Sucks!

No Surprise! Dial-up still "popular" in Ireland

This is honestly no surprise, its nothing to do with people choosing dialup over Broadband and its more to do with people have NO CHOICE when it comes to using dialup over Broadband because they just can't get Broadband!

Its certainly not popular...popular is used incorrectly its more to do with no other available internet access for most people.

Discussed on Ireland Off-Line forum on boards.ie

Taken from: http://www.enn.ie/article/10124572.html

Some 35 percent of Irish internet users go online using a dial-up connection, far higher than the European average of just 12 percent.

That's according to the European Commission's 'E-communications Household Survey', which shows that although Ireland's PC penetration rate (58 percent) and internet penetration rate (49 percent) are on a par with the average European rate, our broadband take-up still lags behind. Broadband penetration in Ireland stands at 20 percent, well below the European average of 36 percent.

Eircom's old ADSL mouse compaign

Anyone remember this?
"Turn your mouse into a super mouse!"

Well back in 2001 when ADSL basically didn't hardly exist anywhere in towns up and down Ireland a number of people created errorcom.com (no longer exists) and they also created errorcom t-shirts.



I've done abit of historical searching and found a picture of one of the suggested designs, from what I'm aware the t-shirts were never made or sold due to legal reasons....its also worth noting that eircom shutdown errorcom.com and eircon.org...both satire sites.

Its sad to see that still ADSL availability and line pass rates are still poor for people outside large towns and citys through-out Ireland...especially compared to the UK.