eircom, Ireland's incumbent telco, is implementing vectoring on its hybrid copper and FTTC (fiber to the cabinet) last mile network, a move that will enable its wholesale customer to deliver up to 100 Mbps over existing copper.
Leveraging gear from Huawei, it will be deploying the technology early next year across their next generation access (NGA) network and included in new cabinets that are added to the network.
Available to competitors to use to deliver higher speed services to their customers, NGA uses a mix of FTTC with a hybrid fiber/copper VDSL2 connection and fiber to the premises (FTTP).
When it completes its last mile fiber network in June 2015, eircom forecasts that 700,000 homes and businesses throughout Ireland will be able to get up to 70 Mbps or higher speeds, while over 400,000 homes will be able to get access to up to 100 Mbps.
Carolan Lennon, managing director of eircom Wholesale, told the Irish Independent that this network expansion will enable it to serve 300 communities that are not served by cable competitor UPC. Despite its move, over 400,000 rural households can still only get dial-up Internet access.
eircom has been aggressive in expanding its NGA network. It estimates that 15 km of fiber is being rolled out each day with 75 new remote terminal (RT) cabinets reaching 15,000 additional customers each week.
For more:
- see the release
- Irish Independent has this article
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