"All service providers are being offered the opportunity to participate in the NGA access program, in line with eircom Wholesale's commitment to ensure that NGA pilot access is open and equivalent."

– Paul Doyle

NGA: leveraging nationwide network reach

On July 28 2011 eircom Group announced Phase 1 of a planned multi-year rollout that envisages the provision of fibre based services to one million homes and businesses across Ireland.

Phase 1 of the plan will see upgraded infrastructure delivered to 100,000 premises by summer 2012.

The locations include:

Mervue (Galway); Douglas (Cork); Dooradoyle (Limerick); Tallaght, Ballyboden, Palmerstown (Dublin); Clonee, Co Meath; Letterkenny, Co Donegal; Swords, Donabate, Co Dublin.

This will involve an initial investment of over €100 million, upgrading the existing copper access network with fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) and fibre to the home (FTTH) technologies.

Phase II includes thirteen communities in eight counties across the country. Work is expected to commence late this summer and will continue through to the end of 2012.

The communities include:

Shantalla (Galway); Quaker Rd (Cork); Limerick City (Limerick); Rathedmond (Sligo); Ballincollig (Cork); Belcamp, Dun Laoghaire, Rochestown (Dublin); Ennis, (Clare); Drogheda, (Louth); Bray, (Wicklow); Ballina and Castlebar(Mayo).

Once Phase II is completed, fibre will pass 250,000 homes and businesses within the 27 selected areas, enabling Wholesale customers to provide speeds of 40 Mbps and beyond. The upgraded infrastructure will largely use fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) technology, but some direct fibre to the home (FTTH) will be used in certain areas.

The Next-Generation Access program builds upon the National Fibre Network and NGN core rollout to bring fibre over the last mile direct to customer premises or to the neighbourhood telecoms cabinet.

This program will be the final and key step in bringing ultra high speed broadband to consumers and small businesses across the country, replacing lower capacity copper access.

Fibre Pilot homes and businesses on NGN

A total of 16,000 homes and businesses in South Dublin and in Wexford will be the first premises connected as part of the Next Generation Access pilot in 2011.

We'll be using a mix of Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) for Fibre to the Home connectivity up to 150 Mbps, and very high bitrate DSL (VDSL) for fibre to the Cabinet with speeds up to 50 Mbps.

Homes and businesses in these areas will have the opportunity to access high definition video, VOIP, video conferencing, cloud computing, and emerging services such as smart metering.

Future applications expected to drive bandwidth demand include telemedicine applications, as telecoms infrastructure is leveraged to deliver cost effective diagnostic and health maintenance services to an aging population without straining hospitals and primary care facilities.

The pilot provides the opportunity for industry to work together to define the processes and procedures involved in providing Next Generation Access to existing homes and businesses and will prove an invaluable learning experience in advance of a broader rollout.