Research & Innovation

Eircom has revealed 700,000 Irish homes will be capable of receiving 100Mbps broadband via VDSL by the end of this month, using a technology called vectoring that uses noise-cancelling technology to boost broadband speeds to homes and businesses.

Eircom has already deployed vectoring technology to 150 of its fibre broadband cabinets. By the end of this month, vectoring will have been deployed to the vast majority of Eircom’s 3,000 fibre broadband cabinets.

When complete, Eircom estimates that at least 70pc of the roughly 700,000 homes and businesses currently passed by its fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) network will be able to achieve speeds of between 70Mbps and 100Mbps.

Eircom is currently undertaking one of the largest private-sector rollouts of high-speed broadband in Europe, investing more than €400m in the network, said Carolan Lennon, managing director of eircom Wholesale.

“Leading telecoms analysts such as Analysys Mason estimate that by 2020, European homes and small businesses will need download speeds of 100Mbps,” Lennon said.

“With the deployment of vectoring we’re making those speeds available to homes and businesses within our existing national fibre footprint now, and the 1.4m homes and businesses we intend to reach by 2016. Once completed, the broadband speeds available over our National Next Generation Fibre Access Network are now faster than most fixed line operators across Europe.

“We continue to work closely with our global vendors, such as Huawei, to explore further hugely exciting technological developments in this area, such as G.Fast, which offers the potential of future step changes in both upload and download broadband speeds by driving fibre further out into our network,” Lennon said.
Wholesale opportunity

Lennon said that in the past couple of years, eircom Wholesale has invested millions of euros in a major change programme to ensure all operators can access the incumbent operator’s network equally and “benefit from the same quality and treatment as our own retail arm.”

She said the wholesale division is now the fastest-growing area of Eircom group.

“We serve over 40 operators with traffic, data, and international services. Fifteen operators have connected customers to the NGA network, including Eircom retail, O2, Vodafone, Magnet, Digiweb, Strencom, Pure and Imagine.

“Our wholesale broadband network has experienced significant growth through new entrants, such as Sky, coming into the Irish broadband market,” Lennon said.

“We’re currently making further investment to ensure operators get the sort of wholesale they deserve, as their success will drive ours.”