Last week I received the following update from Eircom regarding the roll out of high speed broadband to the Monksland area-
There are several cabinets in this area, and not all work is completed which is not helping with the confusion. The snapshot below of Google Earth also includes the locations of our cabinets (green roadside cabinets which we use for delivering eFibre. We do this by moving the broadband equipment out from the exchange and placing it inside a new green cabinet along the roadside to the original ‘passive’ cabinet already in place.
The yellow pins symbolise our cabinets. Each has a specific name and your local knowledge will help provide an indication of the status for each of the areas served.
There are a couple of important caveats to point out.
1) Even if the customer is connected to cabinet that is already providing the service, but they are approximately 2km away, then they are too far to see the benefits of faster broadband speeds. This would be the case for customers living beyond MNS1_003 /ATH1_012.2) In those cases, customers would then fall under the Department’s National Broadband Plan to ensure that they would receive a minimum speed of 30Mb/s before 2020.
Firstly the launched cabinets:
· MNS1_003 / ATH1_012. Launched since July 2014, and covers the area around Forest Mill, Millrace, and Barleyfields. There are 199 premises pre-qualling for service on this cabinet.
· ATH1_013 (Mount William) This cabinet is launched since July 2014. There are 272 addresses prequalling off the cabinet in the Sli An Choiste, Mount William and Ros Ard areas
· ATH1_001 (Cushla). This cabinet is launched since July, 2014, there are 322 addresses prequalling for NGA off this cabinet.
· ATH1_004 (Balllough). This cabinet is launched since July, 2014, there are 220 addresses prequalling for NGA off this cabinet.
· ATH1_011(Danesfort). This cabinet is launched since July, 2014, there are 147 addresses prequalling for NGA off this cabinet.
Secondly, the outstanding cabinets:
· MNS1_002 (Waterville/Tuam Rd) – awaiting licence from council to erect the cabinet. Our records indicate it was submitted in August 2014.
· MNS1_001 (River Village) – we have received permission to erect this one, it was pending a private wayleave until recently. The plinth has just been constructed, and we expect the cabinet to be erected this week. However this cabinet will then be dependent on the ESB to energise before we can commission it. All associated fibre work is complete on it. Our experience to date would suggest it will be available in or around May.
· ATH1_003 (Monksland Biz Park). The fibre cabinet is commissioned, and the fibre network is complete however we cannot bring the cabinet live because of the current location of the associated copper cabinet. The construction of the motorway left this cabinet effectively inaccessible (we have to access it via the back gate of the Elan factory). A new location has been identified, a new copper cabinet erected, and we now need to transfer the cables into the new cabinet before we bring the NGA cabinet into service. We expect completion of this work in about three months.
MNK1_001 (River Village) – This is currently not in scope for eFibre because there are so few customers connected to this cabinet. Customers connected will either fall under the National Broadband Plan or there could be a review to relook at this cabinet in the future.
(See attached file: photo.JPG)
Denis Naughten TD