From: Mark Dennehy (Mark.Dennehy at domain cs.tcd.ie)
Date: Tue 29 Feb 2000 - 14:12:46 GMT
Ref:[John P. Looney, Mon, 28/02/00 at domain 12:17 +0000]
> On Mon, Feb 28, 2000 at 12:02:24PM +0000, Nick Hilliard mentioned:
> > > Considering ADSL can't be used in Ireland, 'cos of the quality of the
> > > phonelines [...]
> > Where did you hear this hokum?
> Number of places, including Eircom themeselves. Basically, in the
> 70s/80s, when they were replacing the phone network, they had the option
> to buy copper, or thinner, cheaper nickle coated copper cables. Then, the
> only disadvantage with nickle coated copper was that signal degradation
> above 8000khz was quite high, once you started getting over 100m from the
> telephone exchange - but people didn't mind.
> ADSL is broadband - doesn't just use 3000-8000khz like modems/phone/audio
> does. So, if your line is nickel/copper, then once you are 300 meters or
> more from the exchange, the voltage required to make sure the signal stays
> quickly approaches infinitly[0]. And Eircom don't know whether to say
> "Drop ADSL", "Drop it far from exchanges", "Drop it in places that have
> nickel/copper wires" or "Provide the infrastructure, and do something like
> the 'We don't support anything faster than 9600 baud anyway' thing they do
> at the moment.
Erm. Not quite right. Between exchanges, it's fibre, and it's fibre from
the exchange out to a drop-box, and then the rest of the local loop is
copper. So if you're within about 2-300 metres of the drop-box, you can
get ADSL - but the number of ADSL cards in the exchanges is limited so
there's a hefty waiting list.
And ADSL isn't being dropped last I heard, it's just that not everyone's
within 200m of a drop-box. Around dublin/bray/greystones it should be
available - the waiting list is the big pain.
-- Mark Dennehy, Email : Mark.Dennehy at domain cs.tcd.ie Research Student, Computer Vision and Robotics Research Group, Computer Science Dept., Trinity College Dublin
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