Broadband has become a ‘catch-all’ term for any Internet connectivity faster than 128Kbit/s dual channel ISDN. Of these, cable Internet offers an alternative to small companies lucky enough to be situated within reach of the upgraded franchises in pockets of Dublin, Limerick and Cork. However, Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line or ADSL, which offers faster download speeds than uploads will be the most the likely route to fast access for most small Irish businesses.
The technology that uses the local digital exchange and standard copper telephone wires, and offers download speeds of about 512Kbit/s, does have its limitations. For a start, it’s a technology more suited to urban rather than rural areas as the service can only be accessed within 18,000 feet (3.5 miles) of the switching equipment located at the digital exchange. Companies outside of this radius will not be able to avail of the service and even then, not all of the digital exchanges are currently switched on for the service. Instead, a phased rollout has been chosen by the ADSL service providers.
Initial offerings
Currently, according to a survey carried out by the European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA), Ireland has just 977 DSL lines in total, compared to league table leaders Germany with 2.5million lines. That situation needs to improve.
Eircom recently rolled out its long-anticipated Asymmetrical DSL service — i-stream to business and residential customers in Limerick, to be followed by Ballina. Phase one, according to an eircom spokesperson will see 500,000 customer lines available around major exchange centres in Dublin, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Galway and the North West.
Further services are expected to follow for about one million customers by the end of 2003. Cathal McGee, managing director, eircom retail, is confident that the service will have the desired impact. ‘We are extremely pleased to be in a position to offer our customers a broadband service that will have immediate and visible benefits for their businesses. SME customers in particular will gain considerably from the use of DSL and the experience of our recent trials bear this out.’
Hot on the heels of eircom, EastBT has delivered its own brand of DSL providing services to businesses and residential customers in the Limerick area, followed by Ballina. EsatBT says it plans to unbundle 40 exchanges in total, servicing a potential 400,000 lines.
According to Deirdre Donnegan, EsatBT’s DSL product manager, services have so far been rolled out to everyone from 100 user security firms to one-man shows. She adds that EsatBT hopes to leverage its relationship with BT to extend the kind of successes BT has had with DSL services with an eye to driving down the cost of delivery to both business and residential customers.
Providers like Chorus and NTL have for some time now been making inroads into high-speed services provisioning, offering integrated broadband digital television, Internet access, and phone services. NTL recently announced that it would extend its services to a further 25,000 users in the Dublin area. In Northern Ireland, UTV Internet has delivered its own Clickserve product and is expected to make a similar offering to Dublin in time.
Fixed wireless providers Leap and Sky-Net are also getting in on the act—both have recently launched Broadband access in the form of fixed wireless access. ‘One of the big broadband challenges is in getting the appropriate lines out to the customer’s front door. Leap is fortunate enough to be an independent network, and therefore don’t have to rely on copper lines. An added bonus is that we don’t have to worry about digging up roads. We can deploy almost anywhere by placing a speed-box antenna on top of your building. This also has the advantage of very quick deployment times,’ comments Charlie Ardagh, managing director, Leap Broadband.
Fixed wireless broadband services are currently based on line-of-sight and you need to be with in a certain radius of the central broadcasting site to avail of services. Leap is mainly serving areas in the south Dublin city-centre but are planning to extend that network as need grows. A further broadband provider, Sky-net is targeting firms in the Sandyford area that are already leased line customers.
But what exactly is DSL?
DSL delivers a pipeline of fast and always on Internet access. DSL, Digital Subscriber Lines come in two main forms: Asymmetric and Symmetric, and can vary in speeds and transmission rates. With ADSL you get a fast downstream rate (receiving information) and slower upstream rate (sending information). The ratios can vary. In the case of SDSL, you get equivalent up and downstream rates. DSL is currently being offered at a number of levels of service depending upon the provider, but generally connection speeds start at about 512kbit/s per second. Fast compared to a 128Kbit/s ISDN connection and light years ahead of dial-up.
Get in the game
It was a touching sentiment that the Internet would prove to be the equaliser of business great and small, far and wide, but not particularly realistic. The fact is many of the benefits enjoyed by those with geographical and capital advantage are simply beyond the reach of smaller businesses. DSL, however, can certainly keep small businesses in the game.
‘The effect on small businesses will be the ability to access and communicate over the Internet at the high speeds normally associated with dedicated leased line circuits. Internet communication and usage will not be confined to infrequent or slow connections and the always-on advantage of broadband allows businesses to constantly be in contact and able to respond immediately.’
Scott Taunton, managing director, UTV Internet, believes that ADSL Broadband brings the advantages of speed and continuous connection, normally reserved for big businesses, within the reach of SMEs at a fraction of the price and at a predictable monthly fee.
Connectivity comparison
Broadband offers genuine advantages in terms of speed of digital data transmission in a way that simply can’t be matched by dial up. One of the most compelling features of broadband access is its always-on availability. Combine always-on capacity with dramatically increased speed and it offers the possibility of conducting business in real-time, potentially enabling services such as video conferencing and teleworking for employees with continual and secure access to the company network.
Many companies have already been experiencing the benefits of broadband in Ireland via leased lines, which is ideal in terms of speed not to mention always-on connectivity, and importantly potential contention rates. However, if you are a small business, a leased line can eat up a serious part of your budget. DSL shares the benefits of increased speed, always on connectivity, often contention, but most significantly is comparatively cheap, beating out ISDN hands down where prolonged connection is concerned. The cost advantage offered by DSL is easily overlooked, particularly, says Ardagh, in a time where cash preservation has gone back up the list of most companies’ priorities again.
‘We’re all watching our budgets more carefully and trying to cut costs. Being able to quantify exactly what the outgoings for the month-end will be is very attractive to small businesses. It provides much more accountability and means they don’t have to worry about always having to watch usage—there are no ugly surprises if someone leaves their connection on for the weekend,’ according to Michael Butler of WMB Systems. WMB systems are DSL installation intermediaries for eircom.
How much broadband?
But just because it is available, doesn’t mean that you need to use it. ‘I don’t think DSL will make dial-up redundant, there will probably always be a space in the market for that—it will however lead to more improvements to services,’ estimates Donergan. ‘Many users may only ever need minimum Internet access; it would be inefficient for them to invest in DSL.’
‘The amount of bandwidth required depends on a lot of factors such as; the amount of simultaneous users, type of traffic, and size of files being transferred or downloaded,’ estimates Scott Taunton. ‘However, for nearly all SMEs, ADSL broadband provides adequate bandwidth to allow multiple simultaneous users to handle a full range of office traffic.’ You also need to look at which way your information is going, says Ardagh, ‘If you need a lot of speed and bandwidth for information going out, then ADSL is fine, but some types of work software developers can upload to server without a big wait time.’ Leap is currently offering SDSL services.
Costs of I-stream ADSL
There are three ADSL packages available from eircom. The entry level product, i-stream Solo, costs €107.69 and offers 512Kbit/s for download and 128Kbit/s for upload. For €168, users can avail of I-stream Multi, a multi-user product that transfers data at 1Mbit/s for download and 256kbit/s for uploads. I-stream Enhanced is similar to the multi-user product but has a fixed IP address—this costs €199.65. The service is capped at 3Gbyte of data for Solo users and Multi is capped at 6Gbyte per month. If users exceed the limit, a charge of three cent per Mbyte will be imposed. Users of I-stream Enhanced are not subject to a cap. Businesses will also need to rent the equipment for the service. Eircom provides a full spec sheet for interested users, letting them know exactly what is needed.
Case study 1:
Ticketmaster.ie
Individual Ticketmaster outlets of the ticket distribution agent both in the Republic and Northern Ireland, have been putting broadband to the test using services including eircom’s ADSL i-Stream, NTL services and BT’s OpenWorld in Northern Ireland.
‘All Ticketmaster outlets are connected into one central system where ticketing information and tickets are held. The time it takes for outlets to access these tickets becomes quite important. All of the outlets need be able to access services with the same speed,’ says Keith English, technical services manager, Ticketmaster.
Keith English points out, however, that speed is not necessarily all-import; rather that access to leased-line services offer greater work efficiency over normal dialup/ISDN.
Access to leased-lines services are dependent on close proximity to the relevant hub and are charged on their distance from the exchange.
‘Most shops don’t have that luxury of DSL and are going from a dialup connection or ISDN. Where our outlets have been able to avail of it, DSL has actually provided substantial benefits in terms of time and reliability. Based on our experience, we’d really like to have DSL in all of our shops.’
Case study 2:
Castle Estates
‘Once you’ve tried, it’s very difficult to go back,’ says Sharon Goldsmith, regional property manager for Limerick-based property management company, Castle Estates. The company has been using Esat’s ADSL service since it was launched. Goldsmith says that Castle Estates has come to depend very heavily upon the Internet, using it for everything from advertising properties online, e-mail notifications, online banking and bill payment, and inter-office communication.
‘The Internet initially meant that we could easily share a lot of information with our clients and manager services remotely, but DSL means that we can now do this quickly, reliably and now inexpensively. We’ve only had the service for a couple of months, but with one out of three regional offices having access to DSL services, we have a pretty clear way of comparing how it has really affected our business.’
Case study 3:
Bohanna Consulting
Keith Bohanna, who is in the business of Project Management and is currently working on the secondary stages of a new start up venture, knows a lot about the Internet and how to put it to the best use. Bohanna, who has been using an NTL service, is one of those who stoically held out against adopting new technology. Armed with a slow dial up connection, he waited for Internet service to catch up with his needs.
‘Broadband really changes the way you use the Internet, it makes it possible to access completely different types of information and rely on it. Impatient with download delays, I’ve always turned my images off when looking at the Internet,’ says Bohanna.
It also potentially changes your work processes says Bohanna. ‘It now becomes possible to create a ‘virtual’ working space, enable voice application, or to do collaborative work over the Internet more time effectively. For example, if you are communicating with remote clients and business partners, people can forget a bit more about the limitations of the technology and focus on the important stuff. As for draw backs, security now becomes a major issue and hardware can very quickly become under resourced.’
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