Eircom Chooses Huawei Equipment for FTTH Rollout

DUBLIN — eircom, Ireland’s largest telecommunications provider, has selected telecoms equipment provider Huawei as its technology partner and equipment supplier for the first of a multi-phased rollout of fiber to the home (FTTH) technology across Ireland. The initial contract is worth an estimated $15 million. Deployment of the equipment will proceed immediately in 16 communities where network construction has already commenced. Customers will be able to order fiber services offering speeds of up to 1 Gbps by the end of August 2015. In total, 66 communities will benefit from FTTH services by 2017.

Huawei will deliver the latest optical line terminals (OLTs) and optical network terminals (ONTs) that will support broadband speeds up to 1 Gbps. This equipment will allow eircom to offer the fastest broadband speeds in Ireland to residential and business customers when the service is launched at the end of the summer. The equipment is capable of delivering even faster speeds beyond 1 Gbps as demand emerges. In 2012, Huawei was selected as the equipment supplier for eircom’s fiber to the cabinet (FTTC) technology that underpins current broadband speeds of up to 100 Mbps that is already available to 1.1 million homes and businesses across Ireland.

Exceeding Growing Data Demands and Expectations
“This is another important milestone in the journey to bring high speed broadband to Ireland," said Johnny Shine, group MD, eircom Networks. "By using Huawei equipment, eircom will be able to offer the fastest broadband speeds in Ireland in the coming months. We see customer demand for data continue to grow at a rapid pace. By deploying FTTH technology we will be in a position to meet and exceed those growing data demands and expectations with a suite of products that offers truly world class broadband speeds.”

With a one gigabit broadband connection, consumers can download a high-definition film in less than a minute and business users will have bandwidth capacity to transfer applications and large data files at rates previously only available to large enterprises.