Hi r/Ireland!

I’m Alex French, Head of Product and Innovation at SIRO, and I’m back again for another fibre/broadband speeds/Wi-Fi AMA in the run-up to Christmas.

I’ll be here from 3pm, so fire away with any questions!

About me:
I’ve worked in ISPs for my entire career (since 1994 — I know, I know). I started out in a dial-up ISP where we literally had to blow-dry the modems when the office flooded. Character-building stuff. Thankfully, fibre is much more waterproof.

Over the years I’ve worked on all sorts of access networks: dial-up, ADSL, leased lines, FTTC, managed Wi-Fi, and now full fibre. For the last nine years I’ve been with SIRO, where we’ve built a new fibre network that now passes about 1 in 3 homes in Ireland.

As Head of Product and Innovation on the Commercial team, my job is to figure out what services we should offer and how to price them. A quick reminder: SIRO builds and maintains the fibre network, but you can’t buy broadband directly from us. Instead, around 20 providers (including Vodafone, Sky, Digiweb, Virgin Media and Blacknight) use our fibre to deliver their services. I spend a lot of time talking to them about what they’re seeing in the market and what headaches we can help them with.

So ask me anything about broadband and fibre in Ireland, how to improve your Wi-Fi speed at home, or how to choose the best broadband service – because nothing says “festive season” quite like diagnosing your router.

Proof/hostage pic – and thanks again to the mods for having me!

by IAmAlexFrench

35 comments

  1. Do you have any plans to go to smaller towns and villages, especially ones close to towns that have been supplied?

  2. When can we get higher upload speeds, or even symmetrical upload/download? the current upload speeds offered by providers are very low

  3. Who is your own home internet with? And what speed and price?

  5. Have you any solution to the issue of direct-buried urban ESB lines. A lot of homes in our area for example were unable to avail of SIRO despite the fact it passes outside, as they couldn’t run fibre underground to the houses. They all went with OpenEir and Virgin instead, so it just seems a bit of a waste of infrastructure.

  6. When will SIRO be available in Urban south dublin? Or is that a very long finger kind of deal?

  7. How come broadband isn’t deemed an essential service in 2025? Is there any plans to make it an essential service?

    I ask because we have one neighbour who has blocked fibre broadband installation to our entire block of houses because she believes in 5G conspiracies and despite multiple engineers/professionals 5G has nothing to do with fibre she won’t listen. The wire is only going accross their property not even attached. It’s caused major disruption and stress as my household in particular as we need broadband access for medical purposes and have gone without for weeks. We now need a new pole installed 😅

  8. How come Virgin Media has practically a monopoly on high speed broadband access in urban areas?

  9. I’m paying for 1000 mbps but at best I’m getting 500 mbps. Will it ever get more reliable?

  11. Will 5G (6G one day?) WiFi routers become the defacto connection for people outside the biggest population centres? Esp with its mobile plug and play flexibility.

  12. What’s your beef with Copper, it saw us through the Bronze Age after all.

    On a more serious note, how much speed does the casual internet actually need, for say streaming, shopping, doomscrolling social media etc? It feels like everytime I see an ad for broadband the number of M/Gbps goes up, as does the price. Which activities would require higher speeds? Gaming, 4k streaming, overindulgence in IoT nonsense etc.

    Bonus question, any designs on Dublin 7 in the near-to-mid future?

  13. What’s your opinion on the pedestrianisation of Norwich City Centre?

  14. Hi Alex, thanks for your time.

    SIRO is available in my town in north County Dublin (Skerries, Rush, Lusk area), however it has not yet extended to housing estates further back from the main urban areas of the town. Is there a plan for universal rollout to these more remote areas, or is it intended only to serve the core areas of each town?

  15. I work in M&E. I deal with a lot of site drawings. What do you think can be done to improve them?

  16. I live in a town where most of the estates have been connected to SIRO but certain ones, mine included, have not. Is there a reason for where gets skipped over?

  17. What is the current state of IPv6 deployment in Ireland? The resellers support seems to be very hit and miss.

    I’ve been online since the days of Internet Eireann when it was pot luck if the modem managed to get a free line. It mostly didn’t! I seem to recall you had a book about getting online in the early days?

  18. I’ve had my fibre box installed in a stupid location down low in the living room where there is no power and I have to run extension cables to have Internet.

    I’ve complained to my provider, they said that I signed off on it which isn’t correct because I signed before the work was done. I didn’t know that there was power required so I would’ve told him to move it. Kn Circet I’ve also said that it’s not their problem that I need to speak to my provider. And now my provider is saying that I have to pay money to openeir.

    I’ve been complaining for six weeks and I’m getting nowhere. Nobody is actually asking me for money. Nobody is willing to fix this. I feel like cutting the cable myself to force them to come out.

    Do you think that you could possibly help with this? I’m living in Dublin city it’s easily at 20 minute job.

  19. Why are providers bothering with offering anything more than 500Mbps when 99.99% of domestic broadband users don’t need any more than that ? There is a massive push to get people to upgrade when they simply do not need it.

    An unessesary sales pitch targeting a market that is simply unaware of their needs

  20. Is there any plan to decouple siro connections from eircode rollouts? Every time I hear someone talk about a new build they are delayed getting broadband because a siro line can’t be enabled untill an eircode is in place 

  21. I’m in Howth, they laid fibre outside my building, yet we can’t use it and there’s no plans to activate for like another 2-3 years, why are things like this?

  22. What is the network charge per user per month to the providers? How is that charge set? Does it vary depending on which network the provider is using eg NBI/Eir/Siro?

  23. I already have fiber to the door, with pure. Why would I want what you are selling

  24. I moved from Sky Siro to Eir recently and the lad from Circuit installing the line more or less said that the Siro line could be removed, that any provider I go with in future will use the OpenEir line first.

    What’s up with that? Seems like Siro is only finding its feet and it’s being wrote off.

  25. Do you have any advice for those of us who are surrounded by NBI and Siro connected homes but still on copper and apparently have to wait for Eir Wholesale to do their street at some imprecise time in the future? Is there anyway to speed up the work or lobby for Siro to take over?

  26. Hi!

    What provider do you usually recommend people to go with? If you HAD to choose a top 3 perhaps??

    Thanks

  28. what’s the story with internet peering these days? I read that traditional internet exchanges like INEX were out of fashion and these days it’s all about ISPs negotiating direct peering relationships with large content companies such as Netflix/YouTube. What’s good/bad about this for consumers/ISPs?

  29. Why could the SIRO technician not pull a cable to a certain location in my house? I had to pay an electrician to move it to where he suggested the modem would be best placed?

    He said if he did it, SIRO would tell him to remove it, I paid the electrician and I am waiting for SIRO to terminate the cable, that was 3 weeks ago

  30. Can i just day that you are doing a amazing AMA legit laughing my ass off here.

    Actual qeustion.. i would love siro but not available here yet. I am with Virgin media and they are bending me over a barrel.. was looking at vodafone? Thoughts?

  31. In my experience SIRO only targets areas where profitability is high – housing estates, town centres, etc. There’s a cohort of the country outside rural towns that are not in the NBP area because eircom have promised to deliver fibre in future – but they are in no rush to provide this so people are stuck on VDSL.

    Any chance of SIRO serving such low density areas?

  32. Hi there, I got my SIRO upgrade when I first moved into my apartment and I’ve realised I would prefer the entry point on the other side of the same wall. Would it be possible to organise that directly through SIRO or do I have to go through the ISP?

  33. I signed up for broadband availability notifications years ago, and all I get is dross from Siro telling me about installations elsewhere in the country. How is that of any use? Am I supposed to move house?

  34. When will 5gbps internet be rolled out and which retailers would be the first ones to implement a residential service package?

  35. It’s frustrating to see your town listed but none of the eircodes in the local area listed as having SIRO available. Seems common in suburbs of Dublin. Any plans for wider availability, particularly in areas with ESB mains buried rather than overhead which I assume is part of the reason for this?

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