Category: Next-generation broadband service

Article

Broadband for rural areas: financed by the EIB and WIBank | European Union Press Releases

My Comments

Some more public money has been put up in the European Union towards facilitating next-generation Internet in rural Europe. This time, it is taking place in the middle of Germany.

Here, the European Investment Bank had put €80m towards Hessen government’s promotional bank (WIBank) to lend to companies to develop next-generation broadband in that state. They want to have this service pass pass 75% of households by 2014 with a desirable throughput of 50Mb/s.

It is seen to be part of “Digital Agenda For Europe” which is needed to satisfy increased data volumes that are now occurring in Europe. Hessen’s main urban centres like Wiesbaden and Frankfurt have the high-throughput infrastructure but there is a desire to get the high-speed broadband out to peri-urban areas, small towns and rural areas.

This may require building out of VDSL2 infrastructure in more of the towns and establishing the FTTP fibre-optic infrastructure in the dense areas like most of Frankfurt. Personally, I would also like to see the VDSL2 infrastructure moved towards FTTC (fibre-to-the-curb) where there are the shorter runs so as to increase the bandwidth available.

The Hessen broadband development is being set up to permit competitive business but is also to be seen by the European Union as an example of a next-generation urban-rural broadband deployment.

It is another of the European publicly-funded broadband-improvement developments that needs to be observed by countries considering the implementation of broadband improvements using public money.

Article

thinkbroadband :: Fyfield and Tubney to get full fat fibre service from Gigaclear

Fyfield & Tubney Parish Council announcement

From the horse’s mouth

Gigaclear

Press Release

Fyfield & Tubney Community Page

My Comments

After Appleton & Eaton have taken on the next-generation fibre-optic broadband to address the rural Internet issue, two more villages in the same county of Oxfordshire have registered interest to become part of today’s real Internet.

Where are Fyfield and Tubney in Oxfordshire? These villages are located 4-4.5 miles (6-7 kms) west of Abingdon, a small Oxfordshire town that has a strong economy and a technology business park. Here, one of the major drivers for the fibre-optic broadband is to allow people who work in the Abingdon-based businesses like Sophos to telecommute or work from home.

Of course there would be some of the countryside and plenty of the small businesses existing in these villages which would benefit from the Gigaclear fibre-optic broadband. This would include many of the businesses offering accommodation wanting to service the “connected” community.

As far as these services are concerned, they will be mainly “Internet-only” single-play services with 1Gbps symmetrical bandwidth. The customers would then need to get IPTV or VoIP telephony through other providers in an “over-the-top” arrangement.

Of course, the equipment that will be supplied will include a router that has dual-stream 802.11g/n Wi-Fi wireless as well as four Gigabit Ethernet ports, which makes it up to the mark for the service.

From what I see of this, it could be a chance to get the rural communities in Oxfordshire and Berkshire online to real standards thus opening them up to the ability of competitive business opportunities and the ability for one to have a “tree-change” without suffering as far as Internet access is concerned/

Article

thinkbroadband :: Gigaclear announces completion of its Appleton and Eaton fibre network

Previous coverage on HomeNetworking01.info

Gigabit broadband now in Appleton, Oxfordshire

Two large Oxfordshire villages now to have fibre-optic broadband

From the horse’s mouth

Gigaclear press release

Gigaclear Web site – Appleton service

My Comments

After three months of hard work, the fibre-to-the-premises gigabit broadband rollout has been completed in Appleton and Eaton in Oxfordshire. This has passed 400 properties with 40% service take-up at the time of writing.

As previously mentioned in the coverage, this service is intended to be a symmetric network with equal bandwidth for upload and download. This feature will make it work well for telecommuters, Skype users and small businesses who synchronise data between home and the shopfront.

There is a desire by Gigaclear to cover more Oxfordshire rural communities. One of these is Watlington where the Watlington Community Broadband service wants to move from ADSL2 copper technology to the newer FTTP all-fibre-optic technology.  Anna Badcock who is representing Watlington on Oxfordshire District Council and formed Watlington Community Broadband with county councillor Caroline Newton is behind this concept as a service improvement effort.

Through the construction phase for this network, Gigaclear have hosted many demonstrations of what this technology can do. This included use of the smart-TVs’ Internet-enabled capabilities, VoIP-based telephony including the ability to retain one’s own number and handset, video telephony amongst others.

What is being emphasised here is the concept of a rural lifestyle but being able to still benefit from real broadband Internet. This concept underscores professionals working from home in a lot of the country villages and towns through country-based businesses being as competitive as city-based ones to country-based hotels and similar businesses offering Wi-Fi to attract the city-based business traffic.

A question still worth raising regarding these FTTP broadband rollouts that Gigaclear are undertaking is whether the farms, manors, and similar large properties on the outskirts of the villages are being given the option to have this broadband service delivered to them. The question that will often be raised by the owners of these properties is how much it would cost to roll out the fibre-optic infrastructure to the main building.

As we see more of these developments taking place around rural UK courtesy of Gigaclear and others, it could be a chance to prove that real broadband Internet, especially next-generation Internet can be a reality in the country.

Articles

thinkbroadband :: Gigaclear delivers Gigabit in Appleton, Oxfordshire

Previous Coverage

Two large Oxfordshire villages now to have fibre-optic broadband

From the horse’s mouth

Website for Appleton & Eaton deployment

My Comments

Previously, at the end of May 2012, I wrote an article about action taking place by Gigaclear to wire up Appleton and Eaton in Oxfordshire for real next-generation broadband.

Now the setup is in full flight and Gigaclear were running a demonstration about the idea of Gigabit next-generation broadband in these villages at the Appleton Village Hall to prove to Appleton & Eaton residents what this is all about. Here, they demonstrated the high-speed broadband service and what it can offer including VoIP, IPTV and similar services.

They will install the services to the property boundary but it will cost GBP£100 for 50m of drop fibre and a fibre modem-router. Here, the cabling will be installed by the owner or a separately contracted third party like www.boxcomngn.net who charge £85 for up to 25m. On the other hand, Gigaclear could do the job for up to £500 for a 50m run.

The service, which supports future-proof IPv6 dual-stack will typically cost £37 / month for 10Mbps reserved to £195 / month for 100Mbps. It includes use of 1000Mbps burst bandwidth and is sold in a similar manner to how most interconnect and hosting bandwidth is sold, and, to some extent some business Internet service are sold. It may seem expensive but there isn’t a requirement to maintain a PSTN line with British Telecom for an Internet service to exist.

The villagers can sign up to VoIP as a telephone replacement if they are happy with no battery backup if power is out. As well, there is the option to sign up with various IPTV services. Even Vodafone had offered a “Sure Signal” femtocell service for their subscribers so that they can get proper mobile telephony in to their properties.

This is another example where the small villages in the UK are being made aware of the idea of real broadband and what it can offer. It is also a good chance for villagers with larger properties to have a look at the feature articles so they can gain the best out of the new Internet benefit.

UPDATE:

Householders can use a UPS like the APC BackUPS ES series units (Amazon UK) or the Zigor Ebro 650 UPS (Amazon UK) to power the router, modem, analogue telephone module and DECT base so they can keep a lifeline VoIP service for this Gigabit fibre-optic broadband service.

Article – French language

La fibre optique se déploie en Côte d’Ivoire – DegroupNews.com

My Comments

Most of us would think that it’s a noble effort to help the “poor starving Africans” out, usually by working alongside a charity or church mission that works in various African countries providing health, education and welfare to these communities. This is although most of these communities work in an agricultural economy.

But in the Cote D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), there are steps to distribute real next-generation broadband to this country using fibre-optic technology. The main drivers for this effort include education and telemedicine to the various communities.

The main infrastructure would be built around a 1400km fibre-optic backbone between San Pedro, Tabou, Man, Odienné, Korhogo and Ferkessedougou;  and another 549km backbone between Abidjan, Bondoukou and Bouna. There will be a network covering the Cote D’Ivoire which uses 6700km of fibre optic cabling and touching the various medical and educational precincts. It will achieve a 100Mbps bandwidth and support digital television and increased-capacity telephony for the telecommunications providers there.

This will be co-ordinated by the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications of that country, Bruno Koné as part of a nationwide “rural telecommunications project” known as the “Projet National de Téléphonie Rurale (PNTR)”.

Issues that can be raised is whether this could allow the creation of a data axis through Africa and whether efforts could be underway to provide competitive telecommunications through this continent. In some cases, this could allow Cote D’Ivoire to become more than an agricultural country by opening up research and commerce in to that area and neigbouring African countries. Of course, the real issue is to have the government work efforts to enrich the nation for all and yield prosperity and health using this technology.

Article

thinkbroadband :: FTTC Etherway, cheaper access to business grade broadband

My Comments

Most small businesses typically head for a consumer-based Internet-access setup which has a reduced upload rate. This can be a limitation for these businesses if they dabble with cloud-based computing, IP-based telephony or IP-based video-surveillance.

If they do want this improved upload speed, the business would have to go for an Ethernet-based service that uses the high-throughput Ethernet protocols. Such services are primarily offered as “Metro Ethernet” copper services or FTTP fibre-optic prices at a price that fewer small businesses can afford.

But BT Openreach are offering a wholesale fibre-copper service that provides Ethernet-type connectivity rather than DSL-type connectivity that is pitched at households. This is mainly for the Etherway fibre-copper setups pitched at small business and professional setups and provides the high reliability that would be expected for this kind of computing.

A question that I would have is whether the copper run is Ethernet-based DSL or Metro Ethernet which uses Category-5 twisted-pair copper cabling similar to that used in Ethernet LANs. It would encompass this ability as well as the cost-effectiveness of these fibre-copper next-generation broadband setups.

Articles – French language

France Télécom va tester le VDSL2 – DegroupNews.com

My comments

Most next-generation broadband deployments in France’s competitive Internet market are either FTTP (fibre-to-the-premises) fibre but Numericable are running with what is called an “FTTLA” fibre-to-the-cabinet setup. This is where the copper run to the customers is a short-run coaxial cable similar to existing cable-modem setups and is based on DOCSIS 3.0 technology.

On the other hand. VDSL2 telephone-line-based technology is successfully used in Germany and the UK for the copper run in fibre-to-the-cabinet setups in those locations. Now France Telecom are intending to try it in the highly-competitive French market for cheaper fibre-copper next-generation setups. This will most likely be used as another method of covering sparsely-populated outer-urban or regional areas where the cost to deploy would be prohibitive for a full-fibre rollout.

The reason they are running with this technology is its ability to provide a “fat pipe” over telephone cable for short runs. For example, as I have seen from the article, an 800m run of telephone cable could yield a download link speed of 25Mb/s on ADSL2 technology, but could yield 100Mb/s for the same distance. Similarly a longer run which could typically achieve a link speed of 1Mbps under ADSL2 could achieve 42Mbps with VDSL2.

As I have already known, these rates are dependent on the line condition between the street cabinet or exchange and the customer’s premises. Of course, this would be delivered under sub-loop unbundling which would be part of the call for a competitive Internet market in France. Similarly, there would have to be competitive access to those street cabinets so that competing Internet providers like Free could run their fibre backbone to the newly-created VDSL2 infrastructure and reach these markets.

Personally, I would like to see any fibre-copper deployment scenarios involving rural properties like farms be looked at so that there is a proof of feasibility for bringing next-generation broadband to the farmhouse door in a reliable manner.