Article

NBN wireless, satellite speeds to double

From the horse’s mouth

NBN Corporation

Press Release

My Comments

Rural Internet in Australia is to get a shot in the arm with the National Broadband Network to double the bandwidth available for the fixed-wireless and satellite rural services. This is through a technical improvement that is being made available for the satellite

The quoted improvements are from an initial 12 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload to 25 Mbps download 5 Mbps upload. The NBN spokesman was even saying that the speeds would be better than the current ADSL2 copper deployments in urban areas. I would see this as yielding some real bandwidth for today’s requirements, especially catering for teleworking, small business and farming requirements as well as families separated by distance due to people heading for the country.

An issue to raise is how much of this bandwidth would be shared amongst the rural households and this could become an issue when neighbourhoods become more dense which can affect the the rural areas as people move to these areas. Personally, I would like to see some of the denser areas like small towns be able to consider the fibre-optic technology. On the other hand, the NBN fixed-wireless technology could support a “master-antenna” setup for those dense neighbourhoods that are at risk of experiencing reception difficulties due to topographical constraints.

At least this is the right step towards real Internet for people who live in the rural and remote areas in Australia.

Article

thinkbroadband :: Gigaclear bringing its full fibre solution to Uppingham, Rutland

From the horse’s mouth

Gigaclear

Press Release

Uppingham First

Home Page

My Comments

There has been some previous broadband enablement taking place in Rutland in the UK. Here, a next-generation fibre-to-the-premises network was established in Hambleton which was the subject of a Skype interview with Matthew Hare from Gigaclear that I posted up on this site.

Now Uppingham is now the target of a next-generation fibre-to-the-premises network. This market town, which is 5 miles (8.05 km) as the crow flies or 5 minutes by car from Hambleton, has had its effort boosted through the assistance of the Uppingham First community partnership.

The effort is concentrated on the North East Quarter which encompasses The Beeches and the Uppingham Gate business park and is part of a 12-month rollout by Gigaclear and Rutland Telecom.

There is also a fixed-wireless service which will cover more of the Uppingham neighbourhood within its 25-mile radius, but I would also like to see the fibre service cover more of this town. This could be achieved as part of a gradual service-expansion effort as the initial rollout proves itself economically.

As those of you who follow HomeNetworking01.info know, this deployment, like other Gigaclear FTTP deployments, will offer the symmetrical bandwidth which will please a lot of Internet users in this town, including the small businesses.

As far as I am concerned, this could cause ripples through Rutland’s small towns and rural areas as the neighbourhoods ask for the real bandwidth in a similar way to what is happening in Oxfordshire.

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/

Articles

thinkbroadband :: Better broadband for one small part of Scotland

Broadband Boost For Glen-Tanar Area | Donside Piper & Herald

My Comments

This story isn’t about a fibre-optic rollout that covers a small town or village with next-generation broadband service. It is, instead about bringing a country area in Scotland up to the current expectations of fast and reliable Internet service.

In the Glen-Tanar area of Scotland, BT Openreach improved the ADSL copper infrastructure using “regeneration” technology to improve the bandwidth available to the residents. This is effectively installing repeaters on the telephone lines so that, rather than getting a very low bandwidth ADSL signal, the rural customer gets at their ADSL modem-router the full 2Mbps signal that an ADSL user in the city would get. No doubt these would be considered “link speeds” with bandwidth reduced due to the overheads required by PPPoA compressing and encoding.  A similar project took place at Ballogie which neighboured this area.

What was know was that the older connection wasn’t just slow, it was unreliable with many of the signal dropouts and modems regularly “retrying” the connections. The new hardware was also about achieving the current 2015 universal service obligation for broadband in the UK.

Of course, other issues like the quality of the copper infrastructure need to be assessed. Here, in these rural areas, there is often ageing connectors due to poor maintenance and the wiring may have started to perform less to expectations. These need to be rectified in order to assure good-quality Internet service.

These kind of broadband-improvement developments that occur in the rural areas, whether through bringing the copper infrastructure “up to scratch” or laying down next-generation optical-fibre or fixed-wireless infrastructure for “next-generation” bandwidth allow people who live or work in these areas to have the expectations of real broadband.

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.

Article – French language

Le haut débit s’étend à Mayotte – DegroupNews.com

My Comments

Mayotte is a “département outre-mer of France located in the Mozambique Channel on the east coast of Africa near Madagascar and has two main islands. It achieved this status in 2011 and is intending to become the outermost region of the European Union in 2014 although there is some of the Islamic culture still existing in that area.

Just lately, France Télécom – Orange have rebuilt the main exchange to integrate ADSL support in the telephone system. This is in conjunction with the connection of the country to the LION 2 submarine telecommunications cable that is integrating the eastern African islands to the LION connection that is servicing the east cost of Africa.

This would allow the islands in this DOM to benefit from an increased amount of bandwidth where there is a goal to make sure that 90% of the households and businesses in this DOM have access to the real broadband service. Initially the households located at the south of the DOM in Kani-Kéli, Chirongui, Poroani or Tsimkoura would receive the service.

Personally I would see this as a chance for areas neighbouring Africa to be in a position to show that continent that the Internet can enable people in this area to benefit as far as cost-effective communications is concerned.

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.