Article

thinkbroadband :: Two rural Lincolnshire villages to get fibre-to-the-home

My Comments

Another step has occurred in the right direction for providing homes and small businesses in two rural England villages with city-grade next-generation Internet service. Again, this initiative has been undertaken by a small operator and has allowed the village to be competitive with the city.

Here, Fibrestream are two-thirds of the way there with gaining interest from the potential users which will open doors to establishing the basic infrastructure and “lighting up” the villages. One of the bonuses that have been offered is that there is the option of helping with the installation to your premises as a way to defray provisioning costs.

They have also provided for a cheaper fixed-wireless-last-mile delivery option if they can’t raise enough money for the full fibre-to-the-premises option. Any monies saved from this option would be reinvested so they can establish the infrastructure for the full fibre-to-the-premises deal. This could still be factored in to villages with farms and similar large properties surrounding them so as to service these properties with high-speed Internet.

Like what has happened with other British villages like Lyddington in Leicestershire, this has become another way of bringing these rural villages in to the online age. Come on everyone who is in the country or underserved outer-urban and regional areas and work together to establish local-broadband initiatives.

News article

thinkbroadband :: Fibre optic broadband in rural areas: Lyddington

From the horse’s mouth

Rutland Telecom – Web site

My comments on this topic

The main thing that impressed me about this news was that a small local operator took up the gauntlet to establish a backhaul and next-generation Internet service for a rural village in England. It’s so easy to expect the big-time companies like the incumbent or competing telecommunications firms or established ISPs to provide this kind of service, but a small firm has decided to lay the groundwork with its fibre-to-the-cabinet operation for Lyddington and the surrounding villages.

There is an expectation for a service with 48Mbps maximum / 25Mbps average headline speed for this network, which was similar to what would be expected for most suburban next-generation broadband rollouts. It will be based on FTTC (fibre-to-the-cabinet) technology with the copper run to the customer’s door being based on VDSL2 technology. This technology has a greater throughput than  the commonly-deployed ADSL2+ but is designed for short copper runs. Here, it will be installed as a sub-loop unbundled setup where the street cabinet exists between the main telephone exchange and the customer’s telephone.

This deployment was considered feasible for environments where the service would facilitate a full takeup of 40-50 customers in a not-so-dense area.

The prices averaged around GBP30 / month including line rental and 600 minutes of calls to any landline in the UK. The hardware would be part of the installation cost and included a VDSL modem and a broadband router that isn’t wireless. It would be the time to look towards choosing a wireless broadband router of the kind that works with cable Internet for this setup if you want the wireless home network. A wireless router would cost GBP45 extra if you bought it from them.

Location issues

There are still a few questions that need to be asked concerning the Lyddington FTTC rollout and would affect next-generation broadband efforts in rural Britain. One is whether and how the larger properties like the farms would be covered by the next-generation broadband efforts? Could this mean that a street cabinet has to be deployed near a cluster of farm gates with longer VDSL2 runs?

Similarly, there could be a classic estate with a large manor house or similar building and smaller houses scattered further afield on the same property. Some of these estates may have the manor house occupied by the appropriate aristocrat or the manor house may be a National Trust museum or upscale boutique hotel. Here, there may be issues with making sure each lodging on the estate has access to the next-generation broadband, and there could be issues with whether to locate the FTTC street cabinet in these estates and where they should be located, especially to make sure that “His Lordship” in the manor has very good bandwidth.

Equipment issues

Another issue worth raising is whether the VDSL2 modems will be made available without a router so that customers can purchase their own wireless broadband router from a preferred retailer. One reason is that an increasing number of manufacturers may supply “future-proof” dual-WAN home-network routers that have a built-in ADSL2 modem as well as a Gigabit Ethernet port on the broadband side. The other reason is that people who know the ins and outs of Internet and home networking may know the best broadband router for their needs and may find the supplied unit not suiting their needs and just another box in their junk box.

Conclusion

At least a small company who has the country at its heart is making real efforts to provide next-generation Internet to the British countryside and could open the floodgates towards competitive rollout of such technology to this class of people.

I am not a paid spokesman for Rutland Telecom but, as I have said before in this blog, I do stand for the idea that people who live or work in the country don’t deserve second-class Internet service.  Therefore I applaud those efforts that are taking place to improve the Internet-access lot for these users.

STOP PRESS

If anyone is living in Denby Dale – the “Pie Village”, in West Yorkshire, Rutland Telecom are inviting people to register for next-generation broadband in this village and neighbouring villages. They need a target of at least 450 households and small businesses in this area to make their next FTTC project for this town come to fruition.

The registration form for this campaign is at the Rutland Telecom Website.

ARCEP white paper for people in multi-unit developments (French language)

ARCEP had established a regulation where if a telecommunications operator provides fibre-optic infrastructure in a multi-unit building, this infrastructure must be available to competing operators. This means that each unit owner / tenant must be able to choose whoever provides their super-fast broadband service and avoids the building owner or body corporate determining who provides that service to that building through exclusive “cosy” deals.

Two different methods

Mono-fibre

Each operator runs their fibre-optic infrastructure to a wiring closet where there is a fibre-optic switch that is programmed to run the operator’s service to the customers in that building. Each unit has one fibre-optic connection to that fibre-optic switch.

The service routing would be based on a VLAN or similar setup affecting the main fibre-optic infrastructure in the building. Operators would then have to make sure that the fibre-optic switch is programmed to pass service from their customers’ units to their street-based backbone.

The main advantage of this setup is that there is only one fibre-optic cable needed to be laid to each unit, thus allowing for reduced costs and infrastructure complexity. On the other hand, each operator will have to have access to the fibre-optic switch to make sure they can manage their services.

Multi-fibre

Each operator has their own fibre-optic infrastructure to each of the units, where there is a multi-entry socket for the customer-premises equipment. If a customer wants a particular service, the provider then visits the customer’s unit and connects the fibre for their service to the socket.

If a site can allow two or more optical-network sockets, two or more operators could be terminated in a socket for each of the operators. This may appeal to “geeks” or business customers who want to establish multi-WAN setups for reasons like bandwidth aggregation, load-balancing or fault-tolerance.

The main advantage for operators is that they have control and responsibility of their infrastructure to the customer’s unit, but each service change may require a field visit from the operator’s service staff. Similarly, there would be the issue of complicated infrastructure runs existing in the building, which may affect further infrastructure deployment.

Opportunities and Questions

A major opportunity that may exist for operators who are running optical fibre through a multi-unit building would be to use the cable as a wireline backbone for a cellular base station installed on the roof. This may be relevant to buildings with nine or more storeys and / or operators that run their own mobile telephone or wireless broadband service.

A primary question that may need to be answered is that if a group of broadband service providers share the same infrastructure run, usually as a cost-saving measure or easier entry point for new operators, would they have to create new fibre-optic runs to each unit in a multi-fibre setup or could they continue to share the same infrastructure to the unit’s door.

Another main question concerning the provision of IP-based infrastructure like the fibre-optic infrastructure in multi-unit buildings is how to cater for “all-unit” Internet services. This could range from a Web site with information for all of the units through unit-occupier access to vision from IP-based video-surveillance systems to multi-SSID Wi-Fi access points in common areas with each SSID linking to the home network in each unit. Issues that may have to be answered include VLAN establishment and / or use of anciliary DNS servers that cover only the services that are provisioned in the building and these setups may end up appearing to be complex to anybody that doesn’t have much computing experience.

Conclusion

What is happening with the fibre-optic next-gen broadband services in France, where there is likely to be lively competition, is worth observing, especially for all classes of multi-unit developments, whether all units exist in one building or in many buildings on one piece of land.

The white papers and other material on this topic at the ARCEP web site may then be worth reading by other communications regulators, building authorities, ISPs, building / development owners and management committees.

News articles (French-language only)

 Les Hautes-Pyrénées et le Finistère en haut et très haut débit – DegroupNews.com

From the horse’s mouth

Hautes-Pyrénées Conseil-Général

Press release

Brochure (PDF)

Finistère Conseil-Général

Press release

My Notes and Comments

Hautes-Pyrénées

In this mountainous département of France, there are plans to establish a fibre-optic backbone that will lead to an improvement in Internet service across this area.

The improvements will be in the form of improved ADSL service for more of the telephone exchanges, including “dégroupage” (local-loop unbundling) for competitive-service access as well as a fibre-optic uplink. It also includes “sub-loop access” where DSLAMs will be installed closer to customers’ premises for those customers that are far away from the exchanges, like farms or mountain properties. These improvements will allow the customers to have the same level of IPTV access as would be expected around France.

There will also be a WiMAX wireless broadband network with 58 stations that will be set up to cover areas that are not likely to have proper broadband service, with satellite coverage for the most difficult cases. This situation may be necessary for some of those properties that exist on the slopes of the Pyrenees.

The fibre-optic network will not just be for a backbone but will provide “next-generation broadband” for key areas such as public service, health, research and education as well as “communities of interest” for the département.

Finistère (Brittany)

This département. which covers the western-most tip of France, has a goal of achieving the minimum of 2Mbps throughout its area.

This will be achieved with a fibre optic backbone through that département. It will also mean that exchanges that service ADSL “dead-spots” can be lit up for ADSL. There is also the possibility of a 97-station WiMAX wireless-broadband network set up in this area.

Both areas

The “sub-loop access” effort that is being undertaken with the Hautes-Pyrénées project is impressive because it represents an effort to get the full-speed broadband to the customer’s front door. But I would also suggest that these efforts include checking for decaying wiring and other limitations that can impede ADSL performance.

Also, the fibre deployments should cover not just the key economic areas in the départements, but assure FTTH deployments in the cities where the key economic areas are, especially the residential parts of these cities. This can avoid the tendency to “redline” the towns when it comes to further investment in them. In the case of the Hautes-Pyrénées project, if a town is identified as being a ski resort, it should be looked at in the context of full fibre deployment so that the small businesses in that area which service the snowfield traffic can gain as much benefit as the big businesses in the cities.

 Quatre ans de DegroupNews : et les FAI dans tout cela ? – DegroupNews.com (French language article)

My Comments

Congratulations DegroupNews on 4 years of service as one of the better IT newsblogs that service France.

I have been a fan of this site and its companion DegroupTest site because of the good quality information that these sites give about the Internet-access scene in France. This includes information on the arrival of Fibre To The Home broadband service in various French cities as well as the service being used for a “people’s triple-play service” which provides receive-only VoIP telephony, basic-ADSL-tier Internet and IPTV service encompassing free-to-air digital TV for one euro a month.

For people who are considering moving to France or setting up or maintaining that dreamy farmhouse or apartment there as a holiday house, rental property or “bolt-hole"; this site offers good quality information on the triple-play “n-box” deals offered by the main operators as well as information about whether you can get a full triple-play Internet service at the location where your property is or will be. It has also made good-quality reviews of the hardware provided by the various Internet service providers as part of their deals so one can know what to expect when signing up.

Other issues that have been touched on in this site include the way the French have handled the perceived cancer demon associated with wireless services like mobile telephony and WiFi networks; as well as their handling of the file-sharing of copyrighted works. It is worth a read whether you have a good grip of the French language or can trust a machine-translation service like translate.google.com to translate the site in to your own.

There has been recent news coverage regarding the upcoming National Broadband Network that the Australian Government has recently launched. Initially it was meant to be a fibre-to-the-node setup for most of the populated areas built by a private company who has won the government tender to build it. The last year was dogged with so much bickering about whether Telstra, Optus or other companies and consortia are fit to build the network. Now the Australian Government wrote off the tenders and decided to make the network a publicly-funded “nation-building” exercise on the same scale as the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Power Scheme.

Their idea would be to cover 90% of Australian premises with “fibre-to-the-premises” service with the remainder served by high-bandwidth wireless or satellite connections. This will be with Tasmania being a test-bed for this service and greenfield developments being prepared for fibre-to-the-premises.

But there are a few questions that need to be asked concerning the deployment of this service.

Deployments in multiple-tenant-unit developments

In most of the densely-populated areas of Australia, there are many multi-tenant-unit developments like blocks of flats, office blocks and shopping centres with many households and/or businesses in the same physical building. Similarly, there are high-density developments where multiple households or businesses in many buildings exist on one privately-owned block of land. There have been two different ways of connecting these buildings to a fibre-to-the-premises network.

The cheaper method, known as “Fibre To The Building”, is to run the fibre-optic network to the building’s wiring closet, then use copper wiring to bring the service to the customer’s door. This may be achieved through dedicated Ethernet cabling to the office, shop or apartment or use of existing wiring that is used for providing telephone or TV service to these locations but using VDSL2 or DOCSIS technology to move the data on these cables.  It would be similar to the “Fibre To The Node” setup which was originally being considered for the National Broadband Network, except that the coverage of a “Node” would be the building.

The other method, known as “Fibre To The Premises” or “Full Fibre To The Premises” would be to run the fibre-optic network to the customer’s door.  This would be similar to how the fibre-to-the-premises network would be provided to a sole-occupancy building like a house and would have a fibre-optic socket or optical-network terminal in the premises.

This issue could be answered by prescribing an installation standard for setups in all current and future multi-tenant developments or by allowing the building owner / landlord to determine which methodology to use for their property. Similarly, there would be the question of whether an existing building should be cabled the moment the infrastructure is rolled out past it or

Carriage of TV and telephone service over the NBN

There has been talk about the high bandwidth availability being the key attraction to the National Broadband Network. This has brought up the concept of video being transferred through the NBN and this may be considered a threat to commercial television and its stakeholders.

Most, if not all, of the high-bandwidth broadband networks in operation or currently being deployed are answering this issue by providing free-to-air and subscription television service through the networks. This has also allowed supplementary services like catch-up TV or video-on-demand to be provided over the same network. As well, the companies who provide retail Internet service based on these networks typically will resell subscription TV service with the service being delivered over the same pipe. There is also benefit for community and vertical-interest television providers because they can use the same bandwidth to broadcast their shows.

The standard for TV service that is available with this broadband technology would be a “best-case” standard which permits full high-definition picture with at least a 5.1 channel surround-sound audio mix and full two-way interactivity.

The landline telephone service hasn’t been mentioned in any of the discussion about the National Broadband Network. Yet it can benefit from the same technology through the use of VoIP technologies. This can lead to cheap or free calls around the country and can lead to households and “Mom and Pop” business users having the same kind of telephone service that is taken for granted in most of big business and government.

The same technology can bring through telephone conversations which have a clarity similar to FM radio. This would benefit ethnic groups who have a distinct accent; women; children; people with a speech impediment as well as voice-driven interactive telephone services. As well, the concept of the videophone, largely associated with science fiction, can be made more commonly available.

Could this be the arrival of the “single-pipe triple-play” service on the Australian market?

This is best exemplified by the typical “n-Box” (Livebox, FreeBox, Bbox) service that is being promoted by nearly every major Internet service provider in France. It is where a customer buys or rents an “n-Box” which is a WiFi router that connects computers to the Internet and works as a VoIP analogue telephone adaptor for two phones; as well as an IPTV set-top box that connects between the “n-Box” and the TV set. The customer pays for a single-pipe triple-play service with cut-price telephony, broadband “hot-and-cold running” Internet and many channels of TV.

Universal-access service and the cost of the service

There is the promise of 90% coverage for Australia but will this promise be of reality? As well, there will need to be a minimum standard of service for all to benefit from the Internet using this technology.

I have talked elsewhere in this blog about achieving a standard of universal access for the Internet in a similar manner to the landline telephone service and other utilities. Issues that may need to be raised include reserving funds for the big infrastructure projects that need to reach certain communities and whether to create subsidised access plans which provide a basic level of service at a very low price or for free.

This would then cover access to decent Internet service for disadvantaged communities including indigenous people, income-limited people and migrant / expatriate communities who would benefit from this technology.

Conclusion

Once the questions regarding about how the National Broadband Network will be implemented are answered, we will be able to gain a clearer picture of the service that it will provide for all customers.

News Links (French-language sites)

http://www.degroupnews.com/actualite/n3071-hlm-paris-sfr-fibre_optique-haut_debit.html DegroupNews (France)

My commets

Since my earlier article wbich I had moved from my older blog, SFR had taken over Neuf Cegetel. But this universal-acces “single-pipe triple-play” service has continued on and the trucks are now rolling a the HLM estates as this is being written.

Because of the high-throughput technology, companies like SFR are able to provide this kind of acess to the people.  As I mentioned earlier, it is underpinned by the European business culture which is primarily “for the people” rather than for the executives of the big companes which is the primary business culture in the USA.

News Links (French-language news sites)

http://www.pcinpact.com/actu/news/41764-neuf-cegetel-opac-triple-play-social.htm PC Impact

http://www.vnunet.fr/news/neuf_cegetel_introduit_sa_fibre_optique_dans_les_hlm_de_paris-2026564 VNUNet 

My comments

)In February 2008, Neuf Cegetel (a French telecommunications provider) along with Office HLM de Paris (the public housing authority in Paris, similar to the Ministry of Housing in Victoria, Australia) have established a universal-access “single-pipe triple-play” service for deployment in areas of Paris that have fibre-optic telecommunications.

This service, which is offered for EUR1 / month tax-exclusive has the provision of:

• 18 channels of regular “free-to-air” digital television programming including high-definition broadcasts provided by the “free-to-air” broadcasters
• 512kbps broadband which is effectively the same standard as most mid-tier ADSL plans currently available in Australia and;
•  a landline telephony service of similar standard to Telstra’s InContact service — can receive incoming calls but cannot make outgoing calls except to emergency and special numbers

delivered over the fibre-optic pipe.

Comments on this service in relevance to the Australian market

From what I see, the 512kbps ADSL service is being considered the bare minimum standard of Internet access in Europe where people in Australia have to call this standard of service a luxury and have to consider 256kbps “fraud-band” Internet service as the “way in” when thinking of broadband. Often this has meant that sole parents and others on very limited income are having to stick to this speed if they want to think of broadband at all; or just simply work with a dial-up Internet connection.

As well, Australian pay-TV providers don’t offer a “FTA-only” deal where you only receive the free-to-air digital TV channels. This may be because of the prevalence of cheap standard-definition DVB-T boxes flooding the market and the DTV service comprising primarily of the FTA channels receivable on regular TV and a handful of supplementary channels that are “spin-offs” of the regular broadcast output. The only areas where such a service may take hold would be customers who live in areas with marginal TV reception and / or customers who rent premises where there is an underperforming TV aerial or simply no TV aerial and may find it hard to get proper digital TV reception.

The kind of landline telephony service that is offered may appeal not just to people on a low income but to share houses where a common telephone may be required just for receiving calls and “emergency fallback”. Typically, the tenants would then maintain prepaid mobile phones for their outgoing calls and for receiving personal calls.

This kind of service provisioning may catch on in Continental Europe where most of the culture is centred around being “for the people” but won’t easily be accepted in cultures like the USA where corporate profits are more important than the needs of the people.