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thinkbroadband :: Vonage and Gigaclear in partnership deal

From the horse’s mouth

Gigaclear

Press Release

Vonage

UK company webpage

My Comments

As you may already know, Gigaclear have been known for rolling out focused fibre-to-the-premises deployments to various Oxfordshire and Berkshire villages in the UK to enable them for next-generation broadband. A lot of these services are known to provide up to a gigabyte in upload and download capacity.

Now they have partnered with Vonage, a US-based over-the-top VoIP telephony provider to exploit this bandwidth for providing VoIP telephony. One would see this as a way to eliminate dependence on British Telecom for landline voice telephony for people who sign up to Gigaclear FTTP services.

Here, the main advantage would be for the new Vonage customers who are behind the Gigaclear services to avoid having to pay the £9.99 activation fee when they set up for VoIP service and will benefit from calling anywhere in the UK for £5.99 per month. As well, Vonage do sell a VoIP analogue-telephone adaptor that is set up for these services as part of the service so you can use that existing landline phone with your VoIP service.

But one could easily ask whether Gigaclear could resell the VoIP service on behalf of Vonage so that customers could buy the telephony and Internet as a package. Similarly, another question could be asked whether Gigaclear could also partner with an IPTV provider to resell pay-TV to the customers.

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Article – From the horse’s mouth

Google

Google Europe Blog: Improving Internet access in Africa with ‘White Spaces’

My Comments

What is “white space”?

A term that we will hear a fair bit of with Internet services is “white space”. This is UHF or VHF radio spectrum that has been newly created as the result of a nation or region switching from an analogue TV service to a digital TV service, which is typically more spectrum-efficient.

How is this relevant

The use of “white space” is becoming very appealing for Internet in rural and remote areas due to the fact that the VHF and UHF frequencies have relatively longer wavelengths than the frequencies used for most wireless-broadband applications. This allows for a longer distance between the base station and remote stations which suits this kind of deployment.

Such setups will be established on the concept of the fixed-wireless broadband setup where the customer-premises equipment will be connected to a fixed antenna (aerial), typically a rooftop aerial.

A lot of the talk about these services relates to whether these setups should be worked on licensed spectrum or the newly-free spectrum be declared in a manner to allow unlicensed use for this application, in a similar vein to Wi-Fi wireless.

In a test that was undertaken in some parts of rural USA by Google, it was proven that white space could be used as a wireless last-mile backhaul without interfering with existing TV stations and other spectrum users. This was through the use of a database which identifies channels that are used that is indexed by GPS-driven geographic parameters. The base station equipment are equipped with a GPS receiver to determine their geographic location and this comes in to play during the commissioning stage in order to determine the useable channels. Of course, the customer-premises equipment would seek for the frequencies associated with services that exist in a similar vein to a cable modem.

The African deployment

After Google had their success with the Kansas City fibre-driven next-generation-broadband rollout when it came to establishing an Internet-service, they put forward the idea of setting up a trial “white-space” fixed-wireless setup in some of the remote parts of South Africa. The idea is to establish access to Internet for the schools that are in this area.

It was organised in partnership with the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, equivalent to the US’s FCC or UK’s Ofcom communications authorities and is assisted by broadcasters and the industry.

What I would see of this is a chance for African nations to observe this trial and see how it can allow for decent broadband service in to their remote areas. This will include assessing what kind of power is needed at the customer’s end so as to determine whether this could work on a solar power setup that serves one building.  Similarly, this could be assessed for establishing cellular-data backhauls for extending or improving access to Internet service via cost-effective wireless-broadband equipment in these areas.

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thinkbroadband :: Highlands and Islands in £146 million fibre boost

From the horse’s mouth

British Telecom

Press Release

My Comments

Another rural area in the United Kingdom is being enabled with real broadband. This time it is the Highlands and Islands region in Scotland.

The mighty Scots will have a fibre-optic infrastructure that will intend to pass at least 84% of homes and businesses in this area. The setup will be primarily of the FTTC (fibre-to-the-cabinet / fibre-to-the-curb) fibre-copper setup with some installations being FTTP (full fibre-to-the-premises) setups.

This £146m project is being primarily provisioned by BT but, like a lot of these projects, has a lot of public funding. There will be £19.4m pitched by BT and £12m coming from the Highlands and Islands Enterprise business group with balance being public money from BDUK (Broadband Delivery UK) and from Edinburgh.

This will be considered one of the most ambitious rural-Internet-enablement projects in the UK due to the geographical makeup of the are i.e. the hilly nature of the Highlands as well as the Scottish Islands separated by water. One of the main costs would be to run 19 undersea fibre links to the Scottish Islands that are in this district. As well, areas that are considered to be remote will be the target of a £2.5m innovation fund to get broadband in to them.

What I would see of this is that the Highlands and Islands project can he used as an example of deploying real next-generation broadband to areas that have a mixture of geographically-difficult terrains like mountains or islands.

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Articles – French language

DegroupNews

Dordogne : le calendrier du très haut débit se précise – DegroupNews.com

L’Aquitaine se prépare au défi du très haut débit

My Comments

In France, there are greater plans to cover the Aquitaine region with next-generation broadband. This time, the Dordogne (24) département is now part of the blueprint to deliver this service through the region. Previously they have established the Lot-et-Garonne and Gironde départements as part of the effort. Initially the effort will be focused on the Gourdine and Bergerac population centres.

There has been work undertaken on coverage in the Bordeaux, Biarritz and Pau population centres with initial involvement from energy companies in that area.

Initial plans require the fibre trunks to be laid after 2015 and the work complete after 5 years.

France Télécom / Orange will be primarily behind the effort as far as the infrastructure is concerned. But a good question to raise is whether there will be local or regional public investment in the effort? This is although most rural-broadband-improvement / next-generation broadband efforts in the UK and France have a fair bit of public investment from local government.

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thinkbroadband :: Fibre broadband coming to Overbury and Conderton

My Comments

Another rural area in the UK has become “switched on” with next-generation broadband. This time, it’s the Overbury Estate in the Cotswolds. This area, which encompasses Overbury & Conderston has been known to be up-to-date and to be the first to come with running water, power and telephone service.

Here, it is being equipped with point-to-point Gigabit fibre broadband which has been said to be the envy of most areas around the world. This is where each customer who has their own fibre-optic run has the full bandwidth of their broadband service to their home network. It is like what happens with the Ethernet switches which provide the full bandwidth to the Ethernet sockets.

Like other “next-generation” broadband rollouts that have been occurring across the UK and Europe, this has allowed the online benefits of city life yet also have the peaceable and community-driven benefits of rural life.

One addition that has been factored in to this rollout is a “drop-in” hub for ad-hoc access to broadband by villagers, business, craftspeople, and community organisations. What I also like of this is that it can be used to help people who aren’t computer-literate get their hands wet with online life.

Let this be a chance to prove whether a “point-to-point” or “active” fibre-optic broadband service can really work and be a viable upgrade for existing next-generation broadband services.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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/

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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.

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