Category: Internet Access And Service

Article

thinkbroadband :: Bangor starts the ball rolling for Superfast Wales

From the horse’s mouth

Superfast Cymru

My Comments

Wales is to be expecting a rollout of next-generation broadband, initially in the Bangor area. The article cited the establishment of fibre-to-the-cabinet infrastructure in Bangor’s High Street with one of the fibre-copper cabinets being deployed there. At the moment, the service isn’t active at that point but I would like to see the service come alive with customers connected to it very soon.

The next-generation service will be based on fibre-to-the-cabinet technology with the option of on-demand fibre-to-the-premises upgrade. Most likely the copper link would be based on VDSL2 technology. This is meant to lift the average broadband speed in Wales beyond 9Mbps.

There is GBP£425 million invested in this broadband project with the estimated rollout between now and end of 2015. There will be some focus on identified “Enterprise Zones” and “Local Growth Zones” where government wants to help stimulate economic activity or population growth.

Of course, like most rural-broadband or next-generation-broadband projects, there will be some public-sector investment. In this case, the funds will come from European Union, UK and Wales governments.

The question about rural broadband will be based on what kind of engineering conditions are needed to determine what kind of technology would be used to supply the broadband. In a lot of areas in the UK where there are estates with clusters of closely-located properties, they should look at using the FTTC technology to plant the cabinets in the estates and close to the houses rather than placing them outside the estates.

It is also worth knowing that BT are the infrastructure providers but there is importance being placed on people having their choice of retail Internet service from different retail Internet providers.

Article

thinkbroadband :: Will FTTP on-demand be available from 18th March?

My Comments

Openreach, who are facilitating the next-generation broadband service in most of the UK, are offering a fibre-to-the-premises Internet service as a user-selected extra-cost option alongside the standard fibre-to-the-cabinet with VDSL2 copper link. Initially the price for the fibre-to-the-premises service was to be £1500 but they were to revise the price table with a baseline £500 connection fee and service charge that depended on the “charge band” you were in.

The service was being thought of as being suitable for small business, but extra commentary described it as being relevant for those of use who are working from home, which I would see as a growing trend.

Various comments that were put on this article related the service as being a “value-added improvement” for your home with one person relating it to having piped natural gas to your home rather than the heating-oil or propane-gas held in a tank or cylinders at your home.  Here, we were thinking of reliability and bandwidth issues that come about with the copper link especially if this link was with older or derelict wiring.

Of course there were doubts raised on subsequent property owners wanting the FTTP service due to it being being of higher cost.

I see this article and its comments as being of importance for people in Australia as the Liberal Party consider the National Broadband Network with the fibre-to-the-premises infrastructure as a waste of money and they would rather that existing areas use fibre-copper infrastructure technologies.

If they are so hell-bent on the idea of fibre-to-the-premises being a waste of money for National Broadband Network and want us to buy the fibre-copper idea, why can’t they offer the fibre-to-the-premises technology as an option that has the connection fee only paid at the initial installation? Similarly, there are those of us who do work from home or run a business from home and we would consider to have as much bandwidth especially if we use it for remote data storage or video conferencing.

Therefore the option of providing fibre-to-the-premises broadband at an upgrade price affordable for most small businesses and home-based workers / entrepreneurs while there is a fibre-copper infrastructure for a next-generation broadband service is very important. Similarly, multi-unit developments must support fibre-to-the-building so that each occupant has the proper full bandwidth available to them.

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 :: Zen launches NGA Ethernet service

From the horse’s mouth

Zen Internet

Press Release

Product Page

My Comments

Most small businesses and professionals end up buying ADSL or similar Internet technology due to it being considered cost-effective. But most of these services yield a higher download speed than upload speed which would suit consumers who download more content.

But the reality with small businesses and professionals is that they need to upload as much as they download. For example, they may want applications like remote backup or cloud-driven data services or they may make heavy use of VoIP or similar communications technology. Except for a hadful of FTTP services like Gigaclear’s where there is the same high upload and download speed, the slow upload speed may put these businesses at a disadvantage.

Zen, a UK ISP have offered a small-business “leased-line” Ethernet-grade Internet service that works with FTTC and FTTP connections to provide from 2Mbps to 10Mbps simultaneous bandwidth at the prices that this group of users can afford. This includes hardware like a managed router and options like failover DSL connections if the main line goes down.

Once more services like these start to come on line for small business at the prices that these businesses can afford, it could open up paths for these business to move off download-focused consumer Internet to business-focused Internet that is also about larger upload bandwidth.

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

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/