Tag: Berlin-Brandenburg

Article

La ville de Berlin lance une application «contre les nazis» | La Figaro (French language | Langue Française)

From the horse’s mouth

Berlin Against Nazis (Berlin Gegen Nazis)

Press Release (German Language / Deutsche Sprache)

My Comments

Another smartphone app has been developed for the community good, this time in Germany. Here, it is a notification app to distribute information about the issue of neo-Nazism to people who live in Berlin.

Smartphones are being seen as activist tools even with custom apps

“Against Nazis” (“Gegen Nazis”), which this fully-free app is called, serves more as a bulletin-board app which shows what is going on around town concerning neo-Nazi activity through the use of push notifications and an interactive map. Through these technologies, this information is distributed effectively real-time. This app allows users to act on the information in order to show solidarity against the neo-Nazi activity that is going on near them or to effectively strengthen the network’s activity. This app has been delivered in German, English and Turkish because of Germany having a distinct presence of Turkish people.

It has been developed by the “Berlin Gegen Nazis” (Berlin Against Nazis) network which is supported by the Berlin local government. This was brought on by a member of this network who was engaged in an anti-Nazi march in Rudolf Hess’s home town when a far-right group effectively took over that march.

The neo-Nazi groups still maintain a presence in Germany although they have a low impact on the national polls and on Berlin’s polls. In relation to Berlin, they have presence in poorer areas of the city like Schöneweide in the former East Berlin. It is also known that people who lived in the former East-Germany areas were soft towards the extreme-right ideology.

This is another way where the mobile phone platforms are being used for the public good especially due to the ease of access that these platforms provide. It also involves creating an information-delivery backbone which is cost-effective for these community organisations.

Telekom startet FTTH-Ausbau für VDSL in Potsdam – VDSL.de (Germany – German language)

My comments

The fat pipe is becoming fatter in Germany

Deutsche Telekom are intending to roll out FTTH (fibre-to-the-home) next-generation broadband into Potsdam, Germany. This is although there is a great penetration of VDSL-driven FTTC (fibre-to-the-curb / fibre-to-the-cabinet) setups in most of Germany, including this capital city of Berlin-Brandenburg.

They intend to have this fibre infrastructure pass at least 21,000 households in the southern and western areas of this city. Building owners will need to give Deutsche Telekom a permit to give the “go-ahead” for the fibre-optic installation work to start in their building, as would be required for most telecommunications works in these buildings; but this could be simply a formality as they realise the benefits of this technology for their tenants.

The deployment pricing will be similar to what has been called for Australia’s National Broadband Network where the installation will be free when the service is rolled out to the area but will cost more for installations commenced after the rollout.

As well, Deutsche Telekom do have a long-term intent to roll out FTTH next-generation broadband to Germany’s major cities.

Moving from FTTC to FTTH

What has interested me about this work is that it is an example of being able to move from an FTTC or FTTN setup with a copper run from a street box to the customer’s door; to an FTTH / FTTP setup which has fibre-optic all the way to the customer’s door. Thi is done while reusing existing fibre-optic cabling infrastructure rather than laying down new infrastructure.

Some of the FTTC or FTTN setups like a few of the deployments occurring in rural Britain are being designed with support for migration to the all-fibre layouts. So anyone who does want to advocate for a part-fibre part-copper setup for a next-generation broadband rollout would need to factor in a future-proof arrangement for FTTH/FTTP all-fibre setups down the track. As well, this approach can cater for environments where some buildings like offices or educational facilities could have an all-fibre rune but as needs change, other buildings could have the all-fibre run. Similarly, it can allow reuse of existing head-end equipment used for the copper deployment like DSLAMs on newer extensions of the part-copper part-fibre setup such as entry to new neighbourhoods for example.

So this setup means that even a part-copper part-fibre setup like an FTTC setup could benefit from higher throughput speeds by moving towards an all-fibre setup while retaining the existing fibre-optic backbone infrastructure.

Customers please note with these conversions

When these networks switch over from a VDSL2-based part-copper part-fibre network to an all-fibre network, you will have to move from a DSL modem router to a broadband router with an Ethernet WAN (Internet) port.

Some high-end modem routers will have a dual-WAN setup which uses an Ethernet port as a secondary WAN port and this may be in the form of a LAN port that can become a WAN port or as a dedicated WAN port. It is worth checking if your modem-router has this setup by referring to its instruction manual or manufacturer’s Website.