Tag: competing Internet service

An issue that will have to be kept in governments’ minds is the assurance of a high-quality value-for-money Internet service that is affordable for all people in all areas of the country.

A requirement to maintain a competitive Internet-service landscape may not be needed if the incumbent infrastructure provider is providing an Internet service that represents proper value-for-money for everyone. This may hold true for a country like New Zealand with its Chorus FTTP infrastructure network which was one of those infrastructure networks that was split away from the incumbent telecommunications service.

This includes a high-throughput service of current expectations, access to a decent-standard Internet service by people who live in rural areas as well as access at an affordable price for low-income and marginalised communities and the non-profit or start-up / small-business sector. Such services may be assisted through programs like “solidarity tariffs” for low-income people or a universal-service obligation fund that is used to subsidise rural setups.

The competitive market

There are different approaches to assuring a competitive Internet-service landscape especially at the infrastructure level.

France implements a requirement to have a minimum number of infrastructure-level providers in larger towns and cities. In addition, they assess all last-mile Internet-provision technologies for provision of Internet service in a competitive manner at the infrastructure level.

Or countries like the UK and Germany encourage and give blessing to independent operators that provide their own fibre-to-the-premises or fibre-to-the-building Internet-service infrastructure. In a lot of cases, such services are offered before the dominant infrastructure provider or ISP offers infrastructure or retail Internet service in the area. Or these networks are offered to an established area in competition to the area’s dominant provider. Here, such operators cover a particular village, town or city; or part thereof and offer retail Internet service that is above average for its class. They are also encouraged to set up presence in multiple areas in order to give more settlements decent Internet service or increase competition in other settlements.

In some cases like with some towns and cities within the USA, the local or regional government provides infrastructure-level or retail Internet service to the area’s citizens. This is typically as an extension to the local government entity establishing its own Internet infrastructure for its own needs and making further value out of it. But this approach has caused friction with the dominant ISPs in those areas due to the provision of competing Internet service in an area where they control the Internet-service market.

These independent infrastructure providers could be required by some jurisdictions to offer wholesale Internet access if they become large enough to do so. This can be deemed by their appearance in a minimum number of cities, them passing a minimum number of premises or acquiring a minimum number of subscribing customers.

There can also be a requirement for an infrastructure operator to accept being “built over” by a competitor i.e. having a competing operator build their infrastructure in that operator’s territory, able to serve that operator’s customers. Such a requirement can be brought about typically by metrics similar to required wholesale-service provision like number of premises passed or subscribing customers.  Or if the population centre has a minimum population size, minimum area or minimum number of homes and businesses, the infrastructure provider has to accept being built over,

In the same context, there will be a question about whether a retail ISP would be able to use multiple wholesale providers especially within the same population centre. This may come in to its own where different wholesale providers offer different wholesale-service standards like higher throughput, symmetrical throughput or business-grade guaranteed service quality. Similarly it could be about extending reach to communities not served by the wholesale provider they are primarily contracted with.

Social tariffs and plans

Another issue that is cropping up is the provision of affordable use plans for certain user classes. This was a practice often done in social democracies where the incumbent telephony-service provider, typically a government entity that was part of the post office, provided affordable basic residential telephony service for poorer communities or provided affordable business telephony service for community organisations.

One user class this would be for are people who are living below the poverty line. Here, disadvantaged communities not having access to Internet service they can afford makes it hard for them to participate in education, employment / entrepreneurship or society, or complete everyday transactions. It is also seen as a factor that exacerbates the “digital divide” between those who can use online services and those who can’t.

This user class would be identified by having access to income-based welfare benefits including concession or subsidised-healthcare cards. Some jurisdictions may even provide particular income-independent concession programs for at-risk people groups like senior citizens or Indigenous and refugee communities. In addition, social tariffs could be offered to people who live in social or affordable / rent-controlled housing typically offered to people who are on limited means.

Some ISPs even use social tariffs as part of their efforts to remove the digital divide, along with subsidised computer equipment for the home or facilitating / sponsoring computer-literacy education programs.

Another user class would be the charitable and non-profit sector who would need Internet service to fulfil their functions. Such organisations may be identified through registration in business registers as being “non-profit” or “charity”, including registration in “charity-commission” registers. As well, some service providers may also factor in organisational revenue or profits. Similarly, start-ups and small businesses could be provided these tariffs such as through business-assistance / incubator programs or rent-controlled business premises that are offered to these businesses.

But there would be the issue of providing an Internet service that satisfies current expectations for standard services when providing social tariffs to these customer groups. That means something that you can run your life or business with reasonably.good Internet service without paying too much for that service.

The existence of social tariffs and plans and the kind of services offered under these plans could be an indication of how competitive the Internet service sector is and whether it is working in a customer-centric manner. But these social tariffs could be supported through approaches like a universal-service-obligation fund, public-sector funding or voluntary-sector funding.

Assuring lively competition

But how can a lively competitive Internet service market be assured? This question is more so where there is that dominant risk of market concentration for wholesale or retail Internet service.

Such concentration can lead towards monopolistic or cartel-like behaviour that is hostile to customers or suppliers such as price-gouging or onerous terms and conditions for the provision of service. As well, this behaviour can facilitate denial of service to communities not seen as being valuable such as rural communities or neighbourhoods of social disadvantage.

Here, governments would need to take a whole-of-government approach to work against market concentration at the infrastructure or retail level. This would involve action by the telecommunications regulators as well as competition-and-consumer watchdogs and may also involve properly-enforced antitrust legislation and regulation. As well, regional and local governments would have to work in a manner to assure lively competition for Internet services in their area when it comes to things like the capacity to regulate telecommunications infrastructure or planning, access to the highways for infrastructure installation, or planning regulation for new developments.

It should include the ability to reject proposed corporate mergers or force the break-up of larger dominant companies. Or it could be about encouraging competitors to set up shop in markets of a significant size that are dominated by a monopoly or cartel.

Conclusion

To assure common access to Internet service that befits current expectations, there needs to be a lively competitive market for this kind of service if the incumbent ISP or infrastructure provider doesn’t provide this kind of service everywhere at affordable prices.

Article

What the customer terminals will look like for Amazon’s Kuiper LEO satellite system

Amazon’s Take on Starlink Targeting >$400 Dish for Homes (gizmodo.com)

From the horse’s mouth

Amazon

Here’s your first look at Project Kuiper’s low-cost customer terminals (aboutamazon.com)

What is Amazon’s Project Kuiper? 15 Questions Answered (aboutamazon.com)

My Comments

Amazon have presented the customer satellite terminals for their Project Kuiper low-earth-orbit satellite service that competes with Elon Musk’s Starlink service. Here, they are showing this hardware well before they had launched their prototype low-earth-orbit satellites as part of that platform, something that may be considered too presumptuous.

But rather than offering just one of these terminals that is expected to be an “all-rounder” for the initial offering, Amazon presented three different terminal designs. These terminals use a phased-array antenna approach that covers a flat plate rather than the dish that Starlink went with for their terminal, and this is considered cutting edge for Ka-Band satellite applications.

It is part of a mission statement to offer high-quality satellite broadband Internet for unserved and underserved communities in a manner that is above average.

The first is an affordable terminal designed for use by households and small businesses alike and is equipped with an 11” square antenna plate. This is expected to cost USD$400 and offers a throughput of 400Mbps. The second is a cheaper transportable unit that uses a 7” square antenna and can offer a throughput of 100Mbps. This would be pitched as a budget option or suit “set-up, use, tear-down” transportable operation or something fit for “Internet of Things” use.

They even offered a larger fixed unit with a 19” x 30” rectangular antenna that has a throughput of 1Gbps. This is pitched for use by large businesses, government or telecommunications companies who need to serve many end-users. I also see this unit appealing towards an Internet-access setup with a satellite terminal linked to  a fixed-wireline or fixed-wireless connection to households and businesses in a small settlement.

This may show that Amazon may want to offer the satellite Internet service based on the Project Kuiper platform as a wholesale broadband service that other ISPs can sell on a retail level.

All these devices use a phased-array antenna approach that Amazon worked on to improve Ka-band satellite performance along with silicon that Amazon had designed themselves. This is based on Amazon’s experience with hardware and services in the form of the Fire TV set-top boxes and sticks, the Echo smart speakers and displays powered by Alexa and the Eero distributed-Wi-Fi home network platform.

There are questions to be asked about these devices such as whether Amazon is offering all of them as modem-router devices that have a Wi-Fi or Ethernet LAN link or as modem devices designed to be connected to a broadband router that has an Ethernet WAN (Internet) connection. This question would come in to its own with people wanting to use advanced or business-grade routers, including using satellite Internet as a failover means with supported equipment.

As well, there are questions that will come about regarding support for mobile and ad-hoc portable use of Project Kuiper terminals. This includes equipment designed to be installed on a vehicle, vessel or aircraft, using a Project Kuiper service in a moving vehicle, vessel or aircraft or setting up a Project Kuiper terminal anywhere without needing to notify Amazon first. This hasn’t been addressed until a significant number of the satellites are launched and there is a strong customer base.

But what is great about this is that Amazon’s Kuiper satellite system is showing up the forces of competition by offering a varied lineup of customer-use satellite terminals with equipment at affordable prices. This is even before the first satellite has been launched.

Gigaclear underscores the value of infrastructure-level competition

An issue that will be worth raising regarding the quality of service for newer high-speed fixed-line broadband services is the existence of infrastructure-level competition.

When we talk of infrastructure for a fixed-line Internet service, we are talking of copper and/or fibre-optic cabling used to take this service around a neighbourhood to each of the customers’ premises.

Then each premises has a modem of some sort, that in a lot of cases is integrated in the router, which converts the data to a form that makes it available across its network. A significant number of these infrastructure providers will supply the modem especially if they cannot provide a “wires-only” or “bring your own modem” service due to the technology they are implementing and, in a lot of these cases, will legally own the modem.

In Europe, Australia and some other countries, this broadband infrastructure is provided by an incumbent telco or an infrastructure provider and multiple retail-level telecommunications and Internet providers lease capacity on this infrastructure to provide their services to the end-user. This is compared to North America where an infrastructure provider exclusively provides their own retail-level telecommunications and Internet services to end users via their infrastructure.

In a lot of cases where multiple retail telecommunications and Internet providers use the same infrastructure, the incumbent telco may be required to divest themselves of their fixed-line infrastructure to a separate privately-owned or government-owned corporation in order to satisfy a competitive-service requirement. This means that they cannot provide a retail Internet or telecommunications service over that infrastructure at a cost advantage over competitors offering the same service over the same infrastructure. Examples of this include Openreach in the UK, NBN in Australia and Chorus in New Zealand.

A problem with having a dominant infrastructure provider is that there is a strong risk of this provider  offering to retail telecommunications providers and their end-users poor value for money when it comes to telecommunications and Internet services. It also can include this provider engaging in “redlining” which is the practice of providing substandard infrastructure or refusing to provide any infrastructure to neighbourhoods that they don’t perceive as being profitable like those that are rural or disadvantaged.

Some markets like the UK and France implement or encourage infrastructure-level competition where one or more other entities can lay their own infrastructure within urban or rural neighbourhoods. Then they can either run their own telecommunications and Internet services or lease the bandwidth to other companies who want to provide their own services.

Infrastructure-level competition

Where infrastructure-level competition exists, there are at least two different providers who provide street-based infrastructure for telecommunications and Internet service. The providers may run their own end-user telecommunications and Internet services using this infrastructure and/or they simply lease the bandwidth provided via this infrastructure to other retail Internet providers to provide these services to their customers.

Some competitors buy and use whatever “dark fibre” that exists from other previous fibre-optic installations to provide this service. Or they provide an enterprise communications infrastructure for government or big business in a neighbourhood but use dark fibre or underutilised fibre capacity from this job for offering infrastructure-level competition in that area.

As well, larger infrastructure operators who pass many premises in a market may be required to open up their infrastructure to telcos and Internet service providers that compete with their retail offering. This is something that ends up as a requirement for a highly-competitive telecommunications environment.

This kind of competition allows a retail-level telco or ISP to choose infrastructure for their service that offers them best value for money. This is more important for those retail-level ISPs and telcos who offer telecommunications and Internet to households and small businesses. As well, whenever a geographic area like a rural neighbourhood or new development is being prepared for high-speed broadband Internet, it means that the competing infrastructure providers are able to offer improved-value contracts for the provision of this service in that area.

Infrastructure-level competition also allows for the retail-level providers to innovate in providing their services without needing to risk much money in their provision. It can allow for niche providers such as high-performance gaming-focused ISPs or telcos that offer triple-play services to particular communities.

There is also an incentive amongst infrastructure providers to improve their customer service and serve neighbourhoods that wouldn’t otherwise be served. It is thanks to the risk of retail ISPs or their customers jumping to competitors if the infrastructure provider doesn’t “cut the mustard” in this field. As well, public spending on broadband access provision benefits due to the competition for infrastructure tenders for these projects.

What needs to happen

Build-over conditions

An issue commonly raised by independent infrastructure providers who are the first to wire-up a neighbourhood is the time they have exclusive access to that market. It is raised primarily in the UK by those independent infrastructure providers like Gigaclear or community infrastructure co-operatives like B4RN who have engaged in wiring up a rural community with next-generation fibre-optic broadband whether out of their pocket or with financial assistance from local government or local chambers of commerce.

This is more so where an established high-profile infrastructure provider that has big-name retail Internet providers on its books hasn’t wired-up that neighbourhood yet or is providing a service of lower capability compared to the independent provider who appeared first. For these independent operators, it is about making sure that they have a strong profile in that neighbourhood during their period of exclusivity.

Then, when the established infrastructure provider offers an Internet service of similar or better standard to the independent provider, the situation is described as a “build-over” condition. It then leads to the independent provider becoming a infrastructure-level competitor against the established provider which may impinge on cost recovery as far as the independent’s infrastructure is concerned. Questions that will come up include whether the independent operator should be compensated for loss of exclusivity in the neighbourhood, or allowing a retail ISP or telco who used the independent’s infrastructure to offer their service on the newcomer’s infrastructure.

Pits, Poles and Pipes

Another issue that will be raised is the matter of the physical infrastructure that houses the cable or fibre-optic wiring i.e. the pits, poles and pipes. These may be installed and owned by the telecommunications infrastructure provider for their own infrastructure or they may be installed and owned by a third-party operator like a utility or local council.

The first issue that can be raised is whether an infrastructure provider has exclusive access to particular physical infrastructure and whether they have to release the access to this infrastructure to competing providers. It doesn’t matter whether the infrastructure provider has their own physical infrastructure or gains access rights to physical infrastructure provided by someone else like a local government or utility company.

The second issue that also can crop up is access to public thoroughfares and private property to install and maintain infrastructure. This relates to legal access powers that government departments in charge of the jurisdiction’s regulated thoroughfares like roads and rails may provide to the infrastructure provider; or the wayleaves and easements negotiated between property owners and the infrastructure provider. In the context of competitive service, this may be about whether or not an easement, for example, is exclusive to a particular infrastructure provider.

Sustainable competition

Then there is the issue of sustainable competition within the area. This is where the competitors and the incumbent operator can make money by providing infrastructure-level Internet service yet the end-users have the benefits of a highly-competitive market. A market with too much competition can easily end up with premature consolidation where various retail or infrastructure providers cease to exist or end up merging.

Typically the number of operators that can sustainably compete may he assessed on the neighbourhood’s adult population count or the number of households and businesses within the neighbourhood. Also it can be assessed on the number of households and businesses that are actually taking up the broadband services or likely to do so in that neighbourhood.

Retail providers having access to multiple infrastructure providers

An issue that will affect retail-level telcos and ISPs is whether they have access to only one infrastructure operator or can benefit from access to multiple operators. This may be an issue where the infrastructure operators differ in attributes like maximum bandwidth or footprint and a major retail-level operator want to benefit from these different attributes.

In one of these situations, a retail-level broadband provider who wants to touch as many markets as possible may use one infrastructure provider for areas served by that provider. Then they use other providers that serve other areas that their preferred infrastructure provider doesn’t touch yet. This may also apply if they want to offer service plans with a particular specification offered by an infrastructure provider answering that specification but competing with the infrastructure provider they normally use.

Multiple-premises developments

Then there is the issue of multiple-premises buildings and developments where there is a desire to provide this level of service competition for the occupants but offer it in a cost-effective manner.

This may be answered by each infrastructure provider running their own wiring through the building but this approach leads to multiple wires and points installed at each premises. On the other hand, an infrastructure cable of a particular kind could be wired through the building and linked using switching / virtual-network technology to different street-side infrastructures. This could be based on cable technology like VDSL, Ethernet or fibre-optic so that infrastructure providers who use a particular technology for in-building provision use the infrastructure relating to that technology.

Estate-type developments with multiple buildings may have questions raised about them. Here, it may be about whether the infrastructure is to be provided and managed on a building-level basis or a development-wide basis. This can be more so where the multiple-building development is to be managed during its lifetime as though it is one entity comprising of many buildings.

Then there is the issue of whether the governing body of a multiple-premises development should be required to prevent infrastructure-provider exclusivity. This can crop up where an infrastructure provider or ISP pays the building manager or governing body of one of these developments to maintain infrastructure exclusivity perhaps by satisfying the governing body’s Internet needs for free for example.

In all of these cases, it would be about making sure that each premises in a multiple-premises development is able to gain access to the benefits of infrastructure-level competition.

Conclusion

The idea of infrastructure-level competition for broadband Internet is to be considered of importance as a way to hold dominant infrastructure providers to account. Similarly, it can be seen as a way to push proper broadband Internet service in to underserved areas whether with or without public money.

Article

Lexington to benefit from real Internet-service competition thanks to an emergency meeting by the city’s council

Lexington Is Downright Pissed About Charter’s High Prices | Broadband News And DSL Reports

Lexington gears up for citywide gigabit-speed internet service | SmileyPete

My Comments

Over the last few years, it has become much easier for the incumbent “Baby Bells” and cable-TV companies to get away with providing a customer-hostile service to most of the USA’s Internet users. This has manifested through onerous terms and conditions, price gouging and poor customer-service quality from these businesses so much so that the average American doesn’t have any faith in them for their telecommunications services.

Lexington to keep the city from heading back to the Ma Bell days

It is while these established telcos and cablecos keep lobbying federal, state and local governments to prohibit the deployment of competitive telephony and Internet service and even have a new FCC chairman as their lapdog. In some ways, I describe this current situation as leading the USA’s telecommunications, cable-TV and Internet-service market back to the “Ma Bell” days before Carterfone and the AT&T breakup decree.

But Lexington, Kentucky have undertaken local-government action to facilitate competitive Internet service.

This was achieved through an emergency meeting of the municipal council to open the doors for MetroNet to set up shop in Lexington and provide their own Gigabit fibre-optic infrastructure in order to offer competing Internet service. It was in response to Charter, an incumbent cable-TV company offering cable-modem broadband, taking over Time-Warner Cable and Bright House Networks thus leading to rubbishy customer service and price-gouging.

Regular readers will be aware of the values of a next-generation broadband network based on Gigabit fibre technology. Here, these include home users benefiting form Internet-delivered 4K UHDTV content being quickly streamed or downloaded or reduced lag for online gameplay. Business users and people working from home can also benefit from being able to upload and download business-critical data quickly, implement streamed-video delivery without issues and see reliable use of cloud-driven “as-a-service” computing, amongst other things.

The fibre-optic service is to start coming on line late Northern Summer. Initially it will be rolled out to the area bracketed by east of Lexington’s downtown area and north of Richmond Road, East New Circle Road and the I-75 Interstate highway. The work had started off in January this year and is progressing smoothly.

The goal is to make Lexington, Kentucky the second Gigabit City in the USA, after Chattanooga in the neigbouring state of Tennessee. Here, the Chattanooga effort was facilitated by the city’s Electrical Power Board in 2009. The goal will also be for Lexington to be the USA’s largest Gigabit City. But could these efforts come on as a way to light up various Southern states of the US as places to conduct tech-focused business?

As has been achieved with real service competition especially on an infrastructure level, it will mean that the incumbent operators will have to lift their game to maintain customer loyalty. Infact Charter have registered interest to offer Gigabit-speed cable modem service in a few of their markets but could this competitive pressure have it happening in Lexington?

Article

County Broadband Bring 1Gbps FTTP Network to Rural Homes in Broughton | ISP Review

From the horse’s mouth

County Broadband

Home Page

Broughton Fibre FTTP Project

Home Page

Press Release

My Comments

County Broadband are a wireless ISP who are offering improved Internet service across most of rural Cambridgeshire and East Anglia in the UK. But they have decided to run a 1Gbps fibre-to-the-premises service in Broughton, Cambridgeshire as a proving ground for deploying this technology in rural villages.

This is similar to the efforts that Gigaclear, B4RN and other small-time rural ISPs are undertaking to enable real broadband expectations in other parts of rural England. In this case it is to provide a viable alternative to substandard ADSL service that may not have a chance of hitting the headline 2Mbps speed thanks to the typically decrepit telephony infrastructure that these areas end up with.

They are announcing the impending arrival of this service through a village hall meeting for the townsfolk on the 4th of August 2017. The ISPReview article raised issues about poor-quality service with BT Openreach saying on their Website that the local street cabinet was mad ready for fibre but this installation was found to be located 3 miles or 4.828 km away from Broughton, without the likelihood of delivering high-speed broadband to that town.

That article also said that, like what has happened in other British rural areas, larger companies would “wake up and smell the bacon” with the intent to service those areas because of the small-time operators offering next-generation Internet in to those areas thus leading to infrastructure-level competition. Of course, there is also the fact that as the town grows, more retail-level ISPs could be offering to use the infrastructure to service that neighbourhood along with mobile telephony providers using the same infrastructure to provide an improved cellular mobile telephony service for that area.

But I also see this as being of benefit to the householders and businesses who want to benefit from what a high-speed Internet connection offers. This is more so where small businesses see the cloud as a way of allowing them to grow up such as for a shop to move from the old cash register towards a fully-electronic POS system as part of “growing up”, or for the hospitality trade to benefit from offering high-speed Wi-Fi Internet as a marketable amenity.

For County Broadband to provide the FTTP fibre-optic infrastructure to Broughton as a proving ground could lead them to better paths for rural broadband improvement. This could mean something like more villages and small towns in East Anglia being wired for next-generation future-proof Internet and perhaps making that area an extension of the Silicon Fen.

Articles

A new provider starts to offer competitive Internet service to the apartment-block market

Fiber Corp looks to fill NBN gap | The Australian Business Review

​Fiber Corp rolling out NBN alternative | CIO

NBN rival Fiber Corp to offer alternative CVC model | Optical Solutions

Fibre optics firm plans to offer 10Gbps speeds | ITWire

From the horse’s mouth

Fiber Corp

Home Page

My Comments

… this time up in Sydney

A highly-politicised National Broadband Network deployment in Australia, which has led to the slow rollout of its services across most of Australia’s urban areas has brought on the arrival of infrastructure-level competition.

This is where independent companies are rolling out fibre-optic or other infrastructure to deliver next-generation broadband Internet service to various neighbourhoods. It has been facilitated by recent liberalisation of the market where multiple retail-level ISPs can buy access to these networks. A similar situation has occurred in the United Kingdom to open up next-generation broadband in to various urban and rural areas thanks to independent operators laying down their infrastructure independent of BT Openreach – the UK’s British-Telecom-controlled equvalent of the National Broadband Network.

One of these that has started taking action is DGTek who had started to run their own fibre-optic infrastructure around Elwood and some of Melbourne’s inner-south-east bayside suburbs, while another of these is TPG who have installed their own infrastructure in a number of apartment complexes across Australia, putting the wind up NBN to cover those locations.

Fiber Corp, a Sydney-based fibre-optic infrastructure company backed by veteran food-industry business and turf identity Nicholas Moraitis who owned the 1997 Melbourne Cup winner “Might And Power”, has started to offer their own competing infrastructure to multiple-occupancy building developments in central Sydney and Mascot. Their infrastructure is based on fibre-to-the-premises implementing Gigabit PON and NG-PON technology capable of offering up to 10Gbps but is being deployed with a similar business attitude to TPG’s infrastructure efforts. Here it is about the “best bang for the buck” where you are thinking about a high-quality service at an affordable price.

It will take advantage of the recent liberalisation of the infrastructure market that allows multiple retail ISPs to compete on the same physical infrastructure, but will be architected to allow small-time and startup operators on to the infrastructure at a cheap price.

Although Fiber Corp is focusing on the larger multi-occupant developments, they have had attracted interest from some of the local councils who are frustrated with the rollout delays associated with the NBN service.

Joel Clarke, Fiber Corp’s CIO, is pushing for a better “NBN levy” scheme for financing rural broadband rollouts. Here, he wants to see that all of the compliant and participating infrastructure providers are seen as part of a larger logical NBN rather than just the infrastructure provided by NBN Co.  It will also require NBN Co to be aggregated to offset all additional costs to wholesalers, retail ISPs and consumers. Otherwise, this levy will simply be seen as a tax upon competing infrastructure providers, making it harder for them to do business.

It also includes the requirement to allow any retail ISP to connect to any infrastructure and offer their service to every customer endpoint. This would allow for customers to benefit from a wider choice of Internet service providers and permit the existence of boutique service providers on the infrastructure.

Articles – French language / Langue Française

Orange : la Livebox fibre à moins de 20€ | Degroupnews.fr

From the horse’s mouth

Orange (France Télécom)

Product Page

My Comments

The competitive French market has underscored another first with Orange (France Télécom) offering a baseline next-generation broadband triple-play service for EUR€20 per month. This is available to people who have Orange FTTP fibre-optic connectivity in their street or building.

Here, the baseline service has a symmetrical bandwidth of 100Mb/s, which may be considered a rarity for baseline Internet services offered by most telcos or Internet service providers. There is also included 10Gb of online storage, with the option to buy on 1Tb of “personal-cloud” NAS storage using the DLNA-capable Livebox Play modem router.

The fixed-line telephone service, which is VoIP-based, has all landline calls anywhere in France and its “Départements Outre-Mer” territories and 110 other countries including the commonly-called destinations included in the package. With this service, you can even call any mobile user in the US or Canada for as long as you like without paying extra. But Algeria and Tunisia are provided as “option-on” countries as far as this package is concerned.

The TV service includes 160 channels with 40 of these available in HD, and users can have multiple TV sets supported as an option. This is alongside the ability to option-on PVR-style recording.

But Orange are offering this service as a turnkey install for new subscribers with the ability to have 24-hour access to their support lines.

The device that is considered the bub of this service is the Livebox Play which supports VDSL2 or Gigabit Ethernet on the WAN (Internet) side and 802.11a/b/g/n dual-band WPA2 WPS Wi-Fi and a four-port Gigabit Ethernet switch on the LAN (home network) side.

The fixed-line telephony service is facilitated using a CAT-iQ base station for DECT or CAT-iQ compliant cordless handsets and a traditional analogue connection for regular telephones. You can also connect USB Mass-Storage devices to the Livebox Play in order to have their data on the home network.

What this package is highlighting is the benefit of sustainable competition on a market where there is an emphasis on value rather than a race to the bottom. It also includes the ability to target “sweet-spot” price points with service packages that have increased value and pitch these packages at users who see these price points as something they won’t go above. As well, the extant telco or ISP is forced to change its ways when it comes to providing a service like multi-play Internet service.

At the moment, the question to raise is whether France Télécom (Orange) will kill this deal after 16 November this year or simply let it roll on as the entry-level fibre-based triple-play package?