Tag: fibre-optic broadband

Article

Deutsche Glasfaser brings its own fibre-optic infrastructure to Germany’s regional and rural areas

Deutsche Glasfaser: Das Netz der Zukunft zieht schon bald in eurer Nachbarschaft ein | NETZWELT (German language / Deutsche Sprache)

From the horse’s mouth

Deutsche Glasfaser

Web site (German language / Deutsche Sprache)

My Comments

Deutsche Glasfaser, a German ISP based in Borken (near Dusseldorf), North Rhine Westphalia, is demonstrating an effort towards bringing high-speed Internet to Germany’s regional, rural and suburban areas.

Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone own most of Germany’s infrastructure-level Internet service. This is primarily copper-based technology, either VDSL using traditional telephone cabling or DOCSIS cable-modem technology using coaxial cabling. They offer their own retail services as well as leasing access to this infrastructure to third-party retail operators like 1&1 and Versatel.

A few operators are establishing fibre-to-the-building or fibre-to-the-premises networks and selling retail high-speed Internet service using these networks. This happens in some major cities. But rural and regional areas were just limited to the Deutsche Telekom or Vodafone offerings which weren’t likely to fare well when it comes to bandwidth or service stability. This is very similar to what happens in most countries when it comes to how areas outside major urban areas are treated when it comes to Internet service.

What Deutsche Glasfaser is doing is creating their own FTTP / FTTB infrastructure in these rural, regional and suburban areas, thus cutting out the copper-based technology that can limit bandwidth due to vectoring or error-mitigation measures. There is also a goal to create a nationwide fibre-optic network across Germany in order to establish some form of independence as far as infrastructure is concerned.

The activity that Deutsche Glasfaser and other city-based operators are doing within Germany is similar to what is going on in the UK. That is where many ISPs are setting up their own infrastructure and offering retail Internet service on that infrastructure that is better value for money than what BT Openreach has been offering.

There will be questions arising about whether these services will be required to wholesale their infrastructure-level broadband capacity to competing retail ISPs and at what point. This may be so where the EU or other groups push Germany to facilitate a lively competitive market for high-bandwidth Internet service.

At the moment, Deutsche Glasfaser is active in 1.3 million households in 13 of Germany’s states and slowly building out in more areas.

Service Packages at time of writing

There is complementary connection and installation for your Deutsche Glasfaser service when you take up one of their packages. This includes “shifting” your Internet and telephone service from your extant provider as well as porting your fixed-line number to their service.

€24.99 monthly introductory offer for the first 12 months of service

As far as I know, there doesn’t seem to be any tariff packages or extensions that allow low-cost or unlimited international calling to popular destinations.

They also offer an IPTV service known as DGTV as an extra-cost option. This has 70 high-definition channels, a PVR set-top box and access to video-on-demand services, It costs €15 per month on top of your Deutsche Glasfaser Internet and telephony package.

What I like of the Deutsche Glasfaser effort is that they are bringing up-to-date Internet technology towards rural, regional and suburban Germany through the use of fibre-to-the-premises or fibre-to-the-building technology. It could stir up others to work on similar projects through that country and through Europe.

Article

AVM shows an example of what the home network router will be about with the FritzBox 5530 Fiber

Neue FritzBox: AVM bringt neuen Router in den Handel (New FritzBox: AVM brings new router to market) | Inside Digital (German language / Deutsche Sprache)

From the horse’s mouth

AVM

FritzBox 5530 Fiber (Product Page – English / Deutsch)

My Comments

AVM is offering to the German market a Wi-Fi router that is a sign of things to come for home-network routers.

This unit, known as the Fritz!Box 5530 Fiber has a built-in optical-network modem that works with current-specification fibre-to-the-premises networks. It doesn’t matter whether the network implements active or passive topology, which would cater for situations where the infrastructure provider or ISP upgrades the service to active technology for increased capacity.

The fibre-optic cable for the network would have to be equipped with SFP fibre-optic plugs which allow the user to plug it in to the FTTP service. Depending on the FTTP installation, this may be a captive fibre-optic flylead that you plug in to the modem or fibre-optic cable you plug in to the equipment and a wall socket.

Here, this kind of router would come in handy where fibre-to-the-premises services are able to be delivered on a “bring-your-own-equipment” basis. Here, this may be a self-install setup for those premises which have extant FTTP infrastructure for the network that provides the desired service. Or it could be for professionally-installed “new-infrastructure” services where the customer supplies their own equipment or the equipment is supplied under separate delivery.

It would also appeal to ISPs who want to provide a router with integrated optical-network-terminal functionality as their customer-premises equipment.

On the left is the SFP fibre-optic connection for your FTTP fibre-optic Internet service while the Ethernet socket in the middle outlined in white is the 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet socket.

On the LAN side, there are three Ethernet connections with one being a 2.5 Gigabit connection for “multiple-Gigabit” Ethernet networks along with two Gigabit Ethernet connections. The Wi-Fi segment is a two-stream Wi-Fi 6 setup which allows for high-throughput wireless networking. Of course, these connections work at the stated speed if equipment matching these specifications is connected to them.

The Fritz!Box 5530 Fiber has VoIP adaptor functionality including a DECT base station for six handsets along with an analogue-telephony-adaptor for one regular telephony device, including a fax machine. This setup is SIP compliant for setup with most Fixed-Line IP services that are the way to provide landline telephony in the era of fibre-to-the-premises broadband.

It runs the AVM FritzOS operating system and like other Fritzbox devices, implements automatic software updating. There is support for the AVM FritzMesh arrangement that allows the use of AVM’s network-infrastructure hardware to become part of a wired and/or wireless mesh setup to assure proper network coverage across your home.

At the moment, the Fritz!Box 5530 Fiber sells to the German market for a recommended-retail price of EUR€169. But the fact that it provides a fibre-optic WAN and at least one multi-gigabit Ethernet LAN connection to answer the trend of high-throughput Internet and home-network connectivity.

This could become in the near future the path to go for home-network routers as fibre-to-the-premises Gigabit broadband Internet takes hold. It also underscores what is going on with the design of consumer IT hardware within Europe.

Articles

Fibre to the premises courtesy of Gigaclear

Queen’s Birthday Honours for CEO of Rural FTTP ISP Gigaclear | ISPReview

Matthew Hare awarded OBE for services to broadband provision | ThinkBroadband

From the horse’s mouth

UK Government – Cabinet Office

Queen’s Birthday Honours List

Previous coverage about Matthew Hare OBE

Interviews (2011,2015)

New ISP players working against established players to provide competitive Internet service

Gigaclear hits the big 10,000

First it was Hambleton, now it’s Uppingham to have fibre-optic broadband in Rutland

My Comments

I have given a fair amount of coverage to Matthew Hare and his company, Gigaclear, on this Website. This is due to the effort put in by Matthew Hare and this company to put fibre-to-the-premises broadband in to a significant part of rural England like East Anglia, the Home Counties and now Devon.

As I have highlighted before, rural areas do have a real need for urban-grade broadband Internet service. This is due to the many small businesses that serve these areas, including people who run these businesses from home along with people who live a significant distance from friends and family who are based in city areas. In some cases

It has also encouraged other independent fibre-to-the-premises networks to exist like the Hyperoptic urban network and the B4RN communitiy-driven rural networks.With these networks, the provision of current-expectation Internet service has been about working independently of BT Opennreach who look after the main telecoms infrastructure of the UK.

As I have covered before, Gigaclear have invested GBP£1000 / property to provide a standard of broadband not normally associated with a rural-broadband deployment. It is to provide a symmetrical Gigabit service using fibre-to-the-premises technology rather than a fibre-copper technology which can introduce many variables like decrepit infrastructure.

Just recently, Matthew Hare and Gigaclear received FTTH awards from the FTTH Council Europe who represent European fibre-to-the-premises network providers. This was because of his successful use of that technology in British rural areas.

Now Matthew Hare has received an Order of the British Empire as part of the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours thanks to his groundbreaking effort in providing broadband Internet service that is beyond ordinary for rural areas. This Honour, fully referred to as “Officer of the Order of the British Empire” was cited as for “Services to Broadband Provision in the UK”.

There have been some other Royal honours issued in relationship to providing independent Internet service using independent high-grade infrastructure within the UK. One of these is Dana Tobak CBE, whose Honour was granted as part of the New Year’s Honours list in 2017-2018 for her work with Hyperoptic and two granted in 2015 in relationship to the B4RN effort – Christine Conder OBE and Barry Forde MBE.

What these awards are showing is that someone has gone out of their way to provide a high standard of Internet service to Britain’s rural community and has broken the ground to offer it independently of an established incumbent telco or ISP.

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 – From the horse’s mouth

Spirit Telecom to introduce infrastructure-level competition for next-generation broadband to Geelong

Spirit Telecom

Hey Geelong – Did you hear us on the radio? (Interview broadcast on Radio Bay FM)

My Comments

Recently, Radio Bay FM in Geelong broadcast an interview about Spirit Telecom setting up shop in this regional boom-city. Here, Roxie Bennett interviewed Spirit Telecom’s managing director Geoff Neate about the pending arrival of their independent infrastructure setup as part of her lifestyle segment broadcast.

Spirit Telecom ahs been established since 2005 and has provided infrastructure-level competition for broadband Internet service in some of Melbourne’s inner neighbourhoods. Here, households and businesses who sign up with Spirit have access to simultaneous ultra-high-speed bandwidth thanks to use of Ethernet cabling within the buildings and a fibre-optic network for the last-mile connection to the building.

But Spirit is intending to roll this infrastructure out to Geelong with the first development that will benefit being the Federal Mills regional technology hub, an example of the new economic direction for that city. Let’s not forget that Geelong is starting to take on high-rise development within its CBD, which could open the door for Spirit Telecom to wire up the new developments for Ethernet-based FTTB next-generation broadband. It is in conjunction with Spirit Telecom’s other efforts to reach other Australian cities to provide developers, building owners and businesses a viable high-quality alternative to the NBN.

This broadcast is a sign of the times because it has highlighted the slowpoke effort that NBN has taken with providing a reliable next-generation broadband service in most of built-up Australia. There was even an on-air “dig” cast at NBN because of the delay in rolling out broadband in to that city.

Personally, I see Spirit Telecom’s effort in running their own infrastructure and high-quality next-generation broadband Internet as something that will “put a rocket up” NBN to roll out infrastructure in to that city/

Article – From the horse’s mouth 

Chorus Broadband NZ

Blog Post

My Comments

Chorus, New Zealand’s broadband infrastructure provider, highlighted why their fibre-to-the-premises broadband setup has been designed to be future-proof.

Here, they highlighted the time when New Zealand acquired colour television and households were getting their claws on to one of the new colour TV sets that were being released. This was concurrent with the 1974 Commonwealth Games being hosted in Christchurch, New Zealand and the Kiwis were wanting to watch this event in living colour. Then they highlighted the up-and-coming 2020 Olympics in Tokyo with the possibility of it being delivered using 8K UHDTV technology thanks to NHK in Japan being able to deliver 8K UHDTV broadcast feeds to broadcasters who have local rights to the event.

But they were mentioning about the feasibility of upgrading their infrastructure from 1Gbps to 10Gbps. They are prototyping such a setup in their Auckland-based Chorus Fibre Experience Lab but came across with the fact that it would only require replacement of the electronics at each end of the connection.

This would be the optical-network terminal in their exchange or street cabinet and the optical-network terminal in your home that connects between the optical fibre and your router’s WAN (Internet) socket. At the time that 10Gbps fibre-optic connectivity is needed, newer and better routers would be offered with a 10Gbps Ethernet connection of some sort on the WAN side, in addition to LAN-side wired and wireless connectivity that suits these expectations. If the exchange-side setup is totally modular, it could allow for a gradual service upgrade initially to those who are after that bandwidth like business users or “tech-head” early adopters.

Some other areas like Hong Kong, Norway, Qatar, and South Korea are dabbling with the 10Gbps fibre-optic idea and offering it as a service. Mostly this is offered by the local ISPs as a premium or business-class service.

But Chorus and other FTTP providers can see other upgrade paths for their fibre-optic services without the need to replace the optical fibre. Here, they could convert from passive-optical-network architecture to active-optical-network architecture to provide full bandwidth to each premises. It also allows the infrastructure to support full quality-of-service for real-time applications like online gaming, IP telephony or video streaming as well as a highly-flexible service for households and businesses.

Chorus are also underscoring the reality that there will be more Internet traffic over their infrastructure especially with the smart home and the Internet Of Things. This is more so if these devices become dependent on cloud services and provide frequently-updated data.

Here, what is being highlighted is the use of futureproof technologies that can allow for long-term investment in the same infrastructure and an upgrade path that costs relatively little to implement.

Article

Hyperoptic Brings 1Gbps FTTP Broadband to its First UK Housing Estate | ISPReview

From the horse’s mouth

Hyperoptic

Press Release

My Comments

Hyperoptic are one of the Internet service / last-mile infrastructure providers operating in the UK who are providing next-generation Internet service to particular communities there in a manner where they compete with established Internet infrastructure providers like Openreach. Here, they have been focusing on apartment towers in most of the UK’s major cities and have even gone as far to provide this service to one of London’s marinas. They were even known to provide “month-by-month” Internet service to people who weren’t likely to be occupying an apartment for the year due to such realities like business placement.

This time, they have broken from their mould by installing FTTP infrastructure and providing next-generation Internet service to a housing estate in Welwyn Garden City, one of London’s commuter towns based in Hertfordshire. The new-build housing estate, known as Bellway at QEII and built where the QEII hospital used to exist, has been established by Bellway homes and consists of traditional standalone homes along with some apartments and “coach houses” (apartments built on top of one or more garages), with the property count coming to 163 premises. The typical price being put up is around GBP£319,995 for a two-bedroom coach house to GBP£484,995 for a four-bedroom house,

But Hyperoptic have put the hand up for the Internet service that will be available at this development by offering the service as a fibre-to-the-premises kind, where they can offer a double-play Internet and landline telephone service. This is a symmetrical service with the Internet connection being up to 1Gbps bandwidth. Here, Bellway have found that access to very-high-speed reliable broadband Internet is considered by potential homebuyers and renters as important as access to good schools and transport infrastructure.

New homeowners will be offered a free trial service of up to 1Gbps Internet and phone service that provides free evening and weekend calls for the first three months. This is compared to the meagre offering of a 20Mbps package offered as the trial package.

Broadband-only consumers will be paying a GBP£40 connection fee, but all users will have a 12 month minimum-term contract and will be supplied with a wireless router for their home network and benefit from unlimited “all-you-can-eat” Internet usage and 24/7 support. Personally, Bellway could come to the party in a better way by offering people buying the new-built homes the ability to have their home wired for Ethernet as a deal-making option for their home-building package, with at least a data socket in the living room and the home office.

This isn’t the only “conventional house” development on a large block of land that is benefiting from Hyperoptic’s fibre-to-the-premises effort. They are looking towards knocking on developers’ doors around the UK and competing against BT, Virgin Media & co to “wire-up” new-build developments of this kind in the UK with fibre-optic Internet.

Here, it is one of the examples of where other companies “go it alone” to provide better Internet service in to neighbourhoods even if the main service provider like NBN or Openreach works at a snail’s pace to provide the same level of service.

Personally, I wouldn’t put it past someone like TPG to approach developers who are building “conventional house” residential developments and offer more than what NBN are willing to provide.