Tag: fibre-optic broadband

Articles

thinkbroadband :: Gigaclear begin fibre-to-the-home deployment in Hambleton

From the horse’s mouth

Fibre-Optic Gigaclear Network for Rutland Village – Gigaclear Press Release

Rutland Telecom (Hambleton page) (Home)

My Comments

There has been previous coverage about Rutland Telecom establishing fibre-optic next-generation broadband in Hambleton, Leicestershire in the UK. Now Gigaclear are in the throes of laying down the fibre-optic infrastructure for the next-generation broadband.

The Hambleton network has been financed through private investors in the Hambleton village. Here, they would want to see a triple return in the form of financial growth, community togetherness and a real next-generation Internet service.

Of course, Rutland Telecom will be the main service provider for this town’s next-generation broadband service even though it is part of Gigaclear. The service is intended to be online in October 2011.

Significant features will include VoIP telephony and 50Mbps headline speed for the service. As well, the router, which will be an optical-network terminal will have 300Mbps dual-stream 802.11n Wi-Fi and a 4-port Gigabit Ethernet switch. This also includes a future proof software design that supports IPv6 networks, which I think are the way to go for next-generation broadband. Rutland Telecom could offer as an alternative an optical-network terminal that connects up to user-supplied broadband routers, which would be required for Wi-Fi hotspots that have advanced user control.

GigaClear and Rutland Telecom have higher expectations with a “fat pipe” data link between Hambleton and London as well as streaming of high-definition television in to this neighbourhood during the 2012 Olympics.

What I have liked about this development and the Lyddington development is that they have become a catalyst for villages and towns across the UK wanting to achieve real broadband Internet on a par with the cities.

Any of you who are regular readers of this site or who subscribe to it will have seen regular articles on activity concerning improvement of broadband Internet service in rural areas. Previously, I have written a post about why I stand for proper Internet service in the countryside and cover it in this site.

But I have observed activities that have raised the standard of rural Internet service in certain areas where there has been lively and competitive trading environment for Internet service. These range from local startups who offer to raise the bar for Internet in a country town to governments putting their hand to the plough for real broadband in the country.

Why rural broadband service

Farmers and small business in rural areas

Primarily farmers and small-business owners would benefit from proper broadband in the country. This is due to more of the business being transacted online such as the use of e-government services as part of managing livestock on the farm.

There is also the desire to be competitive with urban businesses or, in the case of farming, be responsive to customer and partner needs very quickly.

Motels like this one can offer Wi-Fi hotspots as a competitive edge

It also extends to hospitality businesses like hotels, motels, cafes and restaurants in these areas who want to offer public-access Internet service as a way of offering “that bit extra”. This would encompass resorts created around mountains or water features like ski resorts or lakeside resorts.

Similarly, education institutions who have rural campuses can benefit from real broadband Internet as a study and research tool. This could lead to universities and the like enriching the town with research-driven business.

Country living

The countryside is infact considered an ideal place to live due to a slower pace of life. As well, some parts of the country are particular areas of attraction for this class of living due to features of natural beauty like water features, forests or mountains.

An increasing number of urban-based people visit the country as a holiday destination or even move there. Here they would benefit from the same standard of broadband as they have in the city so they can communicate with relatives or friends there.

Similarly, the appeal of telecommuting wound go in hand with the country life as people can head in to the city only when they need to conduct business meetings. This would appeal to semi-retired people who are reducing their time in the main office.

Peri-urban areas

I am also encompassing peri-urban rural areas as well as the typical rural areas that are a distance away from major towns in the scope of this article. These are typically farming districts, areas of outstanding natural beauty or areas surrounding classic monuments that abut a major city; but are sparsely populated compared to the major city.

The people who live in the major city see these places as being a destination for a day trip and a lot of business in these areas is boosted by the tourists from the major city. Some of these areas, especially those focused around areas of outstanding beauty also attract retirees or other people who are “done with the city” as a place of residence, although it doesn’t take them long to travel to town when they need to visit it.

Examples of these in Australia are the Yarra Valley Wine District and the Dandenongs in Melbourne; the Blue Mountains in Sydney and Barwon Heads in Geelong. In France, there would be the wine regions surrounding some of the major cities like Bordeaux.

Action that has been undertaken on this front

Local initiatives

A major form of action that I have noticed is initiatives that are driven by local government and business. This has commonly occurred in broadband-improvement rollouts that are funded by local councils and / or facilitated by small local telecommunications firms or ISPs.

The best examples are the UK developments where local broadband service providers are formed or regional broadband service providers plough effort into “switching on” particular parishes. There are intense local awareness campaigns run by these small broadband service providers to solicit interest from the residents and business owners; and they will manifest in the form of offline and online promotions; including town-hall meetings.

In some of the UK deployments, there has been the use of local “sweat equity” for assisting in the establishment of fibre trunks as well as local landowners setting up easements for these fibre trunks.

Similarly local governments in the UK and France have provided seed money to the broadband initiatives. These are usually to make the towns attract more investment as well as to ignite local “e-government” initiatives.

National assistance

Defining universal-service obligations

Some countries are taking action to define a minimum broadband Internet service standard to be available across their territories. This is akin to the universal service standards that have been applied to electricity and telephone services.

Here, this may be achieved through extending the remit of the universal telephone service, including collecting monies associated with its provision, to the broadband Internet service.

National and international funding

This also leads to national governments funding broadband-service improvement; usually as part of an Internet-service improvement for the nation.as In Europe, for example, the nations also receive handouts from the European Union in Brussels towards facilitating these improvements.

In some countries like Australia and the UK, the upgrading of the telecommunications backbone to fibre-optic technology and the provision of fibre-based infrastructure close to or reaching the customer is considered a major driver for rural-broadband improvement. The use of public resources for this kind of upgrade has often beem met with derision by various conservative groups because they would rather see it all left in the hands of private enterprise.

Technology

Some of the technology is based on what is being used to established the “next-generation broadband” Internet services and is being used as a way of catering to the growth of these rural areas and the changing data transfer needs.

Fibre-to-the-cabinet technology

This typically creates a high-speed fibre-optic backbone to one or more street cabinets located close to customer clusters.The customers have the phone connections linked to this cabinet and the Internet service is delivered via ADSL2 or VDSL2 technology over these phone services.They may have the regular telephone provided via the town’s exchange, a sub-exchange in the street cabinet or VoIP technology.

In some situations, this technique has been used as an “ADSL2 booster” effort by bringing a higher-throughput ADSL2 service to customers who, by virtue of distance to the exchange, would receive lower throughput service or no service at all.

This also opens up a path for offering fibre-to-the-premises next-generation broadband Internet to customers in these towns, either as a service differentiator or as an upgrade path. It also provides for service growth especially if a town acquires a major employer and sees its capacity grow.

Fibre-optic trunks

A fibre-optic trunk line that passes country areas may be treated like a natural-gas pipeline passing these areas. Here, branch lines or “spurs” are connected to the trunk line and used to serve local communities; while the trunk serves cities that are at each end of the line.

This is seen as a way to establish a next-generation broadband Internet service in to the neighbouring towns in a cost-effective manner.

Terrestrial wireless and “white space” spectrum

Another technology that is exciting the prospects of real broadband to the country is the concept of terrestrial wireless. These setups are typically fixed-wireless links that serve individual households or, in some cases, communities or household clusters, with a wired technology like ADSL2 or Ethernet linking to each customer.

Initially this technology was based on 2.4GHz or similar radio links but there is a new break being facilitated at the moment and it is known as “white space”. This is where UHF or, in some cases, Band III VHF, TV spectrum that has been vacated by TV broadcasters as they change to spectrum-efficient digital TV technology.

Governments are looking at using this bandwidth as a cost effective way to provide terrestrial-wireless Internet service to country areas where it would be difficult or cost-prohibitive to provide copper or fibre-optic wireline Internet service. Examples of this kind of setup would be mountains or islands.

This will typically end up as a fixed-wireless deployment with a modem connected to the aerial (antenna) which would most likely be a high-gain TV aerial. This modem would be connected to a broadband router to serve the home network installed at homes in these locations.

Issues to be looked at

A key issue to be looked at in relation to providing a proper broadband Internet service to the country is the decrepit telephony infrastructure that exists in these areas. This is something that I have seen for myself with people who have lived in the country or peri-urban areas as they experienced ADSL service that performed poorly or became less reliable.

Here, telephone companies have historically allowed the telephony infrastructure to perform just enough for voice traffic. As well, due to long cable runs, it has become cost-prohibitive to always renew this telephone wiring to the customer’s door. In some cases, monopoly telephony carriers have allowed the telephony infrastructure to become severely derelict, with callers experiencing poor-quality telephone conversations where they hear crackling or crosstalk.

Dial-up modems and fax machines have worked to what was expected of these phone lines, usually using error-correction methods as part of the data transmission protocols.

ADSL broadband has put a newer requirement on the phone lines due to the bandwidth decreasing as the distance increases. In some cases, newer wiring has effectively increased the performance of the telephone system as far as ADSL service is concerned. On the other hand older and decaying connections would impair the telephone circuit’s ADSL performance, even causing the ADSL signal to drop out. This is even though you could successfully make or take a telephone call on that same line.

What needs to happen if ADSL broadband is being rolled out in to a rural area, the telephone lines need to be checked for quality and reliability. This includes checking connections for quality and reliability; and that ADSL line-distance metrics need to be true to the phone service’s distance from the exchange.

It also includes re-assessing telephone systems whenever newer building developments take place; which can happen over a town’s lifespan. It also includes situations where a neighbouring town becomes larger and the current area becomes a suburb of the neighbouring town.

Conclusion

There have been some positive steps taken by different parties to make the idea of real broadband Internet service in the country a reality. This includes encompassing it as part of defining the minimum requirements for an Internet service.

News Articles

thinkbroadband :: B4RN to deploy 1Gbps fibre network to rural parishes in Lancashire

Web site

B4RN website

My comments

Another valiant effort is taking place to connect rural England to real broadband Internet. This time it is happening in Lancashire’s rural areas north of Lancaster.

This is being achieved through a community-benefit company called “B4RN” which stands for “Broadband for Rural North”. The service is a fibre-to-the-premises service that is being provided to homes, farms and small businesses in these rural parishes. They have a goal to cover all of the 5162 properties but are working it in three phases. This is with the digging of the first phase to commence around Christmas 2011 and the first subscribers on board by January 2012.

What is interesting is that the capital for the effort is being raised through a share issue to the community and that the company is established as a “community-benefit” company where the assets are there for the community rather than being sold off if anything happens to the company.

The effort for he broadband rollout is being driven through shared local labour. It doesn’t matter whether it is to dig the necessary trenches or lay down the conduit and fibre-optic cable in order to connect up the properties. There is even support for training and upskilling locals into these areas where necessary and even the business’s office labour is local-based. One of the videos on the B4RN site even related this effort to how mains electricity was brought to rural Lancashire in the 1930s, through the use of community effort in preparing the infrastructure for the service.

At the moment, B4RN are selling the 1Gbps broadband services for £30 / month tax inclusive and with a £150 connection fee. A good question that may be raised with this service is whether B4RN would be looking at supplying VoIP telephony and / or IPTV as part of an extra-cost option or primarily offer a “purely-data” service for their customers. This is although most next-generation services typically will be expected to offer a “single-pipe triple-play” service with TV and telephony down the same connection as part of their service pack.

This service is another example of how rural communities can become active about bringing real broadband Internet to their areas rather than bemoaning the lack of the service. It also put forward the case for use of fibre-optic technology to deliver broadband to farms rather than unreliable radio services.

Articles

thinkbroadband :: Fibre Only Exchange trial candidate locations released

BT to trial fibre-only rural broadband exchange | uSwitch.com Broadband News

My comments

This is a very interesting direction that will come about as the next-generation broadband Internet service evolves.

At the moment, a typical next-generation broadband service will be based around central-office exchanges that serve and support copper and fibre-optic infrastructure for all communications. This allows for integration with copper-technology services such as PSTN voice / ADSL data.

The newer fibre-only exchanges will operate on fibre-optic infrastructure only with Fibre Ethernet backhaul and FTTH / FTTP fibre-optic service to the customers. The primary advantage of this setup would be to achieve higher throughput for the data that the high-bandwidth technology would provide.

The BT Openreach trial is primarily focused on new exchanges rather than converting existing exchanges to fibre-only operation. It is to assess how much it would cost to switch to fibre-only operation for existing exchanges or go “all-out” fibre-only for new or replacement exchanges. Such a trial could also be used for “infill” exchanges in dense urban areas or to satisfy new developments in potential “Silicon-Valley” areas around universities.

A good question about these exchanges is whether a “fibre-only” exchange could work with a part-fibre part-copper setup like a VDSL2-based fibre-to-the-cabinet or fibre-to-the-building setup.

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.

Article

Telstra super-fast 4G wireless sparks debate over NBN

My comments

As many countries agressively build out fibre-optic-based “Next Generation Broadband”, there is also the reality that companies involved in wireless broadband will deploy LTE or WiMAX “4G” technologies for this service.

This issue has been raised recently as Telstra, Australia’s incumbent telephone and mobile carrier announced its intention to deploy LTE-based 4G wireless broadband. This is even though the Australian Federal Government were rolling out the National Broadband Network, which is the next-generation broadband service based primarily on “fibre-to-the-premises” technology.

A key issue that have been raised include the “all-wireless” household or small business, which doesn’t have a landline telephone or ADSL/cable-based broadband Internet for their telecommunications. This may be implemented by students and similar households where each user wants control over their communications costs as well as assuring proper service privacy.

Issues of comparison

Value of service as a primary Internet service

A common disadvantage with this kind of setup is that the bandwidth available to the user from a wireless broadband service is less than that for a wireline broadband service like ADSL, cable or fibre-optic. As well, the wireline service is typically able to offer better value service than the wireless service. This disadvantage may be eroded if the 4G wireless broadband services are priced aggressively against the Next-Generation-Broadband wireline services.

Reliability and Stability

Even so, the 4G wireless broadband setups won’t yield the same bandwidth as a next-generation broadband setup; and these systems are based on radio technology which can be affected by many factors such as  the environment surrounding the radio equipment, the aerial (antenna) that is used as part of the equipment and the calibre of the equipment itself.

Examples of this include wireless-broadband modems used in double-brick / cinder-block buildings; equipment like USB modem sticks designed to be compact therefore not having adequate aerial systems; and simple weather conditions that affect wireless performance.

Here, this could lead to inconsistent performance for 4G wireless-broadband setups, with results like stuttering during VoIP telephony or multimedia playback.

Multiple device setups

No-one has yet raised the issue of a person operating multiple devices that connect to wireless broadband Internet. This is a common reality as people buy smartphones, tablets and netbooks that have integrated wireless-broadband connectivity. Here, these devices are operated on their own services and it requires users to keep track of the many accounts and bandwidth allowances that each device has.

As well, the wireless-broadband technologies discourage the idea of establishing local-area networks which could permit bandwidth sharing / pooling or sharing of resources like printers or file directories. Here, the users would end up not creating a local area network at all, and may just end up using technologies

Political issues peculiar to the Australian scenario

I also see certain political issues in the “next-generation-broadband vs 4G wireless broadhand” issue more so in Australia. Here, the Australian Labour Party see the National Broadband Network as a tool for nationalising or “claiming back” the wireline telephony infrastructure that they relinquished when Telstra was privatised. Here, Telstra, like British Telecom was originally part of the government-owned “Posts, Telegraphs, Telephones” department and became its own telephony entity as this department was separated.

There hadn’t been any mentions of intent to nationalise the Telstra-owned wireless infrastructure used for reselling their mobile telephony and wireless-broadband service. As well, Telstra were wanting to set up the aforementioned 4G LTE wireless-broadband technology on this infrastructure as a retail service and the Australian Labour Party were seeing this wireless-broadband service as a broadband service that competes with their National Broadband Network.

How I would see this argument is a way of seeking legal authority to require Telstra to do a “BT-style” sell-off of its mobile-telephony and wireless-broadband business. This is where they would be forced to divest themselves of the infrastructure and retail mobile-telephony / wireless-broadband business to another service

Conclusion

How I see the role of any wireless-broadband technology is that it is a complementary technology to a wireline technology rather than a competing technology. It exists primarily for mobile, portable and temporary computing applications.

PS. If I am appearing to write this article in a manner that supports Telstra, I have no pecuniary interests in this telecommunications company other than to be a regular customer of its telephony services.

Articles

BBC News – BT rolls out broadband to two Valleys towns

BBC News – Broadband for two rural market towns

My comments

I have previously covered efforts by companies like Rutland Telecom to have villages and small towns in the UK covered with proper-standard broadband. Examples of this include Rutland Telecom “lighting up” Lyddington in Leicestershire and Hambleton in Rutland as well as Vtesse lighting up Hatt and Higher Pill in Cornwall. Now, British Telecom, the UK equivalent of Telstra, have stepped up to the plate and started rolling out next-generation broadband in to various rural communities in the UK.

Examples of these include Pontcymmer and Baenganw near Bridgend in Wales as well as Oswestry in Shropshire and Stourport in Worcestershire. Infact, they are wanting to “wire up” properly more of the market towns in rural Wales like the whole of Bridgend,  Chepstow in Monmouthshire, Hengoed in Caerphilly, Llantrisant and Llantwit Fardre in Rondda Cynon Taf.

One of the aims stated by BT Openreach who manage the infrastructure and provide the service to retail providers was to reduce the numbers of people that left out of the broadband loop when they were talking of the Midlands deployments. Other quotes included the fact that this was not a rural issue but areas of some of the towns wore not receiving Internet service that wasn’t of proper expectations. This was also going to affect the use of broadband Internet service as a business tool.

What I had observed was that even in the tough economic times, broadband Internet service was being pushed to the same level of expectation as mains electricity or a telephone service. This can then allow for ideals like improved business knowledge as well as the ability to provide your goods  and services in a competitive manner.