Tag: fibre-optic broadband

Article

thinkbroadband :: Rutland Telecom to deploy fibre to Hambleton village

From the horse’s mouth

Internet service for Hambleton – Rutland Telecom

Rutland Telecom – Web site

My comments

Rutland Telecom is at it again with another UK village being wired up with next-generation broadband. Here, Hambleton which is near Oakham in Rutland, is being equipped with fibre-to-the-premises broadband.

They are achieving this goal in a similar community-driven model to the VDSL-based fibre-to-the-cabinet setup in Lyddington, Leicestershire which I have touched on in this site.

One thing that impressed me about this is that it is technically “ahead of its time”. Here, the setup uses an “active” point-to-point fibre arrangement rather than the commonly-deployed “passive optical network” arrangement. This is equivalent to moving a wired Ethernet network froam a hub wihch shared the bandwidth between the devices to a switch which gives each device its own bandwidth at the best speed. Here, the setup is future proof and capable of high speeds and increased bandwidth and can satisfactorily cope with the situation when the village becomes a town.

There had been 60% takeup on the offer to register for the next-generation broadband which shows real interest in better-standard Internet in the country. The service is intended to go live on (North-Hemisphere) Spring 2011.

This company is now encouraging other small UK communities to gain their help in setting up next-generation broadband. It could then be a step in the right direction for telecom co-operatives and similar companies to look towards raising the bar for a standard of Internet service normally taken for granted in urban areas.

Articles – The Age

Buy or beware – competitors gear up to do battle with NBN

No NBN price war, despite competition

My Comments

There have been some recent articles about next-generation broadband services appearing in or being planned for particular locales in Australia that compete with the government-backed National Broadband Network.

UK and France offering competitive broadband service

Two countries, namely the UK and France, have established the idea of competitive next-generation broadband after their success with achieving competitive ADSL broadband Internet service. This is because the governments in these countries have worked ahead by establishing a mandatory competitive telecommunications regime including encouragement of local-loop and sub-loop unbundling. They have even ben cited by the European Commission as examples when it comes to broadband-Internet service being competitive and affordable for most people.  

In France, the government have encouraged competitive fibre-to-the-premises service in the form of two methods. The first method is for one or more providers to share infrastructure, especially that which goes “to the door”, while the second method permits a provider or provider coalition to have their own fibre infrastructure “to the door”. That same country also encourages unbundled local-loop ADSL provisioning or “degroupage” in order to see competitive ADSL broadband service.

In the UK, the government is encouraging Unbundled local-loop ADSL provisioning and there are companies who are setting up or planning local next-generation broadband infrastructure in certain cities, towns and villages. These setups, which are based on either fibre-to-the-cabinet with VDSL copper runs or fibre-to-the-premises technoligy, are even being done as a way of giving rural households access to real broadband even though Openreach, the UK company in charge of the wired telecommunications infrastructure, are taking their time to provide this service. As well, Openreach is slowly rolling out a next-generation broadband network that will work on either fibre-to-the-cabinet or fibre-to-the-premises technology.

The Australian next-generation broadband direction

In Australia, regular wireline broadband is provided through one of two methods. Cable-modem broadband is provided by Telstra or Optus in the major capital cities or through TransACT in Canberra or Neighborhood Cable in Geelong, Ballarat or Mildura. These companies own their own cable infrastructure “to the door”. ADSL infrastructure is provided by different retail providers who either resell Telstra ADSL service or through Optus who either may resell Telstra service or use local-loop unbundling. Recently, some other ADSL providers are selling retail ADSL broadband in a “local-loop unbundled” manner with a few offering “naked ADSL” service which doesn’t provide classic landline telephony on the same line.

The Labor Party had started action on the National Broadband Network which is to be a fibre-to-the-premises network covering most metropolitan, regional and rural areas of Australia with wireless and satellite technology to cover the rest. It was also intended to be a replacement for the copper telephone network that is managed by Telstra and there was the idea for Telstra to decommission this copper network and hand it over to the National Broadhand Network authority. This is in a similar manner to how the Openreach entity has come about when it came to provisioning wireline telephone and broadhand service in the UK. Lately, there was a key issue raised about the service being delivered on an “opt-out” arrangement with customers being charged AUD$300 if they don’t have their property connected to the NBN during the actual rollout and want to continue with their classic phone service at their property after the copper network is decommissioned.

TransACT and Neighborhood Cable are offering National Broadband Network their infrastructure at a price that suits them or they will run a competing next-generation broadband service in their operating areas. As well, i3 Group are working with the Brisbane municipal government to set up a fibre-to-the-premises next-generation broadband service in inner-north Brisbane and intend to run it as a competing service if National Broadband Network set up infrastructure there.

At the moment, the main markets to watch when it comes to next-generation broadband are the metropolitan Sydney and Melbourne areas because of them being population centres in Australia. It will be interesting to see whether companies or local governments will set up next-generation broadband infrastructure there in competition to National Broadband Network.

Questions to be answered

One main question that is to be answered is whether it will be feasible for competing infrastructure providers to set up shop alongside the NBN especially in major markets. This includes whether a building landlord or body corporate can have control over the provision of infrastructure for competing service providers.

Another question is whether IP-based broadcasting and voice / video telephony will be controlled on the NBN so as to prevent access to the network by competing IP-based telephony and TV providers. This may be a game changer when it comes to the provision of subscription TV through Australia because it could open up a pathway for retail operators and others to offer competing or complementary multi-channel TV services. It may also affect IP-based telephony providers like Skype or “virtual-network operators” who don’t own their own infrastructure locally but want to provide competing or complementary telephony services.

Conclusion

If there is a desire to see competitive next-generation broadband service in Australia, there will have to be rules and regulations set up to ensure this kind of competition and if the government is serious about this, they should look at what France and the UK are doing to achieve the competitive broadband market there.

News article

NBN rollout in Tasmania a success, Conroy says – Yahoo!7

My comments

From this article that I had read, I was pleased that Australia had moved on to its first “next-generation broadband” deployment successfully. Most people may scoff at this success being due to a small town where there isn’t many subscribers or the town being in a politically-sensitive neighbourhood in Tasmania.

But I always find that the real test is what happens over the coming years as more people take up the next-generation broadband service and as the service gets used. Issues that will be observed will be whether the use will outgrow the available bandwidth and wither the service is likely to fail over the long term.

In most of the situations were a new technology becomes available, the people who are “first off the block” to take it on are the “early-adopters” who are well-educated, have a good income and have a strong interest in new technologies. They tend to make more use of the Internet and at this time, their heavy use will move off the main broadband infrastructure and most people who use the regular ADSL or cable services in that area will then start to notice better quality-of-service.

It will also be interesting to notice what will happen when the next towns get lit up for the National Broadband Network and also whether the householders in the towns will prepare their home networks for this next-generation service. I have written a good article on this site about preparing for next-generation broadband.

Similarly, it will be interesting to know whether subscribers in these towns will have their landline telephony moved to IP technology and will watch regular TV via the National Broadband Network. As well, it would be interesting to know whether the arrival of the National Broadband Network at these small towns will increase economic growth in these towns, whether through creating a business hub or “Silicon Valley” in these areas.

In most countries, there is interest in setting up most of the densely-populated areas for a form of next-generation broadband Internet service. This will typically provide at least 10Mbps, if not 30Mbps or 100Mbps which will be more than double what your typical ADSL or cable broadband service will provide.

Key features that are being promoted alongside these services include the reliable streaming or downloading of high-definition TV content to many TV sets in the house as well as VoIP telephony, which will include FM-grade telephone conversations or reliable videophone conversations that are beyond the realm of science fiction. The VoIP telephony features will also work alongside remote-terminal setups and other telepresence setups to allow knowledge workers and management workers to work from home, thus eliminating the need to travel in order to commute to work.

One main issue that may affect your home network is making sure it is ready for the next-generation broadband service. This is by preparing the infrastructure for high-bandwidth data throughput and setting up a router that can work with the next-generation broadband technologies like VDSL2 or fibre-to-the-premises.

Upgrading your router to next-generation broadband

The next-generation broadband service will use different connection methods to what you are using now. This will either be fibre-to-the-home or VDSL2 via phone lines and will require a different kind of modem. In some cases, this modem may be provided by your “next-generation” Internet service provider as part of the deal or at extra cost. Some of these service providers may sell a broadhand router that has an integrated modem for the broadband connection as well as router functionality. There is also an increased likelihood for these devices to support VoIP analogue-telephony-adaptor functionality because these services will also be about VoIP telephony.

If you have an ADSL modem router, its ADSL functions will become redundant under this environment unless it has an Ethernet WAN (broadband) connection option. This function may be available in a few recently-issued high-end units either as an Ethernet socket that can be configured to be a LAN socket or WAN (Internet) socket; or as a dedicated Ethernet WAN socket.

When you buy your next Internet router for this technology, the WAN (Internet) side of the router should offer a Gigabit Ethernet connection so you can use it with fibre-to-the-premises setups where you have an “optical-network terminal” modem; fibre-to-the-curb or fibre-to-the-building setups that use Ethernet-to-the-customer copper-cable runs or other connection methods that use a Gigabit Ethernet socket. It may be worth keeping your eyes peeled for “dual-mode” DSL modem routers that work with ADSL setups or VDSL2 “next-generation” setups when you upgrade your ADSL router.

It also may be worth looking towards upgrading to a router which has 802.11n wireless and Gigabit Ethernet for LAN connectivity.  Preferably, the 802.11n wireless network should be a dual-band setup but it doesn’t have to be a dual-radio (simultaneous dual-band) setup, as I will explain later. This will allow for higher bandwidth that the next-generation broadband Internet applications will need.

As well, you may have to pay attention to how the router handles “quality-of-service” with VoIP and multimedia traffic. It is because this kind of traffic will become more prevalent on these high-bandwidth networks and other Internet use like checking on email, viewing Web sites or “download-to-disk” applications doesn’t impair the experience you have during a phone call or when you watch streamed Internet TV.

Your home network

Here, I am talking about upgrading your home or small-business local network to cope with the increased bandwidth that next-generation broadband will provide. This setup is based around the use of a Cat5 wired Ethernet segment that you may have implemented or may want to implement as part of a renovation job; a Wi-Fi wireless segment used primarily for laptops, smartphones and similar portable devices and a HomePlug powerline segment that you may use as a temporary or semi-permanent “no-new-wires” network segment.

The Cat5 Ethernet segment

If you have wired your home for Ethernet and used a regular Ethernet switch as the network’s “central” switch, now is the time to upgrade it to a Gigabit Ethernet switch. This will provide a high-speed path to devices that have Gigabit Ethernet connectivity and can provide “next-generation” speeds in to the home network. The old 10/100 switch can work well as a “spur” switch for a cluster of devices that don’t have Gigabit Ethernet connectivity.

Again, it may be worth looking for a switch that also supports “quality-of’-service” when you upgrade the existing unit. This is even though most of the Ethernet switches that support this are more expensive and require you to visit a Web interface to “fiddle with knobs” to achieve this goal because they are targeted at business users who have their network and Internet managed by dedicated staff or contractors. This may be rectified over the coming years with the implementation of “logo-mandatory” specifications and standards for seamless QoS management.

If you are working on building new premises, considering renovations on your existing premises or are even just planning to rewire your existing premises to current safety expectations, now is the time to consider wiring it for Ethernet. I have written a good article on this topic in the context of new renovations, extensions or rewiring projects. At least make sure you place an Ethernet socket near every TV-antenna (aerial) socket in the house so you can cater for IPTV which will be part of the next-generation broadband environment.

The Wi—Fi wireless segment

As part of the upgrade, a wise step would be to implement 802.11n Wi-Fi in your wireless-network segment. As I have explained in the article “Understanding 802.11n High-Bandwidth Wireless Networking”, there are different varieties of access points and routers for this technology.

One way to go about this while maintaining your regular 802.11g equipment would be to set up another extended-service set with a 5.4GHz single-band access point or a dual-band router set up on 5.4GHz. The existing 802.11g router could be put in to service as an access point running the existing extended-service set. You then focus computer equipment that is equipped with dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi interfaces to the 5.4GHz 802.11n segment while equipment like smartphones, netbooks and Internet radios work on the 2.4GHz 802.11g network. The WPA security key can be the same for both Wi-Fi segments and you could have one SSID being described as <PRIMARY-SSID-54g> for the 5.4GHz segment and <PRIMARY-SSID> for the 2.4GHz 802.11g segment.

As well, the Wi-Fi equipment should support or implement WMM (Wireless Multimedia) quality-of-service “out-of-the-box” but most current equipment doesn’t support it. This is again due to uncoordinated quality-of-service signalling and quality-of-service not becoming a “logo-mandatory” requirement.

The HomePlug powerline segment

This network segment may need to be reviewed if it is going to be the primary wired carrier for all of the multimedia data that next-generation broadband Internet will deliver. This is more so if you are using a HomePlug link to provide content to a DLNA-compliant network-enabled TV set or IPTV set-top box.

Here, you would need to use a HomePlug AV segment for any multimedia applications, a temporary building-building link or as a “no-new-wires” wired backbone between access points in a multi-access-point 802.11n wireless network. This can coexist with your existing HomePlug 1.0 Turbo segment which can be used for applications like connecting Ethernet-enabled network printers to the network or maintaining a backbone for a multi-access-point 802.11g wireless network. As far as any HomePlug AV-Ethernet bridges go, you should prefer those units that have Gigabit Ethernet so as to provide proper throughput to the equipment.

The up-and-coming HomePlug AV2 standard, which allows for higher throughput, MIMO-based operation and each HomePlug AV2 device being a repeater, can allow HomePlug AV devices to become part of that segment.

Purchasing subsequent computer equipment

Any desktop or all-in-one computers or network-attached-storage equipment that you subsequently buy should support a Gigabit Ethernet connection. This issue may not be of concern if you buy relatively-new equipment but can be of concern with older secondhand desktop computers. These can be upgraded through the installation of a Gigabit Ethernet PCI or PCI-Express card in these computers, which requires at the most a small Phillips-head screwdriver to complete.

When you buy Wi-Fi-enabled equipment like laptop computers, you may need to look for equipment that has 802.11n technology. This may be a limitation if you intend to buy a secondary-use laptop or netbook which may not have this functionality or buy smartphones, Internet radios or similar devices that have integrated Wi-Fi functionality because most such devices stick to 802.11g technology to keep costs down or allow longer run-times when run on batteries. This could be worked around through the creation of a “compatibility-mode” 802.11n extended-service-set on the 2.4GHz band or establishment of an 802.11g extended-service-set with its own SSID for these devices to use.

The situation will be likely to change from this year onwards because of work being undertaken to build small-footprint low-power-requirement 802.11g/n chipsets that are optimised for battery-operated devices and manufacturers being interested in implementing the technology in their devices.

Conclusion

Once you know how to have your network ready for next-generation broadband by replacing devices that may slow down the data throughput, you are then able to take advantage of what this new technology offers.

News articles

thinkbroadband :: Vtesse Broadband bring next-generation broadband to Hertfordshire

From the horse’s mouth

Vtesse Broadband – press releases

My comments

The initiative has been taken again to establish full broadband service in the UK countryside. This time, two villages in Hertfordshire, north of London, are equipped with fibre-to-the-cabinet broadband with sub-loop unbundling. The villages, Birch Green and Hertingfordbury, are located too far from the local telephone exchange for guaranteed high-speed ADSL broadband Internet service, so Vtesse have established a fibre-optic backbone for both of the villages and set up the cabinets there.

Another step that has been taken is to have customer feedback to determine where the demand is and where there is poor coverage. The network has been made future-proof so that they can provide fibre-to-the-premises service when the time comes to provide that level of service.

I had a look at the Vtesse website and was impressed with the network-Internet “edge” router that customers would be supplied with as standard. It is a Comtrend ADSL2/VDSL2 wireless modem router that doesn’t just work with 802.11g like most provider-supplied equipment does. Instead, this unit can work with 802.11n Wi-Fi network segments

Again, what I am so pleased about is that this is an example of small companies in the UK have taken the initiative to provide full-ADSL-quality to “next-generation” broadband to the “backwaters” of that country. This then puts farmers and small businesses in those towns on a competitive level with those that have proper broadband Internet service and with the big business operators.

Article

thinkbroadband :: Two rural Lincolnshire villages to get fibre-to-the-home

My Comments

Another step has occurred in the right direction for providing homes and small businesses in two rural England villages with city-grade next-generation Internet service. Again, this initiative has been undertaken by a small operator and has allowed the village to be competitive with the city.

Here, Fibrestream are two-thirds of the way there with gaining interest from the potential users which will open doors to establishing the basic infrastructure and “lighting up” the villages. One of the bonuses that have been offered is that there is the option of helping with the installation to your premises as a way to defray provisioning costs.

They have also provided for a cheaper fixed-wireless-last-mile delivery option if they can’t raise enough money for the full fibre-to-the-premises option. Any monies saved from this option would be reinvested so they can establish the infrastructure for the full fibre-to-the-premises deal. This could still be factored in to villages with farms and similar large properties surrounding them so as to service these properties with high-speed Internet.

Like what has happened with other British villages like Lyddington in Leicestershire, this has become another way of bringing these rural villages in to the online age. Come on everyone who is in the country or underserved outer-urban and regional areas and work together to establish local-broadband initiatives.

ARCEP white paper for people in multi-unit developments (French language)

ARCEP had established a regulation where if a telecommunications operator provides fibre-optic infrastructure in a multi-unit building, this infrastructure must be available to competing operators. This means that each unit owner / tenant must be able to choose whoever provides their super-fast broadband service and avoids the building owner or body corporate determining who provides that service to that building through exclusive “cosy” deals.

Two different methods

Mono-fibre

Each operator runs their fibre-optic infrastructure to a wiring closet where there is a fibre-optic switch that is programmed to run the operator’s service to the customers in that building. Each unit has one fibre-optic connection to that fibre-optic switch.

The service routing would be based on a VLAN or similar setup affecting the main fibre-optic infrastructure in the building. Operators would then have to make sure that the fibre-optic switch is programmed to pass service from their customers’ units to their street-based backbone.

The main advantage of this setup is that there is only one fibre-optic cable needed to be laid to each unit, thus allowing for reduced costs and infrastructure complexity. On the other hand, each operator will have to have access to the fibre-optic switch to make sure they can manage their services.

Multi-fibre

Each operator has their own fibre-optic infrastructure to each of the units, where there is a multi-entry socket for the customer-premises equipment. If a customer wants a particular service, the provider then visits the customer’s unit and connects the fibre for their service to the socket.

If a site can allow two or more optical-network sockets, two or more operators could be terminated in a socket for each of the operators. This may appeal to “geeks” or business customers who want to establish multi-WAN setups for reasons like bandwidth aggregation, load-balancing or fault-tolerance.

The main advantage for operators is that they have control and responsibility of their infrastructure to the customer’s unit, but each service change may require a field visit from the operator’s service staff. Similarly, there would be the issue of complicated infrastructure runs existing in the building, which may affect further infrastructure deployment.

Opportunities and Questions

A major opportunity that may exist for operators who are running optical fibre through a multi-unit building would be to use the cable as a wireline backbone for a cellular base station installed on the roof. This may be relevant to buildings with nine or more storeys and / or operators that run their own mobile telephone or wireless broadband service.

A primary question that may need to be answered is that if a group of broadband service providers share the same infrastructure run, usually as a cost-saving measure or easier entry point for new operators, would they have to create new fibre-optic runs to each unit in a multi-fibre setup or could they continue to share the same infrastructure to the unit’s door.

Another main question concerning the provision of IP-based infrastructure like the fibre-optic infrastructure in multi-unit buildings is how to cater for “all-unit” Internet services. This could range from a Web site with information for all of the units through unit-occupier access to vision from IP-based video-surveillance systems to multi-SSID Wi-Fi access points in common areas with each SSID linking to the home network in each unit. Issues that may have to be answered include VLAN establishment and / or use of anciliary DNS servers that cover only the services that are provisioned in the building and these setups may end up appearing to be complex to anybody that doesn’t have much computing experience.

Conclusion

What is happening with the fibre-optic next-gen broadband services in France, where there is likely to be lively competition, is worth observing, especially for all classes of multi-unit developments, whether all units exist in one building or in many buildings on one piece of land.

The white papers and other material on this topic at the ARCEP web site may then be worth reading by other communications regulators, building authorities, ISPs, building / development owners and management committees.