Tag: fibre-optic broadband

Article

thinkbroadband :: Bangor starts the ball rolling for Superfast Wales

From the horse’s mouth

Superfast Cymru

My Comments

Wales is to be expecting a rollout of next-generation broadband, initially in the Bangor area. The article cited the establishment of fibre-to-the-cabinet infrastructure in Bangor’s High Street with one of the fibre-copper cabinets being deployed there. At the moment, the service isn’t active at that point but I would like to see the service come alive with customers connected to it very soon.

The next-generation service will be based on fibre-to-the-cabinet technology with the option of on-demand fibre-to-the-premises upgrade. Most likely the copper link would be based on VDSL2 technology. This is meant to lift the average broadband speed in Wales beyond 9Mbps.

There is GBP£425 million invested in this broadband project with the estimated rollout between now and end of 2015. There will be some focus on identified “Enterprise Zones” and “Local Growth Zones” where government wants to help stimulate economic activity or population growth.

Of course, like most rural-broadband or next-generation-broadband projects, there will be some public-sector investment. In this case, the funds will come from European Union, UK and Wales governments.

The question about rural broadband will be based on what kind of engineering conditions are needed to determine what kind of technology would be used to supply the broadband. In a lot of areas in the UK where there are estates with clusters of closely-located properties, they should look at using the FTTC technology to plant the cabinets in the estates and close to the houses rather than placing them outside the estates.

It is also worth knowing that BT are the infrastructure providers but there is importance being placed on people having their choice of retail Internet service from different retail Internet providers.

Article

thinkbroadband :: Will FTTP on-demand be available from 18th March?

My Comments

Openreach, who are facilitating the next-generation broadband service in most of the UK, are offering a fibre-to-the-premises Internet service as a user-selected extra-cost option alongside the standard fibre-to-the-cabinet with VDSL2 copper link. Initially the price for the fibre-to-the-premises service was to be £1500 but they were to revise the price table with a baseline £500 connection fee and service charge that depended on the “charge band” you were in.

The service was being thought of as being suitable for small business, but extra commentary described it as being relevant for those of use who are working from home, which I would see as a growing trend.

Various comments that were put on this article related the service as being a “value-added improvement” for your home with one person relating it to having piped natural gas to your home rather than the heating-oil or propane-gas held in a tank or cylinders at your home.  Here, we were thinking of reliability and bandwidth issues that come about with the copper link especially if this link was with older or derelict wiring.

Of course there were doubts raised on subsequent property owners wanting the FTTP service due to it being being of higher cost.

I see this article and its comments as being of importance for people in Australia as the Liberal Party consider the National Broadband Network with the fibre-to-the-premises infrastructure as a waste of money and they would rather that existing areas use fibre-copper infrastructure technologies.

If they are so hell-bent on the idea of fibre-to-the-premises being a waste of money for National Broadband Network and want us to buy the fibre-copper idea, why can’t they offer the fibre-to-the-premises technology as an option that has the connection fee only paid at the initial installation? Similarly, there are those of us who do work from home or run a business from home and we would consider to have as much bandwidth especially if we use it for remote data storage or video conferencing.

Therefore the option of providing fibre-to-the-premises broadband at an upgrade price affordable for most small businesses and home-based workers / entrepreneurs while there is a fibre-copper infrastructure for a next-generation broadband service is very important. Similarly, multi-unit developments must support fibre-to-the-building so that each occupant has the proper full bandwidth available to them.

Article

NBN clears the way for 4K video

My Comments

The CES 2013 in Las Vegas that occurred in early January was used as a showground for 4K ultra-high-definition TVs. These sets could upscale content from the regular-definition and high-definition content that comes from TV broadcasts, DVDss / Blu-Rays and other sources. Similarly there were a significant number of 4K-capable camcorders pitched at personal and “prosumer” users being pitched at this same show.

But the big question that was raised was how to deliver the video content that is natively ultra-high-definition to the people who bought these sets? Recently a satellite-delivered 4K channel as delivered as a proof-of-concept in Europe. As well, Sony demonstrated a BD-ROM / hard-disk content distribution system for this video resolution.

The standards bearers in the broadcasting and consumer-electronics space have called standards for optical-disc “packaged content” or broadcast-television distribution for this 4K content yet. But they are working on a universal AV compression standard for 4K to transfer via cable broadband systems.

What I see of with 4K UHDTV is that it could work hand in glove with next-gen broadband infrastructures like NBN, Gigaclear and other fibre-to-the-premises setups as this article proposed. Here, it could work with a multicast infrastructure for traditional scheduled-broadcast content or with regular QoS-assisted unicast setups for video-on-demand content.

I also see that the the higher bandwidths that fibre-to-the-premises broadband services would need to be present to customers who sign up to the 4K IPTV services so as to achieve an ideal viewing experience.

Of course, this year will show what can be offered for this ultra-high-definition video technology especially when it comes to content delivery rather than just the many screens out there.

Article

thinkbroadband :: Gigaclear bringing its full fibre solution to Uppingham, Rutland

From the horse’s mouth

Gigaclear

Press Release

Uppingham First

Home Page

My Comments

There has been some previous broadband enablement taking place in Rutland in the UK. Here, a next-generation fibre-to-the-premises network was established in Hambleton which was the subject of a Skype interview with Matthew Hare from Gigaclear that I posted up on this site.

Now Uppingham is now the target of a next-generation fibre-to-the-premises network. This market town, which is 5 miles (8.05 km) as the crow flies or 5 minutes by car from Hambleton, has had its effort boosted through the assistance of the Uppingham First community partnership.

The effort is concentrated on the North East Quarter which encompasses The Beeches and the Uppingham Gate business park and is part of a 12-month rollout by Gigaclear and Rutland Telecom.

There is also a fixed-wireless service which will cover more of the Uppingham neighbourhood within its 25-mile radius, but I would also like to see the fibre service cover more of this town. This could be achieved as part of a gradual service-expansion effort as the initial rollout proves itself economically.

As those of you who follow HomeNetworking01.info know, this deployment, like other Gigaclear FTTP deployments, will offer the symmetrical bandwidth which will please a lot of Internet users in this town, including the small businesses.

As far as I am concerned, this could cause ripples through Rutland’s small towns and rural areas as the neighbourhoods ask for the real bandwidth in a similar way to what is happening in Oxfordshire.

Article

thinkbroadband :: Fyfield and Tubney to get full fat fibre service from Gigaclear

Fyfield & Tubney Parish Council announcement

From the horse’s mouth

Gigaclear

Press Release

Fyfield & Tubney Community Page

My Comments

After Appleton & Eaton have taken on the next-generation fibre-optic broadband to address the rural Internet issue, two more villages in the same county of Oxfordshire have registered interest to become part of today’s real Internet.

Where are Fyfield and Tubney in Oxfordshire? These villages are located 4-4.5 miles (6-7 kms) west of Abingdon, a small Oxfordshire town that has a strong economy and a technology business park. Here, one of the major drivers for the fibre-optic broadband is to allow people who work in the Abingdon-based businesses like Sophos to telecommute or work from home.

Of course there would be some of the countryside and plenty of the small businesses existing in these villages which would benefit from the Gigaclear fibre-optic broadband. This would include many of the businesses offering accommodation wanting to service the “connected” community.

As far as these services are concerned, they will be mainly “Internet-only” single-play services with 1Gbps symmetrical bandwidth. The customers would then need to get IPTV or VoIP telephony through other providers in an “over-the-top” arrangement.

Of course, the equipment that will be supplied will include a router that has dual-stream 802.11g/n Wi-Fi wireless as well as four Gigabit Ethernet ports, which makes it up to the mark for the service.

From what I see of this, it could be a chance to get the rural communities in Oxfordshire and Berkshire online to real standards thus opening them up to the ability of competitive business opportunities and the ability for one to have a “tree-change” without suffering as far as Internet access is concerned/

Article – French language

Mégalis pilotera le très haut débit en Bretagne – DegroupNews.com

My Comments

There is an intent by another company to pass next-generation broadband into Brittany, which is France’s northwest rural region. Some of us might say that this has a few of the holiday homes used by British people up there.

There is a long term goal of having the fibre-optic service pass 1 million Brittany households by 2025 but the main effort in the meantime is to pass 85000 households in 12 towns through the next five years. This Mégalis-driven main effort is to focus on enabling rural Brittany with this kind of access, especially with Carhaix, Ploërmel and Redon being focused on.

This project is driven by publc and private funds with the private funds providing most of the investment in the form of EUR€400 million courtesy of Mégalis. Public funds are in the form of EUR€65.94 million from Brittany’s local governments and the European Union are pitching EUR€22 million via FEDER. This is also part of the Brittany local government’s E-government effort to provide an improved online citizen-government interface to the local people. Some experts say that the main issue is that you would need to put down EUR1.8 million and allocate 25 years of work to make sure that all the 1,642 households and businesses in that region are covered.

The questions that weren’t raised were how there would be assured competitive infrastructure access to this network. This would include whether to a single-fibre setup with common infrastructure or a multi-fibre setup with competing infrastructure. 

What I like of this is that there have been some ambitious goals to work a rural French region in to the idea of next-generation broadband and expose it to the highly-switched-on French Internet scene.

Articles

thinkbroadband :: Gigaclear delivers Gigabit in Appleton, Oxfordshire

Previous Coverage

Two large Oxfordshire villages now to have fibre-optic broadband

From the horse’s mouth

Website for Appleton & Eaton deployment

My Comments

Previously, at the end of May 2012, I wrote an article about action taking place by Gigaclear to wire up Appleton and Eaton in Oxfordshire for real next-generation broadband.

Now the setup is in full flight and Gigaclear were running a demonstration about the idea of Gigabit next-generation broadband in these villages at the Appleton Village Hall to prove to Appleton & Eaton residents what this is all about. Here, they demonstrated the high-speed broadband service and what it can offer including VoIP, IPTV and similar services.

They will install the services to the property boundary but it will cost GBP£100 for 50m of drop fibre and a fibre modem-router. Here, the cabling will be installed by the owner or a separately contracted third party like www.boxcomngn.net who charge £85 for up to 25m. On the other hand, Gigaclear could do the job for up to £500 for a 50m run.

The service, which supports future-proof IPv6 dual-stack will typically cost £37 / month for 10Mbps reserved to £195 / month for 100Mbps. It includes use of 1000Mbps burst bandwidth and is sold in a similar manner to how most interconnect and hosting bandwidth is sold, and, to some extent some business Internet service are sold. It may seem expensive but there isn’t a requirement to maintain a PSTN line with British Telecom for an Internet service to exist.

The villagers can sign up to VoIP as a telephone replacement if they are happy with no battery backup if power is out. As well, there is the option to sign up with various IPTV services. Even Vodafone had offered a “Sure Signal” femtocell service for their subscribers so that they can get proper mobile telephony in to their properties.

This is another example where the small villages in the UK are being made aware of the idea of real broadband and what it can offer. It is also a good chance for villagers with larger properties to have a look at the feature articles so they can gain the best out of the new Internet benefit.

UPDATE:

Householders can use a UPS like the APC BackUPS ES series units (Amazon UK) or the Zigor Ebro 650 UPS (Amazon UK) to power the router, modem, analogue telephone module and DECT base so they can keep a lifeline VoIP service for this Gigabit fibre-optic broadband service.