Tag: FTTB

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 – 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

TPG to offer fibre-to-the-basement Internet to these kind of apartment blocks

TPG Is Still Building Its Own Competitor To The NBN | Gizmodo Australia

My Comments

As some of you may know from a few previous posts, Hyperoptic is an Internet service provider who runs their own fibre-optic infrastructure and services apartment and office buildings and similar developments in an increasing number of UK cities with next-generation broadband. They are standing as viable competition against BT Openreach who are effectively owned by British Telecom and offering increased value by deploying FTTP installations in to these buildings whereas the Openreach setup will be based around fibre-copper setups, either FTTC (fibre to the street cabinet) or FTTB (fibre to the basement) setups with VDSL2 to the customer’s premises.

As well, they even offered customers the option to sign up for this service “by the month” rather than a 12-month or longer contract. This was pitched at people who are on short-term work placements or are living “month-by-month” and may not rent the same apartment for a year or more.

In Australia, iiNet recently started to offer a competitive fibre-to-the-building Internet service for apartment blocks and similar developments to answer the National Broadband Network efforts concerning next-generation broadband and this effort has continued since TPG took over iiNet. Like Hyperoptic’s effort in the UK market, this is based on fibre-optic infrastructure that they own rather than the National Broadband Network who are working in a similar manner to BT’s Openreach, thus allowing them to charge cheaper prices for their Internet service and offer better value.

They are different from Hyperoptic because they implement fibre-to-the-building technology where there is copper cabling between the basement and the customer’s apartment, office or shop. But TPG could be in a position to offer fibre-to-the-premises for these users if they so wished to.

A question that will be raised in conjunction with these competitive deployments is whether NBN and competing next-generation-broadband infrastructure can coexist with each other in the same neigbbourhood or building; including whether a retail operator can sell their service on one or more different infrastructures . This could open up infrastructure-level competition for Australian users who live or run businesses in these developments. Similarly, it could be about lighting up “Gigaclear-style” fibre-optic rollouts to rural, regional and peri-urban areas using infrastructure not under the control of NBN.

Article – French language / Langue Française)

Is the fibre-optic Internet service to the building or to the apartments?

“Vraie” fibre contre “fausse” fibre : le gouvernement veut clarifier les choses |ZDNet.fr

“Real” fibre versus “fake” fibre : Government wants to set things right

My Comments

An issue that will surface with deploying fibre-based next-generation Internet service to apartment and office blocks and shopping centres is how should the Internet service be properly qualified as far as the consumers are concerned.

In France, where a lot of households are based in apartments, there is a fair bit of bickering about whether a service provider had installed a fibre-to-the-premises or a fibre-to-the-building deployment.  This is especially where service providers are wanting to run that their fibre installation is “real” fibre rather than “false” fibre as part of one-upping themselves against the competition.

In a multi-occupancy development, a fibre-to-the-premises deployment has fibre-optic cabling going to each apartment, shop, office or other premises. This is compared to a fibre-to-the-basement development, also known as a fibre-to-the-building development where the fibre-optic cabling goes to the building’s telecoms closet and a copper-based cabling solution is used to bring the Internet service to each apartment or shop. The copper-based cabling solution could implement VDSL2 which uses the building’s existing telephone cabling, DOCSIS 3.1 which uses the coaxial cabling that is part of cable-TV infrastructure or Gigabit Ethernet with new Cat5 or Cat6 twisted-pair “blue” cabling.

Most consumer-driven deployments would focus on the fact that households primarily download stuff and would focus on the download speed. But there are users who place value on upload speed which is one of the advantages offered by fibre-to-the-premises. These would include people who frequently work from home or run a home-based business, along with the shops, offices and like premises used for business purposes. They would place importance on uploading so as to facilitate cloud computing, telecommunications, onilne-storage and similar business services. Similarly, the concept of a future-proof next-generation Internet deployment would be considered important as peoples’ needs evolve.

An all-fibre deployment along with a fibre-copper deployment that uses Cat5 or Cat6 Gigabit Ethernet cabling for its copper component would offer the synchronous download-upload capabilities and high speeds that business users would want.

But there needs to be a standard for qualifying whether a service provider or infrastructure provider  has wired that multi-occupancy building with a fibre-to-the-premises setup or a fibre-to-the-building setup. This would include what kind of technology the copper component was based on in the latter service type and whether it is feasible to upgrade to an all-fibre installation along with extra approximate costs.

As well, there would need to be requirements concerning the kind of marketing spiel that service providers or infrastructure providers deliver to those with executive authority over the buildings and the marketing spiel delivered to potential customers who occupy these buildings.

At least the French are fleshing out this issue so that there are proper requirements regarding the marketing of next-generation broadband to apartment dwellers and shopping-centre tenants.

The recent NBN announcement put forward to the Australian people by the Coalition has determined that a fibre-copper setup is a more economical method for delivering the broadband service to already-developed (brownfield) locations than the fibre-to-the-premises setup that Labor is running with. There are some countries like the UK and Germany who run these networks, mainly with the option of full fibre deployment as an option.

The kind of talk I am raising here may work against the “preferred” idea of using existing copper infrastructure in existing condition for delivering next-generation broadband to the customer. This is because of certain realities concerning the existing infrastructure, such as a copper network that was engineered for an area that was more sparse than the current occupation density or a network that needs a lot of attention to provide reliable and optimum service.

A copper network that suited a sparse development

But I see the issue of a fibre-copper network as being area-specific for each brownfield area. Here, this could depend on the density of the brownfield area such as the concentration of multiple-tenant developments or the existence of many smaller properties since the copper network was established.

In this case, one may have to factor whether the copper network may need to be revised to cater for this increased density or whether the point of exchange between the fibre backbone and the copper network needs to be moved closer for some developments. For example, a large apartment block like some of the ones on the Gold Coast or St Kilda shoreline; or a large shopping centre like Doncaster Shoppingtown or Knox City may find that it is better to have a “fibre-to-the-building” approach with the point of exchange in the development.

Older copper networks that need extensive repair work

A copper telephony network that has been neglected by the incumbent telephony provider may need a fair bit of attention to have it work at an optimum speed for a fibre-copper broadband development. This can be more so for those networks that exist on peri-urban, regional and rural areas where there has been minimal investment in these areas.

The network may “just work” with voice telephony or baseline fax applications but may not perform as expected for a DSL application as I have written about before. In some cases, the customer may not even benefit from a reliable DSL service, and the VDSL service is most likely not to be as fault-tolerant as the existing ADSL technology.

If there is a planned fibre-copper deployment, it shouldn’t be just a case of installing a street cabinet and connecting service wires and the fibre backbone to that cabinet. In some cases, it may be about surveying the copper infrastructure for pair-gain setups, decrepit wiring / connections and other situations that may work against optimum VDSL service. Here, it may be worth dong a comparative cost analysis on remedial work for a copper infrastructure to see whether rolling out new fibre or copper infrastructure would be cheaper than doing many repairs to existing decrepit infrastructure.

This kind of work may benefit the retail Internet service providers in the reduced number of customer-service issues due to substandard service, thus providing a positive customer-service image for them.

I would therefore argue that not all copper telecommunications networks that exist in brownfield areas can be the economical basis for a fibre-copper next-generation broadband setup unless they have been surveyed and found to provide reliable service for the area concerned and the technology that is being considered.

Article

thinkbroadband :: Openreach in technical trial to test micro-filters with FTTC service

My comments

Previously ADSL required a truck-roll to the customer’s premises to provide the service. Here, the technician installs a DSL line splitter at the line’s entry point and a socket for the ADSL modem. Now installs don’t need a technician to visit unless they are difficult or sophisticated setups like dealing with business phone systems or monitored security systems.

Typically, the customer installs a micro-filter or ADSL line splitter on each phone device and connects the ADSL modem-router to a socket that doesn’t have a micro-filter attached to it or connects the modem to the ADSL or DATA port of the line splitter. In most cases, we tend to use DSL line splitters rather than line filters at each phone socket. This can allow us to move the ADSL modem-router around as needed to suit different living arrangements or simply to relocate the wireless router for best performance.

Most fibre-copper next-generation broadband setups such as FTTC, FTTN or FTTB typically will implement VDSL2 but this is a different kettle of fish when it comes to provision. Here, a technician still visits the premises to put in a VDSL2 central splitter and run Ethernet-grade cable to where the VDSL2 modem-router would be installed.

BT Openreach are trialing the use of selected line filters and splitters as a way of providing self-installation of VDSL2-based fibre-copper setups. They are assessing these for radio and audio interference and degradation of data throughput with the commonly-used line filters attached to existing phone equipment.

Initially, the tests will be based around professionally-installed setups, but they will move towards self-install setups. It could also then give the same level of flexibility that we have enjoyed with ADSL2 equipment.

These tests could be observed by other countries and companies interesting in deploying fibre-copper next-generation broadband that uses VDSL2 technology; but can also be used as a way of justifying these setups over fibre-to-the-premises setups.