Tag: FTTH

This is how you can make those cabinets part of the street fabric

Whenever any new infrastructure is laid down, there is an increase in the number of street cabinets that will appear as the result of this infrastructure. This is more so with next-generation broadband especially if the service is based around fibre-copper technologies, implements active components or is prepared to do so.

But these cabinets attract a “not in my backyard” comments or activism from local residents or neighbourhoods because of them looking ugly and becoming a surface for the local graffiti artists and gangs to scrawl their “tags” on to. Similarly, the street cabinets can effectively become obstacles in their own right.

There can be something better done about this. One way would be to encourage or commission local artists to paint these cabinets with designs that complement the neighbourbood or a local effort. They then look beautiful in their own right rather than as ugly boxes. Such paintwork can be directly applied or painted on to a vinyl “skin” or “wrap” which is applied to the box. The latter approach can apply to seasonal efforts like Christmas decorations or advertising campaigns if the “skin” can be removed.

Another approach would be to design the street cabinets to be integrated to other street furniture. This would work well if there isn’t a need to provide maintenance access or equipment ventilation from all sides of the cabinet. Examples of this could include a cabinet that is integrated in to a street bench or litter bin. Simply an infrastructure cabinet could benefit from being equipped with a closed rail especially if it is located close to a café or bar with a street dining area. This is because it can be used as a hitching-post for a patron’s dog or bicycle.

What needs to be done to prevent the NIMBY attitude concerning next-generation broadband and similar infrastructure in urban areas is to look at ways to integrate the cabinets in to the neighbourhood area’s fabric so they effectively blend in.

Article

Competitive next-generation broadband arrives at Massachusetts (Photo courtesy of Ian Britton (FreeFotos.com))

Massachusetts Town Builds Itself 2 Gigabit Fiber for $75 a Month | Broadband News & DSL Reprots

From the horse’s mouth

LeverettNet

Project Page

My Comments

Another attempt has taken place to erode the established telcos’ and cable companies’ dominance of the US fixed-broadband landscape. Normally, this would be Google rolling out their Google Fiber service but it is a local government rolling out a municipal fibre-optic infrastructure and selling a retail broadband service to the communities under their remit.

More it’s about access to real competitive broadband in the USA

This time, it is Leverett, a town in Massachusetts, who have established a municipal fibre-optic network with retail service. This network snaps at the heels of Comcast and co by offering unlimited symmetrical 2Gbps downloads for US$75 a month. This is compared to Comcast offering a similar service for US$300 a month with a myriad of installation and activation fees totalling US$1000 along with the cost of poor-quality customer service.

This was an effort to deal with a black hole concerning the provision of high-speed broadband Internet to Massachusetts communities. The LeverettNet network is the first to take advantage of the new statewide broadband backbone known as MassBroadband 123 which could easily light up the state with real broadband.

There will be people who will say that this is public money wasted and it could lead to an increase in local taxes levied by the community’s local government, But it isn’t so because the townsfolk approved a ballot measure put forward by the Leverett council to borrow US$3.6 million to start this project. As well, a local ISP called Crocker Communications was contracted to provide the retail service to the neighbourhood. The council’s tax base would increase because of the property values increasing due to availability of proper next-generation fibre-optic broadband.

I always reckon that this could bring Comcast and others to attention because of a broadband service that offers more “bang for the buck” being available and this results commonly in those companies offering improved service in to those neighbourhoods. Similarly, this effort could be a chance to wake up other local communities in Massachusetts to have next generation broadband across that state.

Articles

5Gbps comes on the scene courtesy of Gigaclear

Is 5 Giga bits a second enough broadband for you? | ThinkBroadband

Wowzers – UK ISP Gigaclear Trial 5000Mbps Fibre Optic Broadband Service | ISPReview

My Comments

Gigaclear are stepping out of the norm when it comes to providing Internet service in the UK.

Here, they are offering 5Gbps as a bandwidth option for all of their fibre-to-the-premises area as well as their regular Gigabit or lower-bandwidth options. This is due to them implementing a point-to-point fibre network as their data infrastructure which they fully own.

At the moment, a home user could sign up for this bandwidth at GBP£399 including VAT or a small business could sign up for a business-grade service for GBP£1500 excluding VAT. The bandwidth could theoretically allow 100 4K UHDTV channels to be concurrently streamed or allow a 1.5Gb file like a film to be downloaded in 5 seconds.

At the moment, most current download and cloud-computing services can’t provide the throughput necessary to allow these high-performance services to run to their advantage. Similarly, there aren’t any routers on the market affordable to most home or small-businesses that would take advantage of these high-performance services.

The cost was considered to be too rich for most residential consumers except for a few wealthy early-adopters but could appeal to some small businesses like busy food/beverage/hospitality places such as cafes and bars running well-used wireless hotspots. These places can benefit because many users can concurrently transfer data including “high-demand” data like high-grade multimedia. videocalls and large file transfers.

What Gigaclear is showing is that 5Gbps could be ne next step for a high-performing Internet that can satisfy householders’ and small business users’ needs in the future.

Articles

Queensland council plans own optical fibre network | The Register

Council goes its own way on NBN, plans cables and telco | Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton, Queensland)

My Comments

Local government has been instrumental in improving broadband coverage for its citizens by encouraging the installation of the necessary infrastructure. This may be a public effort funded primarily by council taxes or rates that are levied on property owners; or it could be a public-private effort where a company also funds the same effort.

These efforts may be used as a method of providing data infrastructure between the local government’s buildings but they have been used to provide broadband infrastructure to citizens and businesses in that area in a manner that competes with established operators. It can also be about the establishment of a company or co-operative that is focused on providing telecommunications or Internet services to the local community.

But such services have raised the ire of incumbent telecommunications and cable-TV businesses and this has had the powerful incumbent operators in the USA like Comcast and AT&T lobby for state-level legislation to strangle community telecoms and Internet infrastructure projects.

Australia has taken a new stab at this effort with the local government that governs Rockhampton in Queensland putting forward the idea of high-speed fibre-to-the-premises infrastructure to cover the city’s central business district (downtown) area.

Rockhampton Regional Council’s mayor, Margaret Strelow showed dissatisfaction with the National Broadband Network heading down the fibre-copper path which would lead to substandard broadband. Instead the council established their own high-speed fibre-to-the-premises infrastructure in Quay Street alongside other council-owned road and water works. This is a “dig-once” effort to bypass the NBN in order to achieve that “smart-city” goal that Rockhampton wanted.

The council will own the infrastructure but create a local non-profit community telco who leases that infrastructure and sells telephony and Internet service to the local community. It is in a similar manner to how some other cities have provided utilities and telecommunications services to their communities.

A question that will be raised regarding these community-focused deployments will include the ability for the NBN or other next-generation-broadband infrastructure providers to build infrastructure parallel to this infrastructure; a practice that is described as “build-over”. This may allow Rockhampton or similar communities to benefit from infrastructure-level competition.

Another question that I also see raised is whether other retail-level telecommunications or Internet providers will be allowed to lease the council-supplied infrastructure in order to sell their services in to that town. This could allow consumers and businesses to benefit from retail-level communications-service and can also include mobile-telecommunications providers using this infrastructure as a backbone for their base stations.

As communities, ISPs, developers and other entities lay down their own infrastructure for their own next-generation broadband services, it could be a chance to raise the issues of “build-over” infrastructure-level competition for locations along with the ability for retail ISPs to compete with each other on the same infrastructure. If these issues are worked out properly, it could lead to increased value for money when it comes to broadband Internet service.

Article

A competitive Internet service market coming to more US cities

Google Fiber Eyes Louisville, Irvine and San Diego Expansions | Broadband News & DSL Reports

From the horse’s mouth

Google Fiber

Press Release

My Comments

I have been covering Google Fiber’s rollout of competing fibre-optic Internet service to various communities in the US and how this is bringing about real competition to the communities’ Internet-service markets. Examples of this include an impending Google Fiber deployment in Raleigh, North Carolina putting the existing ISPs on notice with them offering a similar-speed Internet service to their customers.

Some more communities are now to be touched by this competitive spirit, this time in California where there is a strong start-up and IT-driven business culture. The Californian communities are Irvine, which was where Linksys started from, along with San Diego; while Louisville in Kentucky which has the “Code Louisville” software-development effort is also to benefit. IAt the moment, Google is “checking the boxes” by getting things worked out and approved with the various local governments, “chalking out” where utility lines are and the like so they can start working.

I wouldn’t put it past AT&T, the Big Red or Comcast to get their act together once they know this is going on and “sweeten the deal” for their subscriber bases to avoid the inevitable churn to Google Fiber before the soil is turned. Definitely, things are looking up for competitive Internet service in the USA.

Article

Aylesbury Vale – to benefit from real broadband

Aylesbury Vale Broadband Project Starts Rollout of Fibre Optic Network |ISPReview.co.uk

From the horse’s mouth

Aylesbury Vale Broadband

Project Page

Press Release – At long last we’re laying the fibre

My Comments

Two villages in Aylesbury Vale, Buckinghamshire have been reached for real next-generation broadband thanks to the Aylesbury Vale Broadband project.

North Marston (population 800) and Granborough (population 600) have been the first to benefit from this technology which will primarily be fibre-to-the-premises. But the Aylesbury Vale Broadband Project is taking a mixed-technology approach with fibre-to-the-cabinet if it isn’t feasible to roll out the better technology. Once these villages are proven as successful for this project, other Aylesbury Vale communities will be looked at for covering with next-generation broadband.

This is a complementary project that will focus on areas that are missed out on by the Broadband Delivery UK and the Connected Counties rural-broadband programmes. A lot of the effort is driven by volunteer labour courtesy of the local villagers. There is public funding from the New Homes

Once the service is fully active, the cost to join will be at least GBP£25 per month along with a GBP£150 installation fee. This will include the supply of a wireless router that supports 802.11ac Wi-Fi technology to be positioned at the home network’s Internet “edge” while the service has a 12-month minimum term contract. The full-fibre services will run initially at 300Mbps but are capable of Gigabit speeds.

The Aylesbury Vale Broadband project is one of many examples in the UK that I have read about where local effort and initiative has brought a rural area out of the digital backwaters and drawn it to something that satisfies today’s realities. This is being seen as of importance when we deal with the countryside being a small-business hub or attracting people who have had enough of the city life.

Article

Hyperoptic to offer fibre-optic Internet service to UK’s apartment buildings month-by-month

Hyperoptic’s month-by-month Gigabit fibre-optic service

No contract Gigabit launched by Hyperoptic | ThinkBroadband

ISP Hyperoptic Add No Contract Option to 1Gbps FTTP Home Broadband | ISPreview UK

Advertising a month-by-month telecommunications service as “no contract” service

ASA UK Rules it Safe to Advertise Monthly Contracts as “No Contract” | ISPReview UK

From the horse’s mouth

Hyperoptic

Press Release

Advertising Standards Authority

Published Ruling concering Sky UK and their NOW TV service (month-by-month offering as a “no contract” service)

My Comments

Most Internet services, whether ADSL or next-generation broadband, are offered to customers on a contract where they have to maintain the service for 12 months or more. This is typically to benefit from cheaper or complementary equipment or tariff plans with better value. This may not suit every user, especially if you are on a short-term work placement or are living “month by month”.

Hyperoptic, who provide fibre-optic broadband to apartment blocks through the UK, have answered this need through the provision of a “month-by-month” plan for their next-generation broadband services. They understand that, as I have said before, a person may occupy an apartment for a few months rather than for the full 12 months or more.

The plans require you to stump up GBP£40 to get the service put on, which includes the provision of a Gigabit router. They offer a double-play Internet and telephone service for GBP£27 for a 20Mb service, GBP£41 for a 100Mb service and GBP£67 for a Gigabit service. These include the phone line rental and evening and weekend calls to UK landlines. There is also an “Anytime UK” plan and an “International” plan available but I am not sure of the prices for these plans. A pure-play broadband-only service will come for GBP£24 for 20Mb service, GBP£38 for a 100Mb service and GBP£64 for a Gigabit service.

The open question concerning these tariffs is whether you can take the Gigabit router with you when you move out of the apartment or leave it in place for the next tenant to use. As well, is there a cheaper “wires-only” or “self-install” connection-cost option for those of us who have suitable fibre-optic modem equipment and infrastructure in place? This could be feasible because of the fact that you don’t need to send people to the premises where existing infrastructure is in place and working.

I am surprised that Hyperoptic aren’t running a triple-play service of their own but it would be dependent on them tying up deals with an IPTV service that is operating in the UK like Sky or BT.

By the way, a question that the UK computing and IT press and blogosphere have raised about telecommunications, Internet, Pay TV or similar services is whether a service offered on a “month-by-month” basis with no long-term contract requirement should be described as a “no-contract” service? The advantage with these services is the fact that a customer can walk out of the service before the next monthly billing cycle by cancelling the service and settling up the account for the cost of the service. The IT press were splitting hairs by describing a single monthly billing cycle as a one-month contract because you wouldn’t be able to get money back for unused days of your service if you walked out before the end of the billing cycle.

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority settled this once and for all by allowing a service provider to call a “month-by-month” service with no long-term requirement a “no-contract” service when they advertise it to the public. This is even though a contract that represents the monthly billing cycle of these services is technically a contract.

At least someone has stood up to the realities associated with apartment blocks and offered an Internet service deal that caters to people who come in an out of town on a short-term basis.