Tag: FTTH

Article

Guest blog: Fibre broadband: what does it mean for your business? | Go E-Sussex

My Comments

A situation may occur for your small business where fibre-optic next-generation broadband passes your office (including your home). This is due to efforts in place to head towards the concept of this technology being made available in most places through progressive rollouts by differing companies.

In some cases, the next-generation broadband rollouts are public-private efforts with national, state or local governments putting money towards the efforts as a way of investing in their constituencies. It is very similar to improving infrastructure like roads, rails or utilities in a neighbourhood to make it worth investing or doing business in that area.

How could this benefit my business?

Use of remote storage and cloud services

One obvious application us the increased use of off-premises computing services.  Typically these are in the form of remote storage and backup services like Dropbox or Box.com, often marketed as “cloud storage” services. Some of these services essentially function as an off-premises data-backup tool or they can simply work as an invitation-only file-exchange service, whether between you and business partners or simply as a way to shift files between your regular computer and your mobile devices while “on the road”.

For organisations with a Web presence, this will encompass uploading Web content as you maintain your Web page or even backing up that Web page.

Even if a business implements on-premises storage technology such as a NAS or server, there is also an increased desire for remote “on-the-road” access to these resources. Similarly, it could be feasible for a business with two or more locations to have the ability to shift data between these locations such as storing data that is worked on at home using a NAS or server at the shop or caching data between two shops.

Another key direction is to head towards cloud-computing where the software that performs business tasks is hosted remotely. This will typically have you work either with a Web page as the software’s user interface or you may be dealing with a lightweight “peripheral bridge” for industry-specific peripherals. In some cases, various programs such as some business-grade security programs implement cloud computing in order to offload some of the processing that would normally be required of the local computing system. This is being pitched as a way for small business to “think like big business” due to the low capital-equipment cost.

The next-generation broadband services can improve this kind of computing by reducing the time it takes to transfer the files and allows for silky-smooth cloud-computing operations.

IP Telecommunications

A very significant direction for business Internet use is IP-based telecommunications. This gives businesses some real capabilities through the saving on operational expenditure costs while also opening up some newer pathways that have been put out of small business’s reach.

One application is IP-based videocalls using Skype and Lync technology – totally real, not science-fiction anymore. These technologies have the ability to provide for video-based real-time teleconferencing even to high-quality visual displays and some of them even allow for multi-party videocalls. The next-generation broadband services can exploit this technology by permitting smooth reliable videocalls with the high-resolution video display.

Another IP-telecommunications application appealing to small business is the concept of the IP-based business telephone system. This can be facilitated with an on-premises IP-based PBX server that is linked to the outside world via an IP-based “trunk” or a hosted IP-telephony system which is ran simply as a service. The phones that sit on the desks are primarily IP-based extensions or legacy phones connected via analogue-telephone adaptor devices with DECT cordless phones linked up to an IP DECT base.  In some cases, a regular computer or a mobile device (smartphone or tablet) could run a “softphone” application which uses the device’s control surface and audio infrastructure to make it become an extension.

These appeal to businesses due to access to low telephony costs especially for long-distance calls or, for that matter, free calls between multiple business locations through the use of a tie-line that the business doesn’t need to rent.

The next-generation broadband can allow IP-based telecommunications to take place while data is being transferred or the Internet is being used without impeding data-transfer speed or voice / video call quality.

IP-based video surveillance

Shopkeepers and other small-business owners would find greater justification to install an IP-based video-surveillance system or upgrade an existing video-surveillance system to IP-based technology. This could allow, for example, one to watch over another location from one location or permit backup video recording of the footage at another location whether it be a storage provider that you rent space on or a NAS installed at home or another business location.

This also allows for use of newer cameras that implement higher-resolution sensors and support on-camera video analytics. The increased bandwidth means that more of the video footage from these cameras can be streamed at once to a remote location.

Working from home

If you work from home, whether to telecommute or to operate your business operation from home, you will find that the next-generation broadband service is important for you. This is more so if you are dealing with graphics, CAD or multimedia content or even using a VoIP or videocall service as your communications technology.

As well, you benefit from reduced Internet-service contention with other household members when you have the next-generation broadband service. This is because the increased bandwidth could allow you to do intense cloud-based work computing or a large file transfer while they do something like engage in a VoIP voice call or stream video content.

Offering your customers or guests public Wi-Fi Internet service

If you run a bar, café, hotel or similar venue, you could offer your customers or guests a public Internet service and not worry that this service will cramp your business Internet style. In some cases, you could handle more customers’ data-transfer needs at once  which would happen at “peak occupancy” or allow for them to engage in high-bandwidth applications like business data transfer, videocalls or enjoying online video content and have the best experience with these activities.

To the same extent, the public Wi-Fi Internet service is being seen by mobile telephony carriers as an “offload” service to increase their mobile network capacity. As well, some mobile carriers are even implementing femtocells which are mobile base stations that cover a small area like a home or business premises as a method of improving indoor mobile coverage in a particular premises or increasing mobile capacity in a popular location.

Is your small business’s network ready?

There are some things you would have to do to get your small business’s network ready for the next-generation-broadband service.

Your router

One would be to make sure you have a small-business router that is optimised for next-generation very-high-speed broadband. One critical feature it would need is to have an Internet (WAN) connection with Gigabit Ethernet. This would allow for use with an optical-network modem that provides for the high-speed throughput these networks provide. As well, having Gigabit Ethernet for each LAN Ethernet connector and 802.11n/ac dual-band Wi-Fi wireless where applicable would be considered important for the local network side of the equation.

Most of the current-issue high-end or “small-business-grade” routers would cut the mustard when it comes to having this kind of connectivity and this goal could be achieved with the current network-equipment replacement cycle.

Your network

As well, you would need to bring your Ethernet infrastructure to Gigabit standard while also evolving your Wi-Fi wireless infrastructure to 802.11n or 802.11ac standard with simultaneous dual-band operation i.e. N600 or better. A HomePlug segment that you operate in this network could be brought to HomePlug AV2 standard preferably due to higher throughput and improved robustness than HomePlug AV500 or HomePlug AV.

Wireless hotspots

Those of you who run a wireless hotspot or similar public-internet service which is managed by a special router dedicated to this task may have to evolve it to a component-based system so you can implement high-throughput networking technology.

Component-based hotspot systems use a wired hotspot router with Ethernet connections as the only network connections. Then you connect a VDSL2 modem, optical-network terminal or similar appropriate device to your hotspot router’s WAN / Internet port and a dedicated 802.11n access point with a standard of at least N300 for a 2.4GHz single-band unit or N600 for a simultaneous dual-band unit.  This is also a good time to make sure you have optimum public Wi-Fi coverage across your business premises.

You may also have to make sure that the system has improved quality-of-service support for multimedia-based tasks especially if you business happens to be a hotel or similar type. This is because a lot of people are increasingly using smartphones, tablets and ultraportable laptops to engage in Skype videocalls or stream video content from catch-up TV or video-on-demand services and poor quality-of-service severely ruins the user experience with these services.

Considering the full-fibre option

Another issue that can be worth considering for small-business fibre broadband is the “full-fibre” option in a fibre-copper setup. This is being offered by some UK next-generation broadband services and is also being offered In Australia as an option under the Coalition’s preferred fibre-copper National Broadband Network setups.

Here, the same service provider who would normally provide a fibre-copper service like fibre-to-the-cabinet / fibre-to-the-node would also provide a fibre-to-the-premises service as an extra-cost option. A small business could opt for these services especially if they are using cloud services a lot or uploading data to online storage frequently.

Even a business using a fibre-copper setup could look at the feasibility of the full-fibre option as a long-term goal as they make more use of the Internet. As well, this would be a valuable option for premises that are underserved by VDSL-based fibre-copper services. 

It is also worth noting that when you have a “full-fibre” install to a premises, the sale or lease value can increase because of the availability of really high-speed broadband service at that location.

Conclusion

When fibre-based next-generation broadband passes your business, it would become a valuable business option to sign up to one of these services due to costs saved through the higher throughput available with these services. It also allows the business to “grow up” and adapt to increased data-throughput needs.

Article – From the horse’s mouth

Google

Exploring New Cities For Google Fiber

My Comments

After its success with Kansas City, Provo and Austin, Google is planning to hit nine more US cities with their fibre-optic broadband service. Here, I see this as an attempt to bring competition to Internet service in these communities in a situation where competition is dwindling due to the pending merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

Even though most of the city fathers representing these communities are behind these projects, usually to see their communities grow economically, there are issues with state and federal authorities who have frustrated competitive activity like municipal Wi-Fi deployments. This is typically to protect incumbent cable and telephony companies against competitive service, but it allows these companies to treat their customers as second-class citizens by redlining good services away from certain communities or simply providing poor-value service to their customers.

But something needs to be done to assure competition on the Internet-service front and this may involve the US Department Of Justice rather than the Federal Communications Commission. It may involve prohibition of uncompetitive mergers or overriding anti-competitive state requirements in order to make sure that third-party Internet service providers can operate in more communities. It may even require a repetition of the 1980s court action that took place to break up “Ma Bell” to assure competition. Once we see more of Google Fiber in action and other Silicon Valley Internet companies work towards providing end-to-end Internet service, it could open up the idea of competition to the US market.

Articles

France – where Gigabit fibre is a free upgrade courtesy of Free

French ISP Free upgrades fiber customers to gigabit broadband |CNET

French ISP Free offers fiber customers 1Gbps upgrade for no cost | PC World

From the horse’s mouth

Free

English-language press release (PDF)

My Comments

Again France is showing its true colours as a highly-competitive Internet service market. What with the “n-boxes” that yield very high capabilities including network-attached storage or Blu-Ray 3D players in the set-top boxes; along with all sorts of services offered by these providers for cost-effective prices as I have written about before here in this user guide.

Now the ante has been raised further by Free who had “lit the fire” for this highly-competitive Internet service. Here, they are upgrading their fibre customers to full Gigabit capacity at no extra cost. The setup even uses the concept of “switched fibre” where each subscriber gets their own dedicated Gigabit bandwidth rather than sharing the same bandwidth. This will apply to these customers who are using the highly-strung Freebox Révolution equipment.

It could lead to a situation where other Internet providers in France start to answer Free by offering similar capacities to the public. This could be a very interesting turn for most of France and lead to a European country that can be described as being ready for technologies like 4K UHDTV or “all-IP” TV distribution. Even Brussels will be looking on very keenly as France is seen as a model of a highly-competitive market.

Article

A City Getting Google Fiber Explains How Awesome Google Fiber Is

Click here to view the video

Previous Coverage on HomeNetworking01.info

Real Internet Service Competition Arrives in Utah Courtesy Of Google Fiber

My Comments

Now that Google has started work on providing fibre-to-the-premises next-generation broadband service to Provo, Utah, the city fathers of that town have celebrated by preparing a commercial-length video to explain what this is all about.

Here, this clip uses the analogy of a large temporary swimming pool being filled with water. Firstly, the householder starts filling it with a regular garden hose but it takes a very long time. But a fire engine arrives and dumps a huge quantity of water in the pool and the pool is full enough for a family to start swimming.

The garden hose represents current-generation cable or DSL broadband service while the fire engine’s water supply represents Google Fiber or other next-generation broadband Internet service. The act of filling that swimming pool is similar to transferring content between your home network and a file server somewhere on the Internet such as downloading a video from Netflix or uploading a quantity of pictures to Facebook or Flickr.

This funny video can be used as a way to illustrate this concept when justifying the benefits of deploying larger bandwidth to your home or business network or rolling out any next-generation broadband Internet service.

Article – French language

Fibre optique : le gouvernement lance une mission pour débrancher l’ADSL- m.01net.com

My Comments

France – another area to go full-fibre

It is not just Australia where there is a drive to head towards fibre-to-the-premises broadband. The same situation is also happening in France where a government committee is working on supplanting the country’s copper telephone network with a fibre-based next-generation broadband network.

They have an interim goal for a report by end of 2013 with a final roadmap by end of 2014, which will detail how and when to go about this project and who is being affected. An issue that was being raised was implementing VDSL2 which theoretically yields 50Mbps over a short copper link for areas where fibre isn’t practical or affordable. This technology was just lately accepted as a communications technology by ARCEP who are the governing body for France’s telecommunications.

There was also the Intent to indemnify France-Télécom because, as a classic telecommunications operator and being a spinoff of the Postes Téléphones Télégraphs government body, they own the copper network. This is similar to what has happened with Telstra in Australia when it came to the NBN.

I also see issues that are likely to be raised about the difficult parts of France Métropolitaine (L’Héxagone) and the Outre-Mer territories where fibre-optic installation may be considered difficult or costly. Could this also invoke implementation of technologies like fixed wireless?

Similarly, the competitive nature of France’s telecommunications and Internet-access sector could place requirements on this goal such as whether to cover more or less territory quickly. It can also encompass protection of competitive access to the new infrastructure such as the “multifibre” method or the “single-fibre” method.

It would be interesting to see who else would be daring to head down the full fibre-to-the-premises route while dumping copper for their telecommunications and Internet infrastructure.

Article

thinkbroadband :: Paris suburbs to benefit from FTTH network

My Comments

While the Australian political parties are bickering on about the pros and cons of a fibre-to-the-premises service compared with a fibre-copper (fibre-to-the-node) service for the National Broadband Network, plans are underway to cover the Parisian metropolitan area in France with a fibre-to-the-premises next-generation broadband service.

They pitched €20 million to the effort with France Télécom (Orange) and SFR behind the effort. This is intended to be a public effort with the Ile-De-France regional government standing behind the effort but it will exclude the city of Paris which would be the actual Paris CBD (downtown) area.

It seems like this kind of effort with two private companies who have their own infrastructures working towards a better infrastructure is considered ludicrous in the English-speaking world. But the mindset that drives Continental European business can allow for co-operation on larger projects and improved technology. Similarly, the idea of a national, regional or local government assisting private companies in a public-private effort to work a project may also be considered ludicrous especially when you hear of conservative governments in the US and Australia making efforts to cut down on public-funded broadband deployments.

I have written about the issue of having public assistance in private efforts to roll out broadband-Internet-improvement projects in order to prevent redlining and to allow areas that could be covered to be covered. Why can’t this practice be readily accepted when it comes to rolling out a broadband-improvement project in the UK, USA or Australia – is it too much a political hot potato?

Article (Broadcast transcript)

Media Watch: The difference between advocacy and analysis (11/03/2013) – Video and transcript through this link

My Comments

Very often, the media conversation about the National Broadband Network in Australia is so polarised.

The agenda amongst the technology community (including HomeNetworking01.info), the ABC, the Australian Labor Party, the Fairfax metropolitan press and other progressive groups is that the NBN should be primarily the fibre-to-the-premises setup. Conversely, the agenda amongst the business press, Sydney commercial talkback radio, The Australian,  the Liberal-Party / National-Party Coalition and some other conservative groups is to implement a fibre-copper setup especially in brownfield areas due to it being considered the cheaper option. Some of this talk suggests the use of coaxial-cable runs for the copper run rather than VDSL2 (existing telephone cable) or Metro Ethernet (new RJ45 cable) for these runs.

In some cases, a lot of this talk plants seeds of doubt in the uninformed about whether we need next-generation broadband service or not and this can cause people to reject this kind of service. This was something I had observed through a conversation with a friend of mine who lives in Sydney and heard a lot of this talk through the Sydney commercial talkback radio. He has asked me whether we really need the NBN or not and what costs would be borne by us when we sign up to the service. Here I raised issues like NBN being a carrier for IPTV-based pay-TV as a key needs-driver; as well as the issue of free “to-the-door” cable like with telephony for urban areas.

I have been observing the UK and France situation where there has been real Internet-service competition including some fibre-based next-generation-broadband rollouts. In the UK, there have been the likes of Gigaclear running next-generation FTTP broadband to various villages which I have covered regularly on HomeNetworking01.info. As well, I have observed France’s highly-competitive Internet services, including the use of infrastructure competition (zones dégroupée for ADSL and multifibre FTTH for next-generation broadband). Some of these deployments also have had local-government financial assistance as well as, in some cases national or EU financial assistance.

Sometimes it is hard to sort out the real information from the rhetoric and this can be of concern for the consumer or small business owner who is thinking of a future-proof Internet service for their needs/