Tag: FTTH

Article

Few NBN customers report higher bills after switch | The Age (Australia)

My Comments

There is a key issue being hammered out concerning the National Broadband Network, especially by the Federal Opposition and, to some extent, Sydney’s talkback radio hosts. It is where signing on to NBN ultra-fast broadband Internet service is going to lead to fixed-line Internet bills that are more expensive than with a legacy ADSL or cable service?

The article suggested that the costs would be the same or cheaper than the legacy Internet service. One situation that could cause this to happen is that a customer who moves on to National Broadband Network may use this as a chance to “right-size” their Internet-service package to their use. This can extend to the reality with most of these services that are sold by “data allowance” where people purchase more than they really use so they can create a buffer for sudden usage spikes. This also allows the customer to end up with a predictable bill that they can budget for.

Similarly, IP telephony including Skype, works as a cost-saver because you could effectively place long-distance calls for “pennies’ worth” or more likely for free, compared to paying an expensive bill for these calls. This includes the ability to have FM-radio-grade voice telephony on these connections as well as videocalls of the science-fiction calibre.

I also wouldn’t put it past the retail NBN carriers to follow France’s example and sell n-play service with broadband Internet, telephony, pay TV amongst other services on the one competitively-priced package.  But on the other hand, could we be seeing more of the “over-the-top” telephony and TV services being used with the National Broadband Network?

Sometimes we have to sort out the reality from the rhetoric concerning the next-generation broadband Internet services and pay attention to other larger countries who are operating these services already.

Article

thinkbroadband :: Frilford Oxfordshire to benefit from 1Gbps FTTH from Gigaclear

From the horse’s mouth

Gigaclear

Project Announcement Page

My Comments

Regular readers and subscribers of HomeNetworking01.info have noticed me covering Gigaclear’s activities in bring real next-generation broadband to the Berkshire and Oxfordshire rural communities in the UK.

Now Frilford and the neighbouring communities of Frilford Heath and Cothill are to benefit from this same technology. This is the same business-friendly service with 1Gbps upstream and downstream. Again this is a short drive (in an MG) west of Abingdon, like Fyfield and Tubney. This is another example of the villages and hamlets that exist close to a major town of employment “cottoning on to” the full business-grade broadband at the door in order to facilitate telecommuting for the businesses in that towm.

What I also like about this is that people who want the “tree-change” from Abingdon can value this option yet have access to the real broadband whether they still work or are considering retiring or setting up that small business.

Of course, like other Gigaclear services, this will primarily be a data-only service which will mean that people who want integrated telephony or TV service will have to source these services from “over-the-top” providers.

It is of course another example of pro-active thinking when it comes to bringing real broadband to rural, regional and peri-urban areas, and allowing these areas to become more “switched on”.

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

thinkbroadband :: Gigaclear announces completion of its Appleton and Eaton fibre network

Previous coverage on HomeNetworking01.info

Gigabit broadband now in Appleton, Oxfordshire

Two large Oxfordshire villages now to have fibre-optic broadband

From the horse’s mouth

Gigaclear press release

Gigaclear Web site – Appleton service

My Comments

After three months of hard work, the fibre-to-the-premises gigabit broadband rollout has been completed in Appleton and Eaton in Oxfordshire. This has passed 400 properties with 40% service take-up at the time of writing.

As previously mentioned in the coverage, this service is intended to be a symmetric network with equal bandwidth for upload and download. This feature will make it work well for telecommuters, Skype users and small businesses who synchronise data between home and the shopfront.

There is a desire by Gigaclear to cover more Oxfordshire rural communities. One of these is Watlington where the Watlington Community Broadband service wants to move from ADSL2 copper technology to the newer FTTP all-fibre-optic technology.  Anna Badcock who is representing Watlington on Oxfordshire District Council and formed Watlington Community Broadband with county councillor Caroline Newton is behind this concept as a service improvement effort.

Through the construction phase for this network, Gigaclear have hosted many demonstrations of what this technology can do. This included use of the smart-TVs’ Internet-enabled capabilities, VoIP-based telephony including the ability to retain one’s own number and handset, video telephony amongst others.

What is being emphasised here is the concept of a rural lifestyle but being able to still benefit from real broadband Internet. This concept underscores professionals working from home in a lot of the country villages and towns through country-based businesses being as competitive as city-based ones to country-based hotels and similar businesses offering Wi-Fi to attract the city-based business traffic.

A question still worth raising regarding these FTTP broadband rollouts that Gigaclear are undertaking is whether the farms, manors, and similar large properties on the outskirts of the villages are being given the option to have this broadband service delivered to them. The question that will often be raised by the owners of these properties is how much it would cost to roll out the fibre-optic infrastructure to the main building.

As we see more of these developments taking place around rural UK courtesy of Gigaclear and others, it could be a chance to prove that real broadband Internet, especially next-generation Internet can be a reality in the country.

Article

FTTH the right choice: NZ IT minister | ZDNet

My Comments

Australia, France and a few other countries are implementing fibre-to-the-premises technology as their mainstay next-generation broadband networks. Similarly, some local “real-broadband enablement” deployments in some country towns like Hambleton in the UK have set up for this technology.

Similarly, those countries who have established fibre-copper next-generation broadband services, like the VDSL network in Germany and the fibre-to-the-cabinet deployments in the UK, have shown interest in the FTTP technology in some limited-area or pilot deployments.

Now New Zealand have shown interest in creating a next-generation broadband network. This time, they have headed for the fibre-to-the-premises technology rather than the cheaper fibre-copper technologies. Of course, the rural areas would be serviced with fibre-copper or fixed-wireless setups rather than the all-fibre solution.

The New Zealand Communications Minister, Amy Adams, had gone on record that she stood for the technology. She stood for it because there is better fiscal sense in rolling out this kind of network because of it being future-proof, rather than retrofitting the fibre-copper network to an all-fibre setup at a later stage in the network’s service life. This was raised as part of discussions with the Australian Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy regarding trans-Tasman communications, including capping the cost of mobile-phone roaming between Australia and New Zealand.

The country may also have other requirements that are particular of multi-island nations. Here, it would need to benefit from higher-bandwidth

But, in my honest opinion, that country does need to improve on competitive Internet access. It is because I have heard that the New-Zealand broadband services are more expensive compared to Australia and other main Internet markets. The problem is more so with international access streams ran by other operators so that the retain ISPs there can buy cheaper bandwidth and onsell it to the New-Zealand public.

Articles – French language

Le département de l’Oise déploie la fibre optique pour tous ses habitants – DegroupNews.com

From the horse’s mouth

Conseil Général de l’Oise – Local government for the Oise département

Le Très Haut Débit, Une Ambition Forte Pour L’Oise

Web Site

My Comments

In Australia, work is underway in some towns to have the National Broadband Network fibre-optic infrastructure in place. But the local government of Oise in France have put up a goal to have fibre-to-the-premises next generation Internet past every household in that départément.

This départément is located 25km north of Paris and is a mixture of rural and urban living as well as being home to some of France’s classic chateaux. But the main problem here is that a lot of Oise has areas that don’t “cut the mustard” for triple-play broadband. Here, you could just service basic Internet needs but wouldn’t service multimedia, a busy home or small-business network or triple-play Internet to the French competitive standard.

Technically, the network will be based on FTTH/FTTP technology and will be part of a buid-out of the TelOise fibre-optic network that has been already laid out. This places Oise on a par with most of urban France where there is a fibre-to-the-premises setup in place or being rolled out. The project will target areas where theire is substandard bandwidth first before covering the rest of the département.

This project will be supported with €265m worth of local public money, courtesy of the Conseil-Général who is the local government for the département; and will have a timeframe of around 15 years. I have touched on the issue of public money being used towards improving Internet service in this site as there has been a lot of conservative moaning about this practice in Australia with the NBN and in the USA with wireless hotzones set up by local governments.

What I suspect that would be going on would be a further push for some form of competitiveness in the way the service is delivered, as would be expected in France.

Whatever way I see it, France, like the UK, is an interesting country to observe when it comes to how Internet is delivered in a competitive manner and how local public money can be engaged in these projects.

Build out on TelOise network