Tag: FTTP

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.

Article

Google Fiber Installs In Provo | Broadband News & DSL Reports

My Comments

The work at the coalface has begin for Google Fiber’s deployment in Provo, Utah. In early October, the signing up has begun but yesterday (Tuesday 12 November 2013 (Western Hemisphere)), the work has started on connecting the very customers to this fibre-to-the-premises service.

What I see of this is that the incumbent telephone company and the cable company servicing this town will be squirming because the duopoly that they enjoyed in this town is being lost as a fibre-optic residential Internet service is being rolled out/ This is with a tariff chart being a symmetrical 1 Gbps for US$70 / month, a TV service with this 1 Gbps service for US$50 / month extra and a free 5/1 Mbps service for the installation cost of US$30. It also means that Provo could become a startup and “work-from-home” town due to the 1Gbps upload speeds offered by Google Fiber.

There have to be steps taken to keep the lively competition on foot so that the cost and quality of Internet service doesn’t deteriorate in the towns where competing Internet service exists.

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

thinkbroadband :: Gigaclear partners with Fluidata to offer provider choice on network

My Comments

In the UK, a lot of small fibre-based networks are popping up in different country areas to offer real next-generation broadband to these areas. They are typically either a sole private effort or assisted by local or central government or even the local community.

But, unlike most next-generation broadband networks (including the National Broadband Network in Australia) and the ADSL broadband networks in most areas, there isn’t competitive access to the infrastructure. Here, it makes it hard for these markets to be approached with retail Internet service that competes on price or services offered.

Now, Gigaclear, whom I have been following on HomeNetworking01.info, have partnered with Fluidata to open their fibre-to-the-premises networks to other retail providers on a competitive-access model. This could allow a potential customer in Lyddington, Appleton or somewhere similar to benefit from a competitive tariff chart or sign up to a package that has “all the fruit” like VoIP telephony or IP-provided television.

There needs to be a platform for providing competitive access to infrastructure provided as part of any new next-generation-broadband project  This means that there is a company who looks after the infrastructure to the point of demarcation between the company’s responsibility and the customer’s responsibility at a customer’s installation.

But different companies can use this platform to provide a business or home customer access to the Internet using this infrastructure but in a competitive manner. Here, a customer then chooses which company provides an offer that best suits their needs and provides the best “bang for the buck”.

One could easily think that such a platform needs to be built or integrated at a later stage after the project is established but it is worth investigation any competitive-access systems as part of rolling out a next-generation Internet or rural-broadband-enablement project.

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

thinkbroadband :: Vonage and Gigaclear in partnership deal

From the horse’s mouth

Gigaclear

Press Release

Vonage

UK company webpage

My Comments

As you may already know, Gigaclear have been known for rolling out focused fibre-to-the-premises deployments to various Oxfordshire and Berkshire villages in the UK to enable them for next-generation broadband. A lot of these services are known to provide up to a gigabyte in upload and download capacity.

Now they have partnered with Vonage, a US-based over-the-top VoIP telephony provider to exploit this bandwidth for providing VoIP telephony. One would see this as a way to eliminate dependence on British Telecom for landline voice telephony for people who sign up to Gigaclear FTTP services.

Here, the main advantage would be for the new Vonage customers who are behind the Gigaclear services to avoid having to pay the £9.99 activation fee when they set up for VoIP service and will benefit from calling anywhere in the UK for £5.99 per month. As well, Vonage do sell a VoIP analogue-telephone adaptor that is set up for these services as part of the service so you can use that existing landline phone with your VoIP service.

But one could easily ask whether Gigaclear could resell the VoIP service on behalf of Vonage so that customers could buy the telephony and Internet as a package. Similarly, another question could be asked whether Gigaclear could also partner with an IPTV provider to resell pay-TV to the customers.

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/