Tag: next-generatin broadband

Quality of life becomes another argument to validate rural broadband

Article

Tree on a country property

Local government could also improve the reality of proper broadband in the country

Good Broadband Helps Lift Rutland to Top Halifax’s 50 Best Rural Areas | ISPReview

My Comments

I have given increased coverage to the subject of rural broadband, including implementation of next-generation technologies in the country.

Here I have stood for proper rural broadband due to raising the bar for people who live or work in the country rather than treating them as second-class citizens, something I have experienced with radio, television and telephone. An example of this was a telephone service that was frequently riddled with crosstalk, a radio service with reduced access to music content or a TV service with unreliable reception.

In the UK, the Broadband Delivery UK programme assisted by British Telecom made sure that real broadband passed 98% of the county’s premises courtesy of fibre-to-the-cabinet technology. This was also complemented in some villages with fibre-to-the-premises technology courtesy of Gigaclear and Rutland Telecom. This has been demonstrated as a way to lift the value of the properties in these areas as the quality of broadband service can improve one’s online life.

But real broadband in rural areas has been seen as contributing to an improvement to quality of life in these neighbourhoods, which was highlighted in a Halifax survey that was just published. Halifax factored the quality of broadband service in to this list with a bandwidth of 2Mbps or greater as a positive influence. Here, the Rutland neighbourhood appeared at number 1 thanks to the Gigaclear and BDUK

These figures could be used by local government and citizen groups to substantiate why real competition is important for Internet service and why country areas need real Internet service that is reliable. It can also be used by national governments to define the standard of adequate broadband Internet service and justify having this service covered by a universal-service obligation along with protection of real competition for these services and the provision of public money to set these services up.

Discussions in Germany about how broadband can benefit rural areas

Article

German industry is poised to exploit rural broadband | PC World

My Comments

German countryside - By Manfred&Barbara Aulbach (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

There are real applications for real broadband in Germany

Other countries are having to work harder to even justify rural broadband but Germany is justifying and standing for a broadband standard of at least 50Mbps even in rural areas. This was something that the German Chancellor Angela Merkel had called for in her opening speech at CEBIt 2015 in Hannover.

Here. the goal was about using broadband as a tool to benefit the tradition-driven farming and forestry industries that exist in the country’s rural areas. This is although Germany is pushing the VDSL2 barrow for their next-generation broadband technology but could use “fibre to the remote node” with VDSL2 and ADSL2 to push real broadband to rural households or to serve 4G or newer mobile-broadband service to these areas.

The main benefit was to allow farmers and forestry workers to implement computer-driven analytics rather than tradition and “rough-gauging” to their tasks in order to gain better harvests. SAP were premiering a “field analytics” service which covers the lifecycle of a farmer’s crop, recommending when to start the various tasks associated with that crop. This allows dates for these tasks to be factored in by the farmer or seed merchant. As well, weather reports for that area can be used to vary when to start a particular task.

The SAP service also has the ability for the farmer to share out data with contractors on an “as-needed” basis thus honouring Germany’s strict data-protection laws. At the moment, it is a proof-of-concept service but it was realised that this kind of service can benefit from real broadband being available to rural areas.

Other beneficiaries included Claas who offered a sensor-equipped tractor along with Fovea who offered a surveying app for forestry workers.

Here it is not just about personal entertainment or general office communication that would benefit the rural community when real broadband arrives. It is also about using the “fat pipes” that this technology provides to exchange data with various analytics services to obtain the right crop yield.

Google Fiber available for all small businesses in Provo and Kansas City

Article – from the horse’s mouth

Google Fiber

Google Fiber for Small Business arrives in Provo (plus more of Kansas City)  – Blog Post

Video – what this means for small business!

My Comments

Those of you who subscribe to Google Fiber in Provo or Kansas City were limited by the fact that the fibre-optic next-generation broadband service was positioned just for residential users. This meant that you couldn’t really link up your home office, small business or community organisation to this service to benefit from real next-generation broadband.

Initially Google ran limited-participation program of their Google Fiber For Small Business service in Kansas City to see whether it would “cut the mustard” for a next-generation broadband service that you could trust your business to. Now they have launched the Google Fiber For Small Business service across their current footprint in Provo, Kansas City and Austin.

This is to provide Gigabit throughput along with a supplied router for USD$100 per month with static IPs at extra cost. I have written an article on this Website about getting your small business ready for whenever Google Fiber passes your doors and you sign up for it. Here, I was highlighting concepts like remote storage and cloud computing; telecommuting; VoIP and video telephony; IP-based video surveillance; and public-access Internet as well as drawing attention to your network equipment being up to the task such as supporting high throughput.

As Google provides competitive next-generation Internet service for small businesses, it could provide a real benefit to the small business’s bottom line when it comes to Internet-access costs and value-for-money.

Wires-only self Install to come to UK FTTC services

Draytek Vigor 2860N VDSL2 business VPN-endpoint router press image courtesy of Draytek UK

Draytek Vigor 2860N VDSL2 business VPN-endpoint router

Article

Broadband Router Options for UK FTTC VDSL ISPs – 2015 UPDATE – ISPreview UK Page 2

My Comments

When a person signed up to “fibre-to-the-cabinet” next-generation broadband service in the UK, they would have to make an appointment with a BT Openreach technician to install their VDSL2 modem and rewire their telephone service. Here, you then had to make sure you had a broadband router with an Ethernet WAN connection on the “edge” of your home network which is something you would have to do for fibre-to-the-premises (all-fibre) setups.

Now BT and others are offering this service on a “self-install” or “wires-only” basis where they do the work with getting you ready for next-generation broadband at the FTTC cabinet only. You would have to buy your own VDSL2-capable modem router and microfilters to benefit from this service. This is similar to the current practice of providing ADSL in the UK, Australia and most other countries.

There are an increasing number of high-end modem routers available from most of the well-known home-network equipment names like Draytek, Billion, and TP-LINK. But the VDSL2 modem must work to UK standards which means that it would be a good idea to go to local online or bricks-and-mortar outlets to purchase that VDSL2-compliant modem router.

Bear in mind that some high-end ADSL2 modem routers that are advertised as VDSL2-ready may implement a software-programmable modem which can be set up to “do VDSL2”. Here, check on the manufacturer’s Webpage for a firmware update that opens this functionality and make sure this update is “fixed” to UK requirements.

As well, for anyone around the world who is benefiting from VDSL2-based “fibre-copper” services and having it on a “self-install” or wires-only basis, make sure that you are dealing with equipment or firmware that works to the standards supported by your ISP or infrastructure provider.

To start you off, consider the Draytek Vigor 2860N as a flexible VPN endpoint wireless router for your small business or the Billion BiPAC 8800AXL AC1600 wireless router as modem router ideas for your FTTC-driven home or small-business network.

President Obama speaks out for real competition in US Internet service

Article

Obama’s Plan to Loosen Comcast’s Stranglehold on Your Internet | Gizmodo

From the horse’s mouth

The White House (US Government)

Report (PDF)

Video by Barack Obama

Click to view

My Comments

An issue that is constantly raised in the USA is the lack of real competition when it comes to Internet service provision.

This is because incumbent cable and telephone companies, especially Comcast and Time-Warner Cable, are using their lobbying power to influence state governments to proscribe competing interests like municipal Wi-Fi projects or Google Fiber from setting up infrastructure and service. Similarly, these companies effectively tie up fibre-optic and other backbone infrastructure also to prevent real competition. Here, this leads to an Internet service that simply is poor value-for-money due to prices that go up, reduced bandwidth, onerous terms and conditions and poor quality-of-service.

As illustrated in the video that President Barack Obama made regarding this topic, this limits the available throughput for Internet service and he compared the US situation to cities like Paris, France or Seoul, South Korea where they have the high-speed broadband.

He underscored the role of state and local government to pull their weight to support high-throughput last-mile Internet connections on a competitive level. Uncle Sam had already facilitated the backbone of the US Internet connection but he sees these governments being responsible for the connection to the customer’s door.

It also comes at a time where Comcast and Time-Warner Cable have registered an intent to merge and this is becoming a hot potato issue in the US due to the state of the Internet and pay-TV services that exist there.

One analogy I have used regarding the state of the US Internet service is that it is moving towards a similar standard to monopoly-era telephone service where a single privately-owned or government-owned post-office or telephone company looked after the telephone service. This led to situations like the poor quality of customer service, disinvestment in areas that weren’t considered profitable along with very high prices especially for service-provisioning costs or long-distance calls.

What I have liked about this is that someone “from the top” of the food chain is addressing the issue concerning the quality and value of Internet service in the USA.

UK to benefit from Naked FTTC broadband

Article

Naked fibre to the cabinet may be on the way from Openreach | ThinkBroadband

My Comments

AVM FRITZ!Box 3490 - Press photo courtesy AVM

AVM Fritzbox 3490 – an example of a VDSL2 modem that could be part of the naked VDSL2 service offered in the UK

I have written up an article about broadband Internet options available for those of us who use the mobile phone as the main voice telephone. Here, I was highlighting the kind of options that are available without you needing to pay line rental to an incumbent voice-telephony carrier and highlighted services like FTTP fibre-optic Internet or cable-modem broadband service which are hosted on separate infrastructure.

But I also highlighted the concept of “naked DSL” or “dry-loop DSL” which is a DSL service using your phone carrier’s wires but you don’t have a local voice telephone service a.k.a a “dial-tone” service. A lot of countries offer this as a service option for most DSL-service packages but the United Kingdom doesn’t offer that kind of service at all.

Things are to change for the UK with Openreach offering the “naked DSL” option for people who sign up to VDSL2-based “fibre-to-the-cabinet” next-generation broadband. They will maintain the subscriber’s circuit from the FTTC street cabinet to the exchange just for line testing or if a subsequent subscriber wants to sign up to a full service with the legacy voice telephone component.

But this is a service that is considered a proposal but should really be available for UK households who start out “mobile only” or want to use that second line that was created for the fax or for someone’s independent telephony needs for their fibre-copper next-generation broadband needs.

Cumbria to benefit from fibre-optic rural Internet

Articles

Fibre GarDen to Start Community FTTP Broadband “Big Dig” in Cumbria | ISPReview.co.uk

From the horse’s mouth

Digital Dales

Product Page

My Comments

Yorkshire Dales By Kreuzschnabel (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or FAL], via Wikimedia Commons

Two Yorkshire Dales villages near Cumbria to benefit from real broadband

Another independent rural-broadband campaign is taking place in England to provide fibre-to-the-premises broadband in to some rural communities. This time it is being facilitated by Digital Dales and is to serve Garsdale and Dentdale in Cumbria, just north of the Yorkshire Dales. It, along with Gigaclear’s efforts, seen to be the only two non-BT rural broadband project to be taking place in the UK.

Digital Dales, which is a community-owned cooperative, have raised enough money to commence construction of this infrastructure on the 5th October 2014. In the early days, this enablement project had a bumpy start and was riddled with uncertainty. The funds have been sourced from the Rural Community Broadband Fund which provides money to facilitate real broadband in the country areas, along with the Yorkshire Dales National Park Sustainable Development Fund.

They had achieved the go-ahead for landowners’ properties to have the fibre-optic cable pass through them and the operation will be described as a “Big Dig”.

Once the infrastructure is in place and the service is live, householders will expect to pay GBP£30 / month for 30Mbps or GBP£50 / month for 100Mbps bandwidth. These services will comes with free basic landline telephone service, but the householders can upgrade their phone service to the same standard as BT for GBP£2 – £3 per month extra.

Personally, I would see this as effectively “lighting up” the villages with real broadband which could benefit small businesses, professionals who work from home, the tourism industry amongst other users. It could even allow Garsdale and Dentdale to become more attractive to live in for “tree-changers” as the availability of next-generation broadband is being used to assess a community’s liveability.

BT to investigate remote-node setups for fibre-copper broadband

Article

First BT Fibre-To-The-Remote-Node FTTrN Broadband Trial Set For Q4 2014 | ISPReview.co.uk

My Comments

British Telecom are trialling in Yorkshire a deployment setup for fibre-copper (FTTC, FTTN, etc) next-generation broadband setups. This is based around a miniature housing containing VDSL2 DSLAMs that can be mounted in smaller locations and able to serve a small number of copper connections.

This system, known as FTTrN (Fibre To The Remote Node) allows for longer fibre runs and can be powered either by the client premises or by a low-power independent power supply like a solar panel or simply neighbouring electrical infrastructure. It is intended to be mounted on telegraph poles, installed in small manholes or integrated in to existing infrastructure in some other way.

This is pitched as an alternative to the street cabinet that is essential to the FTTC (Fibre to the Curb / Fibre To The Cabinet) model because these have costs and installation issues as their baggage. This includes aesthetics and streetscape issues including attractiveness to grafitti vandals as a tagging surface as well as assuring dedicated power-supply availability.

Useful for difficult installations where a street cabinet would be difficult to install – cosmetic issues with large cabinets including attractiveness to grafitti vandals, planning / streetscape integration, dedicated AC power requirements including cabling infrastructure

Personally I would see these setups appeal to fibre-copper setups like “fibre-to-the-node” / “fibre-to-the-distribution-point” where the bridge between fibre-optic infrastructure and copper infrastructure is closer to the customer. They also do appeal as a way to “wire up” remote settlements, estates and hamlets with next-generation broadband in the fibre-copper way while assuring improved throughput.

I do still see these having the same limitations as any fibre-copper setup where the user experience can be impaired by use of poorly-maintained copper infrastructure which would be a common problem with rural installations.

At least BT are trying out a highly-flexible fibre-copper next-generation broadband setup which can also appeal as a tool for supplying real broadband to rural areas especially where there are the remote settlements or estates.

A UK developer now makes fibre broadband a key feature for their properties

Article

All New Berkeley UK Homes to be Fibre Optic Broadband Compatible | ISPReview.co.uk

From the horse’s mouth

Berkeley Group

Press Release

My Comments

Beautiful house

House developers could offer broadband readiness as a selling point

Especially in the UK, accessibility to next-generation broadband is being considered a key feature for a property. This has been underscored with Rightmove using this as something to assess a property or neighbourhood with when it comes to its saleability and could easily put a positive impression on its value.

Now Berkeley Group, a developer of premium residential properties in the UK, have released their business plan with the supply of fibre broadband to be part of the feature set for these developments. It is in response to a European Union directive that is requiring new buildings to be ready for high-speed broadband by 2016. In Europe, people are seeing broadband Internet service on the same level as water, electricity, fixed telephoy service and other utilities.

The big question I would have about these developments is whether they would be “wired for Ethernet” and whether this would reach most rooms in these homes? Similarly, would there be the ability for an average home-network wireless router to cover all of the premises with Wi-Fi signal using its own antennas (aerials)?

It is also in addition to a Britain-first strategy for marketing policy, a significant increase in apprenticeships, improved on-site safety as well as a desire to have customer satisfaction that beats Apple’s standards.

Personally, I would see residential building developers implement next-generation broadband and the connected home as a key differentiator with customers and property investors.

Wired broadband for the mobile-only household

Draytek VPN endpoint router

You can use a fully-functional router as part of a wired broadband service without the need to rent a classic telephone service

I have come across households that won’t operate a landline phone service and use mobile phones for their incoming and outgoing voice calls. In some cases, they even won’t run a wired broadband Internet service because they fear they have to pay a line rental to the incumbent telephone carrier for a landline service they don’t need. Instead they would use a mobile-broadband service for their Internet access needs, whether via a “Mi-Fi” device sharing the broadband via a Wi-Fi network with tablets and laptops or just by using mobile-broadband modems connected to or integrated in their mobile devices.

Which kind of users would this appeal to

This advice would appeal more to those of us who are in our premises for the long haul and don’t mind using an account with monthly postpaid billing for our services. On the other hand, a mobile-broadband service may have a better appeal where portability between premises or access to a prepaid service that can be worked into your budget matters.

What kind of connection

Dedicated infrastructure (Cable Internet, Fibre-to-the-premises, etc)

But you can use a wired broadband service in these situations. Here, you can order a broadband service which is based on dedicated-infrastructure technology. A cable-broadband, fibre-to-the-premises service or a fixed-wireless service is typically sold in a manner where you just pay for the dedicated infrastructure. Cable users can even just sign up for a service which has just the Internet service provided over the cable-TV infrastructure without the need to sign up for a pay-TV service.

Most of these services will require the installation of the necessary infrastructure and/or consumer-premises equipment if such infrastructure and equipment isn’t in place already. These services may also earn their keep if an ISP who offers naked / dry-loop DSL service won’t provide the service to a premises where there isn’t already an active telephone service.

Naked / Dry-loop DSL service

But you can use a DSL-based service which uses existing telephone wires, whether this is ADSL-based or VDSL as part of a fibre-copper next-generation broadband service. Here, you would need to sign up for a “naked DSL” service, also known as a “dry-loop” or standalone DSL service. These are provided in a manner where you don’t receive and pay line-rental for a classic landline telephone service, also known as a “dial-tone”. Rather, the telephone lines are used just for the DSL data service and some service providers may provide a “fully-optimised” DSL service which uses the whole bandwidth of the telephone line for the DSL data service.

This same service may also apply to a household or business who has a surplus telephone line along with one used for a classic land-line telephone service. These may be brought about due to a line used for a fax machine or dial-up Internet service or simply a separately-billed phone service for someone else living at home or for your home business, but you may end up purposing this line for a “naked ADSL” Internet service.

What kind of service plan

As for the communications service you sign up to, you would focus on a “data-only” service, also known as a “broadband-only” or “Internet-only” service without the need for a VoIP telephony or pay-TV service if you just want the data service rather than any telephony or pay-TV services.

On the other hand, they may offer a VoIP telephony service with call charges that represent increased value for money or an IPTV service as part of the package. They can be optioned on if you do need these services. The VoIP service will be typically delivered with a router that has an integrated analogue-telephony-adaptor or DECT base-station which works with most consumer fixed-line telephony equipment.

What this allows you to do

The main advantages you would have with these services would be higher bandwidth that is more available as well as a service that gives better value-for-money than the mobile-broadband service. As well, you can use a broadband router that provides improved functionality like wired Ethernet connections and an improved Wi-Fi access point. This device even opens up paths for improving your home network like using a network-enabled printer or a network-attached storage device that works reliably.

For that matter, you can keep your mobile broadband service more or less as a portable broadband solution for whenever you are “on-the-go” and away from home.

Conclusion

It is still worth considering a wired broadband service for your home if your mobile phone is your main telephone handset. Here, you obtain a service that is independent of a classic telephone service such as one based on dedicated infrastructure like cable or a “naked-DSL” service.