Bezeq, the Israeli incumbent plans for a field trail of GPON FTTH. As part of a several months long trial in Petach Tiqva the operator will connect hundreds of GPON FTTH subscribers. These are surprising news from Israel where no serious FTTH seemed not to be considered by any major provider. There’s an article with more details about the project in Hebrew.
In the 28th of July the GIG.U initiative was launched in the US. From the information released so far, GIG.U assumes the role of the intermediary between the local communities around the participating universities and the telecommunications operators. In a nutshell, GIG.U will aggregate demand and then call operators to bid and compete to serve it. An interesting aspect of the whole plan is that it is led by Blair Levin former director of the FCC”s national broadband plan and current communications and society fellow at the Aspen Institute which plays a key role in this initiative.
This is an interesting bottom-up initiative that, if successful, will demonstrate the key role that community leaders can play in the broadband development of the local economies. The tricky part will of course be the financing of the construction of the infrastructure. I plan to write more about it as things unfold.
It has been a while since I posted on the blog. I am happy to break the radio silence to let you know about the newest report I wrote for Diffraction Analysis. It is called “The virtues and limitations of FTTP franchise models” and analyzes the fundamentals of contemporary franchising in the telecommunications business. Franchising has been known in the US for decades but the agreement resembled more to a concession where the cable operator and the city agreed the relinquishing of the rights-of-way for a fee and for a redetermined period of time. Today, content providers and access providers join forces and leverage on each other’s competitive advantages to offer an attractive value proposition to local customers.
While evidence shows a strong contribution of the model to the bottom line, in the long-term franchisers and franchisees will face serious strategic and regulatory challenges. If you want to learn more, go to Diffraction Analysis web site. I hear that the boss is selling reports individually now, so if you are interested in this piece in particular don’t hesitate to drop him or me an email.
I spent a few days during Easter in the country side. I stayed in a small town where a big battle was fought 2.500 years ago, Marathon.
The town is less than an hour drive, north east from the capital and lies just outside the new real estate Greenfield development of the metropolitan area of Athens. It is mainly an agricultural area, at least it is now.
I had the chance to speak with the local people and enjoy the conversations. I realized how different they are from broadband-centric people like myself. They simply do not care about broadband (some of them haven’t even heard about it), facebook, twitter, fiber-enabled economy and the like. These people value more the personal communication than my smart phone, they value more their music tapes than my mp3s.
They prefer to visit and negotiate with the merchants face-to-face than to go online to buy goods. They don’t login to find new friends, they go to the town square and meet them there. It’s hard to explain competitiveness, productivity, digital economy, not to mention mobility and fast internet access.
So that makes me wonder. What is the nature of the digital gap between rural and urban areas, that everyone likes to have an opinion about? It seems that it is not about providing different digital opportunities to urban vis-à-vis rural areas, and it is certainly not about broadband availability. It is more about the social and economic priorities of the “underserved” areas. People in rural areas understand differently innovation, competitiveness and economic growth. They understand differently socio-economic needs and requirements.
Does this mean that they should not using broadband or that they should not benefit from access to the digital economy? No, not at all, but the question is how can someone demonstrate the benefits of broadband. What vocabulary canbe used? “€30 all you can eat” offers do not tell them much. IPTV does not tell them much either, they have about 20 free air channels, they don’t need 80 more; who’s going to watch them and when, anyway! But, think for a moment: what if farmers could monitor their fields and farms from home; or manage their energy at home, or water their plants remotely. What if the benefits of broadband were articulated properly and were directly connected to their lives? This might win their interest.
I guess it’s more of a social issue, an issue of mentality if you like and the fact that no one has explained how broadband can relate to the rural jobs and rural daily life does not help the change. I think these are the questions to ask first before removing rural areas from any broadband deployment roadmap. Because if everyone deserves an opportunity to the new economy, then I suppose everyone needs to be given the chance to ask for it too.
Almost a year ago (29th of March 2010) NBN issued a Request for Capability Statement for the construction of its network. In June the 23rd after assessing the applications filled 21 companies were invited to bid for the tender. Nevertheless, a few days ago, NBN Co announced that it withdraws the tender, the head of construction resigned and the construction industry was left in the cold.
NBN Co considered the bids submitted overpriced on the double digits, which would increase significantly the construction costs and consequently the average cost per home passed. It seems that the risks relating to the construction of the network are read differently by NBN and its industry partners. NBN has announced three major provisions to keep costs as low as possible:
Aerial deployment: 25% of the total access network will be deployed aerially and not over trenches.
Rights-of-way: The Government has express its intention to embark state government and local authorities to the project to facilitate the relinquishment of rights-of-way for the NBN constructor(s).
Telstra Agreement: The agreement with Telstra includes the re-use part of its infrastructure by the NBN Co for laying access and backhaul fiber.
Since neither of those assumptions has yet substantiated (recall also that the bids were submitted months ago) the risk asked from a constructor to assume is significant. If these issues were resolved it is likely that the offers would be closer to what NBN expected. Besides, NBN Co business plan states specifically that costs and time frame are based on these (among others) assumptions.
Addressing these issues as quickly as possibly could make things turn differently. Alternatively or complementarily, the time frame of the construction may well be extended. Decreasing the fiber reach to meet the budget constraints could be a third point of action, albeit it would become a serious political liability for the Government since it could translate in to accepting a major flaw in its own assumptions, before even the start of the project. Finally, there is the option of private negotiation with selected partners. Could that solve the problem without mounting rumors and disbelief about NBN Co’s legitimate intentions?
Things are getting tougher for the NBN since the industry seems relucant to take the assumptions for granted. However, the Australian Government has shown so far a remarkable ability to finding an alternative plan. Only this time the Government is bouncing between its political capital jeopardized by the recent developments and the (un)willingness of the market to swallow the risks. The Argonauts sent a pigeon to sail through the Symplegads; what will it take for the Australians to find their way through this one?
The Government of Qatar announced that it plans to establish a National Broadband Plan for the country that will help advance the fiber penetration across. The Q.NBN, currently the name of the plan, will assume planning and deployment of passive infrastructure. The initiative was formulated with the constribution of the major service providers active in the country.
A few questions that make sense at the moment relate to the type of funding, the ownership of the company that will lay the fiber and the formation that will assume the management of the passive infrastructure and on what conditions will it be sold. I look forward to seeing how these plans will develop in the future.
You can read more here.
Have you ever noticed how NBN sounds like Amen? Here’s a noble prayer to Mike Quigley, CEO of NBN Co. Some people have humor:
“Our Chief Quigley,
respected be thy name,
Your fibre kingdom come,
may your plans become reality,
on Aussie soil as it is in Korea,
Give us this day our daily bandwidth,
and forgive us our symmetric dreams,
as we forgive those who have throttled us,
and lead us not into wireless deprivation,
but deliver us from ignorance & the Liberals,
For thine is the way of ubiquitous coverage,
upgradeable now and forever,
NBN”
Found at Delimiter.
Telmex, the Mexican incumbent, is deploying FTTH in Yukatan Country Club, a high-income residential area in Mexico. The investment is estimated at 2.3M euros to offer speeds up to 1Gbps in all residences.
Telmex seems to have plans to deploy GPON FTTH in other parts of the country, namely cities. These pictures show, according to the users in DSLreports.com forum, what seems to be aerial deployments on copper poles.
I surely look forward to find out more about the company’s mid to long-term deployment plans.
The communications company of Falls City, a small rural city in Nebraska/USA has completed a full deployment of FTTH across the city and is now nearly finisshing hooking-up all homes and businesses in the area (note: connecting, not activating). The company is working closely with local authorities to increase awareness about the benefits of high speed broadband and results so far look promising.
They have secured a sum of roughly $22 millions from USDA Rural Utilities Service and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to expand the system to the antire city and the surounding rural areas. I would really like to know where are they getting backhaul from and at what prices. Current commercial offerings start at $32 for basic package (6Mbps).
Yet another tiny town with FTTH everywhere!
Journal Star reports.
Here’s a couple new announcements in Europe on FTTH deployments:
The first comes from Spain where Movistar launched commercially its FTTH offerings covering 300k households with the aim to span over 1 million homes by the end of the year.
The second comes from Ukraine where Kyivstar expanded its FTTH network to 38 cities in total adding another bulk of 44k residences. If you want to apply check this.
