Archive for the ‘The Blog’ Category

Alsace is planning for its own fiber access network after the recent approval of the Master Plan of Territorial Digital Planning by the competent public authorities. The plan considers a 407 million euros investment up to 2030 to supply fiber connections to residents and businesses in the area. The plan aims at a network that covers more than half of the population. The cost per connection is estimated at 1,000 euros. I’m not sure if the project qualifies for EU subsidy (it probably does not) as it is and I am genuinely interested in see how these plans will materialize.

For more read: http://www.e-alsace.net/index.php/smallnews/detail?newsId=10264.

People can do anything, but not alone. This simple short sentence summarizes how many professionals and citizens in Chattanooga  / Tennessee feel about the implications of their city’s fiber access network to their lives and jobs. Citizens in interconnected communities find ways to work more productively and live better; more than ever before. Fiber access is seen as a platform to facilitate a more efficient working environment  and a greater impact of  ideas. Most certainly, one plus one makes more than two.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2k2l5P7gII

 

Similarly to previous years, network providers continued in 2011 to eye FTTP networks as an option to upgrade their access facilities and differentiate themselves from the competition. The new report “The World of Fiber – 2012 edition” prepared by yours truly and released last week by Diffraction Analysis offers an in-depth analysis and supportive data of what is happening in the world with regards to FTTP. What becomes most apparent in our analysis is that the number of countries where FTTP is happening  either by governments that take a serious look at the topic or by forward-looking private firms continues to grow. The report also features a taxonomy of network providers and their corresponding roll-out strategies. This taxonomy provides insight on the similarities and differences of these actors on the basis of their core business (telcos, cable TV providers, alternative operators, public agencies and real-estate developers) and the characteristics of the geographical markets.

This is a free-to-get report and you can have it if you ask for it. Be sure to expect more insight on the global FTTP market in a new, more analytical version of the report, which will be available soon. For more information visit the web site of Diffraction Analysis.

This post is not related to this blog – well, perhaps vaguely, but I find it very interesting nevertheless. The picture below was sent to me from the good guys at Cosmote. There is a technician that climbed on an antenna of a cell site to remove the snow of last night’s storm. The shot is awesome, the job is freaking dangerous! Take good care of yourselves, guys.

 

 

 

Zhone Technologies and Palm Hills Development (PHD) announced the deployment of an FTTH network in one of PHD’s new development areas. Egypt has been very slow in adopting FTTH and the market is practically driven by private initiatives mostly from property developers. PHD is very active in this domain and has made a few FTTH announcements in the past. FTTH in the country is so far financially attractive only to high-income residential areas and holiday resorts.

 

 

The first week of February marked the end of an era for me, both professionally and personally. On Monday 6, I successfully defended my PhD thesis (title: Next Generation Access Networks: Strategies for Municipal Intervention). It was the final step in a little over 6 years effort.

These were exciting years, I can tell you. Next to my doctoral degree, I worked on developing my freelance business, and tried as much as humanly possible to be a good husband to a wonderful wife and a good dad to two beautiful, smart kids. It wasn’t easy but the people around me – especially the important ones – made it feel achievable.

So, 6.5 years after, the PhD is behind me, I have lots of productive time free again  :-), and I am fortunate to be working with some of the most brilliant minds in the  industry and to be  involved in projects that challenge common business stereotypes and traditional market perspectives.

I want to keep one final note for the blog. The last two years, I faced rough times and things got worse last summer. As a result I haven’t been as loyal as I would like to be to this blog and ended up writing practically only once or twice per month. Even so, the subscriptions and site visits stayed close to what they used to be in the past with some overall drop but not dramatic. The outlook is much better than I’d ever expect it to be. I want to thank you all for that. This is a serious morale boost. I promise to be in full shape soon.

Because (to paraphrase Arnold), I am back!

 

 

A mega ultra reader of this blog pointed me to a great video clip made by Corning that shows a future made of glass. All more often I come across short movie clips demonstrating the impact of high-speed broadband, cloud computing, service mashups and so forth to our every day life. I want to post them here as often as possible. If you have any feel free to share with me.

This is a great clip created by Novay for the positive implications of a high-speed broadband, connected world. Have a look, you’ll like it:

link

In south Hungary, very close to the borders of the country with Croatia and Serbia there is village called Boly. Boly has nearly 4000 inhabitants and 2000 homes, but it has high-speed broadband access. The project started in 2007 and the video below documents  the socio-economic impact of high-speed broadband as experienced by the users of the network. Thanks Csaba for the link!

This week I spent two days at the beautiful city of Budapest where the FTTH Forum 2011 was held. On the 8th of November, during the pre-conference very lively discussions about the FTTH technical and construction solutions as well as its business challenges were held. Special thansk to Greg, Csaba, Akshay, Adrian, Cornel, Khaleel, Ketam, Ajmal and the rest of the participants for contributing to four very interesting and highly interactive sessions – more than I could ever hoped for. We may have skipped the last coffee break and left the room almost 40 minutes after the time initially planned, yet, personally, I enjoyed it a lot.

On the 9th, the day of conference, I liked mostly the frank presentation of Thilo Kusch CEO of Magyar Telekom who answered with remarkable honesty the questions of the participants and Robert Kennedy‘s provocative speech regarding the conditions that make a public subsidy of fiber access socially useful. It is always good to consider the alternative opinions; it helps build stronger arguments when you need them.

The famous James Enck (CFH), Rudolf van der Berg (OECD) and Dave Carter (MDDA) were also there that day expressing passionately their views on the role of private and public innovation and government’s steering towards sustainable fiber-enabled access markets.

Early in the morning, KPN’s plans to acquire the control of  Edutel, XMS and Concepts ICT from Reggeborgh, and Lijbrandt from Reggefiber came in; not to much of surprise for the Dutch delegates in the room. I suspect that KPN’s plans to consolidate the ISP market (by acquiring those who have indirectly influenced already) will face the strong scrutiny of OPTA, and I wonder how/if  the move can be justified before the Dutch regulator.