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.

Nigeria decided to explore the option and design its national broadband plans on the basis of open access models. According to authorities, they want to separate the network to three layers, the passive infrastructure, active equipment and retail services.  You can read more here: http://www.biztechafrica.com/section/government/article/nigeria-adopts-open-access-model-broadband-strateg/1376/.

Government intervention for broadband development in Africa needs serious attention. There are Governments that see a brighter future for their economies in fiber access, both in terms of short-term employment but long-term  economic growth as well.

The time for the FTTH Forum 2011 is closing fast. This year, the Forum is held in Budapest the 8 and 9 November. I will be delivering the pre-conference workshop on the 8th which will frame in one frame all the stakes of an FTTH project. The workshop is packed with information about  the technologies and the topologies, the benefits and limitations, design trade-offs, roll-out strategies, deployment decisions , business’s hots and nots and plenty more. All in all, a fast-track course providing a brisk orientation about the FTTH business.

The workshop is organized in four sessions:

Session 1: FTTH Introduction

• Discuss and compare FTTx architectural, topological and technological options
• What is an FTTx network made of?

Session 2: Designing a FTTx network

• How to optimally design and dimension your network?
• What are the major considerations when designing an FTTH network?

Session 3: FTTH deployment & construction

• Installation methods & roll-out strategies
• Trade-offs in deploying an FTTH system

Session 4: Business challenges and regulatory implications of FTTx

• Prevailing business models and best practices
• What can make or break the business case of an FTTH network?
• What’s the part of regulation in this

Broadband Prime has a late-bird offer for you and anyone who is interested in coming. You can benefit from a 25% discount on the standard price for the workshop by quoting the FT11BUBP promo code when you register. Operators are entitled for a 50% discount from the standard prices. You can find more about the workshop and how to register at the FTTH Forum website.

Last and not least, Diffraction Analysis is the conference consultant and that means that Benoit Felten, one of the coolest people in the business, will be the conference chair. Judging from the panelists and speakers in the agenda I know that it is going to be a very interesting day.

Are you coming and wanna meet? Send me an email.

In a press release coming from the ITU, the Broadband Commission for Digital Development of the United Nations has agreed on four targets to ensure that the global population has the opportunity to engage in the emerging digital society.

Quoted from the press release, the new targets cover broadband policy, affordability and uptake,  in terms of households and people:

1. Making broadband policy universal. By 2015, all countries should have a national broadband plan or strategy or include broadband in their Universal Access / Service Definitions.
2. Making broadband affordable. By 2015, entry-level broadband services should be made affordable in developing countries through adequate regulation and market forces (for example, amount to less than 5% of average monthly income).
3. Connecting homes to broadband. By 2015, 40% of households in developing countries should have Internet access.
4. Getting people online. By 2015, Internet user penetration should reach 60% worldwide, 50% in developing countries and 15% in Least Developed Countries (LDCs).

The announcement from the Broadband Challenge commission also calls on industry for innovation in business models to help achieve these goals. It also calls on governments to develop a policy framework for online health and education services. It calls also the civil society to encourage and stimulate local content production as well as localization of digital content to further increase local demand for broadband services.

There is one more suggestion I would like to see in this announcement, and that is, apart from healthcare and education, to suggest the development of innovative policy frameworks promoting tele-working as an alternative employment status.

Read more here.

The European Commission has proposed to spend almost €9.2 billion from 2014 to 2020 on pan-European projects to give EU citizens and businesses access to high-speed broadband networks and the services that run on them. The funding, part of the proposed Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), would take the form of both equity and debt instruments and grants. It would complement private investment and public money at local, regional and national level and EU structural or cohesion funds. At least €7 billion would be available for investment in high-speed broadband infrastructure.

The Commission considers that this money could leverage a total of between €50 and 100 billion of public and private investment – i.e. a substantial proportion of the estimated €270 billion of broadband investment needed to meet Digital Agenda targets on broadband. The remaining CEF funding for digital infrastructure would support public interest digital service infrastructure such as electronic health records, electronic identification and electronic procurement. The proposed financial support is complemented by proposed new guidelines for trans-European telecommunications networks and services. These guidelines would establish new objectives, priorities, projects of common interest and criteria for identifying further projects of common interest.

If you want to read more visit INFSO newsroom.

That’s a nice video clip, sponsored by Vodafone that illustrates the benefits of broadband in rural and isolated areas. The transition from none to decent connectivity makes the difference. It presents the case of an Italian rural village and an oil factory.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l705X49-emA

The International Telecommunications Union announced today that the standardization of the Ultra High Definition TV specifications are near completion. That means that soon (or, ahem, a little later) UHDTV products will enter the market (I’m sure that one of the upcoming Bond films will feature one of these TVs). UHDTV has 16 times higher resolution than ‘standard’ HDTV (7,680 x 4,320 pixels) and can support 22 audio channels. NHK, Japan’s national broadcasting network,  has been experimenting with UHDTV since 1995 [1], [2] and has already made available some very basic UHDTV content. The uncompressed stream for a UHDTV is 24Gbps. which NHK managed to trim down to 120Mbps. Add an extra 10-30Mbps for the audio channels. That’s a total of 150Mbps.

Today, neither satellite nor terrestrial TV can deliver this bit rate at affordable costs (broadcasting at these rates would require for example multiple satellite transponders). Fiber on the other hand can deliver analogous bitrates, today.