Free High Speed Internet to the Home or School

Bundling of renewable energy with broadband starting to take off

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Sun, 02 Feb 2014 21:53:00 +0000

Bundling of renewable energy with broadband and home monitoring starting to take off. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/comcast-will-sell-electricity-in-pennsylvania …

Internet and Cable Giant Comcast Will Soon Sell Electricity in Pennsylvania

Comcast’s Triple Play package bundles television, internet and phone. With the company’s plans to sell electricity, it could soon become a quadruple play in some markets.

The New York Times: Making the case for cheaper broadband in schools

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Sun, 02 Feb 2014 21:48:00 +0000

‏@nytimes

Making the case for cheaper broadband in schools http://nyti.ms/1eaAwJt 

A nonprofit organization with its roots in the high-tech industry has gathered some 40 executives to demand that the Federal Communications Commission change how it is wiring America’s schools.

The group, called EducationSuperHighway, wants the F.C.C. to add transparency and competition to the E-Rate program, which spends billions of dollars annually to bring broadband to schools. Schools are paying too much to get connected, the group said, and the pace of development is too slow.....

Care for Home Solar Panels with Your Honda? Next stage to fund Google Fiber?

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 20:44:00 +0000

Care for Home Solar Panels with Your Honda? Next stage to fund Google Fiber?
http://techre.vu/WQLh8K

Googles next steps after Kansas City

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 16:12:00 +0000

[The hubbub and buzz around Google’s Kansas City fiver to the home (FTTH) project has died down as Google over the next year focuses on building out its network.

As far as I know, Google has yet to announce any follow on plans to Kansas City. Which begs the question as to what it plans to do next. Some theorize that Google will not undertake any more fiber deployments and instead use Kansas City as showcase to demonstrate to policy makers that building out fiber to the home is not as expensive as the telccos and cabelcos claim, and that there is no need for usage based billing (UBB) or data caps.

I suspect that Google has also learned some painful lessons. Deploying FFTH networks is a grunt business. There is no glamour or pizzazz in stringing fiber and you definitely don’t need a degree from Stanford to build and operate a FTTh network. It is very capital expensive with long paybacks. It is also painfully slow as anything to do with city owned infrastructure takes twice as long as three times your worst estimate to complete. It is a business that is diametrically opposite to the instant billion businesses and atmospheric valuations of Silicon Valley.

It would be shame if Google did not expand beyond Kansas City. But it is clearly not a undertaking suited to their business culture.

I hope that Google is exploring other alternatives such as a “franchise model” for their FTTh networks. With a franchise model Google’s brand name and technology would be a major asset to any budding FTTH project. A franchise arrangement would also help many smaller community FTTH projects get financing. For example in Europe the European Investment Bank is financing a number of FTTH projects with Reggefiber in the Netherlands.

Google has undertaken franchise models and underwriting costs of infrastructure in some of its other business ventures. For example Google has invested $75 million with Clean Power Finance which will help homeowners install solar panels funded by Google, generating solar-generated electricity for a monthly fee. Like FTTH the upfront cost is the largest obstacle to installing residential solar panels. Google, provides the capital funding while the maintenance and upkeep responsibility of the solar panels stays with Clean Power Finance and its local franchise installer. The homeowners, who are essentially giving roof space in exchange for a chance to buy solar-generated electricity, will pay a monthly fee. Google's return on investment comes via the electricity that is generated by the solar panels and sold to customers.

Google staff have also proposed a similar business model for FTTH called “Homes with Tails” where the last mile is owned by the homeowner, but where the capital cost is underwritten by the FTTH developer paid for by fees for Internet service. It would seem obvious to bring these two ideas together in one product offering – solar panels plus FTTH, as part of one product offering.

Google clearly has the expertise and brand recognition to a major FFTH franchiser. And I suspect that in addition to many community deployments, the RBOCs might be a potential target franchisee. The RBOCs have pretty well stopped all their FTTH deployments and yet are still losing out to the cablecos in terms of broadband adoption. They desperately need a new business model. But whether they would swallow their pride and hubris and embrace a new business model with their arch enemy Google is another matter. – BSA]

Homes with Tails
http://www.newamerica.net/files/HomesWithTails_wu_slater.pdf

Google finances solar panels for homeowners
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20112778-54/google-rent-your-solar-panels-from-us/

Reggefiber gets EIB funding for FTTH roll out
http://www.lightwaveonline.com/articles/2012/10/reggefiber-gets-eib-funding-for-ftth-roll-out.html?cmpid=EnlDirectOctober262012&buffer_share=9edf0&utm_source=buffer

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R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant.
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype: Pocketpro

Google's secret strategy with the Kansas City Fiber project

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 12:14:00 +0000

[I have long been perplexed at how Google plans to make a profit with their Kansas City Fiber project.

Originally the project was touted as an altruistic move by Google to really understand the underlying costs of deploying fiber in a large municipality. But as anyone who has been in the trenches can tell you, it is not the technology that determines the cost of a fiber deployment, but the tyranny of the take-up. If you only have an initial 10% subscription rate then the initial cost, regardless if the fiber is on poles or buried, can be as much as $6000 per home. If the take-up is closer to 50% the initial cost drops to around $1500 per home and if the take-up is close to 100% then the cost can be as low as $500 per home. The elbow in the curve for deploying fiber to the home is around 40% take up, at which it might, just might, be conceivable to make a return in your investment.

But Google is competing head on with the local cable and telephone incumbents who are not going to sit on their hands and watch Google take away 40% of their market. Since their infrastructure has been paid for many times over through regulated rate of return on their basic service of cable TV and telephone, they can discount their prices to next to zero to prevent Google from making anywhere close to a 40% take up. So how is Google going to make a profit?

In addition Google has announced that they plan to be a facilities based competitor rather than an open network provider. Many people may remember about 10 years ago in the .dot com boom a number of over builders announced plans to build fiber networks in competition with telecos and cablecos. Almost all of them went bust.

An intriguing hint on Google’s strategy is their plans to deploy fiber above the neutral wire on the poles. Although far less cluttered than being below the neutral wire, this means that specially trained or electrical utility crews must install the fiber. It means that any moves adds, or changes to the fiber splice boxes etc will require these same expensive, unionized crews. Generally when deploying a FTTH network, drops to individual homes are installed when a customer subscribes to the service, but with fiber installed above the neutral wire, it probably makes more sense to deploy all drops and splice boxes during the initial build out. This also drives up front costs.

The only way for this type of strategy makes sense is if Google plans to fiber up every home from day one. Google has a habit of shaking up the world. Remember when it first offered free Gmail with one gigabyte storage? The critics claimed it could not be done or Google would go bust. But Google proved them all wrong.

I suspect the same story is about to happen in Kansas City. Google will offer a basic free high speed Internet to each and every home, perhaps bundled with Google TV using their new set top box. A variety of premium services will also be offered for additional fees. I would not be surprised that Google decided to offer a basic 1 Gbps service to every home. This would clearly differentiate Google from the cableco or telco and make it almost impossible for them to compete without undertaking a massive investment themselves.

Those who elected for the free service would have a Google side bar or screen splash on their TV or computers that are hooked to the Google set top box. Google would then hope to make money by extending its current business model largely through Google TV. Google may make extra money by also making their set top boxes WiFi 2.0 compatible so they can offer a city wide wireless network as well – much like Free is doing in France.

France’s Free network is probably the closest model that Google plans to emulate. However even with Google TV I think Google is going to have a tough time making money. To pay for the fiber alone, they will need to earn $10-$20 per month from each household over the next 5 years. I don’t think highly selective advertising via Google TV will be enough. Negotiating all the TV rights and channel offerings will also be a challenge.

The other potential area for Google to make money is operating as an ESCO (Energy Services Company). Google, as well as Microsoft and many other companies have tried to interest customers with tools to monitor their energy consumption. But customers are not interested in saving energy – if they did everyone would drive at 30 miles per hour, as everyone knows gasoline consumption climbs significantly the faster you drive. Energy prices are also likely to drop because of abundance of gas and a surplus of electrical grid power. So rather than enticing customers to monitor their energy Google, in partnership with the local utility, could offer to peak manage the customer’s power usage, by briefly turning off air conditioners and hot water tanks. They could also install smart thermostats and other devices to further reduce energy consumption. The money in the energy savings would use to pay for the fiber or premium services, rather than being returned to the customer as piffling amount of energy savings.

Bundling broadband with energy is the huge revenue opportunity for Google. The energy market has virtually remained unchanged since the 19^th century. The energy market is many, many orders magnitude larger than the advertising market. Rather than trying to save customers a few dollars a month in energy, it would be far more effective to offer consumer something more tangible and with a higher perceived value such as free high speed Internet.

For more background information please see my blog on Free Fiber to the Home

free-fiber-to-the-home.ca

–BSA]

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R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant.

email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com

twitter: BillStArnaud

blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/

skype: Pocketpro

A novel way to fund broadband FTTH Internet - converting old coax/copper into microgrids

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 19:06:00 +0000

[I have long argued that we need to find new business models to underwrite costs of next generation broadband – Fiber to the Home ( FTTH) if we ever hope to breakup the existing broadband oligopoly.
The lobbying powers of cableco/telcos are so intense and overwhelming that even the few community broadband initiatives that still remain are likely doomed from this relentless onslaught.

If we can find a business model that effectively makes broadband free, then we might be able to undermine the smothering of innovation and economic growth by the incumbents. A couple of business models that I have proposed to deal with this problem such as “homes with tails” – where the customer owns the last mile and/or “bundling broadband with energy bill” have failed to gain any traction for a number of reasons. But the overwhelming challenge in all these cases remains the high upfront capital cost due to the tyranny of the takeup.

Takeup rates are the single most important factor in determining up front capital costs: with a 100% takeup the cost per home of FTTH can be as low as $500. With 50% takeup the cost is around $1500-2000 per home and with 10% takeup the cost per home can be as much as $6000.

As noted by the International Energy Agency in Paris, in a report called “Gadgets and Gigawatts” the typical home consumption of power from digital appliances exceeds, in aggregate, the consumption of power from all the traditional appliances in your home. A good example is the set top box. A single DVR and one HD set-top box configuration can draw an average of 446 kilowatt-hours of power per year: slightly higher than that of a new refrigerator, according to a study from the National Resources Defense Council . The cableco/telcos, who provide the box, have no incentive to reduce this energy consumption, other than paying lip service about their ersatz commitment to the environment.

Digital appliances only draw a small amount of power, as opposed to traditional appliances which have short bursts of large amounts of power. But the fact that digital appliances are usually on 24 hours a day, or seven days week means that even though they are only drawing a few milli-watts at a time their annual power consumption can exceed that of traditional appliances. A good example is the clock in your microwave oven. According to the Economist magazine that little clock draws more power over a year than the microwave oven itself!

Given that typical household electrical bill is $1000-2000 per year, the energy cost of all your digital appliances in a typical western home is somewhere between $500 - $1000 per year.

Given this huge and growing power demand from digital appliances, many people have advocated more energy efficient products. But I am remain very skeptical that such a strategy will work for a number of reasons:

(a) Neither the manufacturers or incumbents have any monetary incentive to become more energy efficient, as the costs are totally absorbed by the customer. And in the case of set top boxes the customer usually does not have a choice of box they can use so they cannot purchase a more energy efficient box;
(b) The growth in the number of digital appliances in our home ( or elsewhere) is far out stripping any modest gains in efficiency;
(c) The Internet of things and embedded ICT will continue to spur growth and demand of digital appliances in the home;
(d) Most of the world has yet to catch up to western homes where energy consumption from digital appliances exceeds that of traditional appliances; and
(e) Jevons paradox will plays a factor in all of this where any gains in energy efficiency paradoxically promote energy consumption

The biggest problem facing this planet is NOT energy consumption. It is the type of energy we use. It is the energy from fossil fuel power plants that is producing CO2 which is destroying this planet. If we could convert all of our energy to renewable sources then we would not be contributing to global warming. If all of our energy came from renewable resources we need not be concerned about energy efficiency. Considering the fact that a couple hours of sunshine hitting the earth every day equals the entire ANNUAL energy consumption on this planet, one begins to appreciate that we have no shortage of energy.

So our biggest challenge is not to make these digital appliances more energy efficient, but to insure that they only use clean renewable power. Since digital appliances only draw small amounts of power at any one time it would make sense therefore to power all Digital Appliances from small renewable energy sources such as roof top panels or micro windmills. But what happens when the sun sets, or if the wind dies? How do you continue to provide power to all the digital appliances and more importantly how do you get the power from the roof top to the devices themselves? Various solutions have been proposed including use of Power over Ethernet (PoE) or 400/60 HZ (400/50 HZ in Europe) multiplex power systems on existing electrical distribution system. But another alternative power deliver systems is to use the existing coax cable and/or telephone copper wire in our homes and neighborhoods.

Coax cable and telephone copper wires are already used to carry small amounts of power to your home. They would also be ideal for the deployment of small power microgrids where neighborhood solar panels or windmills are connected to the copper/coax infrastructure to balance power loads for digital appliances across the neighborhood. Alternatively even the telephone or cable company could deliver renewable power from their head end over their old copper/coax infrastructure to the digital appliances in your home. Given that a typical home may spend over $500 year in power for their digital appliances, this would be a bigger revenue opportunity for the incumbents than delivering traditional broadband. There would also be then a big incentive for these companies to deploy much more energy efficient set top boxes and other devices, if they were also delivering the power for those devices.

These energy savings could also be used to underwrite costs of Fiber to the Home- FTTH. There are several publicly traded energy or green revolving funds who underwrite energy or green projects. Many utilities and municipalities also operate such funds. Funding the deployment of FTTH would allow the old copper and coax to be salvaged for a neighborhood microgrid for digital appliances. The payback to the fund could then be made through the energy savings from the microgrid. Some would argue that why not continue to use the old copper/coax to deliver broadband as well. But I suspect the power distribution network architecture and energy flows would make havoc with any existing broadband infrastructure.
The biggest challenge is that most people who work in the energy or utility field are, believe it or not, more conservative and hide bound than those who work in telecom/cable industry. Educating them on the energy costs of digital appliances and the fact that digital devices don’t require the same megawatt mindset solution of traditional power utilities will be a big hurdle.

A good place to test out the concept of such a FTTH/Micorgrid would be at our universities or colleges, especially that are partnering in FTTH trials such as Case Western, where they have extensive telephone copper networks owned by the institutions. – BSA]

Your set top box consumes more power than your fridge
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2387602,00.asp

IEA – Gadgets and Gigawatts
http://www.iea.org/Textbase/nptoc/Gigawatts2009TOC.pdf

Typical microwave oven consumes more electricity powering its digital clock than it does heating food
http://www.economist.com/node/5571582

Homes with Tails
http://free-fiber-to-the-home.blogspot.com/2008/11/home-with-tails-what-if-you-could-own.html

Bundling Fiber with cost of energy
http://free-fiber-to-the-home.blogspot.com/

Energy Revolving Funds
http://greenlivingpedia.org/Revolving_energy_fund
http://cec-mi.org/communities/services/revolving-energy-funds/?gclid=CNeL-emlt64CFS6FQAodvGtqog
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R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant.
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype: Pocketpro

What the Green Bay Packers can teach us about broadband

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 20:59:00 +0000

If Green Bay, Wis., a town of 105,000 people, can raise $70 million to rehabilitate its football field by selling $250 stock shares, I bet $250 there’s a community in America that can raise $2 or $3 million for a broadband network. Any takers?

[..]

http://gigaom.com/broadband/settles-green-bay-packers-broadband/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=gigaom

Communities put their money where their needs are

In Vermont, 23 town governments created ECFiber, an LLC nonprofit corporation. No tax dollars went into ECFiber. Instead, ECFiber offered tax-exempt 15-year $2,500 promissory notes that effectively earn 6 percent interest. The approximately 50,000 people in these towns raised over $900,000 in 2011 to begin an initial buildout covering 26 miles. To finish the network and bring connections to people’s doorsteps, ECFiber is doing additional fundraising rounds. In a recent effort, the town of Barnard , Vt. with 386 households generated $350,000 to continue building out the network in their town. With funds for covering two-thirds of Barnard accounted for, they expect to raise enough to complete the job.

In rural Lancashire in the north west of England eight parishes united to form Broadband for the Rural North, Ltd (B4RN), a not-for-profit community co-op. Similar to Green Bay, the co-op sells stock in B4RN, though these shares earn immediate tax breaks, and potentially will pay back investors and the communities.

B4RN shares are 1£ each with a 100-share minimum purchase required. Those buying 500 or more get a tax credit of 30 percent of the stock’s purchase price. Investors buying 1,500 shares get a year’s worth of broadband thrown in the deal, or 15 months if they buy before the February 29 Early Bird Special deadline. Further cementing the community bond with the project, investors buying 3,000 shares can donate 1,500 of those plus the broadband service to a neighbor. B4RN currently is over halfway to reaching its financial goal that enables the buildout to start.

The value in these community-investor models is not just their ability to raise money. When the community literally owns a major technology asset such as communication infrastructure, some of the dynamics of marketing, network operations and management change.

New York Times on how universities and R&E networks can help community broadband deployment

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:16:00 +0000

[Tom Friedman's OpEd piece in today's NYTimes http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/opinion/friedman-so-much-fun-so-irrelevant.html?_r=1&hp captures the essence of why Internet and broadband are so critical to the future of our economy.

“The I.T. revolution is giving individuals more and more cheap tools of innovation, collaboration and creativity — thanks to hand-held computers, social networks and “the cloud,” which stores powerful applications that anyone can download. And the globalization side of this revolution is integrating more and more of these empowered people into ecosystems, where they can innovate and manufacture more products and services that make people’s lives more healthy, educated, entertained, productive and comfortable.
The best of these ecosystems will be cities and towns that combine a university, an educated populace, a dynamic business community and the fastest broadband connections on earth. These will be the job factories of the future.
[…]
Historians have noted that economic clusters always required access to abundant strategic inputs for success…. In the 1800s, it was access to abundant flowing water and raw materials. In the 1900s, it was access to abundant electricity and transportation. In the 2000s, he said, “it will be access to abundant bandwidth and abundant human intellectual capital,” — places like Silicon Valley, Austin, Boulder, Cambridge and Ann Arbor.”

R&E networks and universities, however can play a critical role, as community anchor institutions for these economic clusters in deploying innovative architectures and business models. This is why initiatives like Internet 2 UCAN and Gig.U are so important. These new business models and technologies include, but are not limited, to the following possibilities:

(a) Internet Exchange or Transit Exchange points with Commercial Content Network hosting, to provide a level playing field to community based broadband providers, and to reduce tromboning of traffic. Such facilities have been deployed by R&E networks in New Zealand, Norway and British Columbia

(b) Enterprise centric 5G national data wireless networks integrating solar powered WiFi with 4G LTE systems using Eduroam for authentication. A prototype facility is being deployed by SURFnet in partnership with KPN and University of Utrecht

(c) Condominium Fiber and Wavelength networks where R&E networks share costs of infrastructure with the community. AARnet in Australia and RISQ in Quebec have undertaken a number of such projects

(d) Novel new last mile fiber architectures and business models to communities located around a university such as the Case Western pilot and several proposed Green Broadband projects under development

I don’t think R&E networks or universities should compete directly with the private sector in deploying current broadband technology solutions. In fact I believe that if a R&E network looks and acts like a commercial provider, even if it is only serving the R&E community, then it is ultimately doomed. Some day governments will fight the existing oligopolies and introduce real competition. Economies of scale mean eventually commercial carriers should be more cost effective than any R&E network. However, an R&E network will always have a critical future role if it is seen as an agent of innovation in serving both its primary community of research and education as well as the larger needs of society.

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R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant.
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype: Pocketpro

Customer Owned Fiber Network in Durban South Africa

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:20:00 +0000

“@tim_poulus: Successful customer-owned network near Durban (SA): FTTH beating ADSL pricing, plans uncapped service. http://t.co/rIaSyCe”

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/broadband/20388-Mbps-Fibre-versus-Mbps-ADSL.html

10 Mbps Fibre versus 10 Mbps ADSL
Rudolph Muller| 22 May, 2011
Rate this article
(4.00)

ATEC recently launched their 10 Mbps FTTH service in Kindlewood Estate. This is how the pricing stacks up against Telkom’s 10 Mbps ADSL offering
ATEC recently upgraded the internet speed available to residents at Kindlewood Estate from 2 Mbps to 10 Mbps on their fibre network.
“At Kindlewood Estate our clients now have 10 Mbps synchronous connections with 1 GB of data for only R197 per month,” explained ATEC CEO Frans Verwoerd
.
Verwoerd explained that their affordable access pricing is made possible because of their business model in which the developer pays for and owns the last mile connection. This reduces capital expenditure by ATEC (the telco) which needs to be recuperated, allowing for lower rates.
While ATEC’s fibre access portion is aggressively priced, their data prices ranging between R45 per GB and R60 per GB were criticized by ADSL users who felt it is out of sync with market related rates.
Despite the higher per-GB prices, ATEC’s overall value proposition still looks attractive when compared with Telkom’s 10 Mbps ADSL offerings as the table below shows.
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Consortium of 30+ universities to build next generation community broadband

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 12:16:00 +0000

[Here is a great example of how universities and R&E networks can play a critical national leadership role in the deployment of national broadband and help break the current broadband duopoly which is constraining innovation and economic growth.
Universities and R&E networks are the only ones outside the telcos and cablecos who have the knowledge and experience on deploying high speed networks and have demonstrated many times in the past the ability to deploy radically new architectures and business models that significantly reduce the cost of broadband – both wired and wireless. Examples include customer owned dark fiber, IP over glass, integrated Wifi/3G, Open Lightpath Exchanges, Green IT etc. It is also interesting to note that almost of the major Internet developments originated in this community including the Internet itself, the web, IXs, etc. Many universities are also the size of small cities and thus are great testbeds for innovative new approaches to broadband. The only challenge I would give Gig.U besides identifying new applications is also to identify new business models to underwrite the costs of next generation broadband – many of which I have blogged about in the past such as free fiber to the home, homes with tails, etc . Excerpts from Scientific American article– BSA]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gig-u-ultra-fast-gigabit-internet&WT.mc_id=SA_sharetool_Twitter

Need Blazing Fast Internet? Gig.U Is Now in Session
A consortium of more than 30 universities plans to invest in the infrastructure to improve Internet speeds 1,000-fold

GIGABIT INTERNET Gig.U's goal is to accelerate the deployment of next-generation networks in the U.S. by encouraging the development of new applications and services that can make use of ultrafast data transfer rates.
In the not-too-distant future broadband speeds will be measured in gigabits per second rather than megabits per second, the former being 1,000 times faster than the latter. Such blazing fast data transmission will vastly improve the quality of streaming high-definition video, playing online video games, participating in video conferences and using voice over IP, all of which struggle with latency at today's average data transfer rates, which range from less than one megabit per second (Mbps) to 10 Mbps (pdf). The sticking point over gigabit-per-second broadband: who will pay for it?
Telecommunications companies, still stinging from the financial beating they took a decade ago after hastily building up capacity for Internet companies that soon went out of business, have been leery ever since of investing in infrastructure unless they are certain there is a demand for it. Most customers, many of them still exploring the wonders of YouTube and for the most part content to simply use e-mail and social networks, are not demanding, nor are they willing to pay a premium for, service that moves information at 1 billion bits per second.
The exception lies at the seat of learning—universities and research institutes that can find a way to use any extra bit of speed that their ISPs can provide. With the federal government in no position at the moment to invest heavily in the National Broadband Plan introduced by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last year, more than 30 universities and counting have taken the matter into their own hands, forming the University Community Next Generation Innovation Project, more commonly referred to as Gig.U. Members include schools across the country—from the University of Alaska down to the University of Florida at Gainesville.
Gig.U's goal is to accelerate the deployment of next-generation networks in the U.S. by encouraging researchers—students and professors alike—to develop new applications and services that can make use of ultrafast data transfer rates. Imagine downloading two HD movies in less than a minute or expanding the use of video conferencing and Webcasting without worrying about latency issues that today pixilate images and freeze streaming video.
The most interesting uses are yet to come, according to Gig.U organizers, who want to extend gigabit-speed networks beyond campuses and into the surrounding college communities where students and professors live. College communities make sense as test beds for gigabit networks because they include highly concentrated population of heavy Internet users as well as institutions already connected to Internet2, National LambdaRail (NLR) and other high-speed Internet backbones, says Gig.U Program Director Elise Kohn, a former policy advisor in the FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau. "If you look at a lot of our international competitors in the research community, we think our researchers will be left behind without gigabit speeds," she says.
The gigabit networks will vary from site to site, depending on the approach that different ISPs propose to meet the differing needs of Gig.U members. "All of our members are focused on next-generation networks, although some will need more than a gigabit while others will need less," Kohn says. Gig.U is holding a request for information (RFI) from September to November to solicit ideas from the local service providers for building out new networks, which would ultimately be funded by Gig.U members as well as any non-profits and private-sector companies interested in the project.
[…]
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Green Internet Consultant. Practical solutions to reducing GHG emissions such as free broadband and electric highways. http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype: Pocketpro

Quebec announces $900m for provincial broadband initiative

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 14:04:00 +0000

[Almost totally ignored in the English Canadian press was the recent announcement by the Quebec government to spend $900m to provide high speed next generation Internet to all of Quebec.
Kudos to the Quebec government for understanding the importance of broadband to the Quebec economy and addressing head on the cable/telco duopoly. Like the UCAN initiative in the US this program will build upon the existing R&E infrastructure deployed by RISQ that connects most universities, schools, libraries in Quebec. This initiative also builds on Quebec’s leadership in building Green IT economy announced in last years’ budget. http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/2010/10/quebec-prompt-world-leadership.html

http://www.budget.finances.gouv.qc.ca/Budget/2011-2012/fr/documents/PlanBudgetaire.pdf
Page 96

The implementation of a strategy for the digital economy

To address these important issues for economic development
Quebec, the government intends to implement a strategy for the economy
digital. The strategy's main objective is to increase the capacity of
citizens, businesses and organizations to take full advantage of
possibilities offered by digital technologies.

Quebec's strategy seeks primarily to provide Quebec with a network
providing Internet service to high speed in all regions of Quebec by
2020.

For Quebec to take its place among the digital companies
modern and prosperous investments totaling $ 900 million in
infrastructure will be done by 2020. The funds will finance
investment, particularly in the fiber optic detection equipment, the
connectors networks and telecommunications infrastructure. It is expected
that 20% of this sum will be invested in various suburban areas
Quebec, while the remaining amount will be spent in the more remote areas.

The success of this strategy involves the development and enhancement of
capacity of existing infrastructure, both public and private. It is expected
that these strategic investments will be made largely on
networks currently in place. The deployment strategy will therefore
pressing the assets installed in the territory of Quebec, which includes:

⎯ Network integrated multimedia telecommunications, offering a service
data transmission networks for health departments and
other public bodies;

⎯ Information Network Research Québecbased
mainly universities and colleges;

⎯ school buildings, municipal buildings, public libraries, and
hospitals and research centers;

⎯ other public transport networks.

To this end, additional funding of $ 1.1 million in 2011-2012, of
$ 4.5 million in 2012-2013 and $ 9.0 million in 2013-2014
will be awarded by Treasury Board Secretariat. Credits required for
2011-2012 will be filled at the same Fund.
Chair of Treasury Board will further clarify the details of the
strategy for the digital economy.

------
Green Internet Consultant. Practical solutions to reducing GHG emissions such as free broadband and electric highways. http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/

email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
Bill@St-arnaud.org
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype: Pocketpro

Broadband and Economic Development - a hard look at job creation from all angles

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 14:31:00 +0000

[A very timely and important issue – BSA]
http://www.bbpmag.com/2011s/11economic-dev.php

Dear Colleagues,
Of the many great challenges that the United States faces today, none is more important or urgent than spurring robust economic development in our communities across America.

This is a challenge that transcends the political, regional, philosophical and other considerations that often divide us. It is a challenge that we have no choice but to meet without delay if the United States is to remain a great nation in the increasingly competitive global economy.

While there is a growing body of evidence that a strong connection exists between broadband and economic development, we still have much to learn about strengthening that connection and accelerating its positive results. To do this, we need answers to several critical questions: What exactly is economic development? Does it come in different flavors, some of which create more and better jobs than others? How is it measured, evaluated, and compared? When, where, why and how does it occur? How does it address new technologies and evolving global conditions? What are its key success factors? What are the technological, financial, legal, educational, social and other barriers that constrain it, and how can these barriers be overcome? Why do seemingly similar efforts work in some places and fail in others? How do participants from different disciplines view economic development, and how can we leverage each other’s strengths? How can we meet the accelerating needs of our 100 million young people for ever more robust broadband capacity? How can the public and private sectors work together more successfully, in a spirit of common purpose and mutual respect, to drive economic development?

A Full-Day Program at the Summit
Broadband Properties has given me the opportunity to organize a full-day program at its annual Summit in April 2011 to examine these and related issues. The program will be entitled “Broadband and Economic Development: A Hard Look at Job Creation from all Angles.” Knowing that affordable access to advanced communications capabilities has become an increasingly important component of economic development, we will emphasize the role of broadband throughout the day. We will also view economic development from many other angles, with the help of educators, economic development professionals, workforce development specialists, experts on site selection, real estate developers, economists, members of the financial community and businesses that have recently located or relocated, or are considering doing so. We will hear from government officials at all levels and from representatives of Americans with special needs, including low-income families, persons with disabilities and senior citizens. We will also feature numerous case histories, including both successes and failures.
We hope that this program will not be an end in itself but will be the beginning of an ongoing, multidisciplinary collaboration to accelerate economic development across America. We therefore plan to encourage constructive engagement among our speakers and audience, not just during the program itself but also in the development of the event. If you have suggestions, studies, case histories or other resources that would help make this event and its aftermath successful, please let us know. At the very least, we hope that you will join us in April.

Program Chairman: Jim Baller
Jim Baller is a senior principal of the Baller Herbst Law Group in Washington, DC. He represents clients in a broad range of communications matters nationally and in more than 35 states. He is also the president of the US Broadband Coalition, a large and diverse consortium of organizations of all kinds that helped build a national consensus on the need for a comprehensive national broadband strategy and proposed the framework that is reflected in the FCC’s National Broadband Plan. He is also working with Google on its Fiber for Communities initiative.
The Fiber to the Home Council has recognized Jim as "the nation's most experienced and knowledgeable attorney on public broadband matters." In 2001, the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors designated him its Member of the Year. In 2007, NATOA made him its first “Community Broadband Visionary of the Year,” for "almost single-handedly putting the need for a national broadband strategy to the forefront of public consciousness." In 2007, Washingtonian Magazine listed Jim as one of "Washington's Best Lawyers" (defined as the top one percent). In 2009, Ars Technica included Jim on its list of the 25 “Top Names in Tech Policy” and FiberToday honored him as its “Person of the Year.”

------
Green Internet Consultant. Practical solutions to reducing GHG emissions such as free broadband and electric highways. http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
Bill@St-arnaud.org
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype: Pocketpro

The answer to Network Neutrality, data caps and Usage Based Billing lies with Google, Amazon, Netflix, Apple

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:27:00 +0000

[There has been a lot of noise in the blogosphere recently about usage based billing (UBB) and price caps coming to the US. Something I warned would happen based on the Canadian experience.

In fact I believe a more insidious issue is developing where the telcos/cableso are not only extracting monopoly rent, but are using the revenue from UBB to cross subsidize their own proprietary broadband offerings of VOD and IPTV. I will be blogging more about that in the future.

Although I sympathize and understand the issues around network neutrality, price caps and UBB I am very skeptical that governments in Canada or the US will do anything meaningful to address the last mile duopoly – which is the fundamental underlying problem. We saw last week in the UK that British Telecom removed its policy on caps because of stiff competition. This competition was a direct result of the British government’s decision to mandate structural separation. (http://goo.gl/ibVtL)

Unfortunately the cableco/telcos in North America have a lock on Congress which is undermining the efforts of the FCC and the Chair of Canada’s regulator (CRTC) sounds like a spokesperson for Bell Canada in his various utterances on UBB. It is unlikely that we will ever see the necessary leadership in North America to challenge this last mile cartel and create real competition. We need another Teddy Roosevelt to take a big stick and break up this oligopoly which is choking innovation and dragging down the economy as a whole. A good analysis of how Canada’s protected telco/cable duopoly has hurt Canada’s productivity and constrained economic growth was demonstrated in a study by Peter Nicholson, former president of the Canadian Council of Academies - INNOVATION AND BUSINESS STRATEGY Why Canada Falls Short. ( http://goo.gl/zFPXk)

Given the lack of leadership from Washington and Ottawa, I believe it is up to companies like Google, Amazon, Netflix, Apple, etc to provide the necessary leadership and implement solutions that will address the sorry state of broadband in North America. Google has taken the first step with their Fiber to the Home project, for which everybody is breathlessly waiting an announcement on the selected communities that will be part of this pilot. But I think we need more such pilots deliberately targeting the communities that provide the greatest profitability for the telcos/cablecos. This is war and we got to hit the telco/cablecos where it hurts them the most.

But I am not suggesting that Google, Amazon, Neftlix, et al need to build a national FTTH network. I am proposing a different strategy:

When I was at CANARIE we were met with derision and laughter by the telcos when we first suggested that we wanted to purchase our own dark fiber and light it ourselves. They said it would be far too expensive and you need a large organization like a telco to manage and operate such a facility. But with leadership provided by RISQ (the regional network in Quebec) and SURFnet in The Netherlands we demonstrated that we could build our own dark fiber and light it at a fraction of the cost that the telcos wanted for their lower bandwidth managed service. This opened the flood gates. Other R&E networks across Canada and around the world quickly followed suit. Once the telcos/Cablecos realized our threat was real, that if necessary we would build our own fiber networks, and more worryingly introduce competition, they quickly changed their tune and started offering fiber at a much reasonable cost. (In Canada, those glory days have pretty well come to end because of lack of competition and restrictions on foreign ownership, but the revolution continues in the rest of the world, particularly with the UCAN initiative in the US)

Google, Amazon, Neflix et al need to partner together to develop a similar strategy in the battle against the telco/cableco cartel. First they need to build a number of FTTH project in selected neighbourhoods to demonstrate that their threat is real and then negotiate with the cableco/telcos and cell phone companies on transparent policy on network neutrality, costing and elimination of price caps and UBB. If the cableco/telcos balk, which they will likely do initially, the Google, Aamzon, et al consortium have to make their threat real and continue to build more FFTH pilot neighbourhoods. As I mentioned before they don’t have to target entire city or town (which would be ideal if the community were willing to participate as well) but only those neighborhoods which represent the highest profitability to the cableco/telcos. They may even want to partner with someone like Level 3, who I believe needs to extend their carrier’s carrier business model to the last mile.

I think such a strategy would also define the true costs of delivering broadband and perhaps even allow the development of new business models. As I have blogged in the past I think broadband needs to be free and unlimited. There is a much better way to make money from broadband rather than extracting monopoly rent and charging users by the bit. Bundling broadband with energy consumption and CO2 emissions to my mind is one approach that guarantees a lucrative revenue stream to the network operator, without costing the consumer a dime, and allows for unlimited usage and consumption. For more details please see my blog on Free Fiber to the Home http://free-fiber-to-the-home.blogspot.com/

-BSA]

------

Green Internet Consultant. Practical solutions to reducing GHG emissions such as free broadband and electric highways. http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/

email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com

Bill@St-arnaud.org

twitter: BillStArnaud

blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/

skype: Pocketpro

Must read: The economics of last mile fiber

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:07:00 +0000

[A great article by Herman Wagter on the economics of FTTH. Herman was the engineer who built the Amsterdam city FTTH network. Some excerpts – BSA]

Fiber-to-the-X: the economics of last-mile fiber

http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2010/03/fiber-its-not-all-created-equal.ars/2

Lately the word "fiber" has started to become ubiquitous in advertisements for broadband. It’s a synonym for the future, for speed and quality. Everybody tries to connect that synonym to their brand, regardless of their actual network design. In the trade press, acronyms like FttX (which stands for Fiber-to-the-X, where X is your favorite letter or word) are used as if all last mile network architectures with optical fiber are more or less equal.
But they're not. Let’s take a look under the hood and analyze the reasons why fiber is chosen as a medium, then look at the topologies, the architectures, the trade-offs, and the inherent path dependencies of a particular deployment method. Fiber-to-the-curb, fiber-to-the-basement, fiber-to-the-home—truly, not all fiber is created equal.

Getting fiber closer to the home
Ninety-nine percent of the Internet's physical distance has been strung with fiber already; just a minor hop, and home and business users can have a fully fiber connection. The obvious question is, why has fiber been rolled out in globe-spanning networks without any public discussion whatsoever, while deploying fiber in the last mile is a huge deal? The answer is two-fold: money, and natural monopolies.

…
A Utility Infrastructure Law commonly quoted by engineers says, "The closer you get to the home, the more investment is needed, averaged per home connected." This law applies to all parts of the physical network, like water pipes, sewage pipes, and electricity cables. What are the applicable numbers for telecom cables?
A useful division of communication networks is between core networks (deep sea intercontinental, international, or core networks countrywide between exchanges), backhaul and middle-mile networks (from exchanges to local aggregation points), and access networks (from homes to local aggregation points). A quick, back-of-the-envelope calculation based on expert estimates indicates a relative investment level of 1:3:10 for core:middle:access networks, proving the Utility Infrastructure Law.
…
Incremental versus sunk costs
The last mile access line is the biggest part of the per-home average investment in the network. On a per-home basis the absolute level of investment isn’t that impressive relative to other investments (two iPhones? A 50-inch HDTV? A front door?) The useful life of a fiber access line probably exceeds 40 years, but the multiplier of the total number of homes makes it a sizable overall investment—much larger than investments in other parts of the network. To make matters worse, there is a major difference between core/middle-mile and access networks.

Middle-mile and core networks are generally shared between many customers, so capacity can be reallocated. These shared networks can be incrementally extended and increased in capacity as demand grows. Moore’s law helps as well; the fact that the increase in capacity per dollar invested in transmission electronics doubles every 18 months already covers a large part of the yearly increase in traffic for middle-mile and core networks.

But for a last-mile access line, in contrast, there is only one potential customer: the occupant of the home. The majority of the cash outlay goes to laying the access line, and it's all sunk costs. The investment can only be recovered for a minor part of the project (the last drop), and then only the first time out—you don’t remove the last drop even if the customer quits paying you for services. It is not possible to reallocate that access line investment to another potential customer, so that line either pays for itself or it doesn't. (Note: electronics are excluded in this analysis, because the gear can be deployed and reallocated as penetration grows).
The maintenance costs of a fiber line are very low. Verizon estimates that the difference in maintenance costs between a copper line and a fiber line, expressed in a Net Present Value of all future gains, exceeds $200 per connection.

Utilization is key
The investment in access infrastructure, i.e., stringing or digging new cables, consists mainly of labor, not materials.
The net effect of the dynamic outlined above is that penetration levels in access networks are critical to making money with fiber, as Benoît Feltenrepeatedly demonstrates in his presentations. The level of penetration has such a financial impact on the cost price per active connection that an ISP can't really offset that impact by having a more efficient operation in the rest of the value chain. A 20 percent relative variation in penetration can lead to a difference in cost price per connection of $10 or more per month.
Given the fact that almost all costs in the access network are sunk, it is hard to envision two or more new fiber access networks being deployed in parallel to each home, leading to a stable competitive environment over time. (Unless the ISP’s or network's owners are allowed to divide the market and raise prices to compensate for the underutilization of the networks). If the medium is no longer limited and the access network is the expensive part of the investment, why duplicate the cables? We not do duplicate cables for electricity or other utilities either, for the same reasons.

Note that the current competition between the two wired communication infrastructures to the home—cable and telephone—is a historical accident. Both networks were built for and financed by services that were originally mutually exclusive (telephony and TV). Providers of each these services financed each access network, with relatively high utilization rates. The much later discovery that each network type could unexpectedly deliver packets of information to the home for some new newfangled thing called the Internet, and that users were willing to pay for that new service, was a stroke of luck. But now, with VoIP and IPTV, utilization is a major factor, and the sell-off of older, underutilized parts of the access network and investment in new networks has started.
It remains to be seen what models will emerge where. The European trend is to strive for unbundling and sharing of at least pieces of the new access network (France, Portugal), if not the complete access network (Netherlands, Switzerland). This gets utilization ratios up and average costs down. The US, in contrast, has chosen up to now a competition between networks.

So if fiber-to-the-home is a relatively large investment, most of it up-front with an expected lifetime of many decades, and if utilization ratios are the key to fiber's financial success, then it makes sense to look hard at architectures and path dependencies. The risk of premature technical obsolescence or a lock-in that would require new investments should be reduced, or at least weighed in the decisions.

Topology versus technology
A fully optical path gives so many options in transmission technology for such a low price that we have only just begun to explore the possibilities for home use.

The tendency amongst vendors and operators is to define fiber access network architectures by the technology that is used instead of the possible topology. Active Ethernet technology is typically coupled to a homerun network, and GPON technology is typically coupled to a Passive Optical Network with shared fibers to each block. This is a mistake, as different architectures allow more or less flexibility in topology and therefore have more or less path dependency in the choice of technology. The right method is to analyze the architectures and the topologies that can be supported by each architecture. In each potential "fiber-to-the-X," the main architectural choice is this: a full optical path to each home/apartment, or not?

In Fiber-to-the-Curb (aka VDSL), Fiber-to-the-Basement, or HFC (Hybrid Fiber/Coax) access networks, the length of copper wire or coax cable to the home is shortened, but not to zero. Somewhere before entering your home, the optical signal is transformed to an electrical signal, which is transported by an older medium. In the HFC network, the electrical signals are shared in the last segment, while in FttC or FttB, they're not. So these access networks effectively have the same architecture as before (telephony/DSL and cable), but with shorter distances for the old medium, allowing for higher capacity. The optoelectronic conversion of signals is positioned closer to the home.

In Fiber-to-the-Home access networks, a full optical path is built to the home. The optoelectronic conversion which defines the transmission technology is positioned in the home (or on the outside wall). The three main architectures are deep PON, staged PON, and homerun (or point-to-point). In deep PON (DPON), a single fiber is fed to a block of homes and split optically close to the homes with a passive splitter to as many fibers and homes as you design for, typically a multiple of two in the range of 32 or 64. Each endpoint receives the same light from the source, and sends light back through the same single fiber. Staged PON (SPON) is a variation where a much smaller number of homes (typically eight) are served in the same manner by a single fiber. In the aggregation point a 1:4 splitter is used to get to the 1:32 ratio. A homerun architecture (point-to-point) does not split light at all, at least between a home and the aggregation point. Each home gets one or more dedicated fibers all the way from the aggregation point.

If the networks at home are all made out of copper/coax (or wireless) anyway, does it matter where the optoelectronic conversion is positioned in the network, inside your home or a few hundred meters away? To start with, the assumption that copper and electrical signal networks will stay dominant in the home is questionable. Swisscom already has started to invest in optical plastic fiber networks that can be used inside the home, to accommodate the much higher capacity needed.

Second, a fully optical path gives so many options in transmission technology for such a low price that we have only just begun to explore the possibilities for home use. The universities and researchers have already pushed the envelope very far, and Moore’s law is helping us to get price levels down to a level where anyone can afford the technology. If you have a fully optical path, the only thing you need to change if the need arises is the equipment. So a fully optical path allows for a very fast and selective upgrade (compared with a slow and laborious physical network upgrade if you did not invest in a fully optical path). Imagine what a fix AT&T would be in if a service that would require a full optical path to the home suddenly would become popular. Verizon could respond quickly, but AT&T would not be able to follow.

The best fiber possible does nothing except guide light of all possible wavelengths. Each wavelength you can separate from others is comparable to the complete “ether” available for all wireless communication. As long as you can modulate the light source as you wish and keep the signal intact through the fiber, you can do whatever you want with the light. This fact allows for many variations in technology over the same fiber.
Fiber options
So let’s look at the options and see what optical technologies are already available and practical for everyday use at the home. What are the path dependencies for each architecture?
Active Ethernet is a technology for data transmission which requires a unique fiber or wavelengths (one down, one return), and it's very well known and stable. One of the technology's advantages is the distance you can cover or the speed of modulation you can achieve (or the reduction in light power you need), because there is no optical splitter that reduces the light strength between you and the receiver and shares the capacity with your neighbors.
GPON is currently the most dominant FttH technology, since it's specifically designed for shared architectures. Again, specific wavelengths, one for down and one for the return channel, are used. Through clever time-division-multiplexing between users, a guaranteed capacity and a much higher peak capacity can be delivered. Currently this requires the same brand of equipment both at the aggregation point and the home.

10GPON is one of the more promising next steps in GPON, delivering up to four times as much capacity. However, the limits of the pulse width/distance/light-strength combination can become a limitation: if the splitter ratio of a Deep PON architecture becomes too high there is a risk that the number of photons per pulse is getting dangerously low after being split (bit error rates high). Increasing the light strength at the source is prohibited by safety laws so that is no option. In a Deep PON architecture you are stuck unless you want to run more fibers to the splitter. A Staged PON architecture does give the option of removing the 1:4 split at the aggregation point. A home run architecture has the option of putting splitters in the aggregation point at will.

Linear TV (RF over Fiber) is a method for delivering radio frequency channels over fiber. A wavelength is modulated with these RF signals, broadcasted to each home, and converted to the same signal that an HFC cable network delivers. In fact, the fiber part of the cable network uses this technology to deliver all these channels to the coax segment.

Because coax has its limitations when it comes to transmitting high frequencies (over 1 GHz) over longer distances, the frequency band for linear TV is limited to the standard 50-900 MHz. The optical equipment and the fiber, however, do not have these limitations (5 GHz is easily broadcasted). Recently, equipment has been introduced that superimposes multiple satellite TV signals in the frequency band higher than 1 GHz in the same optical wave. These signals are separated at the home and converted to multiple outputs that can be fed to standard satellite receivers, as if you had 4 satellite dishes. This technology is very useful in dense cities where homeowners hate all the individual dishes on top of the roof or the balcony.

Wave division multiplex (WDM) involves sending multiple colors over one fiber, and the technology was first used to increase the capacity in core networks. One of its uses in FttH networks is to reach faraway homes in a shared architecture. A standard shared topology (PON) runs into problems, like not enough light, at larger distances, and requires a lower split ratio, more fiber, and a higher average costs per customer. WDM has a much larger optical power budget (15db more), allowing for much longer distances.
Applying WDM in an PON architecture requires ripping out the splitters in the field and replacing them with a wavelength filter that separates the colors to individual customers. The filter selects one wavelength per user, making the fiber plant dedicated to WDM. In a peer-to-peer architecture, all you need is patching in the aggregation point.

The options outlined above are just what are currently available and affordable. Most likely others will be developed in the coming years.
One thing we can learn from history is that “things are difficult to predict, especially the future”. Indeed, we often cannot imagine what we possibly could do with new technology.

Unbundling
European regulators like having the option to unbundle physical access lines, with wholesale bandwidth access as the second best option. But the various architectures have different unbundling path dependencies as well.

For fiber-to-the-curb, physical unbundling is more theory than practice. Allowing multiple ISPs with their own hardware inside a small cabinet is a questionable idea to start with, but the backhaul is more of a problem. With something like 800 connections per cabinet, you need a very deeply distributed backhaul network, something not many can afford, especially competitors of incumbents. Regulating backhaul access for competitors is an option, but it's not an easy situation for new entrants.
Unbundling Deep PON by requiring patch cabinets close to homes (aggregating homerun fibers in splitters from different operators) is an option that has not been tested in practice. It's not clear that this overhead and cost is worth the effort, compared to alternatives like homerun.

Upgrading the architecture
In theory and in practice nothing is forever: you can upgrade a fiber-to-the-curb network to full fiber-to-the-home, or you can upgrade an HFC network to full fiber-to-the-home.
The legacy of a fiber-to-the-curb network, however, is a large number of cabinets with active equipment out in the field. This equipment is something that old network engineers abhor, because the point of fiber is to get an outside plant which you can leave alone forever.

A HFC network can be transformed to either a SPON or DPON or even a peer-to-peer network. In fact, some small cable operators who have shareholders that let them keep their cash flow have embarked on a seven-year program to slowly and quietly extend their network fiber up to the home, in order to build a full peer-to-peer network. This is the cheapest way to get the best possible architecture, with approximately a 20 percent lower investment per connection compared to a new build-out.

Path dependencies
One thing we can learn from history is that “things are difficult to predict, especially the future.” Indeed, we often cannot imagine what we possibly could do with new technology. Yet it turns out that in ten years, tools and applications can change in massive ways that nobody imagined beforehand. Our appetite for communication bandwidth seems to be unlimited.

Because the rollout of fiber-to-the-home will take more than ten years it makes a lot of sense to think hard about increasing options and reducing path dependencies.

The main issue with halfway options (FttC, FttB and HFC) that do give more bandwidth for data is the time needed to upgrade the network to full optical when the need arises. It may take a decade to do so because it is physical work, home by home. If some other region or country has gone fully optical in the first place, then they have a huge advantage.

A Deep PON architecture creates a serious lock-in. This architecture is the first to hit the wall of limitations of the pulse width/distance/light-strength combination and is hard to unbundle. A Staged PON has more leeway and has less unbundling limitations.
The most expensive but most flexible architecture is peer-to-peer (home run). All technologies can be mixed and matched on a per-customer basis, without modifying the outside plant. Unbundling is relatively easy, and the extra investment is relatively low in dense areas but increases with distance.

Ultimately, it turns out that not all fiber is equal, as we will discover the hard way in the coming years.
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email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype: Pocketpro

Google to deploy Fiber to the Home in Selected Communities

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:30:00 +0000

From Google Policy Blog
http://www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi/

Given how important broadband capability is to economic growth and job creation, it's no surprise that it's become a major topic of discussion in Washington.

The FCC is currently finalizing its National Broadband Plan to present to Congress next month. Recently we suggested that as part of its Plan, the Commission should build ultra high-speed broadband networks as testbeds in several communities across the country, to help learn how to bring faster and better broadband access to more people. We thought it was important to back up our policy recommendation with concrete action, so now we've decided to build an experimental network of our own.

Today we announced plans to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks, delivering Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what's available today to most Americans, over 1 gigabit per second fiber connections. As a first step, we're asking interested local governments to complete a request for information, which will help us determine where to build. Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make broadband Internet access better, faster, and more widely available.

We're excited to see how consumers, small businesses, anchor institutions, and local governments will take advantage of ultra high-speed access to the Net. In the same way that the transition from dial-up to broadband made possible the emergence of online VoIP and video and countless other applications, we think that ultra high-speed bandwidth will lead to many new innovations – including streaming high-definition video content, remote data storage, distance learning, real-time multimedia collaboration, and others that we simply can't imagine yet.

This project will build on our ongoing efforts to expand and improve Internet access for consumers – from our free municipal Wi-Fi network in Mountain View, CA, to our advocacy in the 700 MHz spectrum auction, to our work to open the TV "white spaces" to unlicensed uses.

In building our broadband testbed, we plan to incorporate the policies we've been advocating for in areas like network neutrality and privacy protection. Even on a small scale, building an experimental network will also raise other important legal and policy issues, from local environmental law to rights-of-way, so we'll be working closely with communities, public officials, and other stakeholders to make sure we get this right.

By several measures, no matter who you ask, the U.S. in far too many places still lags behind many countries in Europe and Asia in terms of broadband speed, availability, and uptake. While it's unlikely that our experiment will be the silver bullet that delivers ultra high-speed Internet access to the rest of America, our engineers hope to learn some important things from this project. We can't wait to see what developers and consumers alike can accomplish with access to 1 gigabit broadband speeds.

FTTH leads to energy reduction of 73%, CO2 emissions reduction of 85%.

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 23:10:00 +0000

Stark results from Etisalat in the UAE: FTTH leads to energy reduction of 73%, CO2 emissions reduction of 85%.

http://bbpmag.com/wordpress2/2010/01/etisalat-fiber-to-the-home-network-reduces-carbon-emissions-by-85/

The Etisalat study compared 5,000 fiber-connected homes in the United Arab Emirates with homes serviced by Etisalat’s legacy infrastructure. Because the FTTH network transmits voice, video and data over a single system, it is replacing two separate legacy networks, telephone and coaxial cable, each of which had its own infrastructure and power. The fiber optic network can also transport data over much greater distances. The facilities required to manage the fiber optic network are built at 12-km (7.5-mile) intervals, while the legacy system required a building or station every 2.5 km (1.5 miles). Not only does this require less power and fuel to keep the buildings operational, but it also cuts down on maintenance and staff transport.

Etisalat’s FTTH network has been deployed nationwide and its engineering teams are now working door-to-door to connect every household in the country by 2011. More than 670,000 homes can now access the network.

Must Read: Excellent OECD report on FTTh and Innovation

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 17:55:00 +0000

[Some excerpts -- BSA]

NETWORK DEVELOPMENTS IN SUPPORT OF INNOVATION AND USER NEEDS

http://www.olis.oecd.org/olis/2009doc.nsf/LinkTo/NT0000889E/$FILE/JT03275973.PDF

This report makes a case for investment in a competitive, open-access national fibre-to-the-home network rollout based on potential spillovers in four key sectors of the economy: electricity, health,transportation and education.

This research offers a new approach to evaluating the costs of building the most forward-looking network possible by evaluating what short-term cost savings (benefits) would have to be achieved in other key economic sectors to justify the investment. On average, a cost savings of between 0.5% and 1.5% in each of the four sectors over ten years resulting directly from the new broadband network platform could justify the cost of building a national point-to-point, fibre-to-the-home network.

If the cost savings in these and other industries are potentially large enough to justify the investments then governments have an incentive to find ways to encourage rollouts to capture the social gains. While the calculations in the paper are rough estimations they clearly highlight the fact that investments in fibre
networks can be justified relatively easily through minimal cost savings in other sectors even when the savings are often discounted in investment calculations by private firms.

Policy and regulatory measures to promote competition in a next generation environment should be based on a sound economic assessment of specific market conditions and local factors. Proposals for government investment in FTTH networks should include a thorough cost-benefit-analysis which considers any potential deployments of next-generation networks by the private sector and any public funding of networks must be evaluated and targeted to avoid market distortions and crowding-out of private investment.

There could be cases where the social returns of broadband connectivity are potentially much larger than the costs of building the network but the operators do not invest because their private returns would not justify the investment. The inability of markets to take into account network externalities can lead to
non-optimal provisioning of services and potentially limit innovation.
Some OECD governments have committed substantial economic stimulus funds to the rollout of broadband networks. This paper proposes that these investments could have an important impact in other sectors in the economy, helping justify the initial investments.
...
High-speed communication networks are a platform supporting innovation throughout the economy today in much the same way electricity and transportation networks spurred innovation in the past. Future innovations in many sectors will be linked to the availability of high-speed, competitive data networks and new applications they support. The emergence of many of these innovative services tied to broadband are visible today in four key sectors: electricity, health, transportation and education.

...
Broadband is having a significant impact on education and e-learning by improving access to digital learning resources; encouraging communication among schools, teachers and pupils; promoting professional education for teachers; and linking local, regional and national databases for administrative purposes or supervision.

New high-speed broadband networks are also impacting other sectors of the economy not considered as part of this analysis. Broadband has become the leading delivery system for a wide range of content as witnessed by the transformation of the newspaper, music and video industries. Broadband is also the foundation of innovations in cloud and grid computing which efficiently centralise computing power and resources across the Internet and enable the rapid scalability of services in sectors such as transportation and education. Spillovers in these sectors, which are not included in the calculations, could also help justify
large investments in a national high-speed network.

Policy implications
Policy makers need to consider the potential spillovers of new broadband platforms when considering any public investment in new networks and when assessing potential regulatory requirements on next generation networks.
...
Innovation thrives on open platforms with expansive bandwidth for new applications. Government should promote network technologies and topologies which are the most flexible, create the most opportunities for competition, offer the highest potential for innovation and those which can provide the most bandwidth in the future.

Policy makers and networks planners should focus on developing a broadband platform which easily supports capacity upgrades to match the bandwidth demand of new applications as they appear. Bandwidth constraints should not inhibit innovation.
...
Symmetric bandwidth will also be increasingly important.
Upload speeds over the network will become an increasingly important determinant of innovative capacity. The bandwidth dedicated to downloading is often 10 to 16 times higher than the bandwidth set aside for uploads. This creates an unfortunate dilemma for users, in that their ability to acquire content is vastly enhanced, while their ability to submit content back to the network does not grow proportionally.

High-speed broadband is increasingly considered a general purpose technology. There have been suggestions that a utility-style model for installing and maintaining passive infrastructure such as ducts and poles or dark-fibre connections could promote competition and provide connectivity particularly in areas where private firms have not found it profitable to build out next-generation networks. A utility-style model may also require lower returns than a similar private investment, thus reducing costs and making rollouts more economically feasible.

Access to high-speed broadband is an important foundation for innovation but there are a number of other roadblocks and bottlenecks which slow down innovation and may hinder implementation in sectors and minimize broadband’s impact even when it is available. Any broadband investment with the goal of cost savings in other sectors should be coupled with initiatives to ensure a smooth transition from existing
service models and address any bottlenecks which could hinder adoption and innovation.

The Economist on customer owned fiber

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:22:00 +0000

http://bit.ly/8Inecd

[Great article in this week's economist on customer owned paper based on the original paper by Derek Slater and Tim WU, which was based on the project we have in Ottawa and elsewhere -- BSA]

Who pays for the pipes?

Dec 10th 2009
Telecommunications: If broadband providers are reluctant to lay expensive optical fibres, consumers can sometimes pay for it themselves

TELEPHONE and cable companies make their money by investing in communications infrastructure and then charging people to use it. Having invested, however, they are often reluctant to upgrade their kit. Replacing copper wires with fibre-optic cables, for example, is hugely expensive, and many firms in Europe have been dragging their heels. Now an alternative has been proposed: why not ask communities and individuals to pay for installation themselves?

The idea that homeowners might be willing to pay a few thousand dollars for a cable sounds implausible. But it could be a worthwhile investment. As well as providing a high-speed broadband link, it would increase the home’s value. A survey conducted earlier this year by RVA, an American market-research firm, on behalf of an American telecoms-industry body, found that among respondents who did not currently have a fibre connection, 69% viewed high-speed service as an important factor when buying a new home.

Another attraction would be that if you paid for your own fibre, you might then be able to choose between several service providers. This is more likely to attract American technophiles than European ones, however, because there is already greater competition between service providers in Europe.
[..]

UTOPIA Trailblazing New Opportunity For Customer-Owned Fiber

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:14:00 +0000

[Some excerpts from Geoff Daily's excellent blog on Broadband. As you
know this has been a model I have been advocating for some time, and
have tried to deploy in Ottawa with additional twist of bundling the
cost with the customer's energy bill -- BSA]

Geoff Daily's Blog: http://www.app-rising.com/

My blog: http://free-fiber-to-the-home.blogspot.com/

UTOPIA Trailblazing New Opportunity For User-Owned Fiber

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.app-rising.com/2009/11/utopia_proving_new_option_for.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AppRising+(App-Rising)&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

An exciting development has occurred recently in the world of fiber
deployment. A new model is emerging in Brigham City, a city of less
than 20,000 in northern Utah, for how user-owned open fiber networks
can be financed and deployed.

It used to be that the only way you could get fiber was if you were
lucky enough to have a private provider lay it or to live in a city
that did it itself. Today in Brigham City, for $3,000 you can buy your
own fiber. And in fact more than 1,600 local residents have already
bought in to this new opportunity.

With that fiber they'll get access to UTOPIA's competitive and
growing ecosystem of service providers, where they get to choose what
services from what providers they want running on their pipe.

While this may sound radically different from how fiber has been
traditionally deployed in the US to date, user-owned open fiber
networks have already been a big success in Sweden, helping them wire
remote mountainous communities with world-class broadband
infrastructure.

We also need to realize how potentially brilliant the open fiber
concept is for rural America because of how it allows for competition
to happen between service providers on a single pipe. With open fiber
you can make sure that everyone benefits from having access to a
competitive marketplace of communications services.

But I'm even more excited about what UTOPIA's new model could mean
for the future of fiber deployment.

The biggest problem with the economics of deploying fiber is that you
have to carry a massive debt load and begin paying it off before much
revenue starts coming in. Plus you have to invest a lot of money into
neighborhoods without any real idea of how many people are going to
sign up for service.

The user-owned model totally changes these dynamics. First off, by
having users pay for their own pipes you disaggregate most of the
debt. Just look at Brigham City. They're building a $5.5 million
network and the city's only putting up less than $700,000. So no
massive debt load for the city (or a private provider for that matter)
to carry.

The second major piece of this is that UTOPIA's going to have
built-in take-rates when they build out neighborhoods. Plus churn
should fall to zero since people own their pipes.

Basically the way I see this is as the possible beginnings of a new
third model for fiber deployment in the US. You no longer have to wait
for a private provider to make the investment, or for your city to
figure out how it can overcome all the roadblocks and then actually
execute effectively. Instead users who want service can band together
and find a way to get it now rather than waiting twenty years for
someone else to figure out how to do it.

They have developed a special assessment area model, though, that
allows homeowners to commit to a $25 a month payment over 15 years to
spread out the cost over time.

Another potential trouble spot is how to deal with renters who want
service but landlords who don't want to pay to have it installed.

But while there are questions still to be answered, the keys for
right now is that this model has worked elsewhere, and now at long
last we have someone willing to step out and see if it can work here
in the US.

So I say to UTOPIA: best of luck as you continue on these endeavors!
The rest of the country is watching, and we're all hoping you succeed
as there are millions of us that wish we could get our fiber now but
can't.

And to Brigham City: Kudos to you all! We are all cheering you on,
inspired by your commitment to getting yourselves wired with the most
important infrastructure of the 21st century.

Update on the Ottawa pilot

http://www.techmediareports.ca/reports/content/ottawa_fibre_to_the_home_expe
riment_hits_a_snag

Lessons from the land of cheap broadband in Hong Kong

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:10:00 +0000

[Excerpts from CNN article. While HK density is a factor, it still does not account for the huge price differential in Internet pricing between HK and elsewehere in the world. I love the quote "The telecom industry tends to commoditize people. Our strategy is to commoditize bandwidth". - BSA]

Lessons from the land of cheap broadband in Hong Kong

http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/11/13/lessons-from-the-land-of-cheap-broadband/?source=yahoo_quote

City Telecom's 400,000 customers pay $13 a month for 100 megabit synchronous broadband. And they get a money-back guarantee: If they don't clock 80% of the promised speed, the company pays them twice their monthly fee.

If you live within coverage area of Verizon's FiOS
service (VZ
), you pay as much as $150 a month for up to 50 megs downstream and 20 upstream.

How can City Telecom possibly offer service that's more than twice as fast at less than 10% of the price?

Density is a blessing

It's partly geography and partly vision. While Hong Kong has 7 million inhabitants, only a small fraction of the island's mountainous terrain is developed, which means everyone basically lives on top of each other. The population density is 16,380 people per square mile – versus 640 in Japan and 80 in the US. That makes every customer far cheaper to serve. "We have a phenomenal network built at $200 per home. Verizon is talking about a cost of north of $1,000 per home,"
Lai says. "We built ours at one-fifth the cost."

Of course building the network in the first place required vision.
City Telecom was founded 17 years ago as an international calling-card company by two cousins who plowed in 100,000 Canadian dollars to get started. They could have leased lines to get into Internet-service business the way many carriers do, but that would have meant encountering the same last-mile bottleneck. So, they built their own $400 million network over a decade.

And now the company is on a tear. The largest IP service provider on Hong Kong, PCCW , has about 1 million customers, according to Lai, but is growing at a fraction of the pace. It added only 3,000 in the last six months, compared to 41,000 for City Telecom. PCCW recently slashed its prices to match City Telecom, but still can't come near the speeds. But can City Telecom really make a business out of cheap broadband?

Innovation trumps incumbency

Lai insists the company already has. "The network is cash flow positive since 07. We're debt free with 10% revenue growth and 30% EBITDA growth," he says. "Our stock is up 200% in 12 months, and the market is starting to realize what we're doing."

All that success, Lia adds, is a result of having a Big Hairy Audacious Goal and doing everything possible to achieve it. "The telecom industry tends to commoditize people. Our strategy is to commoditize bandwidth, to make 100 megabits the industry norm in Hong Kong," he says. "Our plan is to win by offering the best service at the lowest possible cost structure. Thirteen dollars is not a lot, but if you scale it and drive your cost base down, it's a beautiful business to be in."

If only some US telecom executives felt likewise.

Switzerland Government Gets it

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:39:00 +0000

Switzerland Switzerland

Wednesday, 7 October 2009

FTTH round table 'making progress'

The Swiss Federal Office of Communications (ComCom) has revealed that
round table discussions on the deployment of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH)
networks are producing concrete results. According to the regulator the
major players are now in agreement on uniform technical standards,
meaning that there are no technical barriers to the rapid expansion of
the fibre network. A consensus has also been reached on coordination,
which will prevent the parallel construction of new networks by laying
multiple fibres in every building (known as the multiple fibre model).
At the same time the participants at the round table have agreed that
all providers must have access to the fibre-optic network under the same
conditions, so as to protect end-users' freedom of choice. The
participants drew up further recommendations for standardised network
access by services. Thanks to an open interface, service providers will
enjoy network access to customers at all times via network operators.
If, at a later date, the customer opts for a different service provider
on the same fibre-optic network, the switch will be possible without any
technical complications.

The roundtable discussions involve cable network operators, telecoms
companies and electricity utilities. Further roundtables and working
groups will be held to clarify points. ComCom will also examine whether
new regulatory measures are needed to govern FTTH deployment, with the
aim of reporting to parliament by mid-2010 at the latest.

New Zealand Government gets it

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 07:28:00 +0000

The NZ government has taken a major step forward in building a structurally separate FTTh network

http://www.med.govt.nz/templates/ContentTopicSummary____41902.aspx

The government's overall objective for the ultra-fast broadband investment initiative is to accelerate the roll-out of ultra-fast broadband to 75 percent of New Zealanders over ten years, concentrating in the first six years on priority broadband users such as businesses, schools and health services, plus green-field developments and certain tranches of residential areas.

This government's objective will be supported by government investment of up to $1.5 billion, which is expected to be at least matched by an equal amount of private sector investment, and will be directed to open-access infrastructure.

On 16 September 2009, Communications and Information Technology Minister Hon Steven Joyce announced the final design of the government's broadband investment initiative [link to Beehive website].
Key highlights

Key highlights of the government’ proposal include:

* An open, competitive partner selection process.
* Government investment will be directed to an open access, passive fibre network infrastructure.
* A new Crown-owned investment company ('Crown Fibre Holdings') will be operational by October, which will carry out the government’s partner selection process and manage the government’s investment in fibre networks.
* Crown Fibre Holdings will establish with private sector partners a 'Local Fibre Company' (LFC) in each region, to deploy fibre network infrastructure and provide access to dark fibre products and, optionally, certain active wholesale Layer 2 services.
* The Government is open to national proposals and proposals aggregating any combination of LFC regions.
* Expansion from 25 to 33 candidate coverage areas based on the largest urban areas (by population in 2021).
* LFCs will be required from day one to be open networks facilitating access to their infrastructure on an equivalent basis to all users.
* LFCs cannot be controlled by any party who also operates as a telecommunications retailer.

The regulatory and telecom policy issues of PON versus home run fiber

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:45:00 +0000

[Here are 2 excellent pointers on the telcom policy and regulatory issues with respect to PON versus home run fiber. As governments around the world accelerate plans to deploy next generation broadband there is clear desire by many to ensure greater completion and create a level playing field for new entrants. Most incumbents prefer to deploy various forms of PON as it keeps them in control of the network (and the customer), even if they are obligated to provide some sort of open access. PON is also seen as marginally cheaper than point to point home run fiber (but with new optical ribbons that is debatable). Regulators on the other hand, especially in Europe, see point to point home run fiber as way of promoting facilities based competition and ensuring structural separation between service providers and infrastructure. Home run fiber also opens the door to new business models such as condominium fiber, customer ownership of the last mile (Google’s Homes with tails) and Green Broadband where the cost of fiber and service is bundled with the energy bill. Thanks to Prashanta Mukherjee and Benoit Felten for these pointers – BSA]

Regulating Fiber Access Networks in New Zealand
http://www.prashanta.com/assets/Uploads/Highlights-assets/2009-8-20-Regulating-Fibre-in-NZ-Paper-Web.pdf

Point to Point versus GPON: A comparison of two optical network access technologies
http://www.fiberevolution.com/2009/08/gpon-vs-p2p-comparison.html

My testimony at FCC broadband workshop

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:23:00 +0000

[The FCC has been tasked to develop a national broadband strategy and are holding a series of workshops. I was invited to give a short presentation on some of the ideas we have been working in Canada and elsewhere. Here are my speaking notes – Bill]

www.broadband.gov

My presentation and background slides can be found at
http://www.slideshare.net/bstarn/fcc-broadband-workshop

Good morning

First all I would like to thank the FCC staff inviting me to give speak at this event and I applaud their initiative in this area. These workshops will be very critical in defining a national broadband vision not only for the US but other countries around the world as well

I am Bill St Arnaud Chief Research Officer for CANARIE

CANARIE is the Canadian equivalent of Internet 2.

Our mandate is a bit broader in that we have been tasked to advance Canada’s telcom and Internet networks and applications

We work closely with organizations like Internet 2, NLR , Educuase in the US and institutions like UCSD

As everyone knows the Internet originated with the R&E community.

Not many people realize however that R&E community is also a major pioneer in new broadband architectures and business models

The R&E community has long experience in operating their own networks national and locally and many university networks are equivalent to those that would be deployed in a small city

New broadband Concepts like condominium networks, customer owned and controlled networks, hybrid networking, etc all started with the R&E community

[First slide]

In my opinion the biggest challenge in developing a national broadband vision is defining a business case

Many people think that government is going to invest billions of dollars in a national broadband deployment

In this era of trillion deficits and near bankrupt state and local governments I very much doubt that governments will be able to make any significant investments in broadband

So we have to look at the private sector as the primary vehicle for deploying broadband

But the business case for private sector to deploy national broadband is also very weak, especially if we want multiple facilities based competitors

I think there is general agreement that multiple facilities based competition is the ideal solution as competition drives innovation, lower prices and more choices for the consumer

But the business case for traditional NGA deployment is very weak and is predicated on 40% takeup and triple play revenues of $130

And of course revenues from triple play are gradually being undermined as video and voice service migrate to the internet in the coming years

Even with those numbers high speed broadband based on fiber will only reach about 40% of customers

So what we need is to experiment with new business models to underwrite the cost of next generation broadband

NEXT SLIDE

Some good examples are the “Home with Tails” concept that some Google analysts are advocating where the customer owns the last mile

Another one is Green Broadband where the cost of the broadband infrastructure and service is bundled with the customers’ energy bill, and the customer is encouraged to reduce their energy consumption, while the service provider makes money from the energy bill rather than triple play. There are now several pilots around the world adopting this model

As you may have heard CANARIE has launched a modest Green IT pilot program to help industry and academia capture new business opportunities in this field

Other examples include the condominium fiber deployment in Netherlands being lead by KPN in partnership with Reggenfiber

Another good example is the Swisscom national condo fiber project being deployed in partnership with numerous energy companies in that country

So my number one suggestion to FCC is that they work with R&E community and fund a number of NGA pilots that promote facilities based competition

For more information please see the links on your screen

Thank you

Open Access Fiber Infrastructure makes economic sense for carriers

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:44:00 +0000

[Benoit Felten, an analyst at Yankee Group has recently published an excellent report on the economics of FTTh, and why an open access infrastructure makes business sense for cariers like that being deployed by KPN in Netherlands (in partnership with RegenFibe and CityNet) , Swisscom and others.

He notes in his report that “ The business model for fiber to the home (FTTH) is a tough one to make fly. Despite the increasing pressure (competitive and political) for wireline copper operators to upgrade their networks to FTTH, the economics of the business model scare both the telcos themselves and their shareholders or financiers… It’s virtually impossible for FTTH to pay for itself in less than five years unless takeup is at least 30 percent, and even then a time frame of seven to eight years is more realistic considering known conditions in most developed markets” This bleak assessment of the business case for FTTH applies not only to carriers but also to municipal fiber builders as well.

However M. Felten clearly demonstrates that “Although it might be perceived by most incumbents as going against the grain, opening up a new FTTH network to competitors is actually an efficient way to increase takeup without sacrificing strategic positioning. It has a significant impact on the reduction of the payback as it generates additional revenue from low ARPU but high-margin wholesale customers.”

I would also add that if the carrier deploys point to point open access fiber infrastructure it opens up new business opportunities such as customer owned fiber (as advocated by Google and others) and bundling cost of fiber and Internet with customer’s energy bill, as in the case of Swisscom. For more details please contact Benoit Felten at Yankee Group BFelten@yankeegroup.com or visit his excellent blog on the subject http://www.fiberevolution.com/ -- BSA]