Internet Thought

CONSUMER PROTECTION - MEETING THE EXPECTATIONS OF THE CONNECTED

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:23:00 +0000

Moderator: Mr. C. Cheah, Deputy Chair, Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), Australia

GSR Discussion Paper on Consumer protection: meeting the expectations of the connected, [presentation]
Ms. Rosalind Stevens, Senior Telecom Expert

Interactive panel discussion:

Educated ICT consumers call for clear information on what they get for their money: are market players playing the game?
Protecting the rights of the 21st Century consumer: privacy and online protection issues
Strengthening ICT consumers’ rights and empowering consumers

Panelists:

Ms. M. Ajam, Board Member and Head of Information and Consumer Affairs Unit, TRA, Lebanon
Mr. D. Gross, Partner, Wiley Rein LLP
Mr. Md. Mahbubor Rahman, Commissioner, Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC), Bangladesh
Mr. C. Njoroge, Director General, Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK), Kenya

mr. Njoroge: The biggest challenge to regulators in developing nations is the underdevelopment of the nation. For instance how do you warn for scams if your population can't read or write.
ms. Ajam: Consumer Affairs regulation is important in our country. It takes quite a while to be agreed in parliament, but we're almost ready. We're also launching a code of practice on Value Added Services. We work on customer complaints as well. We're working with the Ministry of Trade to create a synergy with the general consumer fair trade organisation. They already had a hotline and we worked with them on the problems they encountered with telecom operators. We're hesitating to launch a national campaign until the new consumer laws are in force. But if they are next year, we will start this campaign.
mr. Gross: Talks about the situation in the USA. The USA has a very difficult legaslative situation with regards to consumer protection. Everyone tries to balance the interests of the consumers with the interests of others. Competition is best to serve consumer protection. Doesn't believe that the complaints are rising as quickly as the amount of subscriber. Only 3 per million mobile subs complain to the FCC and 7 per 1 million wireline subs complain the to the FCC. He praises the telecom industry for its efforts to protect consumers. (I wonder who is normally paying his fee, it can't be consumer advocacy groups)
mr. Rahman: Explains all the laws regarding consumer protection in Bangladesh.

Question from the floor weren't really interesting or wildly exciting. yes you need to protect the customer. Competition helps. Tunisia just checks all offers to consumers before they get on the market , to see if they aren't too difficult for consumers.

SESSION 2: IMPACT OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS ON REGULATION - LESSONS LEARNED

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:42:00 +0000

14:00 - 15:30 SESSION 2: IMPACT OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS ON REGULATION - LESSONS LEARNED

Moderator: Mr. J. Genachowski, Chairman, Federal Communications Commission (FCC), United States

GSR Discussion Paper on Impact of effective regulation on investment: an investor’s perspective,
Ms. Lynne Dorward, CRO, Zain Group

GSR Discussion Paper on Effective regulation: the “stimulus plan” for the ICT sector, [presentation]
Ms. Mandla Msimang, Managing Director, Pygma Consulting

Interactive panel discussion:

The importance of effective regulation in light of the global economic downturn and the financial crisis
What regulators can do to attract and secure investment in the sector: hands on or hands off?
The crisis: a call for government intervention and more public-private partnerships?
Who will pay for NGN infrastructure now?

Panelists:

Dr. A. Hiasat, Chairman of the Board and CEO, Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC), Jordan
Mr. M. Kurth, President, Federal Network Agency, Germany
Mr. C. Lopez-Blanco, Director of International Office, Telefonica, Spain

I won't type everything being said here. The presentations will be up later or are up now. So I'll save my wrists and type only the discussions and maybe some original things I hadn't heard yet.

Mod: How can we not let this crisis go to waste?
BNetzA: This industry has already survived one crisis. so I am optimistic. Also if you look at innovation in the industry, it is amazing to see how much there is going on. the Smartphone is a good example. People want to use it and want to use it more. But it is about getting more access to it. Wireless in my opinion is a good solution for many places in the world. Stability of regulation is also important it is not about light touch or even a regulatory holiday. Countries are different, so we will have different regulatory regimes here and there. We should only regulate where market forces work. We must be aware that heavy competition stimulates investment and then we can step away as a regulator. PPP is good but only in areas where there are areas where competition and private investment doesn't work. And we do have to realize that we have intermodal competition. We learned our lessen in the last 15 year. We need to have open access, legal content should be accessible. The openness of networks and interconnection is of great importance.

TRC Jordan: Thanks the writers for the papers. Crisises don't last. They generally take some years, but regulation is for 10 -15 years. Licenses are there for 10-20 years. We can have a look at some exemptions so to encourage investment. Awarding spectrum maybe even for free might stimulate growth too. In the third world we should couple investment in spectrum with the investment in broadband. So that if you get a spectrum license you will also invest in Broadband

Telefonica: One of the central beliefs is that the crisis is the result of a lack of regulation. I cannot agree with that. More regulation by itself is not an advantage. We need to understand the big difference between the financial sector and the telecom sector. The telecom sector is suffering less, probably because we suffered a crisis a few years ago. We know regulation well. We think that regulation must and will play a critical role. We know as both an incumbent and new entrant the role of regulation. We are resilient, but not immune to the crisis. I think the question is how the telecom sector can promote recovery. There are four questions:
- What is the role of the telecom sector. How do we promote new services in the IP world
- How to build the new infrastructures of the 21st century.
- What is the social responsibility of this sector
-the roll of the public sector in the roll out of new networks. There is no one size fits all roll for the government. We think the public sector can play a role, but governments shouldn't violate the traditions of this sector. We as Telefonica have rolled out new networks in Latin America. It was the private sector that delivered that.

The delegate from Cyprus: I agree with Telefonica. I can see the regulator as a facilitator to investment. But I don't see a role for the regulator in investing. Also if we see that a lack of broadband access is a social problem, than that shouldn't be impacted by the regulator. Gentleman from South Asia going on for 5 minutes. Other gentleman: disagrees with the idea that the financial crisis isn't a problem for the telecom sector. Gentleman from Sierra Leone. Would the stimulus not need to go directly to the consumer. Saudi Arabia: It seems to us the wireless industry is making the same mistake as with 3G. They are over investing and they are paying huge amounts of money for buckets of air and I would like your comments on that. Lady asking question on in country consolidations.

Answer Ms. Msimang, the biggest problem is that regulators are not consistent in their approach and are changing regulations half way through an investment. Also I would encourage regulators to do a cost benefit analysis.
Answer ms. Dorward: I had to smile about the statement by Saudi Arabia. the regulator is as much responsible for the high price as the telco. They set floor prices too high and already book the profits in their budgets. We're collectively involved in this.
Answer Telefonica: Regarding the role of public investment I would point to the European Commission who has a balanced approach to public investment in new networks. Furthermore it is about transparancy. It is a good approach. another aspect is that we are resillient sector, but that doesn't mean we don't feel the crisis. For us it is important to look at the new services. Mobile broadband is hit by the crisis. For us it is important that we are facilitated in getting as low as possible costs for investing in new netowrks through co-investment and shared infrastructure.
Answer Jordan: There is no one solution. We could agree to revenue sharing or retail price caps for certain offers. There is not one kind of support a regulator can give to the industry.
Answer BNetzA: Mobile services is growing strong and it is affordable. Just look at China and Africa. How do we guarantee that it will be affordable. If we study it, I think that we can't conclude that free licenses give cheap mobile access. It is about competition. We made 50 billion from the spectrum sale, but we won't from the new spectrum sale. But the German consumers haven't paid for this high investment in spectrum. They have some of the lowest prices in Europe. (OH YEAHH??? Rudolf)

Moderator Julius Genachowski: there is a crisis, but there is also an apportunity. We see examples from all over the world of innovation. We heard about the importance of a good regulatory regime. We heard about the importance of the private sector, of openness and transparancy and technological neutrality. There were many more themes to digest.

Presentation by Rory Macmillan at GSR09

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:45:00 +0000

Moderator: Dr. K. Shehadi, Chairman and CEO, Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), Lebanon

GSR Discussion Paper on Connectivity, Openness and Vulnerability: Challenges facing Regulators, [presentation]
Mr. Rory Macmillan, Founding Partner, Macmillan Keck

Interactive panel discussion:

Competition, consumers and content: time for converged regulators or greater cooperation?
Balancing expectations of various stakeholders
Understanding market transformation to cope with convergence, addressing new regulatory challenges

Three elements

Connectivity We have almost 100% penetration globally with mobile. This is one to one connectivity. The internet is increasing as well and it is many to many communication. 10% increase in broadband equals a 1.3% growth in GDP.

Openness What does it mean, ducts, LLU, Net Neutrlaity. All in all not an easy element

Vulnerability

Revolutions in Network archintecture. We now see telecoms as platforms and the end-to-end argument. You have the IP-hourglass where IP goes over everything and everything over IP. We see a wider range of technologies both in the fixed and in the wireless networks. We have more and more global competition and all kinds of services and applications companies competing with even more problems emerging when content is included. Regulators will have to deal with this.

Competition is the most important element. Regulators need to stimulate this. Regulators need to reduce the costs of physical elements of networks. One of the most important one is spectrum. Coase has argued that we should introduce more trading in spectrum and make it a tradable commodity. It shouldn’t be monopolized by the state or the military. The challenges are to identify what bands and how. But in order to do so Regulators will have to wrestle with broadcasters and military.

Regulators can assist in reducing the costs of building out new physical networks. The Lebanese TRA is an example where it tried to simplify the application for permits. In West Africa we’re using high voltage electricity networks to guide fiber past. Portugal has a reference duct powers.

Soft regulations works as well. For instance rules on how indoor wiring needs to be done.

We also see a change of the role of government where it is a seed investor in new networks. It used to get out of investment, but now it is back again and this creates new problems for regulators. Regulators have already problems with regulators and this may be more in the future.

How open should governments be. How many spectrum licenses. Do we have natural monopolies? How to regulate competition. Focus on the backhaul, how to regulate non-dominant and dominant operators symmetric and asymmetric. Tricky discussions on what to do with the opening up of fixed networks as it may be good business. Both KPN and Benoit Felten of the Yankee Group have argued in this favour

Key issues in vulnerability. Regulators often have no legal powers in many cases to deal with these issues. SIM card registration. Lots of soft power. Lawful interception.

All in all we can say that regulators are faced with a myriad of problems that go up and down the network stack, where it is hard for them to find their role. They have to deal with the wider ICT Ecosystem. It is necessary to identify durable regulatory principles. Regulatory process in a contentious environment. Regulation is preemptive dispute regulation.

Panel

Panelists:

Dr. A. Badawi, President, National Telecom Regulatory Authority of Egypt (NTRA), Egypt
Mr. N. Curien, Autorité de Régulation des Communications Electroniques et des Postes (ARCEP), France (presentation)
Mr. H. Osuna, President, Comisión Federal de Telecomunicaciones (COFETEL), Mexico
Mr. R. Mangtani, Director of Regulation, GSM Association

Mod: Do you still see a split between content and networks or is it coming together.

Mex: We are very much up with convergence and want a free flow of content. We need to be forward looking and the changes in the technology sector. This sector comes up with new ideas continuously.

Mod: Do you think that opening up the network is bad for investment? Like some incumbents say.

Mex: If you start with an open mind as an investor you may see that open networks may deliver a higher yield than if you have a closed mind.

Mod: How do you see the benefits of Converence

Egyptian Regulator: (reads a pre-preapared statement that doesn’t really answer anything) Technology and convergence offer new opportunities. And with that there will be new problems and regulatory will often not be able to keep up. New laws need to be technology neutral.

Mod: Maybe France can tell us if it is good to regulate content en telecoms by two different different regulates

ARCEP: we will defend the French language and switch to French. The telecom regulator is more an economic regulator. The content regulator is traditionally more political working on the importance of the role of the French content etc. Maybe in the future we will be integrated as things do change. New laws do dictate that we cooperate as regulators in France. Another element is frequencies and that is where we meet more. It is clear with the Digital dividends and here we have a digital coordination council. So there we meet. Third element is that content isn’t traditional audio visual content any more. It is now on the internet. It may not be wise any more to have regulators who are focussing on different networks.

Mod: What do you think of Next Generation Access. Can the Mobile networks get access and promote this?

GSMA: First I want to correct mr. MacMillan, intelligence needs to be in the network as well as in the edge. For instance we need Session Border controllers. Now, going on we need the new networks based on 3G and 4G and we will be competing with the fixed network

Mod: Mob providers have had a privileged relationship with the customer. Do you see it as a problem that the customer is becoming more liberated

GSMA: well we are opening up a lot more. Walled Garden’s are going away.

Mod: Rory what do you think? Are mobile operators doing enough?

Rory: well it all depends on the audience here… are the operators, or regulators… (laughter). But coming back to the edge and center debate. It is now about doing things in the right place in the network. This may be in the core, but also in the edge. It is about where competition can be usefully supported. The judgement regulators have to make is whether it should allow some control. You can look at Carterphone, but also at iPhone. It is a difficult question.

Mod: I do feel that mobile operators hate to loose their control of the customer.

GSMA: Just look at the iPhone. 2 billion itunes downloads without the operator being involved.

Egypt: Openness increases traffic and increased traffic creates revenues for operators. However we haven’t heard much from mobile operators about this yet as mobile data isn’t that popular yet in my country.

Mexico: we’re in much the same situation as Egypt, though maybe a different phase. More and more companies are understanding that the increase in usage is the result of openness. Consumers will choose the network is the most open.

France: Convergence is a win-win for all. It fills the networks, fixed and mobile. It is a win for consumer if they get more free access. If they get richer access. We need to find a balance so that disputes between stakeholders don’t destroy what we have. We have two large integrated operators in France SFR and France Telecom. Their long time survival depends on their integration. We are very fortunate in France to have effective competition. We do see that all operators are investing in France in new network. The incumbent as well as the challengers. The incumbent may threaten not to , but the challengers make sure they need to.

Mod: on the aspect of vulnerability to what extend have regulators failed until now. We do see a bit of self-regulation.

Rory: the whole control issue has flipped. The customer is now in charge. It used to be the telecomprovider. Customer demand is also firing the innovation in dealing with the vulnerability issue. It is an open question if they regulator should be involved. It is about trust in the end. I wonder if trust is a currency. Trust has to be earned. The more competition the more possibility to earn trust. So regulation may not be.

Comments from the floor:

Gentleman: Licensing is itself very restrictive. We should open it up. Also we should look at our billing structure. Billing is now voice and time based. Data is not really part of it. We need to change our billing relationship in order to make clear that the future lies in data. Gentleman from Middle East. We have this vision as a regulator that the customer will own its own terminal and than choose its own network. We have new building developments where we have convinced the facility provider and the builder to build in the fibre networks from day one and to open this up to all networks. Gentleman from Africa: we agree that competition stimulates development. But competition also brings risks. So what should the regulator do on tarrif structures as there is now risk. Secondly convergence has effect on QoS. What should the regulator do to stimulate QoS. Gentleman from the middle east: I think that IMS will deliver a solution to the vulnerability problems. Operators will need to implement this and deliver the future fixed mobile integration. The next generation IMS will deliver also many controls for content players in the network. Gentleman from Wimax forum: reads a prepared statement. Next generation mobile is here already. Countries can benefit from this technology as soon as regulators assign 2.3Ghz and 2.5Ghz to Wimax operators. Gentleman from the Middle East: We don’t know where convergence is now. We should question the role of the regulator. The regulator is often required to negotiate with the government for instance to get military frequencies. On the other hand we have to be scary enough to the private sector. We have to be multiple things. Technology Neutral is not the answer when it means technology ignorant. Regulators should look like the government, but they should consist of ex-private sector people. They should understand the technology and business well.

ARCEP: Two comments… what the consumer want is to have everything and for a low price (all you can eat) The network also doesn’t care anymore what the content costs. The big issue is therefore to look at the cost of connectivity.

Mexico: We need to change our frame of mind on how to deliver connectivity and not just voice.

Egypt: Convergence is necessary for developing nations. Escpecially if they hope to leap frog.

GSMA: We need convergence, but we need to be aware of the regulatory problems that for instance cloud services bring.

My notes on the report on the GILF 2009.

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:31:00 +0000

Dr. Saad Al Barrak CEOof ZAIN was the chairman for yesterdays GILF and he reports back on the forum. I just heard that he became chairman because he has a tendency to ask difficult questions and be direct. Chairman's have to be polite ;-) There are BTW over 900 registered attendants

Some of the results were:

With regards to the Financial Crisis there needs to be investment in broadband for economic recovery and growth. Need for predictable stable regulation. Harmonisation of regulatory frmaeworks regionally, where beneficial. Leverage harmonized radio-frequency spectrum and refarm it as there are many places where the military has too much spectrum and some other entities think they have divine rights on spectrum. Which is an outdated concept belonging in the 18th century. He also asks for light touch regulation and not too heavy handed taxation as some regulators even tax when someone sneezes.

Universal Access. USF is good concept. need more industry role in implementation. Also need to release funds for network roll-out. Technological neutrality - allow investors to choose to reach under/unserved populations. To be very specific or technology biased. Regulators shouldn't copy the mistakes of mobile companies. Mobile companies for a long time forgot they were a service company and not a technological engineering firm, where the customer wasn't at the center. And of course Sustainable business models are needed.

On IP/Telecom Convergence: Need long term horizon view. Set aside significant spectum to support future growth convergence and new services. Experiment with innovation zones of spectrum to test new technologies and approaches. Lighter regulation and flexibility to allow for tech/market evolution. Avoid prescribing specific buisness model. ITU needs to assist member with spectrum, including with white spaces.

Conclusions: Industry ready and willing to work with regulators and ministries. Seeking collaborative engagement, identify areas of common interests. In Zain we say that collaboration is like a romance. We need to have a romantic relation with our regulators. The aim is for a very vibrant sector to help connect the unconnected.

There are some remarks from the room. I'll try not to identify the speakers.
A gentleman from south Asia uses quite alot of time to say not too much except that we need investment in underserved areas. A gentleman from the middle east seems not to be to much in agreement with some of the conclusions. Another gentleman from the middle east asks for more coopetition between companies. Another gentleman doesn't want to subsidize as it doesn't enable people to become more capable themselves. It has a parasitic effect in the long term. A representative of a big telco in the Middle East talks about the need for regulation but also a need for some regulators to back off. He says he won't name which regulators because he wants to remain good friends. The Chair of the Lebanese Regulators who is chairing, mr. Kamal Shedadi, says he sees the best regulator as one that doesn't need to be too visible, but that is also dependent upon the companies playing by the rules. This also goes for mobile companies who once were new entrants, but now act like incumbents. The president of one of the largest Sub Saharan African telco's talks about how mobile are the new competitors and then quickly questions whether it is good to local loop unbundling as the mobile operators don't need to unbundle.

Blogging from the ITU's Global Symposium for Regulators

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:59:00 +0000

I have arrived at the Global Symposium for Regulators 2009. It is a yearly conference organised by the ITU. I'll try to update you on what is going on here and what is being discussed. It is definitely a different conference. Let me give you some first impressions.

I don't have an opinion on Lebanon yet as I arrived at midnight and my hotel is a short walk from the conference hotel. The conference hotel is an oppulent affair called the Habtoor. They have a $25000 a night penthouse. So, a serious hotel, which was seriously out of my ITU daily allowance. Despite the opulence, there was no coffee for those arriving.

The swag bag was good: the usual memory stick, a book and a DVD on Lebanon and an umbrella. This last bit surprises me as the weather is supposed to be very good for the coming days.

The setup of the room is definitely different than what I am used to from the internet meetings like RIPE or last weeks Ecomm09 in Amsterdam. The seating is arranged with ITU- countries and other members in the front. AT&T is right up front. . I have to sit in the back as I am an observer. There are certain people who have VIP on their badge, which is probably very important for some reason or another. Translation is provided in 5 languages and of course the first speaker spoke Arabic so we do use it.

Interesting news was that yesterdays session of the GILF was opened by the minister of telecoms of Lebanon who wasn't a minister any more by the evening. There is a new minister now in Lebanon.

The Future of Interconnection, or why we continue to pay for Voice

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:39:00 +0000

My second presentation at Emerging Communications Europe 2009 (Ecomm2009). The outline is: One would expect that because of the rise of data we wouldn’t have to pay for voice anymore, this won’t happen because:

With data overtaking voice even on mobile networks, one would expect that soon we don’t pay for voice anymore
We accept paying by the minute because voice is highly valued and it is a familiar way of billing
The way voice interconnection is paid for in Europe is the reason we are stuck with paying by the minute
Only when the current interconnection model is removed will voice be ‘free’

The Future of Interconnection, why you will continue to pay for Voice

View more presentations from Raindeer.

Why all telecom companies should follow Free.Fr's example

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:36:00 +0000

I just finished my talk at the Emerging Communications Conference in Amsterdam. It was great fun to give and Brough asked the question he said he would ask. The answer is in the backup-slides. It was fun giving the presentation, unfortunately noone from Free in the audience :-)

Why all Telecom Marketing and Product management is wrong

View more presentations from Raindeer.

(Video) How the internet works, what peering is and what exchanges are

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:45:00 +0000

Vincent Rais, a mega-uber value reader pointed me to the topic of this article. Euro-IX, the European Internet Exchange Association held a competition for a movie that explains how the internet works and what the role of an Internet Exchange Point is and how peering works. The movie that was the result, is really good and much recommended if you ever need to explain it yourself, or need to understand it. (it comes with subtitles too) If you want to continue with your education, have a look at my explanation of peering and transit over at Ars Technica. (or have a look at the dr. Peering site)

Must read/see: Layar, Netflix saving millions, Telefonica invents FON on crack

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:41:00 +0000

Very Short post. Just some stuff that needs viewing:

Layar: Dutch company doing augmented reality browsers. Really the coolest stuff around. Wanting my next phone to support this (Android and iPhone)

How Netflix could save hundreds of Millions: Vijay Gill of Google calculates how much it would cost for Netflix to send all its traffic over the net instead of the US Mail. It would save hundreds of millions: Blog and Spreadsheet. According to some hardcore networking and peering geeks the numbers are conservative. Hat tip to Lantao

Telefonica doing some real inventing: Combining multiple DSL lines of different subscribers to one line for one user by combining several wifi access points. This is FON on steroids and crack. It opens up a vision of the future where your device would just look at how much spectrum and lines it can use depending upon its subscription and not anymore one accesspoint, one pc. Imagine combining UMTS/Wifi/Wimax and on top of that combining multiple wifi access points in that batch of wimax UMTS. I hope you can follow... Hat tip to Jap

I'll be speaking twice at Ecomm Europe in Amsterdam

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:22:00 +0000

Next month the Ecomm conference will be in Europe for the first time. The format is very interesting. Very short (10 minute) pitches from interesting people. Just to name a few:
James Enck (Eurotelcoblog)
Benoit Felten (Fiberevolution)
Frog Design
Martin Geddes (BT)
Brough Turner
The Google Wave Team
And a bunch of people that look just really cool.

Amazingly two of my proposals for a talk got accepted. Probably because I used bold statements and now lies on me the burden to deliver. My talks will be:

Almost all Marketing & Product Management of Telco Services is Wrong

Rudolf van der Berg, Management Consultant, Logica

Date: Wednesday, October 28

Time: 11:00 - 11:10 AM

Location: Transformatorhuis

Free designs and markets its services like a consumer electronics company would. Every 6 months new services. All for the same price package. No questions about profitability of an individual service. No difficulty in getting the billing right, because there is no billing. It's services are used a lot and Free is a very profitable company.

The Future of Interconnection

Rudolf van der Berg, Management Consultant, Logica

Date: Friday, October 30

Time: 5:20 - 5:35 PM

Location: Transformatorhuis

How peering and transit works, why this is different from the traditional way of telephony interconnection, why this has the entire GSM world up in arms and lastly why countries like India show this would be a good way forward

If you are there.... Please contact me. I hope we can meet up.

Ouch, KPN forgets it offers FTTH in Almere

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:22:00 +0000

KPN has launched a new website called "internetvergelijken.com", which is a website to compare internet subscriptions. The website only shows KPN DSL-subscriptions of KPN brands; KPN, Telfort, Het Net and XS4All. It however omits KPN's FTTH offers.

As all of you know Reggefiber has built an FTTH-network all the way into my house in Almere and KPN is the sole provider at the moment on that network. KPN has invested in a 41% stake in Reggefiber, so I thought I would be able to see the KPN fiber offer in my home.After all at 1000 euro/house connected it is quite a sizeable investment. Unfortunately this isn't the case. KPN seems to dislike people moving away from DSL to fiber and doesn't promote it's offer at all on this website (or by any other means as far as I can see, except for kpnglasvezel.nl).

The site also excludes providers who use KPN's network to offer their services, resellers and those that use KPN's copper but through Local Loop Unbundling (BBNed, Tele2 etc) and of course offers of cable providers like UPC, Ziggo or Kabel Noord are not shown. I can understand omitting cable as KPN doesn't get any money from customers going to these networks, but LLU and wholsale broadband access is real money for KPN. I once heard someone at KPN say: "I don't care who sells the copper as long as it gets sold. When they move to cable, that is when I get angry"

So my question to you Are the margins on DSL so good that it is more profitable not to get a return on a sunk investment in FTTH?

iUHBA networks says it will roll out $70B - network.. I say not likely

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 01:05:00 +0000

Today I saw this announcement on iUHBA's website. I have followed the company for quite a while because of the claims made by its director Neal Lachman (who aims to become the richest person in the world). The company announces that it will roll out a 10Gbps FTTH and wireless 802.11n combined network to 2.5 million wireless nodes and 37 million homes passed and all that in 6 years. All this on an initial investment of 2 billion dollars, which somehow will turn into a 70 billion investment. The numbers are way too big for my taste. Just think of it

- Raising 2 billion dollars, not a simple feat. But the best thing is that somehow this seems to grow to 70 billion in just 6 years as they say they need a 2 billion dollar investment for break even, but total costs of the project is 70 billion. What bank would be willing to loan this? On the other hand I know of some cable companies that got this kind of money from investors..so you never know
- Building and growing an organisation from 0 to Y6 25,500 personel
- 1 million wireless locations per year, to be finished in 2012
- 20 million subs and 37 million homes passed by 2016, that is 3 million homes per year or 12000 homes per workable day and at 30 homes per 3 man crew/day to connect I would say they would need a team of about 20000 to 30000 to get the work done.

The numbers are just too much and then when you search for the past of the people involved especially its director Lachman stands out for having many visions, but little success until now.

All in all, I'm very sceptical of this getting anywhere at all.

But of course I will promote Virgin Broadband for free on my blog.

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:33:00 +0000

It seems like Virgin UK broadband's ad agency spammed the blogosphere with its new ad and asked for feedback on it. Where feedback means; "could you please post it on your blog and be nice about it". James Enck already put a review up: "Cute, but pointless, and it does nothing to convey the sort of message this company should be telling regarding its competitive strengths." I can only say that I am glad that I got an e-mail explaining the ad, as otherwise I would never have known that:

We’ve recently been working on a new video to promote Virgin’s 50Mb broadband service, following on with the ‘Powerful Stuff’ idea. For the video, we’ve recreated the famous ‘When Harry Met Sally’ diner orgasm scene, but with a slight twist!

The video was shot with all the men in the diner thinking they were just extras in an advert. The reactions are genuine, which hopefully gives it a funny edge.

Unfortunately for Virgin I don't like When Harry met Sally, it makes me cringe everytime it is on TV. This ad, though more original than UPC's ad for Fiber Power makes me want to switch away as quickly as possible. Imagine this coming on tv, when you're on the phone with a friend. Nope, if they want funny, they should go to Hong Kong and see how real fiber is promoted.

Virgin's ad agency should have a look at what KPN does with its commercials. The current series of Generation KPN are quite good in promoting KPN.

WARNING: Virgin's ad is Not Safe For Work (with audio on)

From GigaOm: What a daughter's broken leg tells about broadband

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:54:00 +0000

This is just one of those stories that explains how our world changes through the internet, through access to highspeed broadband. There is no business case, there are just billions of examples.

http://gigaom.com/2009/08/17/what-my-daughters-broken-leg-taught-me-about-broadband/

OECD publishes Communications Outlook 2009

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:20:00 +0000

UPDATE the next morning: Tad Reynolds of the OECD commented below and on the OECD Facebook page. The OECD Facebook page contains a bit more stats. I knew I should have called Tad at midnight, just to ask him to clarify, but I didn't otherwise I would have written a totally different article (something along the lines of OECD publishes unclear chapter in Comms Outlook 2009. Here are Tads comments.

Thanks Rudolf. The OECD basket methodologies define a number of calls (rather than minutes) which then can vary in terms of duration. So the high basket covers 1680 calls (which works out to 2952 minutes per year) using the methodology. This works out to around 4 hours a month of outgoing calls which is a good size in Europe but on the low end of typical consumption patters in Canada and the United States.

We will work to correct and clarify the situation in the PDF version.

Original: It's here, it's full of statistics! Statistics we can all fight over! The OECD Communications Outlook 2009 (in online PDF) is every telco business/regulatory geeks best friend! And boy have I found some statistics to fight over already on page 280.

It aren't even the broadband stats, sorry haven't looked at them yet. Nope, the mobile pricing stats are the one's I want to start a fight over. I don't know who, but someone in the mobile industry convinced the polite and naive OECD that 760 mobile minutes (outgoing) per year is medium usage and 1680 minutes per year is high usage. That is respectively 65 minutes and 140 minutes per month. As I wrote in a previous post the average usage in most of Telenor's countries of operation is higher then that. Developing nations like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Thailand all reach these numbers. Only Serbia doesn't.

In the USA (as the OECD reports as well) the average usage is 5-6 times this number. And as the US is a country with high fixed an low usage costs, it gets an especially bad deal in this comparison. The OECD acknowledges this, but I hope that next year the medium usage will be at least at the medium usage of countries like Sweden, Denmark or The Netherlands (200-300 minutes).(and now I will take my medication and calm down again)

Basic truths about broadband speeds (reaction to Kevin Walsh on GigaOm)

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 10:07:00 +0000

On GigaOm Kevin Walsh has written down some basic truths about broadband, as he sees them. He sees a big problem with politicians wanting the wrong things when it comes to guarantees on bandwidth speeds. As he says:

Many believe that broadband service providers selling, say, a 5Mbps service should be required to set aside the same amount of capacity in order to fulfill that implicit service-level agreement (SLA). In other words, if you pay for 5Mbps, it’s there when you need it. But the reality is that networks, just like hotels and airplanes, are almost always oversubscribed — the owners of these assets sell more capacity than they have available.

Unfortunately this article messes things up just as badly as the politicians criticized. I reacted in the comments and post the comment here too. There are the important elements that need considering.

The speed of the line from the end-user to the local aggregation point (switch, cable head-end). DSL and wireless technologies are particularly crappy, as the speed the end-user can have is a function of the distance the end-user is from the DSLAM or the antenna. Unfortunately there are still telco’s that sell up to 8mbit or up to 20mbit subscriptions that can only attain 4-8mbit/s because of distance limitations. The really nasty one’s try to upsell the customer to a top tier 20mbit/s line where only 4mbit is achievable and so a 4mbit/s subscription would have sufficed
The speeds that can attained between 6pm and 10pm and the speeds that can be attained between 2am and 6am. These can be limited by oversubscription on:

a. the local segment (cable and wireless) and
b. on the ISP’s WAN
c. from the ISP to the rest of the world

Oversubscription on the local segment is a fact of life on cable and wireless networks. It is a shared medium. This should be clear to end-users. It is not bad, it is a fact of life. It’s effect is that between 6pm and 10pm the speeds can be erratic. between 2am and 6am the listed speeds can quite often be attained.

Oversubscription on the WAN is part of the problem you’re describing above. Oversubscription on the WAN is not an economic fact, it is a result of crappy network planning. Oversubscription on the WAN can be completely unnoticed by the end-user if the network operator builds enough bandwidth into it’s WAN. If the network owner and the ISP are the same entity, this shouldn’t be a problem. With traffic growing 50% per year proper network management dictates that an oversupply of bandwidth is necessary anyways. Statistics from the AMS-IX in Amsterdam show that peak traffic is about 50% higher than average and three times higher than the bottom. So next year your average is the same as today’s peak and in 2.5 years even the bottom is at today’s peak. WAN Bandwidth is a problem in some countries like the UK and the USA where the costs of backhaul to and from smaller communities are extremely high because of regulatory and/or competitive problems. Mind you, technical and cost limitations are often not important here, as the costs of installing faster equipment is often not prohibitively high. (DWDM, 10Gbit/s ethernet etc) This also means that you don’t have to build your network in a fashion where everyone can achieve max speeds at the exact same moment. Just carefully planning it. Like the highway system, where we don’t expect all car drivers in the US to show up at the Brooklyn Bridge at the same moment (or to start driving at the same moment at all, regardless of location).

The costs of traffic from the ISP to the rest of the world is governed by the economic laws of peering and transit. For an explanation see my article on Ars Technica. Whether enough is available to the end-user is dependent upon how easy it is for an ISP to get peerings with the most important networks (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Akamai etc) and the local costs of transit. Many developing nations find that their biggest problem lie here:

The national incumbent monopolizes transit traffic and charges outrages amounts for it.
No local internet exhanges to keep local traffic local.
No possibilities for local peerings with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo etc meaning that the transit link gets hit harder.)

Amsterdam, London, New York are places with low costs for transit ($4/mbit/s/month) and many peering opportunities, so any network operating there should be able to get enough traffic for their end-users. Dave Farber once mentioned that traffic costs were only between 1%-5% of a subscription.
So, to conclude:

Politicians are right to complain when listed speeds on the local loop cannot be attained because of distance problems. Providers of DSL and wireless should be put in the doghouse for this. The should inform their customers properly of what speeds can really be achieved.
Cable networks and wireless networks could be required to publish the mean and median speeds users can attain between 6pm and 10pm.
Problems on the WAN and on the interconnect to the rest of the world are either a result of bad investing in backhaul or because of regulatory and competition problems. If that is the case the ISP should inform its customers of the situation, explain why this is the case and show how it deals with distributing a scarce resource among all the users. A good example is the Plusnet DSL network in the UK who are very clear on how they prioritize network traffic between different classes of customers.

Mobile termination in non CPP countries

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:14:00 +0000

As I only discovered two days ago, Ofcom is busy with a consultation on the future of mobile termination charges.http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/mobilecallterm/

On the site you can find a report by Analysys Mason that describes the situation with regards to mobile termination tariffs in Canada, HongKong, Singapore and the USA. http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/mobilecallterm/annex8_1.pdf
One of the interesting conclusions is, that for elements like penetration it doesn't really seem to matter which tariff scheme is used, but it does affect the usage of mobile telephony.

Also have a look at Sri Lanka, the only country to have decided to go to CPP, but decided not to after a wave of protest in the country on the issue. http://www.trc.gov.lk/images/pdf/cppeng.pdf their approved retail tariffs are interesting to look at too. http://www.trc.gov.lk/press-room/approved-tariffs/91-sri-lanka-telecom-plc.html

(Mobile) termination rates may end your career

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:40:00 +0000

I have been quite critical on "termination charges". One reaction I received to my previous post via e-mail was quite eye-opening.

I have a friend, he was a member of the board of the regulator in XXXX. He ‘was’ because next day after regulator presented decision to lower MTRs, parliament (instead approving this decision) voted to change the CEO and the board. He was a member of dispute resolution commission. While resolving an ordinary dispute one of the sides started to influence him. Finally some people were trying to shut him. That’s more or less realistic picture of regulatory environment in developing country.

As a Dutchman I don't know what corruption is. It doesn't really exist here as far as I know. Maybe I'm blind, but we're doing pretty well according to Transparency International and World Audit Corruption. However, most countries are fighting a 2 TRILLION dollar industry (services (fixed and mobile)and equipment), when they want to change the rules to make sure that their country benefits from (mobile) telecommunications. To see some recent examples look for instance to these postings by Steve Song about telecoms in Africa, or at Russia aiming to ban foreign VoIP. Benefiting often means more for the same money, or more for less money and this is perceived as a loss by the local telecommunications companies.

You know, it's an increase in telecommunications usage that benefits economies, not an increase in telecommunications revenues, but that is awfully easy to say from the Northern bit of Europe

Low (mobile) termination costs are good for the poor

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:11:00 +0000

I've been interested in mobile termination rates for quite a while and I've blogged about it previously. In recent days I've been looking at it again for a variety of reasons and I found some new data, which might are interesting in the debate and that show that low termination rates or no termination rates are beneficial to poor people and to competition in general. I also read this article by Emma Buckland or Analysys Mason, who claims that in developing countries, where almost all mobile users are prepaid, a move to MPP would be even less popular.
But first, what was it all about again.

In most countries in the world, if you call a telephone number, your network will pay some money to the receiving network for the termination of the call. This system is called, Calling Party Pays. The effect is that in those countries the receiving of calls is free. The amount that needs to be paid (termination rate) is often determined by the regulator. If the market would set it, it would result in termination monopolies and as Orange in the The Netherlands once showed, you can raise termination costs without affecting incoming call levels, so it's essentially free money. The height of the termination rate is very contentious. Even more so because many regulators have deemed it right that some networks should receive more than others (asymmetric). Incumbents less than new entrants and mobile more than VoIP and fixed lines. Termination rates can be anywhere between $0.004 cents per minute (India) to $0.20 cents per minute (calling a mobile in Bulgaria). For a nice overview of the EU, see these graphs of the ERG.

There are a few countries that have a system that is known either as Bill and Keep or Receiving Party Pays or Mobile Party Pays. The way this is generally implemented is that the networks of the calling parties do not pay each other at all for the traffic terminated on the other's network. (I don't know of any country that has implemented a system that works like a collect call, where the receiving parties network pays back to the originating parties network) Countries that have this model are the USA, Canada, Sri Lanka, Singapore. There isn't one effect of this model, as in the USA you buy a bucket of minutes and whether it's an incoming or an outgoing call, your bucket is emptied) but in Singapore and Sri Lanka incoming calls are free.

There are many countries who have moved away from this model to CPP (like France and China). Sri Lanka had decided to move to CPP, but reversed that decision after an uproar in the country. So you would expect CPP be better for competition, better for consumers etc. And this is argued by the GSMA. And well, that just isn't true. The exact opposite is the case. Scott Marcus wrote a good comparison of CPP vs Bill and Keep and pointed to the larger amount of minutes of use in BAK countries.

One of the problems with the comparisons between BAK and CPP however is that they are often written in a black and white fashion. The main argument against BAK is that you would have to pay for incoming calls, that no user would/should accept this. Often the argument is used that it is bad for low usage and pre-paid customers as in CPP the operator gets income from their incoming calls too. What isn't done however is to make a comparison between countries with a high termination rate and a low termination rate in CPP countries. It is here that you can see some very interesting developments.

India is the ultimate country when it comes to low termination rates. They are at 20 paise per minute or $0.004/minute. Idea Cellular there reports around 400 minutes of use and an ARPU of $5.70. Interestingly they see a decline in average minutes of use, because of more multi-SIM customers. So an average customer may use more minutes, but on various SIM's. Almost all of these customers are on pre-paid subscriptions. Now contrast this to some other countries in the world.

Telenor in it's quarterly reports gives a good insight into the minutes of use for all of it's countries.
Pakistan has termination rates set at $0.013 per minute. For Pakistan they give 150 minutes of use on average.

Thailand's termination rates are at around $0.02 per minute. In Thailand there are on average 300 minutes of use.
In Bangladesh the termination rate is at $0.0026 per minute and the Grameen Phone customers call 300 minutes of use.
All three countries aren't rich, but have mobile penetration rates of 30% or more and compound average growth rates of over 50 %, which means that with 2 years they will be above 60% market penetration.

Now compare this to Telenor's European operations, neither Norway, Denmark or Sweden reach more than 250 minutes of use. Serbia gets 100 minutes of use. What are the termination rates in these countries?
Norway - between $0.08 and $0.14 and 250 mins of use
Denmark - between $0.10 and $0.14 and 200 mins of use
Sweden - $0.06 and 220 mins of use

So the poorer countries in this example have more minutes of use and a lower termination rate. Given the CAGR in the poor countries it can't be said that they don't see an uptake of mobile phone usage. Despite even the fact that in these countries most people use pre-paid mobiles. All in all to me this implies that there is much to say in favour of decreasing mobile termination rates and maybe to abolish them all together. Also I would expect that developing nations would be in favour of such a move as it becomes clear that the nations with the lowest termination charge are the one's with the highes minutes of use.

Now even RIM says Etisalat was hacking Blackberries

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:36:00 +0000

As reported last week, Etisalat installed software to intercept communications from Blackberries on their customers Blackberries. The software, called Interceptor, was developed by SS8 and was of rather shoddy quality, leading to decreased battery times and slower Blackberries. Etisalat denied any wrong doing and claimed it was an upgrade that would improve 2G to 3G handover. Many people, including me, called this utterly bogus.

Now an unsuspected source of support has come. RIM itself has developed and released a security update to remove the SS8 Interceptor application. Here is their announcement:

Registration App Remover for BlackBerry smartphones

Recently an update may have been provided to you by Etisalat for your BlackBerry Handheld via a WAP push. The Etisalat update is not a RIM-authorized update and was not developed by RIM. Independent sources have concluded that the Etisalat update is not designed to improve performance of your BlackBerry Handheld, but rather to send received messages back to a central server. RIM has developed this software (“Software”) that will enable you to remove the Etisalat update.

Etisalat and SS8 hacking your Blackberry for (un) lawful interception

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:46:00 +0000

It seems the UAE had some trouble reading Blackberry communications and turned to SS8 for a solution. SS8 suggested an unobtrusive program to be loaded on all Etisalat's customers Blackberry's. 'Trust me guv, nobody will notice'... yeah right. The programme eats batteries for lunch and the server it needed to communicate back with was overloaded (IDIOTS, like you don't know how many devices there are!). Annoyed Blackberry users saw their devices slow down to a crawl and started to complain. A little investigation later and a programmer found out the so called performance upgrade rolled out to all Blackberry users was a snooping programme by the SS8 company.

As some of you might know I've worked on the data retention and lawful interception in the past. I was at the Ministry of Economic Affairs, writing obligations into the Dutch Telecommunications law (chapter 13). The rules of lawful interception are that:

you perform it in a way that the target cannot identify whether he/she is being intercepted.
the intercepted data is transferred to the government as is and with precautions against tampering with the data on the side of the telecommunications company and on the side of the law enforcement agency.
all the communications of the target are intercepted, regardless of the service/channel used (so GSM, GPRS, UMTS etc)

The trouble is that a target may irritate a law enforcement agency by using encrypted communications. So when you intercept that according to the rules, you get intercepted communication that you can't read. (but still can perform cool traffic analysis on, however that is for a different post.) In the past we've seen complaints about Skype and the German/Dutch Cryptophone. Blackberry is also one of the naughty boys who seem to have encryption in place. Not a very good one as the NSA doesn't like it for Obama and from what I can find on the net, the Indians claim to have cracked it.

For the UAE it seems to have been too difficult to do cryptanalysis on the Blackberry. They must have asked around the world of lawful interception vendors and found one who was able to sell them a 'solution'. From personal experience I can tell you that the world of lawful interception vendors is full with dodgy, shady, snake oil vendors. If ever you want to see some of them, go to the ISS world conference. It is way fun as you can read in this Wired story :-) And well SS8 is one of the more respectable ones in this dodgy world. But they're still out to make a quick buck and now have been found with their pants down. This is not the way to do proper interception and even if the technology would have worked as advertised chances are that some Blackberry developer would have figured this one out within no time and would have spilled the beans on-line. What programmer doesn't want to know how a proprietary performance update works.

Now the UAE is no democracy and it doesn't care much for 'rights' as demonstrated in this video, so it doesn't care about due process, but it does care about 'face' and I bet SS8 will have quite some trouble to try and save it's masters face ..... or face a 'similar' punishment as the grain salesman in the video. (who wants to bet that SS8 will not be at ISS World Dubai in 2010?)

Update: I did some searching around and came across this brilliant posting on the Blackberry boards. To really make everything very clear the files in the update were in a directory named: ss8/interceptor.... yeah right... like we don't have Google these days.

UPC Fiber Power rips off Hong Kong FTTH Commercial (badly)

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:43:00 +0000

The orginal commercial is funny. It has farts in it.

Here the UPC-commercial, no farts, not funny

For those people who want to know which commercials UPC's creative team will rip off in the future?

http://www.youtube.com/user/HKBNatUTube

for all Hongkong city telecom commercials.

Fiber to my Home, the installation in home

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:04:00 +0000

Today fiber was installed in my home. You've seen the previous installments how fiber was just outside my front door. Today the last meter was bridged. This was done by a company called Schuuring. They apparantely are looking for more people to help out. Two people came. One made sure that the fiber got from the front door to the utilities closet. The second guy did the final work, make the fiber ready for use.

The first guy
He started with opening the latch to the area between the floor and the ground, there is some space there to crouch. After this he opened up the stones in the street and dug a small hole to get the slack fiber from under the pavement.

From Fibre to my Home

There is about 10m slack available

From Fibre to my Home

A hole is drilled in the outside wall to bring the fiber in. The fiber is run through and the hole is filled with some kind of elastic glue.

From Fibre to my Home

The slack is fed into the crouching space and left there. The last two meter is pushed upwards into the utilities closet.

From Fibre to my Home

The first guy is then almost finished. He cleans up after himself, hammers the stones back in. Tells the second guy that he has chipped a stone and promises that it will be replaced. His final task is to leave a plastic bag with a connection set for the second guy. Good thing to know. If the first guy doesn't hammer the stones back in properly and I would complain later on, than he has to come back on his own dime and fix the problem. So he was committed to hammering the stones back into the pavement the right way. (In 5 years time those stones will hover above the rest of the pavement I expect :-) )All in all this took about 15-20 minutes.

From Fibre to my Home

The second guy
The second guy came about half an hour later. He told me that they had been told not to allow pictures as some of the stuff was proprietary and "copyrighted". He was a young guy and I don't want to bring him into trouble. It seems Arcadis checks up on their work and well. Arcadis developed an online model for the Ministery of Economic Affairs which you can use to calculate the costs of installing a fiber network in The Netherlands. I used it for the calculations in my OECD paper.

I did get some pictures of his kit and the way the fiber was installed. The install itself takes less then 15 minutes and is mostly aimed at getting various layers of the fibers and then connecting the fiber to the connectors (which come with fiber attached). That then is put into the metering closet in the grey cabinet.

From Fibre to my Home

The splicer! Very cool with a small LCD screen.

From Fibre to my Home

The whole shebang installed in my utility closet. Next to it you can see my Alice DSL modem.

From Fibre to my Home

The Finished product.

The guy gave me some interesting information as well. An installer is required to do 11 installs per day. Homes like mine are easy. and they can do 20 of them on a good day. High Rise is difficult and takes more time. Older homes are also a pain. they sometimes need to drill straight from outside into the living room. A max of 6db signal loss is allowed. They try to do alot less, between 1 and 3. All in all the installation took only 15 minutes.

The line also needed to be tested. For this he used a unit by Kingfisher, pretty standard. What took the most time was getting someone on the phone at the central office. Those guys need to connect about 200 homes per day and they can be quite busy. There are 2 guys per central office. If someone finds a way in which the central office testing can be automated, that would be a great benefit. In my opinion. If you can get a testing unit to which you can hook up 500 to a thousand homes and have it communicate with the testing unit (or wirelessly to the guys mobile phone) that would be a major improvement to their workflow. Anything around 5 to 10 thousand euro would probably be worth the investment.

All in all this bit took another 15 minutes. 10 minutes for the waiting 5 for the testing.

Now I need to wait for KPN or Online to come up with a symmetrical offer for broadband to my home. Or shall I punish KPN and go for UPC for one year??

Bonus pictures
A picture of how Reggefiber promotes that people have signed up for fiber (glasvezel) in Zeewolde.

From Fibre to my Home

And some pictures of someone sitting in a tent in the street hooking up the fibers from individual homes to the main duct.

From Fibre to my Home

Dilemma: Do I choose Reggefiber/KPN or UPC

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:45:00 +0000

Maybe you readers can react and give me a clue of what I should do, because I am in a difficult spot here.
Tomorrow Reggefiber will install the FTTH in my home. Pictures will follow. So in a month or two, I will be able to get KPN over fiber here. Now you would imagine me to go for the fiber offer. I have promoted it everywhere. I still think that fiber is the coolest thing to happen in a long while... However this is the choice I am facing.

I currently spend 80 euro/month on Triple Play. Alice Internet 20/1 DSL+phone international 50 and UPC Royal TV.30
The TV is non-negotiable. BBC 1, 2, 3, 4 are watched alot here. KPN can't offer it yet.

KPN offers me 30/3 internet and free national calls at 55. So with UPC Royaal TV at 30 that makes 85.
UPC offers me 60/6 internet, free national and europe wide calls and UPC Royaal TV at 74 euro/month
UPC even offers me 90/6 internet, free national and europe wide calls and UPC Royaal TV at 84 euro/month

So what should I choose? Go for a year of Docsis 3.0 and hope KPN gets the point or go with fiber even though it misses the sparkles.

Please give a reaction in the comments

Price war in The Netherlands. UPC drops prices

rudolfvanderberg@gmail.com (Rudolf van der Berg) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:07:00 +0000

Well, UPC has declared war on KPN. It has drastically dropped its's prices as of today. As you might remember I named UPC as the price quality winner recently. Now it's for a similar offer also the cheaper option. The worst comparison is the 60/6 offer. KPN asks 110 euro for a 60/6 triple play offer. UPC asks 74 euro for a similar offer. KPN offers free viewing of the Dutch football league, but UPC throws in free calling in Europe (including Turkey)

Based on head-line speeds, KPN has a problem both in the fibre space as in the DSL-space. The public won't understand an argument based on the difference between Ethernet and Docsis 3.0 when it comes to fibre. The headline speeds of ADSL2+ are lower and the price difference is not substantial to UPC's 30mbit offer. For instance Telfort, KPN's cheap brand asks 34,95 for 20mbit and unlimited national calling. UPC asks 48, but throws in a free digital tv and a PVR for those customers that already have analogue Cable TV with UPC (almost 90% of the potential subs in UPC's region)