Fiberevolution

FTTH Council Europe Annual Conference in Lisbon

2010-02-08T15:02:46+01:00

Like I do every year, I will be attending the FTTH Council Europe Annual Conference in Lisbon on February 24-25th. This is a really special event for me as it's the greatest gathering of minds and matter on the topic of FTTx, and it's a great opportunity to meet with all those who count in this field and hear from all those who will count.

In case you are still undecided about attending the event (or if you just didn't know about it), I have asked the good folks at the FTTH Council Europe to hand me over a couple of free registrations to give away on www.fiberevolution.com and twitter. These registrations are worth 453 €, so it's not a little gift we are proposing here!

If you wish to win one of these registrations, you need to do something very simple:

a. if you're not a twitter user yet, you need to get a twitter account.
b. follow @fiberguy if you don't already do so.
c. send the following twitter message: 'Win a free pass for the 2-day FTTH Council Europe event in Lisbon on Feb. 24-25th with @fiberguy: http://bit.ly/b3eap9. Please RT! #ftth'

And that's it. On Friday, February 12th I will select the two winners out of the list of participants. It is very important that you tweet the message above exactly, letter for letter, or I won't be able to see your participation.

Definitive Views on GPON vs EP2P...

2010-02-05T10:00:00+01:00

If you were one of the early followers of Fiberevolution, you know that one of the first "visible" posts explored the issue of incumbent GPON deployment.I did not know it back then (although I found out real fast!), but I had stumbled upon one of the great religious wars of the NGA world (the other being cable vs. fiber.) I revisited the issue several times on this blog, and over the course of 18 months, I talked on this issue to numerous service providers and vendors.

Last November, I started to write a report that would summarize my views. This report, entitled GPON or EP2P: Choosing an FTTH Architecture is the result of these discussions and a string of specific interviews. Vendors interviewed include Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, Hitachi, LG-Nortel, Ericsson, Huawei, PacketFront and ADVA Optical. Service providers interviewed for this report include Reggefiber, Telecom New Zealand, Amsterdam Citynet, BT, PBC, Free/Iliad, i3, Swisscom and Fastweb, Lafayette Utilities System, Verizon and more.

For obvious reasons, I can't share this report or even its conclusions here. It's available to Yankee Group Link Research customers and can be custom purchased on the Yankee Group online store as well. What I can do here is tell you what I tried to achieve, and hopefully convince you that the report is worth looking into.

The starting point of my thought process was that the debate as it is often framed by vendors is sterile. Both sides more or less claim that theirs is the superior technology at lower costs. That's not helpful to service providers (and, I suspect, not to vendor credibility either...) A technology, after all, is only as good as what you do with it. What I endeavoured to do therefore was to frame the technology choices in context by answering these two questions: which technology choice is best aligned with which strategic objectives, and which deployment model should be chosen (for GPON in particular) to maintain that alignment.

I hope you find it interesting and challenging and would welcome comments!

Martin Geddes: Goodbye Minutes, Hello Moments...

2010-02-01T14:00:00+01:00

When it comes to rethinking the telco paradigm, if there's one guy you can trust to do the job it's Martin Geddes. His presentation at ecomm in October was one of the most insightful, and it's now available online. Look at how common sense thinking could turn frustrating voice services into really useful tools... If you want to check out his slides they are here.

There Will Continue To Be Suicides In The Company...

2010-01-27T18:12:28+01:00

I'm sure you all remember the media furore in France and elsewhere about the wave of suicides at France Telecom in the last 18 months. Back then I wrote a piece entitled Of Dinosaurs, Evolution and Suicides trying to explore the issue, it's causes and it's consequences.

Part of the political aftermath of the "suicide scandal" was that FT's number 2 Louis-Pierre Wenes was forced to resigned and was quickly replaced by Stéphane Richard, who is to take over from Didier Lombard as CEO in the coming months. Richard has surprised many since he joined France Telecom by his candid style of communication and the fact that he did not hesitate to question some of the strategic choices made in the past including content exclusivity.

Richard was invited on French radio Europe 1 a couple of weeks back but I only saw the interview today (reason being that he ousted the Apple Tablet back then...) But that's not what stunned me. What stunned me is the following exchange, at the very beginning of the interview. I'm writing it down in French and then translating it to make sure that I'm not getting the meaning wrong in translation. JPE is the interviewer Jean-Pierre Elkabbach:

JPE: Il faut rappeler que des cadres et des salariés avaient choisi par désespoir le suicide, est-ce que vous sentez que la vague de morts volontaires peut être stoppée ?

SR: Ce serait présomptueux de dire cela. Je pense que malheureusement, il continuera d'y avoir des suicides probablement dans l'entreprise. Ce que nous essayons de faire, clairement, c'est de reconstruire une entreprise. D'abord ça commence par un nouveau pacte social.

Here is my translation, hopefully as faithful as possible to the original:

JPE: I remind [our listeners] that some managers and employees had chosen in despair to commit suicide. Do you feel that the wave of voluntary deaths can be stopped?

SR: It would be presomptuous to say that. I think that unfortunately, there will continue to be suicides in the company, probably. What we are trying to do, clearly, is to rebuild the company. It begins with a new social contract.

Wow.

"There will continue to be suicides in the company..."

I can't believe the guy said that. I jumped in my chair when I heard it. I'm torn between admiration at the candor of the statement and disgust at the cynicism of it. Most business leaders would have been forceful: "we have a moral obligation to stop it" or something like that.

I don't quite know what to think, except that this guy certainly isn't like the previous guy...

The full video interview (in French):

L'interview politique de Jean-Pierre Elkabbach
envoyé par Europe1fr. - Regardez les dernières vidéos d'actu.

FTTH Council North America against Open Access

2010-01-27T13:00:00+01:00

Tim points out a tidbit of interesting news that I had missed: The FTTH Council North America and TIA came out vocally against open access for Fiber in filing to the FCC. As Tim points out, they oppose it mostly on principle and try to discredit the Berkman Study on telecom policy which quite convincingly shows how open access policies in European and Asian countries have spurred on competition and contributed to the development of telecom markets in these countries.

This is not a new discourse in the US and as such does not really surprise me. I've heard or read similar arguments (especially the attempts to poke holes in the Berkman Study) in the last few months. What's most interesting to me is the fact that this comes from the FTTH Council NA.

This kind of policy positioning highlights the key difference between the North American and European FTTH Councils. The NA Council has Service Provider membership and acts as one of many lobbying arms for incumbents in the North American market (although none of the big players are actual members). The European Council has only vendor membership and can therefore stay more neutral about topics such as this one (the European council has expressed policy solutions around various scenarios depending on geography, but certainly hasn't in any way expressed a pro- or against- position on something as sensitive as open access.

This also raises interesting questions about a possible future alignment of the three councils on policy aspects. It seems unlikely that any form of significant collaboration can be envisaged with differences in position such as these...

KDDI takes control of JCOM

2010-01-26T11:36:22+01:00

Despite the fact that Japan is the world leader in fiber coverage (although not in fiber adoption, that's Korea) it's a market that is so dominated by incumbent NTT that it often seems not much happens there. Well this morning, something major happened! KDDI, the number two FTTH and broadband provider in Japan acquired a controlling stake in JCOM, the leading cable operator.

As mentioned in this article the consolidation makes a whole lot of sense for KDDI, even though it comes at a steep price. And while it reinforces KDDI's overall position in the wireline market, it still leaves them trailing behind NTT.

One of the scenarios of FTTH deployment that the European Commission desperately wants to avoid is the return of the incumbent monopoly under the guise of fiber deployment. Japan is a prime example of that and although this has been flagged as an "issue" by the Japanese regulatory officials, it doesn't seem like there are a lot of scenarios that are likely to address that issue shy of separation...

Meanwhile, in Europe, incumbents are still claiming that investment and competition cannot be combined and suggest that the japanese scenario is what regulators must accept if they want their fibre. With the exception of a limited number of markets like Sweden or France where innovating competitors have effectively made a dent in the incumbent's control of broadband infrastructure and are now in a position to invest in FTTH, it's hard to imagine how the game might play any differently than in Japan (reconstructued monopoly) or in the UK (separated monopoly.)

Which doesn't make it fine...

Orange's Exclusive Content Strategy in Question?

2010-01-22T15:42:49+01:00

According to a short article in Les Echos (France Telecom Doit s'Interroger sur sa Gouvernance, Selon Richard), France Telecom's #2 Stéphane Richard has expressed doubts around Orange's Exclusive Content strategy. The exact quote is as follows:

<< Stéphane Richard - who is to take over from current CEO Didier Lombard in spring 2011 - added that the group needed to question its policies in terms of contents considering the issues it faced in its exclusivity strategies. >>

According to 2009 Q3 results, Orange has 596 000 subscribers to its exclusive content channels. End of 2009 numbers will be announced in February 25th. It's not a bad number considering these channels were launched a little under two years ago, but it still pales in comparison to Canal +'s 10.2 million subs (Canal + & Canal Sat).

More importantly perhaps, the core strategic intent behind Orange's costly acquisition of football, TV Series and Cinema exclusives was to drive broadband subscriptions, particularly over FTTH. On this particular count, the officials are silent, and the aggregate French numbers suggest that - on the FTTH side at least - the impact is anecdotal.

Is France Telecom looking for a way to pull out of this strategy under the cover of "legal uncertainties" ? It's a distinct possibility...

Fiberevolution Meet: Boston, February 3rd

2010-01-21T17:31:21+01:00

I will be in Boston the first week of February and would love to meet fiber minded individuals! I would suggest the evening of February 3rd, maybe around 7 PM. I'm suggesting the Parish Café as a good meeting place, but am open to alternative suggestions!

(For musical minded people, I will also most likely be checking out the Elastic Waste Band in Cambridge later that evening, you're welcome to join!)

Are Street Cabinets Such a Good Idea ?

2010-01-21T15:07:48+01:00

As you will know, I have been skeptical about the potential of Fiber to the Cabinet, mostly due to what I perceive as a lack of future-proofness (yeah, I know such a word doesn't exist...) of the deployment. One aspect that I honestly haven't investigated much is the impact of having cabinets in the streets. After all, I thought, cable operators have had them forever...

I guess I should have looked more closely at some of the posts James put up on eurotelcoblog. The photo on the right is a photo of one of Numéricable's cabinets in Marseille. Last year, a group of people went through several districts of Marseille and tracked down cabinets to photograph them. The results are here for the 14th district and here for the 3rd district.

This is truly frightening stuff. And the worse is I see no reason why this would happen to Numéricable and Virgin and not to others, including FTTC deployers. If you see similar sights, please send me photos!

France Accelerates Fiber Deployment... or Does It?

2010-01-20T18:02:41+01:00

On Monday, French prime minister François was due to make a speech that would, some journalists thought, give a kick in the butt to FTTH deployment in France. The fact is that three years after the first FTTH deployment announcements, France as a whole doesn't have a lot to show for it. ARCEP recently announced 250k NGA subscribers, 200k of which are Numéricable's HFC.

Needless to say that Mr. Fillon's speech was eagerly expected... and did not fail to dissapoint. The Prime Minister reaffirmed that €2bn had been earmarked as public contributions to FTTH deployment in zones 2 and 3 (ie. low density urban and rural) and that jointly deployed projects would be favoured. But there is nothing in the way of specifics at all to understand who can tap into that money, under what conditions and how the competitive landscape will be maintained under these circumstances.

In parallel, the various decrees describing the exact sharing model for zone 1 have been published (hurray!) which suggests that the existing players will no longer be able to hide behind that particular topic to explain why they aren't progressing.

Sorry to paint a bleak picture so early on in the year, but in between private players who announce deployments when they really don't want to actually deploy and a government that announces high ambitions but no sensible implementation, I'm not feeling upbeat.

The only good news (perhaps) is that another €2.5bn will be attributed to NGA services. Of course, these are not defined and how the money is to be distributed isn't either. Say what you will about Americans, at least when they say there will be public financing they publish clear rules and do what they say...