France: landmark decision for fibre projects

By Pauline | Published: October 22, 2009

This story was originally published at www.samknows.com. I don’t plan to cross-post all the stories I write for SamKnows, but this project seemed to be huge significance. I will be following its progress with interest.

French flagThe European Commission has given the green light to the largest ever government-backed fibre-to-the-home project in Europe.

THD92 is a €422 million (£386 million) project that will bring next-generation broadband to some 829,000 homes and businesses in the Hauts-de-Seine region of France. (THD stands for très haut débit, meaning “very high speed”, and 92 is the number of the Hauts-de-Seine département.)

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Starting out with Samknows

By Pauline | Published: October 12, 2009

Today I started a new gig — writing news for the website www.samknows.com. My brief is to expand the coverage of the news section to include broadband issues in Europe and the US. The website already does a good job of covering broadband news from the UK.

For those of you who haven’t come across it yet, Samknows was set up in 2003 to provide campaigners in the UK with the information needed to bring broadband to their area. It was instrumental in aggregating demand for broadband services, which was important in the early days of first-generation broadband when BT set “trigger levels” for exchange activation.

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When was the last time you read the newspaper in the loo?

By Pauline | Published: October 6, 2009

No, don’t answer that!

But do keep in mind the old ways people can “consume” media (what a horrible phrase) as you watch the latest version of the Did you know?/Shift happens video above, updated by XPLANE in partnership with The Economist. The video focuses on convergence and the changing media landscape.

I discovered the original Did You Know? video a few months back while looking up material to use for a webinar on audience engagement with social media tools. More on that, hopefully, as and when it happens.

My original name for this post was going to be “Fast facts about social media” because the data points in the video flash past almost too fast to take in. It’s an unashamedly US-centric production too, but it’s worth watching all the same.

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French fibre ultimatum

By Pauline | Published: September 29, 2009

French flagLe Figaro reports that the French President has given the country’s four main telecoms operators just two weeks to come up with a joint proposal for connecting the country’s so-called “grey areas” with fibre.

In larger towns and cities, four operators — Orange, SFR, Free and Numericable — are deploying fiber-optic networks which has brought 4.5 million households within reach of a superfast connection. This might sound like a lot, but this represents less than 20% of homes in France.

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FTTH global rankings – H1 2009

By Pauline | Published: September 29, 2009

FTTH Global Rankings June 2009

The latest update to the FTTH global rankings has been released by the three FTTH Councils of Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America, and it holds few surprises.

The Asia-Pacific region still leads the global ranking with South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan taking the first four places, followed by the Scandinavian countries of Sweden and Norway. There is just one new entry in the list — Slovakia, a country with about 2.2 million homes (for comparison, the UK has around 25 million homes).

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The lowdown on Highams Park

By Pauline | Published: September 24, 2009

Equipment in a BT exchange

Openreach has published “indicative prices” for the fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network rollout at Highams Park in north-East London, in a proposal that looks set to test not only the technology, but how much consumers are prepared to pay for superfast connections.

The price range of Openreach’s GEA-FTTP (Generic Ethernet Access fibre-to-the-premises) product is likely to be set between £175 and £255 per annum — or £14.58 to £21.25 per month — “for bandwidth options up to and including the 100/10 Mbps product with standard grade service repair response times”.

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ECOC 2009: Technology, money, people

By Pauline | Published: September 23, 2009

Here’s a copy of my leader article in the ECOC magazine:

And so to Vienna for the 35th year of ECOC, which is billed — quite rightly in my view — as the leading optical networking event in Europe. Personal highlights from last year included the post-deadline paper from Alcatel-Lucent and Draka, which reported 40 Gbit/s transmission over transoceanic distances for the first time, JDSU’s photonic integrated amplifier, and Rod Alferness’ plenary lecture on predictions for the next 10 years of telecoms. I’m sure 2009 will provide a similar combination of interesting technical results, innovative new product announcements, and insightful debate on the future of optical networking technology. In short, pure heaven for technophiles like me.

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When things are quiet on the blog…

By Pauline | Published: September 16, 2009
Topping out on Punta Fiames, nr Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.

Topping out on Punta Fiames, nr Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.

I like cables of all kinds, especially cables that lead to the top of a mountain…

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BT replacing fibre with copper

By Pauline | Published: September 3, 2009

File this one under “makes no sense”. While Openreach has been building trial networks for fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) and fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC), it has also been overlaying copper on fibre access networks built back in the 1990s.

The legacy technology, called TPON (a term I hadn’t come across until today) was originally installed in outlying housing estates that were often a long way from the main telephone exchange.

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Digital Britain: how does the UK really compare?

By Pauline | Published: September 2, 2009

“Digital Britain disappoints” and “Digital dithering from a dated Government”: two hardly unique headlines in the media immediately after the release of the Digital Britain report, which is supposed to be the UK’s blueprint for a digitally connected future.

But how does Britain really stand up in the international league tables of broadband ambition? Well, for a kickoff, it’s worth pointing out that there are two completely separate targets: a universal service commitment of 2 Mbps by 2012; and delivery of “superfast broadband” (whatever that might be) to 90% of the households by 2017.

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