FiberGeneration

FTTH Business Model, Or How Illegal Download Leads To New Jobs Creation

The Pau Broadband Country Fiber-To-The-Home network is truly *the* model for Muni FTTH. Here's one example, which I like to share with people in the Governmental sphere those days, in regards of the famous Hadopi law.

Just a few months after the launch of the network back in 2005, the 2.5Gbit/s high-speed links between Pau and Paris' Telehouse hubs became almost overloaded. In the upstream direction. Traffic analysis demonstrated that Gen Y fellows and geeks of all sorts were uploading gigabytes of more or less legal stuff: music, video, software, everything that makes Vuze and the likes so fun to use...

With the remarkable increase of fiber subscribers since begin 2008, an upgrade of these Pau-Paris links was mandatory. 10Gbit/s is now on its way. That makes the distance between the two cities totally transparent, allowing ultra-high speed communications for businesses who run operations in Pau, Paris, and elsewhere in the World, for instance... San Francisco and the Silicon Valley.

Guess what: since empty space is a scarce resource in Paris, new datacenters are popping up outside the capital city. One the very few towns out there able to host Green datacenters: Pau. Pau has all the know-how, skills and legitimacy to offer such high-tech facilities. Here's the beauty of the story: It is because of a band of young guys are playing with the law that Pau can host new businesses in a booming sector. If you are looking for a business model which works, here's one: let the Gen Y play at will.

Move From IT To Green IT. Or Die Hard.

Only Inuits haven't heard of Cisco' s Telepresence so far. Everyone knows about Google' s PowerMeter. Everybody is watching Microsoft' s moves onto the growing Green fields.

Does anyone have a clue about Alca-Lu' s stuff there ? I mean, have you read or heard about the French-American firm efforts in the Green sector outside its own corporate PR ? I'm afraid this silence is one of the too many instances of the real situation of the former Telecoms giant: Alcatel-Lucent is dying, like Nortel. Innovate, or die. Simple.

Don't Stop Till You Get Enough...

Once in a while, emotion is so highly disturbing that I do post something which is not at all related to Technology or Business or Apple or whatever makes our daily life as professionals.

Today is such a day. Waking up hearing a tribute to the King of Pop is definitely not the best way to start. Anyway, the Show Must Go On. Thanks for all the joy and happiness you gave us, Man.

What Do Green Jobs Look Like ?

To answer that very question, check this out. And do like me: move to Green NOW !

Sustainable Development: A Green Presentation

The Daily Life Of A Fiber Installer

Watch this. Would you want to be a fiber optic cable installer in Vietnam ?...

Long Haul Optical Networks: Onto The Next Big Thing

According to the latest Global Bandwidth Forecast Service' report by Telegeography, Trans-Atlantic communications links are set to face a bandwidth glut within the next few years.

Says the press release: "According to new projections from TeleGeography’s Global Bandwidth Forecast Service, bandwidth requirements will grow 33 percent (CAGR) between 2008 and 2015. At this rate, trans-Atlantic capacity will be exhausted by 2014, and cables providing diversity along geographically unique routes may run out of capacity even sooner."

For Optical Communications long-timers like myself, this is no surprise. It's simply the center piece of the forthcoming overhaul of the Fiber Optics technology: Today's optical transmission systems are based on a 30+ years old technology. That's far enough, for the singlemode fiber which is used in backbones since the mid 80's is reaching its limits with the 40G and (worst) the 100G systems planned by some telcos around the planet.

Telegeography analysts state it clear: "While 2014 is 5 years off, lengthy cable financing and construction cycles mean that carriers must confront this challenge far sooner. New technologies, such as 40 Gbps transmission line rates, may allow operators to expand capacity on some existing systems, delaying the need for new cables. However, these technologies remain unproven on a commercial long-haul submarine cable, and will only postpone the inevitable day of reckoning."

As I already wrote several times here and there, my take is that a brand new fiber technology will leave the labs' s clean rooms to show up on optical systems vendors' s shelves as soon as massive deployments of FTTH Fiber-To-The-Home networks will be over. 2014-2015 seems to be the timeframe for that. (Not) surprisingly, 2014-2015 is also the time when submarine systems will have to be revamped.

For those of you who were not in the Optical Communications business in the 80's, I tell you what: submarine systems have always been the test bed for new technologies, from the SMF Singlemode Fiber itself to WDM Wavelength Division Multiplexing and Optical Amplifiers. It won't be different this time. Five years to go before the big change!

The FTTH' s Ultimate Business Model

Every single speaker at every single conference where FTTH Fiber-To-The-Home is the core topic is talking about business model(s). Since years, they all look for *the* business model. The fact is: there is no business model at all. Surely not when you think about this question from the Telecommunications' industry perspective. Considering FTTH as any other Telecoms technology - DSL, WiMax, LTE, whatever - is a pure mistake. It should be considered as the Web 2.0: a breakthrough concept, allowing anyone to contribute to the community. Think Peer-To-Peer: I can directly provide you alone or the whole community on the network with the service you/she want, without any intermediate actor.

"FTTH = Web 2.0". Once you'll get that paradigm, you'll understand that there is no business model for FTTH at all. See Twitter.

Pau Broadband Country: Muni Fiber To Everyone At Ten Euros A Year

Pau Broadband Country FTTH by the numbers:

• more than 600 new jobs created since 2005 
• for a 140,000 inhabitants area
• with 10,000 active subscribers to date
• on 50,000 households passed
• out of 57,000 planned 
• over a 15-years leasing contract
• representing an investment of 35 Million euros
• including 15 Millions euro financed by the network infrastructure operator
• and 20 Millions financed by the Pau Greater Area collectivity

Which means a total investment by each and every citizen of the Pau Greater Area of 143.00 EUR over 15 years.

In other words: less than 10 euros per year over 15 years, to get the most advanced Fiber-To-The-Home network in Southern Europe (which starts south of Frankfurt ;-) and help the creation of hundreds of new jobs in new industries. Who said FTTH has to be expensive ?...

post-scriptum: The PBC Pau Broadband Country is the mother of all Muni FTTH network on the planet. Everyone interested or involved in this topic should study PBC carefully, and in depth. Learnings are just amazingly surprising. Positively surprising.

A Few (Disturbing) Things About FTTH Fiber-To-The-Home

I've been quite silent here over the last months, although I've been quite active on the FTTH front: training an installation & maintenance contractor, visiting key vendors, working on Muni Broadband projects, attending seminars and conferences.

Living  "Fiber Broadband" since two years, especially with the lovely Pau Broadband Country, I'm now convinced of a few things. Here are my points:

1. Installing fiber at the FTTH subscriber' s place is not a B2B job. It's B2C. We are the Consumer. You don't behave the same way when dealing with me aka the person than when dealing with me aka the enterprise. This is where everybody fails, from the Telco to the Contractor: the traditional "telecoms" technicians are not suited for installing fiber in our houses.
   They may have all the required technical skills, but they lack the social ones: customer relationships. Here in France, some big players recently realized the issue, due to the countless problems they have to face once entering the Subscriber's place. My take: in two years from now, the guy (or the girl) who will install FTTH in my house won't come from the Telecoms world: she will come from the Retail world.

2. The future of FTTH relies into Muni Networks. Telcos and CableTV operators have only one objective: make their company's stocks shine on the market. Therefore, no private Communications Services Provider will deliver non-TriplePlay services on their own networks, at least not until some new player comes with a disruptive business model à la Apple' s App Store. Just because they can't make money selling the peer-to-peer/local/kiosk services that are the true juice of Fiber-To-The-Home.
   Even e-Health and e-Education are not really in their true scope: ever seen a Telco providing Maths courses ? Here again, Apple could serve as the disruptive model with its iTunes U. IMHO, Telcos are set to stick with their TriplePlay stuff for a long while. In France for instance, when speaking FTTH in public, both rivals FT-Orange and SFR describe Fiber-To-The-Home as "the technology to get HD-TV and soon 3D-TV", and that pretty much it. At a recent conference in Paris, Swisscom even said that FTTH is no different from older technologies, relying on a 20 to 30 years ROI business model. I sincerely wish Apple to look after Broadband, in order to demonstrate to all those old-thinkers how they are wrong, keeping their old-fashioned way of building and operating access networks...
   Let's face it: only Open Neutral Access network infrastructures allow the so-called Next Generation Applications or Services, such as Tele-Medicine. Applications which must be operated by some Service(s) Provider(s) who are of a totally different type than the Telco and the CableTV guys. One must split the services from the infrastructure, to enable competition and service delivery. Allowing anyone to provide any service to anyone on the network is the key for innovation, hence jobs creation. Ever heard of a private telco with such an open mind ?
   Hence this fact: a) as existing Telecoms and CableTV operators will only deploy FTTH in dense urban areas, b) as Collectivities, e.g. City Councils, in the rest of the country, e.g. rural areas, will have to go Fiber Broadband in order to avoid the Digital Divide and keep their employment rate up, c) as those Collectivities will build public infrastructures which are open and neutral by nature, FTTH Muni networks will serve as the platform for innovation, new businesses and new jobs creations - like the Pau Greater Area do with its Pau Broadband Country network, by the way: more than 600 new jobs since 2005, for a 140,000 inhabitants area, with 50,000 households passed and 10,000 active subscribers to date, for a total investment by each and every citizen of 143.00 EUR over 15 years (or less than 10 euros per year over 15 years...).

3. There is not one business model for FTTH but two: Pau, and Twitter. Regarding Pau, see above: 10 euros per habitant per year over 15 years, to build and operate a FTTH/FTTB network with the highest penetration ratio in Europe to date, and hosting some of the most advanced high-tech research centers in the World.
   Now, think Twitter. A disruptive Web 2.0 service, launched 3 years ago without any business model, today the fastest growing communication tool on Earth. Still no proven, established business model, yet millions of users, daily. Hence this: get Munis and Collectivities to build open neutral 100 Mbps symmetrical access networks, and let the people create the killer app.
   Forget ARPU, CAPEX, OPEX. Go PEOPLE.