FiberGeneration

Alleluia : Twittervision on the iPhone is there !

Just installed Twittervision on my iPhone. Absolutely stunning app. The potential uses in business are countless. I better hurry up creating my Web 2.0 start-up in Pau ;-)

iPhone & MobileMe : Say Bye Bye To The Auto-Reply

Verifying my .Me settings this morning, I've realized something : since I bought my iPhone 8 months ago, I never used again the automatic reply feature for emails when traveling. 

Since the advent of Lotus Notes and MS Outlook, the typical auto-reply looked like this one :

Dear Sender,

Thank you for contacting Marc Duchesne.
I will be on a business trip until October 31st.
During that time, I will have limited access to my e-mail. I will respond to your message as soon as possible.

I apologize for any inconvenience,
Carpe Diem,
_Marc

Now, thanks to the iPhone, I don't care mind being abroad on the road : I ALWAYS have access to my e-mail. Will I reply to them "as soon as possible", that's another story !

iPhone 2.0 'Remote' : a Small App For A Giant Leap Forward

Shall you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you can now remote control your iTunes libraries (Mac and PC, Folks) with the little yet jaw-dropping awesomely fantastic Remote application.

Now, once again Apple is showing the way to the Future : how we'll be able to control any *connected* device from our smartphone - er, iPhone.

Possibilities are endless, including for professional applications. ***

More details on Remote here.

*** Call for developers : you 're young, you're open-minded, you're french (yes, some of us combine those three criteria ;-) you're an iPhone/Mac developer : please drop me a line (Twitterers welcome).

Say Goodbye Farewell To Second Life

Second Life is dead. Google just launched its own "virtual world" platform : Lively. The difference with SL ? Lively is entirely Web-based. You don't need to install and run a standalone piece of software, as opposed to Second Life (how many of us have been rapidly fed up launching SL ?...). To play with Lively, you just stay with your favorite browser, aka Firefox 3 (it runs with IE too).

Lively is truly the signal most of us were waiting for to go investigate the potential of Virtual Worlds for business. And it's made by Google.

For a complete review on Lively here by Techcrunch.

Download Lively here. That's the only thing that sucks, by the way : there's no Mac version for the time being, although Mac users are among the most efficient beta testers because we easily become early adopters...

My Carbon Footprint, Business Only

Since beginning of this year I owe have sent approximately 5 tons of CO2 to into the precious air of Mother Earth to date.
I'd better define my compensation plan quickly, shall I want to stick with the Sustainable Development concept...

"Second Life: Virtual Worlds and the Enterprise"

A must read essay that I've discovered today whilst surfing on Bruno Giussani' s LunchOverIP blog : "Second Life: Virtual Worlds and the Enterprise", by Susan Kish. It was published last year, but it's still pretty valid and useful for those of us who want to better understand what are the possibilities offered by the Virtual Worlds in the Enterprise.

Download PDF here.

[The Changing The World Edition] Muslima.com

Looking for some info to get the most out of FriendFeed, I found this post by Digital Inspiration.
Although a pretty interesting article with lots of useful tips, an ad banner catch my eyes : " Muslima.com, the International Muslim Matrimonial Site." That was kind of a surprise to me, since I always thought Islam religion would forbid such of dating services.
Says the About page :

" Muslima.com is a specialist Muslim dating and matchmaking website that assists Muslim ladies to find their perfect match anywhere in the world. We offer friendly service combined with sophisticated search and messaging facilities that will make your search for true love fun and enjoyable. "

The website is available in 4 languages : English, Dutch, French, and German. No Arabic, at least on the .com domain. Does that mean that the target audience is not the one claimed above ?...
Anyway, dear Muslim readers, shall you be looking for a friend or a husband/wife, you can go here.

Like Shopping ? You Will Love The Mall Plus (dot com ;-)

Still not the colorful experience of a real journey at the Wafi City (for instance), but a true step towards full 3-D online shopping.
Let the fiber shine in to our homes, and we'll probably get real-time person-to-person interaction like in the real World.

Design For The World

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Fake Steve Jobs To Bob Metcalfe : "Go Get New Glasses"

Dan Lyons aka Fake Steve Jobs has the point with Bob Metcalfe' s EnerNet idea. His "one pair of glasses" theory is worth reading. Trust me. Because I'm a proponent of this idea that the Internet, Broadband, and Fiber can help solving the Climate Changes issues.

Wake Up Call By Google

Google did it again. A true breakthrough online app, which is set to be the next revolution in the Internet mattress - ooops, sorry, matters. See here for more details.

It's about Apple : How To Get Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong (To Certain Extent)

Wired Magazine has published an excellent article on Apple : "How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong". A must read, including the Evil/Genius and Online Extras side articles.

For an Applemaniac, Jobsian Fanatic like myself, those type of readings just confirm what we already presume on the Product Marketing & Industrial Design way at Apple (at least since Jobs' s return in 1997).
It also raises three questions in my mind :

1. when even a pure self-made man like me can understand quite a bit of the underlying long term strategy and the tactics at Apple, why the heck no other company is applying the same methods ? Can you think of another name, in any other industry, with this level of perfection in Industrial Design and Marketing at large ? Maybe Trek ? Or maybe I'm too much Apple-branded that I'm too blind to see outside the Reality Distorsion Field !

2. why can't we French people enjoy the beauty of an AppleStore, whilst the Mac/iPod/iPhone/iLoveIt maker is to open a superstore in rainy Liverpool ? Is there something we Frenchies don't get about Apple and/or Steve Jobs ? Hey, we've bought into the iPhone hype - even restaurants' s maîtres d'hôtel have iPhone now.

3. the last yet most important : when will I get a job at Apple ? ;-)

Fiber-To-The-Home : The Exploding Market

See by yourself...

[UPDATED 03-19-08 2:25PM CET] The video is no longer available on YouTube. That's the beauty of Web 2.0 and Rights Management ;-)

It's about the iPhone

Back at home after being on the road (and in the air, and on the Southern Alpes slopes), I took a couple of hours this morning to watch the recent introduction of the iPhone SDK by Steve Jobs and his fellow Apple execs.

You'll get a flavor of the impact of the iPhone Software Roadmap by reading those two articles, from David Pogue for The New York Times here, and Mike Elgan for ComputerWorld here.
Quote Master Pogue : " iPhone 2.0 will turn this phone into an engineering tool, a game console, a free-calls Skype phone, a business tool, a dating service, an e-book reader, a chat room, a database, an Etch-a-Sketch…and that’s on Day One."

To better understand why the iPhone 2.0 is THE Revolution many of us were waiting for, just watch Scott Forestall, VP iPhone Software, demonstrating one of the most exciting new features of the platform, based on the built-in 3D-accelerometer : undo a photo edition by... shaking the iPhone (demo starts at 39:30).

After seeing this, you'll get a better picture of Apple' s Hardware roadmap : the next gen iMac will be multi-touch based. Then, you'll agree with Elgan : the iPhone will change the PC world, forever.

Looking Forward To The Googled Fiber World

Back from San Diego, I had a meeting yesterday night in Paris with the VP Sales & Marketing of a new startup working on some *fiber network monitoring* stuff. I can't disclose anything of course, just that it's about Fiber-To-The-Home.

Things we've discussed until late in the evening were on the forthcoming changes in the optical comms industry per se and our own lives.

Like this one : thanks to FTTH and 40G/100G/etc. networks, we're going to be "online" everywhere anytime, with our entire "life" relying on *The Net*. Fine.
Now, since we'll do everything - working, watching TV, training, sharing life, etc. - through a single fiber strand, this one better stay up and running 24/7 : we won't accept being cut off for 2 days until the Repair guys come in. Hence the need for monitoring systems, which would look after the faults on the fiber right up to our living room.

A tremendous challenge, provided the numerous FTTx networks topologies and technologies. A challenge which requires to think out of the box. Something the legacy Test & Measurement firms can't do. Something a well funded startup can do. How much do they need ? $5m. Which is not that much for a solution which will help change the World (because it'll guarantee your fiber stays okay).

Ed. note : French world-famous blogger Loic Lemeur got $6m for his Web 2.0 video-sharing platform. Raising $1m less to produce something which really serves the World shouldn't be that much a problem. At least in a perfect World...

OFCNFOEC'08 Daily Special : "TGOGGTF : Turning Goofy On Google Going To Fiber"

According to Mr Metcalfe himself, the Communications world is now based on a 4-layers model : Ethernet > Internet > Web > Google.
Google : recruiting at OFC. Of course we know Google has its own fiber infrastructure. But. What if... Google is the only company on Earth able to do what Bob Metcalfe asks the whole Communications industry to do : re-invent the Network.
Okay, the idea of having one single company managing the whole stuff could be scarring off some people, but heck, that would be an exciting journey.
Doesn't Google have its own switches now ? So, imagine Google coming up with some fancy optical transport technology. Like Soliton, for instance...

Live from San Diego : Bob Metcalfe speech @ OFCNFOEC'08

This are my running notes of Bob Metcalfe' s keynote speech at the opening plenary session here at OFCNFOEC'08, San Diego, California. Posted after the speech, for misspelling corrections and irrelevant stuff deletion.
I'll comment some of them later on, in a further post. Just this personal note : Mr Metcalfe himself confirms that good times are ahead for the the Fiber industry. Should she wants to reinvent herself.

Running notes :
- BM has no ppt slides.
- uses instead 3 cards stacks, today will use 5 packs - reads the cards either on the table or hand held.
- the agenda of the day is to get the answer to two questions : "why should we be Terabit Ethernet ?", and then "how ?".
- 20 years between the first optical Ethernet in 1978 and the real commercial one.
- BM has a new project : create the Ether-Net, to solve energy crisis.
- SONET vs Ethernet : Ethernet won because of prices slash on cost per bit.
- BM prefers the terminology "telephon television and data" vs "voice video and data".
- the Internet is now carrying video, mobile, and embedded apps.
- Internet was not designed for none of them.
- Bubblephobia : people still afraid of traffic growth after the 2000 burst.
- expects growing traffic on embedded apps : first were mainframes then mini-computers then PCs then laptops then palmtops, so what's next ? : embedded.
- "alien wavelengths" : fiber people don't allow computer people to send their own wavelengths on the fiber.
- Ethernet technology will continue to ramp-up on a 10x slope, not 4x : 10G, then 100G, then 1T.
- Terabit Ethernet needs break out the existing infrastructure, otherwise it will be chaos.
- chaotic infrastructure because of too many levels, pieces, components - too much complexity.
- BM to the audience : "it's good news for you : it's gonna be fun". invent new stuff. means new business.
- BM lists some directions : new fibers : maybe carbon fibers ? how about no fibers at all ? how about free space mesh ? OOO (no more OEO conversion) ? etc ?
- we will never hear the word "OC3072" because of Ethernet 100G.
- Intel Sales & Marketing VP says TbE will not happen on terminal devices - it will be WiMax instead.
- when Tim Berners Lee invented the WWW, he never thought there will be a Google.
- today we have 4 layers, no more the 7 of the OSI model : at the bottom : Ethernet, then Internet, then WWW, then on top : Google.
- we need to re architect Ethernet because online video : download needs bandwidth, streaming needs QoS, interactive needs low-latency : Ethernet never been good at that.
- re-architect Ethernet : routing, switching, etc.
- meet people needs for lower energy consumption.
- Ethernet will help reducing transportation needs etc.
- BM asks the audience : "you fiber communications people are you ready to help solve the energy crisis ?"

Short biography of Dr. Robert M. Metcalfe: MIT engineer, Harvard mathematician, Internet developer, Xerox scientist, Ethernet inventor, Stanford professor, 3Com founder, Cambridge fellow, InfoWorld pundit, and now Polaris partner.

Read the OFCNFOEC plenary session program here.
See Bob Metcalfe' s recent interview by Light Reading here, and read more here.
Get the clear picture on why online video naturally changes the World here.
Last but not least, the legend of Bob Metcalfe is here, by Wired.

Say Hello To eXperide

Since October 1st 2007, I'm working with the french group "R&D", who owns the french largest fiber optics distributor ICTL. My job: help the company to create and launch a new subsidiary aimed at consulting & training services for the Optical Communications industry.

Please welcome eXperide, your new fiber optics companion.

What we do : bring fiber optics skills to everyone.
Why we do exist : to help telcos and al. to build, operate, and maintain state-of-the-art networks faster and better.

Here's the eXperide' flyer intro :
" in this ever-changing world, where the survival and development of your business relies on a fast and constant adaptation, knowing markets and technics is mandatory for your success. eXperide has been designed to address your needs of advice and training in all parts of installation & maintenance of optical communications networks.
We do exist to go alongside with you at every stage of your growth, from qualifying existing installations up to helping you to setup new structures aimed at networks' s construction & maintenance and certifying your outside plant technicians for jobs at service providers and system integrators.
Our only objective : to enable you to go to market faster, better, and safer. "

To better understand the core idea behind eXperide, have a look on the presentation I've created back in late October to get the whole team engaged - and focused. Of course, you won't see the most interesting part of of it : our strategy ;-) My favorite quote : "Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the trouble making individual".

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It's About Small Teams Within Large Companies Making Big Impact

[updated 10:06PM]
Reading Robert Scoble' s latest post, on how small teams can make a big difference within large companies, I thought about... the Agilent Mini-OTDR. This little box, which is not as sexy as the iPhone of course, was the GameBoy of his kind at its release back in 1996.

To make it short, this product was a breakthrough-paradigm shifting optical tester, inventing a brand new category - the so-called handhelds - for a brand new type of end-users : the fiber optics installers. Almost 12 years after its release, the Agilent Mini-OTDR is still the reference, as the two main competitors JDSU and EXFO (ever heard of those names ? ;-) even do copy & paste - including the naming system.
What's the link with Scoble' s post ? Small teams. The Mini-OTDR has been defined, designed, and engineered by a 6-people team, within the HP Optical Communications Division group (aka Agilent Photonic Test Division or something like that as of today). Take Scoble' s text, replace "Microsoft" by "HP", "Yahoo" by "EXFO" and you get the same picture.

Who said "Less Is More" ?...

post-scriptum : the hands carrying the Mini belong to my dear buddy Dieter *John* Gustedt, the guy who made the Agilent Modular Network Tester real.

Internet Failure Hits Two Continents

CNN Dubai reports :
" High-technology services across large tracts of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa were crippled Thursday following a widespread Internet failure which brought many businesses to a standstill and left others struggling to cope.
Hi-tech Dubai has been hit hard by an Internet outage apparently caused by a cut undersea cable.
Industry experts are blaming damage to two undersea cables but it is not known what caused the damage.
Reports say that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain Pakistan and India, are all experiencing severe problems.
Nations that have been spared the chaos include Israel -- whose traffic uses a different route -- and Lebanon and Iraq. Many Middle East governments have backup satellite systems in case of cable failure."

As stated by one of the interviewed ISPs, this pretty severe outage is a wake up call for the region. But also for the whole Telecoms industry : it's time to stop lay offs and start lay out new cables. Dear submarine systems makers, you've got a bright future ahead of you !

Just like in the mid-90's, when the big projects such as FLAG and SeaMeWe appeared.
The difference ? Today, there are people at the end of the fiber. Applications. Business. Users.
It's showtime for the real Net Economy, folks !

Read full article here.
Thanks Laura for the heads up.

DailyMotion Goes Soccer 2.0

French video sharing site DailyMotion is bidding for the French Soccer Premier League TV broadcast rights (actually, the VOD online magazine part) for seasons 2008 to 2012. The startup competes against medias giants Canal+, TF1 and France Télévisions, TV channels M6, Eurosport, and Direct8, but also against telcos Orange and SFR.
No matter the final decision by the League, the fact that a WebTV platform is offering its services shows how things are moving fast. Industry shake-up, you said ?...

See here for more details (link in french).

France 2.0 ?

Buddy Blogger Benoit Felten has posted a very interesting article on the recent report from the French business owners/managers' Union MEDEF : "How to make of France a leader in the Digital Economy." (link and pdf document in french).

Zattoo : Say Hello To The TV Of The 21st Century

I'm currently testing the new Zattoo Beta application. Just blazingly simple.
Says the US startup' website homepage : "Zattoo is live TV on your PC - it's the football game as you chat, the news as you email, and your favorite soap as you pay your bills. Zattoo is also TV when you don't have a TV - it's the channels you want, when you want, where you want.".

Thanks to Zattoo, I'm relieved now : I'll be able to watch Roland Garros and The Tour de France whilst "working" at the office next summer. Pretty cool, huh ?

Seriously speaking, Zattoo is the application lots of us were waiting for since a while : an easy way to watch free TV live channels on our computers.
Now, the question is : how will Zattoo make money, provided that the software is supposed to be free of charge ? The answer may be in the Partners page :

Partners

Zattoo's customers are end users: people who appreciate high-quality, quick-start, long-play video from multiple channels available on one browser. Broadcasters and advertisers are our business partners.
Broadcasters

The ability of broadcasters to reach large audiences via the Internet has until now been limited by the unfavorable economics of Unicast, whereby for each additional audience member a broadcaster has had to incur additional cost. Zattoo solves this problem with our peer-to-peer distribution architecture, which allows broadcasters to reach ten times the audience with no additional infrastructure investment. For the cost of serving 10,000 users with Unicast, broadcasters can now serve 100,000 users with Zattoo.
Zattoo provides broadcasters with compelling competitive advantages beyond reducing operating cost. Zattoo gives broadcasters the technology to deliver streaming with vastly increased quality, reliability and unmatched video smoothness. Furthermore, Zattoo enriches the user experience by integrating compelling multimedia elements, thus making the Zattoo experience stickier than traditional TV.

Contact: Niklas Brambring, Content Acquisition Manager (nick@zattoo.com)
Advertisers

Zattoo enables advertisers to leverage the most successful web-based advertising methods in combination with the best attributes of broadcast television "spots" by supporting banner ads, targeted text ads and video clips. Advertisers understand the inherent strengths and value propositions of each method and can make an educated investment to reach specific audiences. Furthermore, advertisements can be sourced from ad specialists and integrated without modification, leveraging de facto industry standards.

So, correct me if I'm wrong : Zattoo gets (or will get) revenues from both the channels broadcasters and the advertisers. I understand the earlier, but don't get the later one yet : does that mean we will experience complementary ads during the live program ? Such as embedded contextual advertising, for instance.
Think about the combination of a live transcription system (used in live captionning) together with customized/localized advertising content : you're watching the latest '24' episode (well, once the writers' s strike will be over ;-), Jack Bauer is driving the brand new Ford SUV, and boom, you see a beautiful ad banner urging you to call your local Ford dealer... That is the power of TV thru Internet : UCC "User Customized Content", as opposed to the UGC User Generated Content.

The question is : could Zattoo be the Next Big Thing ? When it's about watching live TV on a PC, probably yes. Is that what the people want (watching live TV on a PC), I don't know. On the one hand, some want a PC on their TV, on the other hand some want TV on their PC. The right answer is called something like "convergence", isn't ?
So, what do I Average Joe want ? I want Zattoo on the iPhone. I have VOD already (iTunes, YouTube), now I'd like to get live streaming too. Because I'd like to be able to watch Roland Garros live whilst Im' sitting in a High-Speed Train.

Last thing on Zattoo before a more deeper review some time later : the folks there seem to care about their users. As an example, I've received the invitation to download the beta in french, although the company is based in the US (as far as I understood on the 'About' page). The set-up is quite fast and simple too. Pretty neat stuff, Folks ! Keep going ;-)

To visit Zattoo : here.

That's why I keep thinking the iPhone IS Testing 2.0, 2d edition

See here. And apply the same concepts (i.e. remote control, keyless, etc.) to testing devices or networks. You'll get the idea. Granted.

This Is What WebTV Is All About

The CES big circus has just started. If you can't make it to Las Vegas, you can still attend the show and get the whole flavor of it... on the Web.
See here, here, and here. Lesson : WebTV is the future. And the present, too, should you have a broadband access.

Ed. note : for a full coverage of CES'08, Robert Scoble has the list.

Post-Scriptum : I wonder if the folks at the Optical Society Of America are going to offer the live coverage of the forthcoming OFC-NFOEC exhibition in San Diego next month.

The Always Surprising Google

Nope, I'm not blogging about the forthcoming shake-up the Menlo Park folks are preparing on the entire Telecoms industry.
I'm just amazed by this : someone somewhere on the Planet (well, that is : in Canada) recently searched for "best elevator pitch web 2.0". Guess what : this post went number 4 in the first page (the 1 to 10 results). The power of SEO is just awesome. See the search results here.

post-scriptum : to better understand Google's strategy to reshape the Telecommunications landscape and rule the World, see their fantastic yet sometimes odorant home networking system here. Warning : this offer will last until March 31, 2008, at midnight.

The Web is the Platform

Erick Schonfeld of Techcrunch reports the short speech of Jeff Huber, VP Engineering, Google, at the Web 2.0 Summit yesterday in San Francisco.

Quote Huber : " What we see is applications fundamentally changing. Just like the model for content changed from monolithic sites, now applications are going to be feeds and containers. A lot that you have heard here is about platforms and who is going to win. That is Paleolithic thinking. The Web has already won. The web is the Platform. So let’s go build the programmable Web."

And let's go build the user-programmable test gear : Testing 2.0 !

PAL-V : A Dream Made Real ?

   

A new tricycle of some sort ? Quite not. Check this out.

Thanks Andrew for the heads-up.

It's Time To Push The Pedal To The Metal

In other words,  Telcos are readiing their FTTH-Everywhere strategy. Read this.
(thanks to Benoit for the heads-up)

Crossing The Chasm, By Steve Jobs

Just one day after the announcement of the iPhone price drop, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has posted an open letter to all iPhone customers on Apple's website. Read it here. That is pure Art Of Marketing. And another fantastic example of Apple' s focus on its customers. I wonder how many CEOs in the World would do the same in such situation : act, apologize, and explain.

Voyage In Another Web 2.0 Wonderland

Fasten your seat belt, and click here. Enjoy the ride.

Data Visualization For Open-Minds

   

Thanks to Master Guy Kawazaki (and the Magic of the Blogosphere), I discovered the recently published article in Smashing Magazine : Data Visualization: Modern Approaches. For all of you manipulating data to be presented to end-users, customers, or managers, this article (and the related comments, full of links too) is a must-read. It's a given that the web sites and tools mentionned are must-bookmark ;-)

Fiber in Europe : Disruption Full Speed Ahead

A new business model is making its debuts in the Fiber-To-The-Home market. In " Europe Fiber futures: 40 Gbps to offices & 100 Mbps to homes ", VON' European Editor  Bob Emmerson explains what a Nordic telco, Lyse Tele, is currently doing with its customers. The real innovation : subscribers can lay the last meters themselves, in order to reduce the costs.
IMHO, this is the very first step towards a " Network 2.0 " approach, where the end-users will build their access networks according to their own needs. The technology is there, the tools are there.
Imagine the fiber network in your neighborhood as a giant  loop, open, always on, delivering enough bandwidth for the common applications and services - say 100Mbps -, onto which you can plug your terminal at will.
We just have to do it (I will come back on that one later).

The parent company of Lyse Tele is a utility that had and still has a core asset: an established billing relationship with millions of electricity users. In April 2002, they formed a subsidiary to enter the IPTV arena, so while the activity was brand new, the name was not. Moreover, this was a company that the market could trust, and that is something technology cannot create.

The company started with a clean sheet of paper. There were no legacy investments or services to protect. But to compete, they needed a visionary strategy and an offer that was not merely different but radically different. All service providers employ the same technologies, so the radically different visionary strategy and offer had to come by way of marketing.

Selling Before Building

Their go-to-market strategy is alarmingly simple: before you go anywhere, make sure there is a market. They make sure by creating it.
They could not realize differentiation over cable or copper. It had to be fiber. To justify the investment, the company set up meetings in the neighborhood. They provided a supervised play area for children, coffee, mineral water, and a presentation.

The basic pitch is also simple. The company will lay fiber to your home, and you get 100 Mbps IP access (minimum), IPTV and triple play services, and because the bandwidth is symmetric, you can also participate in a community of interest groups. But all of this can happen only after enough households sign up. Participants can sign up at the meeting or later, and they are encouraged to spread the message if they want the service.

It works. To keep costs down, subscribers can lay the last part of the network themselves. There’s a do-it-yourself kit, and they save €500 (US$630). Around 80% do the physical, self-provisioning part themselves.
Apart from saving money, subscribers who lay the fiber themselves feel that they own that part of the infrastructure. VoIP calls made within the broadband network are free. This part of the strategy minimizes churn, as does the decision to deploy symmetric access to facilitate the development of community services. It works. Upstream traffic exceeds downstream.

Okay, that was a fake. Unfortunately.

All right, I have to admit it : this post "Paris Finally Gets Free fiber -- But Not The Kind You're Thinking"  is a fake.
Nicos Sarkolazy doesn't exist, neither this Fiber 2.0 startup (at least, as far as I know ;-) and his founder Mark Billaud.

This post was a proof of concept : to show that shifting the paradigm can help communities to deploy their own broadband/fiber networks.
I simply took the recent article written by Terrence Russell for Wired, and changed the names and locations.

Now, we might do our best to make it real ;-)

post-scriptum, about the names : it's a reference to a recent post from Jean-Michel Billaut (link in french), who wrote an open letter to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, urging him to push on the deployment of FTTH Fiber-To-The-Home access, for every French Citizen to get universal broadband access.

Paris Finally Gets Free fiber -- But Not The Kind You're Thinking

Exclusive report from fellow journalist & columnist Nicos Sarkolasy. [with typo corrected]

Between the nationwide decline explosion of municipal fiber projects and the stall huge perspective in Paris's FT fiber plans, it's not shocking to hear that other companies are coming up with their own homegrown solutions for the tech savvy city. The one that's been creating the most buzz in France over the last couple of days has been Fiber 2.0, with its audacious pledge to "free the broadband". With funding from Google and Sequoia Capital, the Biarritz, Euskadi-based company has recently announced its plans to expand its free coverage from the two Paris neighborhoods it currently blankets to an additional six communities within the city.

But here's the rub--even though Fiber 2.0 has been generous enough to donate the equipment, the deployment of the network relies heavily on volunteers. Although the company has seen success in providing free fiber in roughly 25 countries around the world, I wasn't sure how the service could become a viable way to connect with its sub-municipal scale and reliance on the generous and willing. To get the story straight, I had a brief chat with Fiber 2.0 CEO and Co-founder, Mark F. Billaud.

"We don't think of ourselves as being in competition with the FT deal," Billaud clarified during our phone conversation. "In many ways we serve a different market. We're not trying to be the backbone coverage for emergency services like police and fire departments, and that's a big part of what France Telecom and Orange are trying to do in Paris."

Ironically, I think Billaud touched on an important point while describing the role of Fiber 2.0's free service in a city setting. The availability of using the Web 2.0 and the ability to watch HD-TV on the go is what most of us associate with municipal fiber, but the truth is there's a much more complex element involved when the service is meant to become part of a city's infrastructure. Building out a speedy and adequately blanketed fiber network is not only expensive, but also a logistical nightmare when it comes to guaranteeing near flawless service for the public safety sector. Rather than trying to provide a de facto solution for all situations, Fiber 2.0's founders made the wise decision of focusing on enabling a community to buildout its own network for casual use.

There was still one thing that was bothering me--what's with the whole volunteer element? "Most of the people who contact us about volunteering are interested in doing their part by putting a booster on their windowsill," Billaud explained. "But we still encounter a fair share of people that are actually interested in sharing some of their unused bandwidth to provide connectivity for the community."

If the citizens of Paris can methodically build their own patchwork network, I'm left to wonder who really merits from the FT deal. But does Fiber 2.0 really have what it takes to even knockout a lot of the floundering muni-fiber projects out there? With all the bureaucratic red tape surrounding most muni projects it's possible, but the company would need a lot of visibility and a continuous supply of altruistic community to pull it off. Until progress is made with FT, or we see the rollout of WiMax/Xohm, I'm willing to give it a shot. It's not like it's going to cost me anything...

Frequent Flyer ? Think Again.

" For the hundreds of climate-change activists who have camped out near Heathrow Airport for the past week, there is only one way to reduce the carbon footprint of aircraft: Stop flying so much. " 

Must we quit flying to save the planet? the article published yesterday on the Seattle Time, by Mark Rice-Oxley is a must-read for all of us, especially those whose wallet sports one or more Gold/Platinum/Whatever-metal frequent flyer card.

Here's the conclusion :

[He noted that] 45 percent of all flights in Europe are less than 310 miles. "The French and Germans are showing that if you invest in good railways, you can persuade people to travel by rail and not by air."

But it's not only about leisure travel. Business travel makes up, by some estimates, 40 to 50 percent of all air travel. One element of the British OMEGA project is a study that looks at how business can reduce its aviation carbon footprint.

Keith Mason, who is leading the study, said it involves persuading businesses to measure the carbon they consume, choose flights that are not just the cheapest but are least environmentally damaging, use rail when possible and make greater use of videoconferencing and Internet solutions.

"We are aiming to come up with a range of practical tools that will help companies start managing their carbon consumption," Mason said. He noted that one company, PricewaterhouseCoopers, has introduced an internal "carbon budget" whereby its 1,000 top travelers must reduce their CO2 footprint by 20 percent.

Some experts think similar personal carbon budgets — rationing — may be the solution.

"It's too late for voluntary mechanisms," Anderson said. "Carbon allowances are the only fair way to deal with this."

I wonder if I would still be able to collect 150 boarding passes in a year, as I did back in 2000.
On the other hand, flying every two days or so is exhausting - ask your captain the next time you get in an airplane. And opportunities to create new businesses out of this new situation (i.e. Global Warming) are tremendous...
 

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