Here's an ATM machine' s screenshot, captured last night in downtown Pau. What a brilliant customer experience, is it ?!!!
For you geeks reading this blog, here's the MS Windows' s error message :
Question : Who the heck developed this mission-critical app ?
Next question : When the hell will the big guys (hey, you're seeing a large bank here) realize that Windows really sucks ?
That is one of the headlines on the FTTH Council Europe homepage :
" Public and private interests in Portugal have this week made a series of ambitious and immediate commitments to FTTH investment that could propel the nation into the top tier of European fibre nations.
On Friday 4th July, the Portuguese government set the target of 1 million FTTH connections by 2010, and there is every indication that this will be achieved as carriers Sonaecom and Portugal Telecom announced investment plans to potentially exceed this number before the end of the decade.
Incumbent telco Portugal Telecom forecast connecting 100,000 homes by the end of this year and a total of 1 million by the end of 2009.
In February, alternative operator Sonaecom announced a €240m FTTH roll-out to reach around a quarter of Portugal’s 10.6 million population. Its project completion is anticipated three years from now."
So, Portugal enters the Ultra-Broadband race with a quite aggressive plan.
In the meantime, FTTH deployments are still on hold (sort of) in France, with the three major telcos : FT-Orange, SFR-NeufCegetel, and Free waiting (sort of) or the final decision by the Authority of Regulation ARCEP on the mutualisation.
OK-derle, Portugal is a small country compared to France - say 6 times smaller population-wise. However, 1 million connected homes by 2012 as target goal defined by the Portuguese government is more aggressive than the one set by the French government - 4 million homes (link in french) - when compared to the respective population numbers : for Portugal, the ratio is 1:10, whilst for France it is 1:16. Ever heard of the Digital Divide ?...
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...
At NXTcomm'08 yesterday, Verizon Communications Inc. announced its plan to offer 50-Mbit/s
FiOS service to its FTTH Fiber To The Home customers (approx. 10
million households).
Read LightReading article by Raymond McConville for more details.
According to LightReading, " the 50-Mbit/s FiOS package will be offered for $90 per month in New York and Virginia, and at $140 per month in all other markets. The 50-Mbit/s downstream speeds will be coupled with the 20-Mbit/s upstream speeds Verizon began offering in October 2007."
Writes McConville, " Verizon’s ultimate goal is to enable 100-Mbit/s downstream to each FiOS subscriber. The carrier says it has successfully conducted 100-Mbit/s field trials with employees, but hasn't yet set a timetable for a commercial launch.".
Bokay. That's a truly compelling offer for the lucky FiOS' subscribers. But this is still an annoucement. For people - read Online Gamers, developers, entrepreneurs - looking for ultra-broadband access today, there's a place on Earth where they'll find 50Mbit/s upstream & downstream, immediately : Pau, France.
For less than $53 per month, installation and first month for free*.
Since decades, Australian and Californian surfers move to Biarritz for its beautiful spots. Why wouldn't the young *Net* generation, online gamers first, move to Pau for its blazzingly fast broadband access (and its wonderful landscapes in the meantime) ?
ps : 100Mbit/s is also commercially available, since a couple of years...
* by NeufCegetel, until June 30th.
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.
Yesterday morning on my way to the FTTH Forum organized by the French Fiber-Lobbying association CREDO at the Telecom & Management Institute of Evry, 30-km south of Paris, I've lost almost 60 minutes.
The reason ? Watch the photo, and you'll understand : the A104 "La Francilienne" highway is one of the most crowded in the country, thanks to those awful convoys of trucks.
Why that ? Because : a) in this part of the Greater Paris area, the A104 makes the connection between the A4 highway which goes eastbound, and the A6 which goes southbound; b) this very piece of land is occupied by a handful of super-malls and... giant logistics/warehouse/whatsoever-big-chunk-not-producing-any-good hubs; c) just a few miles away, there is a huge road construction on the bridge over the Seine river, which forces drivers to slow down their already slow speed.
That's France, Ladies & Gents. An economy based on Consumerism. No more industries, as per the German terminology. We are a country made of shopping malls and logistics hubs. Commuters do waste hours in traffic jams each day because of some truck on a road somewhere has got a problem. Road constructions takes ages because of nobody cares of the end-user - read : the driver. We all together do send tons of CO2 in the air because of those stupidities. A vicious circle, like this road on the photo.
The irony : I've lost my time on the road to a conference aimed at Fiber-To-The-Home, which, among endless other things, allows teleworking.
geo:tool=blockrocker.com
geotagged
geo:lat=48.6315472
geo:lon=2.5328636
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 !
Digging into the FiberGeneration' s stats of the day, it appears that more than one guy from Quebec, Canada, searched Google for JDSU + EXFO. Hum. Something in the air there, isn't it ?
Robert Scoble has posted a very long article on how to find a job during recession. Worth reading, provided the current situation in the Global Economy.
Here are a couple of my favorites, based on my own experience back in 2003 when I had to leave Agilent Technologies - should TypePad and YouTube have exist at this time (I think TypePad was in its early stage online by then), I would have jumped on them to do exactly what Scoble suggests. Hey, I've got the job with the city of Pau thanks to the Blogosphere, and I've discovered the wonderful world of WebTV last year thanks to Usenet. Lesson : listen to what Scoble says.
Here we go, with my own comments/feedback.
6. Do a video everyday on YouTube that demonstrates something you know. Loic does a video everyday. If you’re laid off you have absolutely no excuses. Get a cheap Web cam and get over to YouTube or Seesmic.Do it. It'll pay back quickly. That's the true aim of the so-called Web 2.0 : help people make connections faster.
10. Go to any job networking session you learn about. All of them were valuable to me, even though they didn’t necessarily bring me a job. Part of it is just feeling like you’re doing everything you can to get back on your feet. It’s an attitude thing. If you have an attitude that you’re going to work at this that will come across and will bring opportunities to you.I'll never forget the workshop sessions at the outplacement consulting firm I've been to thanks to my severance package at Agilent. Outstanding outcomes. For instance : at the very first workshop I've attended, I was with C-level people, from many different areas; industry, computing, bank, consulting, even politics (the chief of staff of a very popular yet powerful mayor of a city nearby Paris). It helped me realize two things : a) I was definitely not the only forced to look for a new job, b) I am a C-level guy (well, of the free-electron type ;-)
16. Go to every business event you can attend. Can’t afford to get in? Me neither and I have a job! Hang out in the hallways. You never know who you might meet. At minimum you’ll get interesting interviews for your blog. Have your resumes ready.My worst regret, when I look back at the 2003-2005 period. I didn't take enough time to attend those business events. I learned the hard way how proactive networking is mandatory (just because, before being laid off by Agilent, I never ever had to look for a new job : I always had the chance to meet the right persons at the right time).
Full post here.
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).
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).
I'm not talking of Master Steve nor his clone, but of Mr Greenspan.
In his recent interview by the Wall Street Journal, Master Of Disasters and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said that the United States are probably about to enter recession : "The symptoms are clearly there. Recessions don't happen smoothly. They are usually signaled by a discontinuity in the market place, and the data of recent weeks could very well be characterized in that manner."
Shall I be american today, I'd better get everything ready to relocate somewhere in Europe quickly. Because what Mr Greenspan says always come true half a year later (I'll never forget that I've lost my job at Agilent Technologies because of him ;-)
According to Yahoo! a few minutes ago : Oil Futures Rise to $100 a Barrel. Read here. Better consider swapping your 4x4 truck for an hybrid.
Thanks to The Broadband Hub, this highly interesting presentation by Dr. Robert Atkinson of The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF). Although it's 100% USA-focused, I'm sure most of the ratios apply to the rest of the Western World too (incl. France of course and unfortunately).
Among many key figures which help understanding the real situation in regards of Broadband access & use, the one about the perception of the Internet by Disabled persons (page 39) is quite questioning : the Internet, which normally should be considered as one of the most powerful tool to get Disabled people on board, is not. There is a good news behind the bad one : there is plenty of stuff still to be done for real innovation and entrepreneurship in this domain. "Change the World", right ?...
ps: also found in this presentation, the Virginia Tech’s eCorridors Broadband Access Map, that enables real-time, bottomup broadband mapping. Got to find the same for Europe. Or create it if it doesn't exist yet !...
Madame Christine Lagarde, French Minister for the Economy, Finance, and Employment (that's a title as big as the Ministry itself...) recently asked the French citizen to use bicycles instead of cars, in order to not spend their money on gasoline (and diesel).
Nice try, but she better had read this survey from Virgin Vacations before going with such a stupid statement. The survey is about : The eleven most bicycle friendly cities in the World.
Here's the list :
1. Amsterdam, Netherlands
2. Portland, Oregon
3. Copenhagen, Denmark
4. Boulder, Colorado
5. Davis, California
6. Sandnes, Norway
7. Tronheim, Norway
8. San Francisco, California
9. Berlin, Germany
10. Barcelona, Spain
11. Basel, Switzerland
That's seven cities in Northern/Central/Eastern Europe and four in the US. Paris, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, France ? Nowhere to see. I've been in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Boulder, San Francisco, Barcelona, Basel : I'd love to ride my bicycle there. I live nearby Paris : I would never ever jump on a Velib. Life is way too much important to me.
Full survey and more here.
Bicycle Friendly Community here.
Photo credit : George Bosela
According to Lightwave earlier this week, Danaher Corp. and Tektronix Inc. announced they have reached a definitive agreement under which Danaher will make a cash tender offer to acquire all outstanding common shares of Tektronix for $38.00 per share. The aggregate purchase price is approximately $2.8 billion, including debt, transaction costs, and net of cash acquired.
With the acquisition of a venerable company, Tektronix, which is a reference in the T&M Test & Measurement world together with Agilent Technologies (formerly Hewlett-Packard), the industry landscape is going to change once again. The alliance between Fluke - another pretty strong reference at every Telecoms & Datacoms network installer on the Planet - and Tek is creating a new one-stop-shopping center covering the whole spectrum of typical applications, from lab & manufacturing (Tek) to installation & maintenance (Fluke), from low-end/high quality/mainstream test gear (Fluke) to high-end/high quality/advanced (Tektronix).
Whilst T&M market leader Agilent Technologies has to face three major competitors : JDSU, Anritsu, and the new Fluke+Tek actor now, the French-Canadian firm EXFO is left alone as a small player in front of giants. EXFO, whose role model was HP Test & Measurement (aka Agilent) will most probably be set ready for a merger with another group.
Note that EXFO's stock slipped quite heavily yesterday, and that Tek's raised rose nicely at the official announcement.
Charts available at Yahoo!Finance here.
post-scriptum : For you who are not familiar with the Telecoms Test & Measurement, I'll publish a brief history of the sector, to show how the T&M folks are still surfing on the ripples of the Internet Bubble' implosion.
Did you know that by 2010, 20 typical households will generate as much traffic as the entire internet moved in 1995 ? This fact, and much more, on this video.
See the video on the original website here
More on Internet Innovation later this week.
Heard from Mr Dominque Paret, IT Development Director at the Region of Loire (you know, Saint-Etienne, their Soccer Team, their Schlumberger/Wavetek/Acterna/JDSU/Who'sNext? Fiber Optics Test R&D & Manufacturing Plant, etc...) last week at the Odebit Conference in Paris, this true fact - for France in this case, however I'm sure it also apply to many other countries in Europe : when you build a new road, you know the traffic will double the next year AND you know there will be a new college within the next five years. Simply because people have moved all along that new road.
According to Mr Paret, this is a well known and well mastered model (that's why we have those ENA and X and Mines things ;-). The problem with fiber is that there is no such a model at the moment : nobody can tell for sure what will be the outcomes of a FTTx network five years after its completion.
Shall YOU have heard or experienced or built such a model yourself (i.e. in/for your community), please don't hesitate to share it !
Thanks to the weekly delivery of my YouTube' subscriptions, just discovered this video from the Electric Power Board, a.k.a. EPB, of the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee.
A Chattanooga' s public utility, EBP launched a Fiber To The Home initiative back in August this year. In the official announcement, Harold DePriest, EPB’s President and CEO said : ”A Fiber to the Home infrastructure will help ensure a growing supply of jobs for our children – and our grandchildren. Fiber to the Home will be as critical to Chattanooga’s quality of life as electric power was in the 1930s or the Interstate system was in the 1950s. On top of that, it will help make electricity in our area even more reliable and affordable.”
What makes this initiative an interesting case study for the cities and local collectivities wondering if a FTTH network is worth the investments : it's a 160,000 inhabitants town, with a local economy that includes a diversified mix of manufacturing and service industries, four colleges, and several preparatory schools. According to Wikipedia : Chattanooga is the corporate headquarters of many mid-sized firms including bicycle manufacturer Litespeed (looking for a titanium bike ? there you go ;-) and sustainable design company Tricycle Inc.. Many businesses in the banking and insurance industries run their operations from Chattanooga. The city is also home of large branch offices of AT&T and UBS. In summary, Chattanooga is pretty similar to lots of european cities, take many Germany, UK, and France for instance, which might benefit from Fiber-To-The-Home too...
Back to DePriest announcement :
“A recent study by a group of professors at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Tennessee State University suggests these economic and social benefits alone could top $600 million for Chattanooga over ten years.
Another study, verified by the Electric Power Research Institute, indicates that Fiber to the Home will also allow EPB to make significant improvements to its electric power distribution system. The infrastructure can help the company locate problems earlier, restore outages more quickly and gain efficiencies that are not currently available. It will also allow EPB to provide more tools to help customers reduce their power usage and cost.
The value to electric power customers in the form of reduced outages, energy conservation and other efficiencies is estimated at roughly $300 million over ten years, bringing Fiber to the Home’s total value to the community to nearly $1 billion over the course of ten years.”
Quite an interesting ROI, right ?...
See the video - and much much more - directly on EPB' s website here.
Read why the such an initiative always generates FUD here and here.
More on the lovely city of Chattanooga here. Among many other key factors to make a city a nice place to live in, this : "The city supports a downtown shuttle fleet of zero-emission electric buses - manufactured here in Chattanooga - for commuters and visitors wishing to park-and-ride."
Post-Scriptum : for those of you who are too young to remember, here's why the title, and a pretty cool video to illustrate it.
This week could be the Week Of Broadband here in Europe, with the Apple+O2 deal on the iPhone in the UK, with ECOC'07, the european Fiber Optics conference & tradeshow in Berlin, Germany, and with Odebit'07, the Broadband conference in Paris, France.
Let's take this opportunity to go back to the fundamentals : why fiber is the only medium of choice when it's about delivering multimedia content instantly - Here is an excerpt of the FTTH Council' s Feb.07 report : "Fiber To The Home, Advantages of Optical Access " :
Common sense suggests that communities with plentiful, reliable bandwidth available will do better than those without. FTTH-powered bandwidth is essential for:
• Hometown businesses competing in a global economy.
• Professionals and others who work at home.
• Quality of life provided by online entertainment, education, culture and e-commerce.
• Special services for the elderly and for shut-ins.
FTTH thus helps define successful communities just as good water, power, climate and transportation have defined them for millennia.That’s obviously so for greenfield developments – the data, in previous sections of this report, show that fiber-equipped homes and offices sell faster, and command a price premium over real estate developments without fiber. But what about existing communities? Direct comparisons are admittedly difficult because FTTH has not been widely available until recently, but virtually all of the real-world economic studies have borne out the predictions; none has suggested otherwise.
By far the most comprehensive look at broadband’s impact is a 2005 study by William H. Lehr, Carlos A. Osorio, and Sharon E. Gillett at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Marvin A. Sirbu, from Carnegie Mellon University. It was funded by the Economic Development Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce and by the MIT Program on Internet & Telecoms Convergence (http://itc.mit.edu). The study found that broadband enhances economic activity, helping to promote job creation both in terms of the total number of jobs and the number of establishments. Broadband is associated with growth in rents, total employment, number of business establishments, and share of establishments in IT-intensive sectors.
There are also numerous case studies, comparing specific communities before and after public investment in broadband. A few examples:
• One early study, of a municipal fiber network built in 2001 in South Dundas, Ontario, showed substantial benefits. It was prepared for the UK’s Department of Trade and Industry.
• A 2003 study by D. J. Kelley comparing Cedar Falls, Iowa, which launched a municipal broadband network in 1997, against its otherwise similar neighboring community of Waterloo. Cedar Falls bounded ahead of its neighbor.
• More recently, Ford and Koutsky compared per capita retail sales growth in Lake County, Florida, which invested in a municipal broadband network that became operational in 2001, against ten Florida counties selected as controls based on their similar retail sales levels prior to Lake County’s broadband investment. They found that sales per capita grew almost twice as fast in Lake County compared to the control group.Similar patterns have emerged for communities using FTTH provided by private enterprise. Fort Wayne, Indiana, has taken good advantage of a Verizon FiOS investment there, for instance. And in February 2007, two big studies of housing sales in Massachusetts – where FiOS is coming on line in numerous communities – show a startling recovery. Sales are up, and prices are down only slightly (after a decade-long rise that makes housing there among the most expensive in the United States).
The data are clear and consistent: FTTH, whether provided by private or municipal organizations, is an economic plus for all communities, and an outright boon for many.
FTTH and Economic Development FTTH helps define successful communities just as good water, power, climate and transportation have defined them for millennia.
FTTH Council website here.
Full report here.
Also a must-read, the american online magazine Broadband Properties. Its baseline : "Building The Fiber-Connected Community".
One of the few rules I do follow in business is Never Talk Politics. Especially when it's about Economy. However, there are times when I can't keep my mouth shut. Take Mr Greenspan. Back in 2000, he announced a possible downturn of the US economy. Six months later, the Telecoms industry crashed, bringing down countless firms, startups, and worst, people, all around the Planet. The collateral damages were spectacular yet dramatic...
He did it again earlier this year, warning that the American economy might enter recession by the end of 2007. See what happened with the subprime mortgage crisis this summer, and the actual ongoing global turmoils worldwide.
That's why, the next time this man claims a downturn might occur in your industry, you better look for a new job somewhere else...
In other words, Telcos are readiing their FTTH-Everywhere strategy. Read this.
(thanks to Benoit for the heads-up)
Thanks to Benoit Felten, this article by Andrew Schmitt of Nyquist Capital : "The Proving Ground of NTT", or how Japan expect to reach 100% broadband coverage, 90% of which to be ultra-high speed (read : fiber-based) by 2010.
In the early 90's, the Japanese economy crashed. Fifteen or so years later, Japan is back in the Top-5 concert of leading nations. Since fifteen years or so, Japan is building a truly broadband infrastructure. There is a strong link between those two facts : nationwide networks construction creates and maintains jobs, whilst thus available high-speed links helps creating new products & services, hence new jobs. A virtuous circle that propels the Economy.
A little while ago, entrepreneur/stock market commentator/best-selling author/co-founder of The Street.com and Mad Money host Jim Cramer went absolutely crazy live, during one of his regular appearances on CNBC.
Watch his new blockbuster : approximatively 2 million viewers on YouTube as of today. IMHO, it's even better than Ballmer going on stage.
In the meantime, you may listen to what the man said. Because it might be damn true...
William McDonough: Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
Jeffrey S. Young: iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business
Joel A. Barker: Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future
Jeff Cox: Selling The Wheel: Choosing The Best Way To Sell For You Your Company Your Customers
Alex Steffen: Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century
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