FiberGeneration

Say Goodbye Farewell To The Luciole

Rumor confirmed by a source who was dealing with Sunrise Telecom (SRT) on a *advanced fiber monitoring system* : SRT's Swiss-based subsidiary is no longer part of the company.

Optical Network Test : The Sun Rise Again ?

Rumor is spreading around the Test & Measurement small world : some interesting news coming soon from Sunrise Telecom, San Jose, California, and its swiss subsidiary.

It seems that SRT' management finally realized that the R.O.I. of the former startup could have been way better.

Stay tuned for more, as I wait for one last confirmation before publishing the whole story.

May The Force Be With Cisco

As I'm involved in the creation of a "FTTx School" here in France, Cisco' s Telepresence system is one of the tools we're investigating for us to deliver training courses and seminars over fiber. An amazing piece of technology, Telepresence makes StarWars' R2D2' s holographic videos real. 

My lucky buddy Jean-Hughes Lauret is to get one system soon, for his academic purposes.

See what how you will soon be able to beam Princess Leia here.

More on Cisco Telepresence system ? You may want to start there.

Also, you may get info about Cisco' s initiatives to reduce carbon emissions here.

post-scriptum : thanks to Guy Kawasaki for the reminder.

The Wonderful World Of Fiber Optics... And Web2.0

This is a dynamic collection of fiber-related photos fetched on Flickr with Yahoo!Pipes. Created and published in less than 2 minutes.

This is the exact same collection, geocoded. Cool, huh ?

Teaching Fiber Optics The Paper Way

Since I came back in the training business a year ago or so, I decided to drop the traditional slideware stuff * for a more 21st Century stylish method : use the Web 2.0 gear such as YouTube for tutorial videos, Picasa for real world photos, and more recently Facebook for post-training social and collaborative networking (note : all free apps, as I want to keep the learning materials costs as low as possible for the customers).

However, whilst going whole online digital is nice because it's hype, I still need a paper board to explain a lot of things, which a video clip will never replace (except perhaps those made by the folks at CommonCraft).
I love paperboards : it forces you to go crisp & clear, splitting your explanations into simple/one-page explanations - as Twitter forces you to write a message in less than 160 characters. Over the last 15 years that I was delivering training courses and sales seminars, I've collected lots of my paper rolls, for me to keep record of the interesting discussions with the attendees.

Of course, bringing a paperboard roll back home works fine when you travel by car, but it's a bit more tricky when you fly. Thanks to Apple, this issue is over. I now capture all the relevant stuff with my iPhone, and upload it on the MacBook right away. That makes the paperboard digital ;-)

* note : I'm thinking of using cartoons such as this one to explain and share complex stuff in the next future.

Teaching Fiber Optics Basics The YouTube Way

Why spend time on training course slides and notes design and edition, when everything you need is available on the Net ? Provided that people better remind images rather than text, YouTube is one of the new companions of the teachers, trainers, and instructors of all kind, together with Wikipedia and a few other Web 2.0 tools.
Here's a collection of videos I've put together for fiber optics training - most are in english, some are in french. Enjoy, and feel free to use. The playlist is available here.

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.

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...

Generation Fiber

Read here. I'm glad this blog is named after the Fiber Generation...

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.

From San Francisco to San Diego

I'm heading for the OFC'08 tradeshow, going first to San Francisco to do some business with a couple of french friends of mine who have the very chance to have both a french and a US passport.
I'll do my best to do live blogging on Tuesday next week, for the OFC Keynote - Bob Metcalfe will be there.
CU soon ;-)

The I-Take-Some-Time-For-Blogging On Fiber-To-The-Home Edition [01-30-08]

Buddy Blogger Benoit Felten has published an outstanding interactive map on the actual situation of FTTH Fiber-To-The-Home networks worldwide. Worth the look (and bookmark) for all of us working in the FTTx field.

FYI, here's the comment I just left :

"About Pau : the 6,000 active subscribers milestone will be achieved within the next couple of weeks.

Based on the map, which is pretty accurate thanks to Benoit's outstanding work, one can note that Pau is the ONLY european city south of the Loire river (means, where weather conditions are wonderful for most of us ;-) that offers up to 100Mbps connectivity to enterprise & residential customers."

Go to the map here.

The Magic Is Back, or : Marketing That Serves The End-User

Back in 2000, I titled the brief report of the OFC Optical Fiber Communications exhibition to my management at Agilent Technologies : "The Magic is gone." The whole Telecoms industry was ruled by marketeers, and Fiber was no different. The Lucents, the Cornings, the Pirellis : they were all selling wonderful shiny proprietary solutions to hungry customers (the new telcos which were popping up like hell everywhere on the Planet), totally forgetting that what made the Optical Communications industry in the past was Innovation.
Fact is, until 1998 the fibers were sporting strange names, such as "ITU-T G652". Everything changed in '98, when Corning came out with its Leaf, Lucent with its TrueWave, or Nec with its Lucyna. Since then, marketeers took over the business, leaving inventors and researchers in their labs. The best example : the Pirelli Telecoms booth at OFC'99, with an... italian motorcycle as the only product on stage.
For people like myself, whith a technical background, a marketing position and a customer-focused mindset, the outcome was obvious : a total lack of real customers' s needs, leading to what happened to be a violent downturn.

Today, almost 8 years later, my feeling is that the Magic is back. Reaserchers and innovators can talk to end-users again. See this product presentation video by... Corning : for the very first time since a decade, a new product is a true solution to a real customer problem.

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.

FTTH Market Overview, An Old Yet Useful Study

Digging the Web for data on FTTx Fiber-To-The-Something key players in the Bay Area, I found this 125+ pages document. Quite an extensive overview of the FTTx markets, although the study is dated 2003. Considering that the Telecoms industry just recovered by the end of 2006, IMHO most of the informations you'll find in there are still pretty much relevant - simply change names when M&A apply.

Ehrhardt & Ehrhardt consulting firm website here (in Dutch)

Anyone Willing To Relocate To France, American Fellows ?

Earlier this week, US Telco Verizon  unveiled a Groundbreaking FiOS Internet Service. Claims the press release : " Verizon has changed the definition of "fast" with the introduction of a new, symmetrical Verizon FiOS Internet service for consumers, featuring an upload and download speed of up to 20 megabits per second (Mbps)."

Wow. 20Mbps on fiber, that's quite a breakthrough. For the US. Because, not willing to play the Arrogant Frenchie, but... we've got 20Mbps DSL since years, allowing real TriplePlay services including HD-TV. Okay, DSL is not symmetrical. Guess what : we (well, the lucky guys in Paris or Pau and many other cities across the country) can get full-symmetrical 100Mbps on fiber since months.

Take the city of Pau and its state-of-the-art 'Pau Broadband Country' broadband access network : 40,000+ homes passed, with 6,000+ active subscribers : NeufCegetel offers symmetrical 50Mbps   since May this year, whilst enterprises and high-end users enjoy a full 100Mbps connection.

So, for those of you who seek bandwidth hungrily : take a one-way ticket to the 21st Century' (Broadband) Capital : Pau.


Update 10-27-07 : I just replaced the previous photo for the one above. The reason is that the author of the original photo sent me a message today, claiming the copyright. He wanted me to mention his name, blahblahblah. Well, I would, should this famous photo be about a private thing or so. Fact is, the photo shows a public work on a public street, for a public community (a french city somewhere in the Alpes). In summary, the guy shot a picture of something paid by the French citizens, and he wants a copyright on it. Weird, IMHO. Especially at the Age of the Web 2.0.
To reach this modest person, click here, er, nowhere : I haven't seen any "email me" button on his weblog, which is here.

post-scriptum : the photo is mine, means I shot it myself some years ago, somewhere in Santa Rosa, California.
I must apologize : I didn't ask the authorization to PacBell to take this picture. However, it's here for you, with no copyright. Enjoy it, copy it, save it, distribute it : it's free, because I decided to put it here, on my blog, on the Web, on the Internet.
By the way, the PacBell folks did a great job repairing a fiber optics cable this beautiful morning. I wish the French telcos and I&M contractors be able to deliver the same level of quality. But that's another story.

Exaflood ? Exaflood.

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.

Me Too

Ten years after leaving my own firm to do something else, I'm back in the Fiber Optics Training & Consulting business. Since Monday this week, I'm in charge of the creation of a ad-hoc subsidiary at a 20-yrs old / 50-people / fast-growing company here in France.

It's a little bit strange to me : I'm paid to do what I haven't had the chance to achieve with my own firm ten years ago.
The good news is : today, the market is there (thanks to YouTube, Facebook, and MSN), the customers are there, and the tools are there (thanks to the Internet and the Web 2.0).

And thanks to those ten years out of this particular business, I've learned so many different things myself in so many different domains that I'm more capable to run this business successfully than in the 90's.
For instance, this : today, I've been working at Production, assembling and testing fiber patchcords. For the first time since 1983 when I first put my fingers around an optical fiber, I've been shaking. I was afraid of breaking the fiber whilst stripping it. Now I understand my attendees fifteen or ten years ago, when they were shaking and I was saying "come on guy, look at me, am I shaking ?"...

Over the last ten years, I've learned a lot of things, for sure. Maybe the most important one is humility.

 

Building Fiber-To-The-Home Vs. Building Homes

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 !

Chattanooga Choo Choo

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.

Is The Fiber Magic Back ?

[updated Sat. 09/22]

At the recent ECOC European Conference and Exhibition on Optical Communication which closed its doors yesterday in Berlin, Germany, Alcatel-Lucent researchers delivered  post-deadline papers that remind me the good old days of the pre-Bubble era (i.e. when Marketing was not the ruler).

Among several outstanding breakthroughs (for fiberoptics technology- savvy guys ;-) : the transmission of 12.8 Tbit/s of data through a single optical fiber over a record distance of 2,550 km, and a 8-Tbit/s WDM transmission with 80 channels, each modulated at 100 Gbits/sec, transmitted over 520 km

A few facts for novices : a data rate of 1 Terabit per second represents roughly 12 millions telephone landlines; ten years ago, the transmission record was set around 3 Tbit/s, equivalent to approximately 40 millions lines; in late 2000, the record was at 6.5 Tbit/s, allowing the transmission of 1 million motion pictures over a single fiber at a time.

As stated by french pioneer and researcher Emmanuel Desurvire in his paper "Optical Communications in 2025", presented at ECOC'05 : " 20-years objectives can only be reached though tech-driven research and there is an urgent need to get started."
It seems AlcatelLucent got started again, leaving marketing behind the labs' s doors for the sake of the whole Fiber Optics industry.

GPON Deployment Forum

The Fiber Optics Industry keeps accelerating its pace towards  full recovery and  bright  sustainable future. The forthcoming "GPON Deployment Forum" organized by IIR Telecoms is a must-attend for all of you involved with FTTH Fiber To The Home networks.

GPON Deployment Forum is to be held Mon 03 Dec  - Thu 06 Dec 2007 at the Moevenpick Hotel, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Event detailled presentation here.
Event brochure here.
Registration here.

FTTH and Economic Development

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".

Fibernews goes live !

[updated 09.14.07 @ 8:22PM CET]

Please welcome the new member of the Fibergeneration family : FiberNews !
FiberNews is a GoogleMap mashup, displaying FTTH Fiber-To-The-Home related news per their respective location.
See the previous post here.

Created with Yahoo!Pipes and GoogleMaps, of course.
The process is very simple :
1. get news feeds from different online news websites,
2. filter them on specific items, extract the location out of the press release or information,
3. get the corresponding output file as a KML file,
4. open it with GoogleMaps,
5. get the HTML code,
6. embed it in a blog post.

Next steps : a) add more news feeds - for the time being, that's only Fiber Optics Online and The New York Times, b) add a Yahoo!Maps display, to compare with Google's, c) test new ways to show information, as on Babelcast for instance.

You can see, use, and copy the fibernews pipe here. 
FiberNews webpage is here.

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)

Leadership, Economy, and Fiber Optics

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.

Fiber On Demand Goes Live !

I'm pleased to announce the release of my new weblog : " Fiber On Demand ".
Fiber On Demand displays all videos related to the FTTH Fiber To The Home technology available on the Net.

The first version, aka "beta" as usual, do aggregate content from YouTube and GoogleVideo. The actual query looks for all the files tagged "FTTH", without any further operation but filtering non-unique items, the results being combined into one single RSS feed.

To create Fiber On Demand "Beta", I've used only two tools, beside the TypePad platform of course : Yahoo!Pipes and Feed2JS. Total time spent to put together the actual version : less than 60 minutes, including 10 minutes to build and test the pipe, 20 minutes to test several options to display the RSS feed on a TypePad' weblog, and 20 minutes to create the current design of Fiber On Demand.

To get started, here is a comprehensive list of useful ressources :
- Yahoo!Pipes Blog
- Some Template Tips & Tricks blog
- 5 cool ways to use Yahoo!Pipes
- Yahoo! Pipes: Unlocking the Data Web  by Jeremy Zawodny

My "FTTH_videos" pipe is available here.  Developed from scratch - means it's not a clone of an existing pipe. Just to prove how easy it is to build your own app, even if you haven't put your hands on C++ since years (myself : was in the mid 90's, when I were a registered NeXT Developer ;-)
   
The next revision of Fiber On Demand will : a) exclude french-speaking videos, b) sort the videos by location.
Also, I'll do my best to  get embedded YouTube clips instead of vignettes.

Last but not least, I'm preparing another video blog, this one aimed at education on fiber optics technology. Stay tuned ;-)

post-scriptum : to go to Fiber On Demand, click on the link under "Blogging On Fibergeneration" in the right hand' sidebar.

UPDATE Aug. 27, 2007 : I will publish the step-by-step process in a future post (read : soon).

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...

Fiber Optics Fellows, Get Ready For The Next Big Wave

" Cisco found that American video websites currently transmit more data per month than the entire amount of traffic sent over the internet in 2000. " This, and much more, into the article written by Matt Chapman of the Australian online magazine ITNews.

For the Telecoms Industry, this is the best news since the downturn : Finally, there is a real need for bandwidth.
It's a given that telcos, cable TV operators, and the remaining carriers' s carriers will have to build lots of new long haul networks pretty soon, for the actual infrastructure will start showing off its limits.
Let the big guys deploy their FTTH networks here, the CableTV folks upgrade to DOCSIS 3.0 there. Then, watch them struggle with the first Internet black-out, and you will see how quickly those new long-distance infrastructures will show up. So wonderful time ahead for the Fiber Optics fellows ;-)

post-scriptum : You may also read the original article published by Ars Technica last week : " Report: Cable companies facing big bandwidth crunch ".

(Thanks Bruno for the heads up)

Testing Fibers The Web 2.0 Way

Got to tell you : Testing 2.0 becomes real. Some much fun with all the Web 2.0 apps out there. Web-apps, not Client-apps, that's the key. Stay tuned, more to come next week.

Private Message 2d Edition

To my unknown reader from Eningen : please don't hesitate to give me a call !

About Innovation In Fiber Optics Technology

Japan Telco & R&D leader NTT was the first to come on the market with a new type of fiber aimed at Fiber-To-The-Home easy deployments. That is due to the fact that FTTH roll out started earlier in Japan than in the US. The question is : how about Europe, and France especially ? Local Telcos and ISPs seem not to be concerned by technics, and the local fiber optics industry has been almost wiped out after the crash, back in the early 2000's. So, no industry, no innovation, no innovation, no more industry. Time to do something, Mr President !

Why FTTH helps vendors to innovate

Worldwide leader Corning announced a breakthrough optical fiber technology, performing over 100 times better than standard fibers. The N.Y.-based fiber maker worked closely with Verizon to resolve FTTH installation challenges.

"This is a game-changing technology for telecommunications applications," said Peter F. Volanakis, president and chief operating officer at Corning. "We have developed an optical fiber cable that is as rugged as copper cable but with all of the bandwidth benefits of fiber. By making fundamental changes in the way light travels in the fiber, we were able to create a new optical fiber that is over 100 times more bendable than standard fibers." Corning's newest fiber technology achieves this while maintaining compatibility with