FiberGeneration

Good times ahead for FTTH in Europe ?

Fiber-To-The-Home enters a critical period in Europe. A "go/no go" kind of game, where CE might lose a lot : its economic wealth for the decades to come against other regions such as North America and Asia.
Read FTTH Council Sets Euro Target by Ray Le Maistre, International News Editor at Light Reading.

The revamped FTTH Council Europe expects 8 million homes to be hooked up to fiber-to-the-home connections by the end of 2012, says the industry body's new president. (See FTTH Council Adds New Prez.)

Joeri Van Bogaert, sales director for German fiber optics equipment vendor Leoni NBG Fiber Optics, took over as president of the Council in April, since when he has been restructuring and refocusing the pressure group, which aims to influence regulators, policy makers, financiers, and network operators that FTTH deployments are a positive influence on individuals and businesses.

Bogaert says that at the end of 2006, the European Union's 27 member states, plus Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland, had about 820,000 FTTH connections. The current target is to increase that ten-fold, to more than 8 million, by the end of 2012. "That's probably more realistic than ambitious," Bogaert concedes, adding that current growth indicators mean "we may need to revisit that forecast at the end of this year."

He says that, of that 8 million, about 6 million to 6.5 million connections are expected to come from buildouts by utility firms, city developments (especially Amsterdam and Vienna), and other communities, with the remainder from carriers such as France Telecom SA (NYSE: FTE - message board). (See FT Fleshes Out FTTH , Neuf Unit Wins FTTH Deal, and Amsterdam Fires Up Muni Broadband.)

Full article here.
FTTH Council Europe website here.

Dave Letterman introduces the iPhone Nano

Letterman just invented the dual-purpose iPhone Nano. The very first high-tech breath mint ;-)

Go to the 5:35 mark to enjoy Dave's understanding of webcasting, followed by the iPhone intro.

Direct link to the iPhone stuff here on CBS website. Click on " Watch Video " under the " Dave's iPhone Sneak Peek 06.27.07 " title.

iPhone Sales Pitch

New York Times' technologist David Pogue does great selling the iPhone.

(Fake) Steve Jobs talks about the WebTV revolution

The famous/must-read/sometimes-hilarious/always-right-but-on-portugal-matters/almost-as-good-as-the-real-one Fake Steve Jobs gets it on the forthcoming revolution which will change the Television industry for ever.

Happy Days for the iPhone

Henry * Fonzie * Winker was on Craig Ferguson' s Late Late Show to talk about the iPhone.

Guess you'll never pull off again ;-)

Looks Like It's Starting All Over Again

According to Forbes, ten small European optical-fiber network operators are to combine their infrastructure in an alliance called Euro-One. New entrants, new countries are involved (e.g. Czech Republic). It reminds me the pre-Bubble times, back in the late 90's, with all those alliances between telcos. I hope the new guys have learned from the mistakes of their predecessors. The good news is that the Internet has dramatically changed since 2000 : way more users, applications, usages, etc. It should help Euro-One to build an infrastructure that fits the actual needs of the customers. Note : maybe I will stay in the business. Perhaps someone at Euro-One needs my expertise ;-)

Fiber 101

For those of you who still wonder if optical fibers are made of recycled glass or beach' sand, this video from the Discovery Channel.

Comment faire la fibre optique
Uploaded by jeansergio

It's about testing your broadband access

" Testing the limits of the customer premises " was published a year ago by Tim McElligott on TelephonyOnline.com

The battle for the soul of the broadband customer goes on behind closed doors. But it's not all behind the doors to the development labs where ingenious engineers hatch super-secret capabilities. Nor is it all behind the doors to the central office from which all bandwidth flows. One of the biggest battles is being waged by technicians behind the doors to the den and to the family room.

“The home is the new frontier,” said Dave Holly, head of the cable networking division for JDSU. “It has dramatically changed what is being introduced to the network [by end users] as well as the portfolio of [test] tools we must develop and deploy.”

In this new frontier, the key to winning the broadband battle — not that there ever will be a clear-cut winner, only interchangeable market leaders — may depend on the weapons, or tools, with which service providers outfit their technicians.

With FTTH and FTTN implementations in full swing, significant changes are taking place in all aspects of network testing that will affect not just an upswing in the sale of test gear, but how, from where and by whom live networks and services are tested.

There are still those vendors looking for ways to “outfit the Super Tech,” said Peter Schweiger, business development manager for optical network test systems at Agilent. But he and others believe that may never happen. In some respects, the technologies are too numerous and complex for technicians to have command of them all. For the same reasons, it is untenable to have a single tool a tech can carry.

Test equipment manufacturers are trying to strike a balance between building what Schweiger calls the “minimum viable product” — a hand-held device with a couple of red and green lights that tests continuity and perhaps a little jitter and response time — and a full-blown analyzer that looks at Sonet, Ethernet and dense wave division multiplexing and acts as an optical time domain reflectometer and perhaps even POTS tester in the same box. He calls it, poetically, the difference between “tools for techs” and “instruments for engineers.”

Much more in the full article here.

The whole Testing 2.0 concept is right at the core of this article : for several different reasons, today's technicians need simple red & green lights tools to test the broadband access (and TriplePlay services) at the subscriber premise. Testing 2.0 goes even further : it's all about making tools for non-technicians.

Everything Ajax

For those of you who don't know what AJAX is, better ask the guy who invented the acronym.

Back To Safari

Welcome to FiberGeneration 2.0, and welcome to Safari 3.0 (beta). Way faster than the lovely Opera 9.2. Still some key features missing, such as IE or Firefox masquerading - very convenient, for instance to edit posts in WYSIWYG mode on TypePad ;-)

Kazados.tv finally launched

InternetTV station for teens Kazados.tv is live since a few hours. Have a look here. Warning : french speaking only (not text caption ;-)

Fiber : Generation Web 2.0

Watch this video, created by the FTTH Council in the US. Straight to the point : is the Internet as we know it today ready for the new huge amount of data that is coming out from all those new online applications. Such as video, for instance...

Bringing Social Networking To The Next Level

Earlier this week, Web browser pioneer Netscape has released a public beta of Navigator version 9. Among several nice features (which still can't beat the powerful yet unknown Opera 9) Netscape Navigator 9 jumps on the Social Networking bandwagon with the possibility for the users to share interesting stories [they] find with millions of people and vote on stories submitted by others as [they] browse.
An interesting feature indeed, which is similar to other social sites such as Digg and Delicious, it relies on Netscape's  start page Netscape.com. That means you need to go to Netscape.com to read other people' s opinion on the story or topic you want to submit (as with Digg and al.).

Now, wouldn't it be cool to be able to share your opinion on that story directly on the web page you read it ?
Fleck does that, somehow. Launched last year, Fleck is a  Web annotation tool for marking up blogs, Web sites, and social networking profiles with little sticky notes. See the snapshot for a quick view (Credit: CNET Networks). With Fleck, no need to jump from one site to another : you get the message right onto the relevant page.
However, you still need to go to Fleck.com before sticking your note in order to give the URL of the page you want to add this note to.

Those necessary steps are quite annoying. The ultimate user-experience would be for anyone browsing the Web to be able to leave a note or a vote or a feedback onto any web page without being forced to go back and forth between different sites.

As stated on Fleck/About : " Fleck.com wants to add a new layer of interactivity to the web. Fleck is inspired on a story written in 1945 by Vannevar Bush and an article titled 'We Are The Web' by Kevin Kelly.
Vannevar Bush predicted a machine called the Memex that would allow people to surf from one information page to another. Some people say that Hypertext and the World Wide Web are based on or at least inspired by the Memex.
One thing that the Memex had and the web doesn't is the ability to add new content to every page it contained."

Anyone willing to make this last sentence really true ?

Just This (17.07)

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Newsmap : how to make world news sexy

   

I recently discovered Newsmap, a Google News aggregator of a new kind.
Similar in its concept to the " What's Hot " feature on C|Net, Newsmap " provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe ".

As stated as well in the " About " page on Newsmap' website :
Newsmap does not pretend to replace the googlenews aggregator. Its objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media. It is not thought to display an unbiased view of the news; on the contrary, it is thought to ironically accentuate the bias of it.

I am convinced such of concept can be applied to many other areas than pure online news. For instance, a telecommunications operator could use it in its supervision and/or monitoring systems, e.g. to display users' s traffic. 

Clean-tech investing surpasses telecom, medical devices

Martin LaMonica for C|Net posts :

" Recently published research confirms what any venture capital investor would tell you: clean tech is hot.

The Cleantech Network and Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2) published a report summary on Tuesday fing that VC investment grew 78 percent in 2006 to $2.9 billion. Most of that money went into energy-related technologies.

That investment growth is anticipated to continue: the report expects numbers to climb to $19 billion by 2010.

The authors cited a few reasons for the investment boom in clean, or green, tech: concerns over global warming, higher energy prices, improved technology and changing public policies.

A lot of the money spent in venture-backed companies last year went to a handful of energy companies. With funding, those companies were able to ramp up their businesses from technology pilots to full-scale productions. A collection of solar and biofuel companies--Cilion, AltraBiofuels, Bloom Energy, Renewable Energy Group and Nanosolar--accounted for $600 million of investment in 2006.

Although there is clearly a bull market in clean tech, there are also regular concerns over a bubble, particularly in solar and biofuels. There is also the concern that lower energy prices could make alternative energies and fuels less economical. "

Shall you have the idea of a solar panel producing biofuel together with a micro-yet-powerful wind generator serving as a WiMax basestation, it's time to call on the VC firm next door ;-)

Viewed Pre-G8 On New Views Edition 06-06-07

Press Briefing by Tony Snow and Jim Connaughton, Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality
Jim Connaughton, Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, and US President's top environmental advisor answers questions about international development and the international development agenda leading up to the G8. 
[tags : climate environment globalwarming]

Truth about Kyoto: huge profits, little carbon saved
On the eve of a G8 summit focused on climate change, Nick Davies of The Guardian reveals major flaws in the global system designed to reduce emissions.
[tags : climate  environment  globalwarming]

China unveils climate change plan
China has unveiled its first national plan for climate change, saying it is intent on tackling the problem but not at the expense of economic development.
[tags : climate  environment  globalwarming]

Kazados.tv : still not online

Folks at 2T Productions and VO-Productions might be busy those days. Kazados.tv is still not online, altough it was planned to go " on air " (hey, that's  Television ;-) at the beginning of this week.
Having problems with PHP/MySQL over Flash, guys ? That's what happens when you decide to be a * disruptive-paradigm-shifting * kind of start-up without resources (read : money)...
Maybe it still the time for 2T and VO to read " The Art of Bootstrapping ".

Linked-In 100

I've reached the One-Hundred connections level on Linkedin today. Among those 100 persons, there are only a handful who I never met face to face or discussed or worked with. Quite impressive, when you think about seriously.   

Just This (16.07)

   

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