Yesterday in Mortain, a beautiful small town a few miles away from the Mont St Michel,was the 3d Ultra-Broadband Conference, held by the french optical cable manufacturer ACOME.
Here are my running notes, as is - means no re-writing * ( my personal comments under brackets ) :
Regis Paumier, CEO, ACOME. keynote speech :
- CETHD Center of Expertise for Ultra Broadband : 1,000+ visitors to date (note : opened mid 2007)
- there are many issues with Quality and Maintenance (on optical networks, FTTx)
- key issue in France (on FTTH) : rural environment.
Ms. Agnes Huet, President, Comptoir des Signaux. market survey by the FTTH Council Europe :
- FTTx networks Business Model :
a) OpenAccess is mandatory
b) Operator vs. End-User : capacity becomes commodity; extends potential services; puts the End-User at the center of the market.
- User-oriented solutions : puts the End-User at the epicenter of the system : dynamic bandwidth allocation, dynamic services allocation.
- Open Access / Open Networks not widely adopted in France : very few existing networks allow such services.
- xPON infrastructures limit Open Access systems.
- Collectivities want to : investigate all potential solutions; model contribution and ROI.
- Collectivities claim they don't have visibility on those solutions (hence the need for permanent live show-rooms).
Yves Le Mouel, President, French Federation of Telecoms (i.e. : Operators) :
- FTTH in France : need 100k new subscribers per month to be considered "mainstream";
- Investments : estimation = 10 Billions euros over 10 years (see recent announcement by SFR - link in french);
- New Business models must be invented, because based on abundance of bandwidth and services;
- the key question is : how to deploy a complex infrastructure to deliver services the simplest way (note : hence the need for a complete paradigm shift. Think Different);
- how FTTH will win by 2012 : the Killer App.
- the Killer App : images, video, online gaming, music, unlimited storage (read : Cloud Computing);
- services : teleworking, telemedicine, teleassistance, telemonitoring, online shopping;
- QoS : PnP, Easy2Go, AlwaysOn.
- avoid the Digital Divide : think Geography, Social, residential customers vs. enterprises...
- issues to be fixed : evangelisation, training & education of networks' deployment professionals (comment : good to hear that from the operators themselves);
- this represents more than 100,000 jobs (comment : good to hear that one too. I personally claim FTTH is a unique opportunity for new jobs and businesses creation, since months);
- target FTTH France 2012 : 3-Mo new subscribers per year. Same as ADSL. (comment : on this one, I slightly disagree : ADSL is easy to deploy, because it uses an existing infrastructure. FTTH : you need to install at least the last mile).
Thierry Houdart, Deployment Director, Axione (ETDE groupe Bouygues). an innovative solution for optical cable deployment :
- install the optical cable along the low-voltage power distribution network;
- speed : up to 1-km per day, by 2 technicians;
- no traffic disruption (road, power, telecom, etc.);
- capillarity : the fiber cable can go right to the end-user;
- infrastructure' cost : divided by a factor of 2 to 3 compared to existing traditional solutions, e.g. buried cables;
- green deployment : lower the CO2 emissions by 50%.
My personal take (this time w/o brackets, because it's a pretty crucial point ;-) : I assume the cost of deployment with this new solution is less than 30€ per meter, all together - site survey, components, installation, etc. Let say we can achieve 15€/m : a fantastic quantum leap for FTTH.
This solution is a true paradigm shifting one anyway : the split of the cost of deployment is no longer 80% civil work and 20% components + instal; it is now 20% civil work and 80% components + installation. On top, it's an eco-friendly solution. Fiber finally goes Green. Brilliant.
* I wish I could capture notes this way ;-)
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