FiberGeneration

Note to the FiberGeneration Readers

Since quite a while, I'm moving my "online sharing" activities to more comments on others' s blogs and more twitts than ever before. Hence the relative silence here on FiberGeneration.
Actually, I'm investigating several ways to post those comments and twitts on this blog, should they be relevant with FiberGeneration' s *editorial line*. An interesting yet difficult job ;-)

In the meantime, Andrew keeps posting his short notes as often as his own job allows it. Also, my friends Georges and Handy should publish their first posts within the next couple of weeks (I know, I said that 2 months ago about Georges ;-)

Keep going, Namaste, and Peace Out (I think we all need it at the moment...).

Autumn break [by Andrew]

Two time in year - in spring and in autumn - company goes to forest for break day. It happened last Friday.

Starting morning - mushrooms search
Afternoon - some shashlik
Good team!

Typical French Kiss *, Without The Simple...

This is the photo of one newly renovated part of the CNIT exhibition & conference center down there in Paris-La Defense. Look at the stairways : the escalators stop at mid-level. Very easy for people carrying heavy loads (joke)...

* KISS : Keep It Simple Stupid.

Twittering The Fiber Generation

The stats are quite clear : this blog gets visitors from my Twitter. Pretty nice piece of evidence that the Web 2.0 is truly powerful.

Finally, France May Lead The Path To Broadband For Everyone

This morning at the Ultra-Broadband Summit at the Odebit Conference in Paris, Mr Eric Besson, Minister of State to the Prime Minister, with responsibility for Forward Planning, Assessment of Public Policies and Development of the Digital Economy, introduced the draft plan for Digital Economy by 2012 - read the full text here (link in french).

The one thing that will change the game : France is going aerial cabling. Mr Besson cited Japan and South Korea as the most advanced countries for FTTH, emphasizing on the fact that those countries are deploying mostly aerial fiber. Also, Mr Besson cited USA, where 60% of the fiber cables are aerial. Last, Mr Besson said that aerial cabling reduces the cost of deployment by a factor of 2.

That is the best news I've heard from a member of the French Government since years. Finally, we are to join the "smart club" : aerial cabling is faster, easier, and cheaper than any other solution - buried, ducts...

The french cable manufacturer Acome has developed a solution for fiber deployment along low-voltage power lines which do inverse the traditional ratio Civil Engineering vs. The Rest (i.e. cables, hardware, network equipments, install, etc.) : 20/80 against 80/20 traditionally. Let's work on the 80%, by reducing some costs, such as hardware and/or commissioning for instance, and we will reach an even more attractive solution.

We have now the opportunity to develop truly innovative ways to deploy fiber to everyone faster and cheaper. That is a challenge I hope we at the Pau Broadband Country will be able to help solving.

Odebit 2008 : the Day of Broadband For Everyone (or ?)

On Tuesday, the Grenelle du Très Haut Débit will be held in Paris, during the fast-growing Odebit tradeshow & conference event. 

I'll attend, on behalf of my boss Jean-Pierre Jambes of the Pau Greater Area. Being a rep of the Pau Broadband Country is a fantastic honor to me, since I've started my career 25 years ago hearing people claiming that Fiber To The Home was the Future. The Future is now, and it takes place as well in Pau.

If you're looking for a city where you can help changing the World thanks to Broadband, don't hesitate to stop by. 

Blogging or not blogging @ ECOC'08

I will be attending ECOC'08 tomorrow Monday at the Brussels Expo exhibition center.

Shall you be in town as well, please feel free to stop by the eXperide booth, where I'll be demonstrating how the Web 2.0 changes the way we do business.

Speaking of Web 2.0 : due to the tight schedule, I won't be able to make a complete report of the show. However, if WiFi and/or 3G works in Brussels Expo, I'll post short notes from both Twitter and Typepad for iPhone.

See you then ;-)

The Man

Mister JMB * himself, at the Pau-Pyrénées airport.

* [update 09/20] Jean-Michel Billaut, the man who is at the origin of the PBC Pau Broadband Country network.
Born in 2003 and operational since 2005, PBC is still the largest FTTH Fiber-To-The-Home network here in France, with 42,000+ houses passed (15,000 under construction over the next 30 months) and 8,000 active subscribers to date.
The adoption cycle seems to be accelerating with a growth rate of 22 new subscribers a day - that is 30 more per week than last spring. The only limitation factor : there's not enough OSP technicians to make the job (hence the need for a "local" training facility, by the way...).

Above Vilnius (by Andrew)

I come to Vilnius today.
And observed - there are air balloons above city. First, second... dozen or more! Amazing view.
It were rised up and up!
I looked with palpitating heart... Well, I did not skydive more than week!

iPhone, Broadband Fiber, Web 2.0, and me

[updated 09/17/08, from a Mac ;-) ]

I'm typing this post on my iPhone 3G, whilst enjoying a delicious tartare at the "Berry", one of my favorite restaurants here in Pau. Connected to the Net via 3G, of course. The last couple of days have been quite busy, as my boss Jean-Pierre Jambes and I are preparing a series of strategic events over the next two weeks. Among those events, there's the presentation on Thursday of the "FTTH School" project that we've been working on since last winter. Shall the Gods of Broadband here us, it's going to be a sort of World Premiere, with a pretty intensive use of ultra-broadband to deliver training courses and stuff. The other event we're preparing : the Odebit'08 conference, to be held in Paris next week. I've been spending the afternoon creating and editing the Pau Broadband Country' presentation. A slideshow made with Keynote of course, made of photos and a video. And designed for... the iPhone : we won't use a laptop to run the slideshow on the booth, but an iPhone connected to the larger display with the wonderful Apple-made AV cable. There's many more than one thing to share with you : how I recently boosted my network and started some really intersting experience sharing thanks to Linkedin' a Discussions feature; or how I know twitt more than ever, thanks to the iPhone 3G and Twitterific. But I have to stop writing, as the tartare is getting cold (joke ;-).

The First FiberCamp Is Born, And It's Not In France

Whilst the french community is busy preparing the Grenelle du Très Haut Débit, where some members of the French Government will (hopefully) unveil its plans for fibering (hopefully) the country, others are working hard to make things real.

See the folks at Lafayette, who are calling for the very first BarCamp for the Fiber Community : it's called CampFiber, and it will be held in Lafayette, LA, on the 4th of October this year.

Congratulations and all the best to Geoff Daily, the organizer of this fantastic event for all of us evangelists of broadband, open neutral networks.

I've embedded the interview of Terry Huval, director of LUS Lafayette Utility Systems, by Geoff, for you to get a flavor of what's going on in the US those days.

Ed. note : I can't stop thinking about the situation if Napoleon didn't sold Louisiana to the US two hundred years ago. Maybe France would have been the true leader of the Broadband communities movement...

I personally have been calling for a FiberCamp since more than a year or so. Unfortunately, this country doesn't seem ready for the kind of * Community thinking * that's required for such a workshop.

Vilnius

Past and present days are very close here. Like this. Bank building and old house are close neighbors. "Old" do not mean bad condition, - cafes and night clubs there.

fibre-optique-france.com

No, this domain name isn't mine, unfortunately ! That's a french blog on Fiber-To-The-Home and related stuff held by proactive insiders.

Shall you read/speak french, "fibre-optique-france.com" is worth bookmarking and subscribing.

Between countries

Now I found out faster way to Minsk. It's a 50 km more, but no need to wait 3 hours at the country' s border. Under way back, I saw 12 km(!) trucks line .

Suppose, some people forget car lines between the two countries. :-)