Preceding its annual conference to be held Wednesday and Thursday this week in Delhi, India, the FTTH Council Asia-Pacific has released an appealing video about the Fiber-To-The-Home technology. Although it focuses IMHO a bit too much on the "Consumer" aspects, such as HD/3D-TV, and not enough on the "UGC" side, I love it.
Simply because it summarizes extremely well the true benefits of FTTH : non-TriplePlay services and usages. Efficient, Entertainment, Eco-Friendly : those are the arguments highlighted by the FTTH CAP to promote the concept.
Three "E", that makes an easy baseline for all of us Fiber Evangelists : "FTTH : Triple-E Services at Your Home".
Go to the 3:01 time tag to understand the power of Triple-E.
This is a commercial aimed at converting consumers to Ultra-Broadband. Not from a US or European telco: from STC, aka Saudi Telecom. Enjoy, and think of Fiber as not only a game changer but a World changer...
If you are a Muni looking for efficient ways to deploy your own Fiber-To-The-Premises network, there are a couple of examples to follow on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. In Europe, Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Pau in France. In the US, there is Chattanooga, Tennessee.
This video highlights the numerous obstacles faced by EPB, Chattanooga's Muni Power Utility, against the Cable TV operators. Provided that EPB is currently offering 1Gbit/s access to Residential customers simply because they can do it, there's plenty of lessons to be learned from this part of the beautiful land of Tennessee.
Among many others, the way the Municipality succeeded in mixing Energy and Communications services onto a single network is a perfect example of how the Smart Grid can facilitate ultra-broadband infrastructures' deployments.
Also, the responses EPB and the city of Chattanooga gave to opponents, CATV operators first, might be part of 'The Perfect Open Neutral Access Network Salesman Guide'. Watch those answers starting at 2'02" time tag.
Post-Scriptum : I already published a video about Chattanooga, back in September 2007 (yes, 3.5 years ago). To avoid you a boring search, you'll find the post here.
French startup Bluwan has finally launched two weeks ago in Milano. Founded in 2005 by former Thomson/Thales executives, the company was kind of acting in stealth mode until the FTTH Council Europe' Conference recently held in the Fashion' s european capital city.
Here's the promotional video of their unique solution, so-called FTTA Fiber-Through-The-Air. Don't be confused: there's no fiber here but the trunk network. There's even no laser beam as the video may suggest - remember FSO Free Space Optics ? Actually, Bluwan has developped a quite interesting multiplexing technology that allows "the aggregation of multiple independent channels (modems) through [our] wideband radios and antennas onto a single air interface."
Being involved with Ultra-Broadband deployment in Rural areas, I'm convinced such a solution must be part of the portfolio of networks operators : faster and cheaper to install than wireline/optics, Radio fits well with mainstream needs in most parts of the country but dense areas. What mainstream needs ? TriplePlay. Telephone, Internet, Television. Downstream apps, actually. Because the only yet radically crippling limit of this FTTA technology is the rather impossible symmetrical mode - as with most of the Wireless Access technologies to date.
Post-scriptum : Among all the ultra-broadband wireless technologies available today for access networks, I do prefer Free-Space Optics. Simply because it's way safier than Radio in regards of signals' s confidentiality. Of course, one may be able to tap in the laser beam to "listen" the actual communications. However, such a hack is much more difficult to achieve, compare to pure radio comms. In the case of BluWan, the interesting thing is the fact that its founders come from one of the key suppliers of the Defense/Military sector. Hence I would rather double-check the security issues with BluWan' engineers before deploying my first FTTA link...
For those of you who still wonder why Cisco' s Telepresence and Apple' s FaceTime are such big deals, here is the answer. Enjoy, and have a nice landing.
You Dear FiberGeneration Readers might have noticed that this blog is quite calm these days in term of new, fresh content.
Fact is, I do face some hard times figuring out how to feed you with interesting stuff since a while now.
Actually, I'm spending less and less time here for you since I've started to work on the biggest project I've got the chance to work on since the very beginning of my career, back in early 1983.
The first terrestrial optical link ever in commercial use in France by the French Railways in 1985, the optical network design for the first spanish high speed train in 1989, the first ribbon-fiber-based LAN system developed by french cable manufacturer Acome in 1997, the first (and still only to date) plug & play telecom test platform by Agilent Technologies in 2002, the first broadband powerline plug by LEA in 2005, all of this seems nothing compared to the project I'm on today...
420M€ total investments, including 59M€ from the local government, 820,000 households to pass in 6 years : meet THD Seine, aka "DSP92". The largest Public Fiber-To-The-Home network in the World to date. Designed by french CATV operator Numericable for the Hauts de Seine département. The biggest challenger on the french Broadband market place working for the biggest economic place in the country. No more, no less.
And I am THD Seine Project Director at Sequalum, the operators' operator created by Numericable together with Construction & Engineering worldwide leader Eiffage and SFR to manage the network during the 25 years of the contract with the Hauts de Seine government.
That means I have tons of things to share with you, which I can't. Either because the Business of Conduct Policy obviously forbid it, either because my own ethics make me reluctant to do it, or simply because I'm too exhausted sometimes to write down something intelligent for you even if not relating to this very project.
When I was working on the Pau Broadband Country two years ago or so, I couldn't blog much on my activities there because I had some sort of a gentleman agreement with my dear client and boss Jean-Pierre Jambes.
Today, the situation is totally different: I can't blog at all. Or just a bit, here and there (links in french), on my spare time - you know, between the private life matters and the business ones.
However, I keep FiberGeneration alive. The reason is: I'm currently learning how to better manage my own time, for me to do more in less time so that I can free up my agenda. My plans for the evolution of FiberGeneration are still valid, it's just a question of availability of me. Mock ups are tested since a long time now, for instance this one here. Stay tuned !...
post-scriptum : I don't blog, yet I tweet. You can follow me here.
If you're like me and lots of my friends and colleagues, you know you want an iPad but you're still hesitating because of this (pricing, features, etc.) or that (3G or not, 32GB or 64GB, etc.). Watch this video, and you'll run to the Apple Store next door in two minutes and forty five seconds from now.
On Friday, Google closed its call on its initiative on ultra-broadband open access networks. According to James Kelly, Google Fiber Product Manager (what a cool job title !), more than 1,100 communities and 194,000 individuals have submitted a response to the bid. James doesn't tell much about the applicants, giving just a couple of links to fancy stuff on YouTube or Facebook. We'll have to wait a little bit to get all the names, and, more importantly, the happy few cities who'll get the chance to experiment Google Fiber.
For the time being, we must dig the Net to find out some concrete data. As such, Martin of Zettaphile.com has put together an
exhaustive list of those communities, which contains some well known
cities, e.g. Anchorage, AK, Tempe, AZ, Berkeley, CA, etc. Also, Tim Poulus built his own list where we can see that Palo Alto has apparently decided to apply to Google
Fiber as well.
The list of small communities in Rural America who
applied to Google' s RFI is just impressive. Asheville, North Carolina,
has launched a viral marketing campaign here, including a useful blog which tracks the news about the
collectivities seeking for Google's help. Also in NC, Greensboro is
looking for its House M.D. Their Googlegrensboro website
is just gorgeous.
Nevertheless, two elements in James's blog post are of concern to me. First, this sentence about the responses : "all with the goal of bringing ultra high-speed broadband to their
communities": no word on open neutral access here. Then, the map at the end of the post : beside the fact that it's not an interactive one (ever heard of Google Maps, James ? ;-), there's something which rings a bell to me.
When you look at this map, the evidence is that people don't want Google Fiber per se. They want Broadband, full stop. As everybody knows, the US Government has publicly announced it National Broadband Plan last week. See the official video here, and download the full document here (dear Wisconsin's readers, be patient : 11.50MB ;-). Just compare the actual maps listing the current pending or granted awards (thanks to Rob Powell of Telecoms Ramblings for the heads up) with the Google Fiber's one : it's almost the same. That means most of the people consider the Mountain View giant as another communications services provider, at the same level than a Verizon or an AT&T or a ComCast.
The problem is : Google doesn't position itself as a services provider. To better understand my point, let's read Google Fiber statement again - full text here :
Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make Internet
access better, and faster for everyone. Here are some specific things
that we have in mind:
Next generation apps:
We want to see what developers and users can do with ultra
high-speeds, whether it's creating new bandwidth-intensive
"killer apps" and services, or other uses we
can't yet imagine.
New deployment techniques:
We'll test new ways to build fiber networks; to help inform,
and support deployments elsewhere, we'll share key lessons learned
with the world.
Openness and choice: We'll operate
an "open access" network, giving users the choice of multiple
service providers. And consistent with our past advocacy,
we'll manage our network in an open, non-discriminatory, and
transparent way.
Google will be a operators' s operator, of the same kind than what we already enjoy here in Europe with the Reggefibers type of Open Neutral Access providers. When you see this flash mob organized by some hungry guys in Columbia, Missouri, you doubt they've got it right.
My guess is that the majority of the individuals who have called on
Google Fiber have done it for the very same reasons people here in
France called on their local govs some years ago: they live in a
Broadband deadzone, as those French peers were living in a DSL black
hole ("ADSL White Zone" as we call it ). No matter who provides the
service and how, people just want their broadband connection at home, to
watch HDTV without glitches and upload their family's photos faster.
The best example of this quest comes from the city of Peoria, Illinois. Their call is all about speed. Nothing on the benefits on the local economy through the creation of new services thus new jobs, nothing on the benefits of Open Neutral Access at large.
"Think big with a gig" is Google Fiber's motto. I'm afraid 80% of the
1,100 communities actually think small thanks to their geeks. I sincerely wish James and his team good luck with the review of the responses, hoping they will come up with one or two truly groundbreaking projects.
post-scriptum : since Fibergeneration is well indexed by Google' s engines, I know this post is set to appear quickly on top of James' s alerts. So, here's my advice, dear James : you may want to investigate what a few furious guys have achieved somewhere in South-West of France with the Pau Broadband Country FTTH muni network. To get started, click here.
note : you can read my previous posts asking for a Google Fiber world here, here, and this last one, date Feb.7, 2010.
Back in the late 80's, I decided to name the Fiber Optics Network team at the Telecoms Department of SNCF French Railroads after the initials of its members. The good news : we were only three guys. That made it easy : "Duchesne, Bernard, Millorit" gives "dBm". Unfortunately, I was so naive that I didn't protect this name...
Today, I'm deeply involved in Fiber-To-The-Home, helping french CableTV operator Numericable to build THD Seine, the world-largest public FTTH network to date. My trigram at Numericable : MDU.
I'm hungrily waiting for the next one. As I'm doing Fiber test & measurement since the very beginning, I guess I'll end up my career with something like "OTDR" : "Oh, Time for Duchesne to Retire" !
May be the first time ever I like something made by Microsoft. The question is: when will Redmond partner with Cupertino in order to screw up Mountain View's plans ?...
Yesterday, giant behemoth test equipment maker JDSU has acquired one of the Telecoms Test business units from my beloved Agilent Technologies. OK, for the Milpitas, CA/Germantown, MD/Eningen, Germany - based company, it's about being able to fulfill market requirements on promising technologies such as LTE/4G.
Fact is, JDSU hired a lot of former Agilent employes and executives after 2003, when the A board decided to abandon the highly competitive, low margins, Telecoms Field Testing arena for the Life Sciences and all that stuff kind of more profitable business.
For instance, three of my former colleagues at the now deceased Optical Network Test Division in Boeblingen, Germany, are working a few kilometers south, at the JDSU's european HQ in Eningen. Funny, their big boss is our former Vice-President. Nothing surprising here, that's just life as it goes in a small world such as the Test & Measurement one.
Of course, this acquisition is a good news for some insiders, who will make a nice jump in their careers, and a bad one for lots of people on both sides, who will lose their jobs because of redundancy. Plus, it gives JDSU a strong lead against its rivals Anritsu and EXFO.
However, I'm still convinced that JDSU is doomed from the start : this company is made of the agglomeration of multiple firms, without unity nor unification. JDSU is not one. The board keeps acquiring a small fish here, a big one there, yet without a clear, unique, vision (but the one of making money on the short run).
On the contrary, Agilent is re-building itself from the start, focusing on its core, historical business : Lab & Production test & measurement. Agilent was never made to address the Field Testing market, despite it has released the most advanced gears in some segments, e.g. fiber optic test. Just an example, for those of you who are familiar with fiber : the Modular Network Tester that we've introduced back in March 2002 is still unmatched eight years later. JDSU recently released a pale copy of the MNT, with a product which looks like a Dell compared to a Mac, see what I mean - I won't write the JDSU thing is a pure crap, although I think it is ;-)
Agilent's products portfolio is more and more "people-oriented", whilst JDSU and the others are still focusing onto hardcore technologies. I know a friend of mine, still with Agilent Boeblingen, who's developing some new solutions based on... the iPhone. This is an indication that, going leaner, Agilent also goes faster.
Less is more, right ?
Disclosure : A former employee, I'm also an Agilent shareholder. For a few bucks only, provided I couldn't keep my stock options when I've been laid off. Which is not that much of a problem, as the stock never ever reached the break even point since I left !
I got that video in my "Must-Share" list since months. Fact is, almost a year after this presentation, the situation has never been so accurately described by Derek Slater, Policy Analyst at Google.
When it's about Fiber-To-The-Home, the Last-Mile is still THE issue. Which can't be solved without the involvement of the customers into the loop : we must talk Fiber-FROM-The-Home, not "To".
The question is: who else, beside Google, could make such paradigm shift become a reality ? Maybe the answer will come from... France, later this year. Stay tuned.
Yesterday, french telcos Orange and SFR announced their co-investment on two suburban towns in the "Greater Paris" (french joke) area, to roll-out FTTH Fiber-To-The-Home. They also announced the possible creation of an open joint-venture that would serve as operators' s operator for medium dense areas.
Of course, this is a smart move, considering the Fiber-Broadband plan to be unveiled by the government on Monday the 18th of January. No need to sport an MBA to understand that France Telecom and SFR have set up a nice trick to get public funding in order to build their own next-gen access networks.
Now, it may be useful to get back a few months ago, and read this post and this one written by Jean-Michel Soulier, CEO of french-canadian operators' operator Covage. Here's what Jean-Michel proposed before the whole attendance at the yearly forum held by Regulator ARCEP last September.
- the territory could be split in 4-5 segments representing approximately 1m households each in semi-dense areas (this assumes that private initiative will cover dense areas, which according to operator Free is easier said than done).
- a national consortium would be set up with the largest operators and the French national bank CDC. The consortium would in turn establish a subsidiary in each of the territorial segments.
- In each segment, a neutral operator would be selected for the deployment and operation of the FTTH network, in association with the local communities willing to participate in exchange for some ownership in the network.
- the large operators, as members of the national consortium, would commit to use the consortium's FTTH lines in order to guaranty the business case and the ability to raise additional financing.
That is a simple plan, quite easy to implement, and above all: it ensures Open Neutral Access.
Which Orange-SFR public-money-vacuum-cleaner new venture surely won't.
Dear Fibergeneration Readers : I wish you and your loved ones a peaceful year 2010. Hope your dreams will come true. Yet don't forget : People are the most important thing to take care of. Being alone makes no sense. Watch the proof here.
Carpe Diem, and Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones.
December 05, 2009
James Cameron' s "Avatar" is probably the very first 2.0 movie in history. Just visit http://www.avatarmovie.com/ , and see by yourself.
Ah, by the way: Avatar is on Typepad. And you can follow @officialavatar, in case...
The FTTH Forum organized earlier this week in Lisbon by HanseCom has been quite a nice success, with a large audience, mostly coming from Portugal of course.
I was the only French, together with Roland Montagne of IDATE, to speak at the conference, which was pretty much held by the "Dutch Connection" ! A piece of evidence that the Open Neutral Access approach is still not a standard thinking here in France...
Actually, I was supposed to be part of two panels : the one on Muni Fiber, and the one on new cabling techniques. I must admit : due to my hectic agenda over the last few weeks and my current focus on Rural Broadband, I totally forgot the second point and did only prepare the first. I realized my mistake... the morning before the panels, scheduled in late afternoon !
By chance, Hassan Clausen, Managing Director of HanseCom and organizer of the event understood pretty well the situation, and let me withdraw from the New Cabling stuff, which gave him the opportunity to get 3 speakers at each panel. I'm glad my mistake finally allowed Uffe Mogensen, CEO of GM Plast, to deliver a fantastic presentation on micro-trenching techniques.
So, as planned, I did present the Bottom-Up approach for deploying Fiber in Rural areas. To start with, I explained why the usual way of deploying municipal Fiber-To-The-Home networks in France is never satisfying for the citizens - see Pau Broadband Country or Gonfreville-l'Orcher : as the people were not involved in the project at the very beginning, they are to reject it quickly as soon as something goes wrong.
That's where the "Top-Down" strategy fails. Enters the "Bottom-Up" approach : help the people solve a real problem in their daily life - what we B2B marketeers call "the customer' s pain", and go a step beyond by offering them something else on top of the solution used to fix this problem. Work with them to define the solution, work with them to test and implement it. Doing so, you will get the citizens adopt the solution, as they are part of its design' process.
The first question is: is there an Open Neutral Access Fiber nearby ? If the answer is "No", then... well, look for alternatives (which are not part of this discussion, sorry !). If the answer is "Yes", then the next question is: can Fiber help solving the problem ?. If the answer is "No", bad luck for me (and you, BTW ;-). If the answer is "Yes", then let's work it out with the customer, er., the Citizens.
That's the Bottom-Up approach for deploying FTTH Fiber-To-The-Home, starting by the Church. Why the church ? Simply because in each and every small city or village out there, there's a church - or a synagog, or a mosque, or a temple, whatever religious construction that is (or was...) the heart of your town, with active social life around, e.g. a pub, a grocery store, a book store... The idea is that simple : get the Fiber to the very heart of your village, and get the people build a community around it. They will adopt the project, because they will be part of it, playing an active role.
Actually, that's nothing new. Think of the Web 2.0 stuff: how did all those famous startups which we all know today, the Facebooks, the Twitters, the YouTubes, proceed at the beginning ? Got an idea, test it among a bunch of buddies, then once the idea went polished enough, extend the testing phase to a larger audience, who will help fixing the bugs and adding new features, then launch the product publicly. And still keep their users onboard by creating a true community spirit. There's no difference with what Seth Godin, the iconic Marketing guru of the Blogosphere, calls the Tribe.
In the business, how do you get customers to use your product ? You do evangelize them, right ? Here, with Municipal Fiber-To-The-Home networks, all we need to do is the same. Hence the Church.
Let me evangelize you. Here is the presentation, available for download on Slideshare. I give three examples of actual projects based on this bottom-up approach.
Disclaimer : I'm currently working as a consultant for two of those municipalities: Montmirail and La Grande Paroisse. The two projects are ongoing, both in the preliminary phase of network design and definition of the first targets (low-investments, boot-strapping...). The project concerning Val d'Isere has not been approved yet - we just started the discussions a couple of weeks ago.
Post-scriptum : this idea of bringing Fiber Broadband to a community is pretty well spread in the Anglo-Saxon part of Europe, not speaking of the US of course. See what fellow Guy Jarvis is doing in the UK with his FibreStream organization, or Frans-Anton Vermast of i-NEC in the Netherlands and elsewhere (interview by Costas Troulos of Broadband Prime here). Although this kind of spirit is not that common here in France, I'm convinced that involving the people right from the beginning of a project as big as bringing fiber to their home is the only way to go when public money (means your taxes and mine) is at stake. Frans Anton has found a nice tweak to the FTTH acronym in the Municipalities environment : FFTH, Fiber FROM The Home...
Tomorrow Wednesday, I will be in Lisbon, Portugal, for the first time ever. Never been there before, even when I was Business Dev EMEA at Agilent Technologies. Maybe that's why I lost a quite big tender with a new entrant back in the Bubble Era. I shall come back to this story someday, because it's a typical example of the Bid2Win fundamentals.
Anyway, the point of this post is: I've been invited by HanseCom to speak about "Fiber in the Municipalities" at the FTTH Forum conference, to be held November 4.
I'll present three examples of the bottom-up approach here in Rural France. Fiber-To-The-Church, that is !...
The conference takes place at the VIP Arts Hotel in Lisbon. As I'll fly back home on Thursday morning, feel free to send me a tweet @mduchesn if you're in town. We'll discuss Fiber To The Marina ;-)
According to Robert Moore of RJ Metrics, "a on-demand database analytics and business intelligence startup that helps online businesses measure, manage, and monetize better", who published on TechCrunch a well-detailed article on Twitter data from an investor' s perspective, I belong to the smallest portion of Twitter users, with more than 500 followers, over 500 updates, and more than 3,200 tweets sent (excluding the 1,400+ tweets from auto-RT of @FiberNews).
Now the question is: how do I monetize my status ? ;-)
I strongly recommend that you read this article: it's full of interesting informations on how people do use Twitter. For Marketeers of all sorts, that's a gold mine.
FiberGeneration The Blog will soon celebrate its third anniversary. The right time to give it a little refresh, touch by touch.
After those beautiful (yes) buttons on the left sidebar which I installed a couple of weeks ago, today I replaced the 18 months old banner by a more accurate one : I'm doing more "green" stuff than being in Pau at the moment, so goodbye Boulevard des Pyrenees, and welcome to the Green Wave.
Also, I replaced the standard Category Cloud by this amazing widget, on the right sidebar. It's powered by Microsoft Silverlight, so it may not display on your browser, sorry for that. I couldn't find a dynamic tag cloud coded in Flash.
By the way, I wanted to implement a new Comment and Interaction system: Echo by JS-Kit: although I'm quite an advanced Typepad user, I didn't find a way to easily enable this feature without switching to Advanced Design. As I don't have the time to do it today, please wait for the next revision to enjoy this wonderful tool, which you can see in action here.
Of course, the facelift will continue over the next few weeks - I want to clean up a little bit the page, and... add pages. Stay tuned!
Oh, by the way: FiberGeneration has 95 subscribers according to Feedburner as of today. Thank you All. I'm honored, and will do my best to publish more interesting stuff for you during this coming 4th year of existence.
Brussels finally gave its "Go" to the THD92 project held by the department of Hauts de Seine, west of Paris. With 850,000 homes and enterprises to be connected to Fiber, THD92 is the largest FTTH Fiber-To-The-Home project in Europe to date.
It's also by far the most critical project for the whole Telecoms circle here in France: The Hauts de Seine department is the home of President Sarkozy, who will certainly keep an eye on the construction of the network until completion, and watch carefully the outcomes.
By 2012, the Hauts de Seine will offer ultra-broadband connectivity to all its citizens and businesses. Provided this territory is the richest of France, THD92 is to serve as THE Model for the rest of the country. Maybe the enormous reservoir of talents there will help developing the long-awaited Next-Generation Apps. Perhaps France will lead the Digital Economy then...
ps : for more info on THD92, read this post by Buddy Benoit Felten, and follow the links.
I recently wrote a disclaimer about the upcoming "Fiber Camp", to be held in Paris next week during the Odebit tradeshow and conference (trade show first, as you need to be exhibitor to speak at the conference...).
I finally got a chance to read the program, on paper (the one published online don't give details on the so-called Fiber Camp): it has absolutely nothing to do with a BarCamp type of workshop. Participants will attend a Vendors session, with a fixed agenda and fixed speakers, er., vendors.
I wonder if that's the reason why the organizer inserted a "space" between "Fiber" and "Camp"...
Anyhow, you guys who were expecting to participate to the first real workshop on FTTH deployments, better stay home.
Yesterday in Paris, the French Government gathered the ICT community for the first seminar of the series on the Stimulus plan (link in french). The agenda of the day: where, when and how to invest into the Digital Economy.
Of course, Fiber Broadband was one of *the* topics of the day. The opening session has been quite interesting, with several key actors - the Prime Minister, two former Prime Ministers, Ministers, Senators, operators - claiming that if France is to be "fibered", than it must be the whole country, meaning Rural areas as well.
Mr. Yves Le Mouël, President of the French Telcos Federation (comprising all of them but Illiad-Free), used an expression which I find pretty accurate: "in the villages, we must bring Fiber up to the Church."
Starting today, I declare " FTTCh Fiber-To-The-Church " to be the new motto of us Rural Broadband activists.
I am a Cycling Freak, Tennis Fan, and Fiber Broadband Evangelist.
Among other things, I am currently managing the deployment of the World's largest Public Fiber-To-The-Home network aka "SarkoFiber".
*** Disclaimer : this is a personal weblog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, no matter who he is. ***
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