FiberGeneration

FiberGeneration The Company : D-52

 There's no better time to launch a startup than a big crisis such as the one we're heading to. Actually, I recently remembered that I've launched XWinG right after the downturn in 1993. Within the next 2 years, we were number one on the market. The key is : Bootstrapping. Less is more. Customer-centric.

Okay, fast forward to tomorrow : I'm happy to announce that FiberGeneration will be become a company on December 1 (this year ;-). Headquarter : Helioparc technoparc, Pau, France. Business : help people to better understand and use Web 2.0 apps & tools.

Of course, Fiber-To-The-Home and Sustainable Development will be part of the game...

Stay tuned for more soon !

Starting Up In Belarus : OptixSoft

Whilst my friend Andrew decided to go to FOD Fiber Optics Devices Ltd, some of his colleagues at the IIT Institute of information Technologies of Minsk, Belarus, decided to create their own firm : OptixSoft.

A unique start-up of its kind, OptixSoft provides outsourced R&D services to the Fiber Optics Test & Measurement industry :

OptixSoft offers a full range of specialized software development services, from GUI and custom utilities for equipment to embedded software development for Windows CE and Linux, to firmware and device driver development. Our main specialty is software development for telecommunication industry, including embedded and low-level software development for fiber optic transmission lines and fiber optic test and measurement equipment.

In addition to specialized system/low-level software development (firmware, embedded software, drivers), Optixsoft also offers custom application software development for desktop and pocket computers. Even the most robust and feature-rich test and measurement instrumentation often requires enhancements and customization, and additional application software needs to be developed to support that. Often such software allows users to work with files, display and organize data received from your test and measurement equipment, and integrate with 3rd party solutions.

Custom application software development that we build for our clients includes:

intuitive user interfaces to manage existing processes and files,

data processing and data storing for 3rd party databases,

data analyzers and report generators,

distributed systems and packages.

To give you an idea of OptixSoft' s capabilities, CEO Mike Ziuzin developed a few years ago a project of his own : a *pocket-OTDR*, based on a micro test probe (the "OTDR" per se) and a Pocket-PC. WiFi, BlueTooth, and miniaturization : the right package for an FTTH Fiber-To-The-Home tester...

You can contact OptixSoft by email at : [email protected].

Alex Che, software expert, waits for your twitts here on Twitter

I visited IIT a few years ago. It was like if I were playing "Back To The Future" : those folks were using pretty aged equipments, things that we Frenchies got at the university back in the early 80's. And those guys were doing absolute jewels. Out of almost nothing, at least for someone like myself who has been working with the big T&M vendors such as HP/Agilent and NetTest for years.

Since this visit, I'm convinced that this team is capable of miracles. May The Force of the T&M be with them ;-)

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...

Okay, They Got It Right (well, almost)

Sunrise Telecom just announced its new TriplePlay tester. See here.
The good thing : it does all TriplePlay Services tests. The bad one : it does the tests from the CO.
Question : how about testing the link FROM the subscriber' s home ?

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.

That's why I keep thinking the iPhone IS Testing 2.0

See here.
And apply the same concept to testing devices or networks. You'll get the idea. Granted.

Test & Measurement Industry : The Consolidation Still Goes On

According to Lightwave earlier this week, Danaher Corp. and Tektronix Inc. announced they have reached a definitive agreement under which Danaher will make a cash tender offer to acquire all outstanding common shares of Tektronix for $38.00 per share. The aggregate purchase price is approximately $2.8 billion, including debt, transaction costs, and net of cash acquired.

With the acquisition of a venerable company, Tektronix, which is a reference in the T&M Test & Measurement world  together with Agilent Technologies (formerly Hewlett-Packard), the industry landscape is going to change once again. The alliance between Fluke - another pretty strong reference at every Telecoms & Datacoms network installer on the Planet - and Tek is creating a new  one-stop-shopping center covering the whole spectrum of typical applications, from lab & manufacturing (Tek) to installation & maintenance (Fluke), from low-end/high quality/mainstream test gear (Fluke) to high-end/high quality/advanced (Tektronix).

Whilst T&M market leader Agilent Technologies  has to face three major competitors : JDSU, Anritsu, and the new Fluke+Tek actor now, the French-Canadian firm EXFO is left alone as a small player in front of giants. EXFO, whose role model was HP Test & Measurement (aka Agilent) will most probably be set ready for a merger with another group.

   

Note that EXFO's stock slipped quite heavily yesterday, and that Tek's raised rose nicely at the official announcement.
Charts available at Yahoo!Finance here.

post-scriptum : For you who are not familiar with the Telecoms Test & Measurement, I'll publish a brief history of the sector, to show how the T&M folks are still surfing on the ripples of the Internet Bubble' implosion.

Twittervision and Twittermap : two of the greatest Web 2.0 apps for Testing 2.0

I've been playing a bit with Twitter' mashup apps during lunch break : Twittervision and Twittermap. Just amazingly simple tools for displaying any geotagged data on a map.
For those of you who ignore what Twitter is, read this recent post by Guy Kawasaki and follow its links.

post-scriptum : as I'm going to be busier (if running at 120% is possible ;-) over the next couple of months, I'll post more twitters here, thanks to Twitter's SMS feature. Watch the left side bar for updates...

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 !

Private Message

To the unknown Test & Measurement fellow who recently searched for " Web 2.0 test measurement " on Google.de : Sie können mich jederzeit anrufen ;-)

ps : funny, I was to work with JDSU, Eningen, Germany, two years ago.

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.

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 ".

Testing 2.0 : back to the roots

Testing 2.0 : the rough idea

Test & Measurement Industry needs a refresh

Direct from the Telemanagement World 2007 forum in Nice, France, LightReading' International News Editor Ray Le Maistre posted an interesting article about the forthcoming changes in the Test & Measurement industry, starting with the networks Operations Support Systems (aka OSS).
Read here.

Skypee Thoughts Of The Day On Verizon & al.

Beginning of this year, I've asked my dear coach Hal Stitt of DeltaNet Consultants for his advices on how to engage Verizon for a client of mine, who is to deploy FTTH Fiber-To-The-Home networks in the country. I thought getting some inside perspective on the FiOS roll out would help my client to better understand the issues of fiber testing in case of a massive deployment. I'm glad to share with you some excerpt of a conversation we hold through Skype' chat on that Verizon :

Hal Stitt: 05:22:04
You asked some time ago for connections at Verizon. If I were you, working with a company planning to install an optical access network, I would not use Verizon as an example. Verizon was very early in the game, and they made some choices then that they would not make now.

Hal Stitt: 05:24:46
I would recommend researching active FTTP networks, and the companies driving that--Mainly Cisco. Current thinking is acive access networks will have a higher bandwith limitation, making them useful over a much longer time. The additional cost is small compared with the additional throughput active networks can deliver.

Hal Stitt: 05:29:27
In Verizon's experience, about 80% of the cost of installing a passive access network is in the installation of the fiber itself. The active system would have about the same cost for installing the fibers. The additional cost for the active stuff, mainly routers and power system, may double the overall cost, but it raises the bandwith ceiling by one or two orders of magnitude.

Hal Stitt: 05:32:19
Cisco is pushing a system of 3 classes of routers: Access, aggregration, and core. I believe you can imagine where they would reside. Subscribers would be connected to a nearby access router, the access routers would feed the aggregation routers, which would in turn feed the core routers.

Hal Stitt: 05:34:30
Cisco and others are pushing the active active network. Several companies, including Agilent, are pursuing test concepts to ensure quality content delivery. The are pushing the active paradigm because it reduces many error sources inherent in the passive access links.

Hal Stitt: 05:36:38
I would recommend starting the research with Cisco and branching out from there. Your client could make a different decision than Verizon made because the situation is different than it was when Verizon chose the passive approach. Your client would surely thank you for that.
-----------------------

The rest of the discussion being confidential, I won't post it here ;-)

post-scriptum : I'll come back on Verizon later this week, with their learnings on the first FIOS deployments.

Testing 2.0 : The Elevator Pitch

Last week, a headhunter * and reader of this blog (he found me through LinkedIn, by the way) asked me the question : "what  is ' Testing 2.0 ' about ?"

So, I had to do the Elevator Pitch. How to explain a Paradigm Shifting-next Google-Revolutionary business in 30 seconds. Funny enough, I just finished reading this post on Paul Williams' s IdeaSandBox a few minutes before. I had to keep focus on my usual introduction of Testing 2.0, trying not to do it the '24' style : " The following take place between 1998 and today" ;-)

Let me introduce Testing 2.0 for you :

FTTH Fiber-To-The-Home networks are moving to mainstream. According to the Fiber-to-the-Home Council and the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), in North America alone FTTH networks now pass by six million homes and more than 300,000 homes are being passed with FTTH every month. That means thousands of OSP Outside Plant technicians going in the field to connect and test fibers each month. Meaning thousands of manpower hours, thousands of miles in the streets, thousands of  dollars of equipment in the trucks... The problem is : the Telcos can't afford such tremendous investments without cutting costs here and there. Their priority number one : cut the costs of the OSP techs. Avoid the trucks. Get the fiber turned on with no technician on-site. In the US, Verizon calls on the T&M Test & Measurement companies since years, asking them to develop low-cost 'Go/No-Go' test solutions to be used by novices, say the guy who is mounting the optical fiber termination box. No one of them answers : such a solution would kill their business !

Here comes Testing 2.0 : the answer to the Verizon and the likes' s call. Get rid of the trucks, and turn on the fiber without specialized tools and technicians.
Testing FTTH links from the subscriber' s place become a simple/easy/fast task : connect the test probe to the fiber, check the availability/quality of the three services (telephone, internet, TV), send the results to the Service Provider via... SMS, and that's it.

Testing 2.0' breaks the rules, because : a) it splits the test solution into three pieces : low-cost yet universal and reliable hardware, custom-built software apps using Open Source and Web 2.0 bricks, and a complete yet evolutive bundle of  services, and b) Testing 2.0 is based on a Pay-Per-Use model.

Low-Cost, Pay-Per-Use, Services : Testing 2.0 revamps the whole Telecoms Test & Measurement industry' landscape :
- Low-Cost : instead of the traditional $  3k-5k testers which are sold today by all the major T&M vendors, Testing 2.0 concept is based on $500 probes that do the same basic job : go/no go.
- Pay-Per-Use : Testing 2.0 solutions use cellphones and smartphones as the user interface. The probe' s data are then transmitted to the Service Provider (e.g. Verizon and the likes) per SMS messages.
- Services : since everyone in the Telecoms industry do face scarce resources issues, Testing 2.0 solutions include every service both the Service Provider and his Network Equipment vendor need to turn on and maintain the fiber : test reports, data management, etc.  All based on Web 2.0 collaborative platforms.

That is Testing 2.0 in brief. From now on, I will publish more details on the dedicated Testing 2.0 ' blog (URL already registered). Also, I have opened a wiki a couple of weeks ago, which will be used together with the Testing 2.0 blog.
Stay tuned ;-)

* I haven't got the job (hey, that is : CEO of a 20M€/50 people firm !), however I've got a new reader. I think the latest will pay on the long run ;-)

post-scriptum : there is nothing to see at the moment at www.testing2dot0.com.