Convergence Conversation

A few interesting tidbits of news on a busy Friday:

• Virgin in the UK is experimenting with aerial FTTH deployment to extend its footprint. Virgin had already expressed its intention to expand last year, but technology choices had not been mentioned back then. They clearly are now. Pauline Rigby has a short piece on what's known about this on the Samknows Blog. Let me just say this at this stage: this makes a whole lot of sense. If you're going to deploy anything these days, it should be fiber.

• The big story (if you can say that) at the FTTH Council Conference in Lisbon was that Lithuania had shot all the way up to the top of the European ranking.

The second interview I managed to do in Lisbon was of Sue White, who is in charge of Alcatel Lucent's recently unveiled HLN strategy. I asked Sue to explain what HLN was and how it affected Next Generation Access deployment strategies.

I apologise for the intense shakiness on this video. Definitely need to get a zi8!

This has led me to also take a deeper look at how bloggers, newspapers and tweeters have dealt with this piece of news and I was surprised and - to a certain extent - dismayed as well to see how polarizing Google's image is. More...

I did a few interviews at the FTTH Council Europe Annual Conference in Lisbon before my zi6 camera failed me. I also think I need to upgrade to the zi8 for stability and sounds reasons, but that's another topic.

Anyway, here is the first of the two interviews I could salvage, and it's with Wolfgang Fischer, the FTTH guru of Cisco in Europe:

This is an advert to raise awareness on the fiber initiatives in New Zealand. I love the concept!

I'm finally back home after over a week of traveling in Europe. Pauline and Carlos, amongst others, have already expressed their views of the FTTH Council Annual Conference in Lisbon, so I'll try not to overlap too much of what they covered, but will nonetheless share my own thoughts.

I don't fully agree with Carlos that it's been a year lost, but I think he has a point when he says that facially there was very little different to be heard in Lisbon this year compared to Copenhagen last year. I've always said and written that FTTH deployment would be a slow affair and we are certainly seeing that now. The fact that the numbers have hardly budged in Europe is certainly depressing, but it doesn't mean that nothing has changed in the background. More...

Ever since I started looking into the UK broadband and FTTx market I have heard time and again the pride of various players (Ofcom, BT and others) in the pioneer role that the UK played in broadband emergence and adoption. When discussions steer towards NGA and FTTx in particular though, the pride either turns to arrogance or shame. There seems to be something rotten in the state of UK NGA.

Yesterday I was pointed to a release by Research firm Point Topic on UK FTTx deployment and adoption. I will tell you honestly, I nearly fell off my chair. I'm ashamed enough that the French FTTx numbers don't reach the 100k mark yet, imagine my astonishment at seeing that there were less than 3000 FTTx subscribers in the UK (an adoption rate of 0.005%) half of which are FTTC. More...