Convergence Conversation

Bezeq, the Israeli incumbent plans for a field trail of GPON FTTH. As part of a several months long trial in Petach Tiqva the operator will connect hundreds of GPON FTTH subscribers. These are surprising news from Israel where no serious FTTH seemed not to be considered by any major provider. There’s an article with more details about the project in Hebrew.

A mega ultra reader of this blog pointed me to a great video clip made by Corning that shows a future made of glass. All more often I come across short movie clips demonstrating the impact of high-speed broadband, cloud computing, service mashups and so forth to our every day life. I want to post them here as often as possible. If you have any feel free to share with me.

This is a great clip created by Novay for the positive implications of a high-speed broadband, connected world. Have a look, you’ll like it:

link

This is a great clip created by Novay for the positive implications of a high-speed broadband, connected world. Have a look, you’ll like it:

link

In south Hungary, very close to the borders of the country with Croatia and Serbia there is village called Boly. Boly has nearly 4000 inhabitants and 2000 homes, but it has high-speed broadband access. The project started in 2007 and the video below documents  the socio-economic impact of high-speed broadband as experienced by the users of the network. Thanks Csaba for the link!

This week I spent two days at the beautiful city of Budapest where the FTTH Forum 2011 was held. On the 8th of November, during the pre-conference very lively discussions about the FTTH technical and construction solutions as well as its business challenges were held. Special thansk to Greg, Csaba, Akshay, Adrian, Cornel, Khaleel, Ketam, Ajmal and the rest of the participants for contributing to four very interesting and highly interactive sessions – more than I could ever hoped for. We may have skipped the last coffee break and left the room almost 40 minutes after the time initially planned, yet, personally, I enjoyed it a lot. More...

Nigeria decided to explore the option and design its national broadband plans on the basis of open access models. According to authorities, they want to separate the network to three layers, the passive infrastructure, active equipment and retail services.  You can read more here: http://www.biztechafrica.com/section/government/article/nigeria-adopts-open-access-model-broadband-strateg/1376/.

Government intervention for broadband development in Africa needs serious attention. There are Governments that see a brighter future for their economies in fiber access, both in terms of short-term employment but long-term  economic growth as well. More...

The time for the FTTH Forum 2011 is closing fast. This year, the Forum is held in Budapest the 8 and 9 November. I will be delivering the pre-conference workshop on the 8th which will frame in one frame all the stakes of an FTTH project. The workshop is packed with information about  the technologies and the topologies, the benefits and limitations, design trade-offs, roll-out strategies, deployment decisions , business’s hots and nots and plenty more. All in all, a fast-track course providing a brisk orientation about the FTTH business.

The workshop is organized in four sessions:

Session 1: More...

In a press release coming from the ITU, the Broadband Commission for Digital Development of the United Nations has agreed on four targets to ensure that the global population has the opportunity to engage in the emerging digital society.

Quoted from the press release, the new targets cover broadband policy, affordability and uptake,  in terms of households and people:

1. Making broadband policy universal. By 2015, all countries should have a national broadband plan or strategy or include broadband in their Universal Access / Service Definitions.
2. Making broadband affordable. By 2015, entry-level broadband services should be made affordable in developing countries through adequate regulation and market forces (for example, amount to less than 5% of average monthly income).

The European Commission has proposed to spend almost €9.2 billion from 2014 to 2020 on pan-European projects to give EU citizens and businesses access to high-speed broadband networks and the services that run on them. The funding, part of the proposed Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), would take the form of both equity and debt instruments and grants. It would complement private investment and public money at local, regional and national level and EU structural or cohesion funds. At least €7 billion would be available for investment in high-speed broadband infrastructure.

The Commission considers that this money could leverage a total of between €50 and 100 billion of public and private investment – i.e. More...