Yesterday morning in my snail mail box there was a brochure for the THD92 project. This brochure was distributed as a supplement to the monthly rag we receive from the 92 department. It's essentially propaganda, but when it's propaganda about fiber, I can't help but being interested!
This is what the cover looks like:
I looked at the interior and found it surprisingly accurate. It's trying to highlight the benefits of fiber to laymen and -women, and it does, in my opinion, a surprisingly good job of it. You might argue that my wife is hardly a laywoman fiberwise, but she told me she'd found it very clear and accessible too.
The booklet describes the nature of the project, the financing, how it will be rolled out, etc. On this last aspect, as the next two scans will show, it's not good news for me:
This graph shows where the fiber will be rolled out first. Unfortunately, I like in a detached house and these are at the very bottom of the list... But things get worse!
I live in Colombes which, with my luck, is in the lowest possible shade, meaning that deployment here will not happen in a good while. I'll be lucky if I have fiber by 2015, especially if, as many public driven projects do, the planning for this one slips. Maybe I should move abroad and rent my house for 5 years. Then when I come back I can be just in time for fiber!
THD92 is an interesting project in that it is designed as technology agnostic and open. The brichure even explains how MDU managers or owners can ask THD92 to deploy the vertical so as to ensure that none of the service providers will effectively own the vertical. The following graph explains how and where service providers can "pick up" the last mile network deployed by THD92:
And finally, of course, the obligatory "this is good for you" graph. There's another infographic in there that shows the time needed to download a movie, mp3s, etc. via DSL and via fiber. I haven't reproduced it here since these are classics, but I did find it surprising that a public financed project would list the time needed to download divx movies... Anyway, this is the more generic "why you need fiber" infographic:
So THD92 is back from the dead. It's going to be interesting to see if and how Numéricable (who owns 80% of the consortium selected to deploy and manage this infrastructure project) is going to find the ~500m EUR they need to finance this deployment considering their current financial situation...
