Fiberevolution

Last year Algeria Telecom announced that they were launching a small-scale FTTH pilot program in one of the suburbs of Algiers. The main stated reason was responding to a willingness by local governments of eliminating satellite dishes that ruin the view. That may sound odd to people who live in countries where most of the habitat is single homes, but having been to Algiers a couple of times in the early 2000s I believe it’s not quite as anecdotal as it sounds.

Having said that, I believe that AT uses this as an argument to get municipal backing, but the real driver is for them to sell IPTV and eat into the revenue flows of the satellite distributors. The pilot was considered successful, and Algeria Telecom announced a couple of weeks back (link in French) that they were deploying a slightly larger operation in Medea with 2000 homes connected. More importantly, Algeria Telecom announced that their FTTH footprint would expand to 250.000 homes by the end of 2011.

Again, in comparison with large-scale deployments in North America or Asia, this may seem very small indeed, but it’s worth remembering that there are only 3.2 million active wireline phone lines in Algeria (World Factbook, 2008), so what we are really talking about here is the upgrade of close to 1/10th of the wireline network.

It’s worth keeping in mind that while there isn’t significant competition on the wireline side in Algeria, competition in wireless is fierce, and Algeria Telecom is not the dominant player in that market. According to the article above, AT is starting to see copper disconnects, so delivering more through the wireline is also a way of staying afloat in their historical market.

Exciting to see a growing number of emerging countries seriously moving in the fiber direction.

This is something I've been meaning to do for months, if not years, but always pushed back. I love blogging and it's brought me a lot (as I hope it has to my readers), but one thing that has becoming increasingly evident to me is that people do not comment easily, and so while I'm happy with the medium to broadcast my thoughts, it hasn't really proved to be the right way to interact.

This mailing list in invitation only, but you can (of course) send me an email to be invited. It's open to anyone who has an interest in matters related to NGA and FTTP. It will operate under the following rules:

• the purpose of the list is to discuss and apply collective brainpower to the topic of wireline Next Generation Access, including but not necessarily limited to FTTP.

• other telecom related topics may be discussed if they are adjacent to our core topic, but don't be surprised to see list admins ask for topic shutdowns if things get too far off track.

• much as I want this to be convivial and friendly, it's been my experience that mailing lists can die from too many jokes and personal messages. I'll let everyone exert their good judgement as to when not to post, but please try to stay on topic.

• certain topics will not be tolerated on the list. For now, these include politics and religion (assuming there are ways that these could be on topic). The list may be extended in the future.

• aggressive behaviours, baiting, insults (blatant or otherwise), racism and other manifestations of intolerance will not be accepted on the list. I will be harsh if and when these crop up.

• many of the members will be representatives of service providers or vendors, but despite that the list will not be a medium for commercial activities. Members who indulge in hard-selling (onlist of offlist to list members) will be banned.

So remember, all you have to do to join is to send me an email. You'll find a link to do that at the top right corner of this page, under my photo. Hope to see you there!

I’m tweeting live about the Seoul FTTH Council Annual Conference. The hashtag is #ftthseoul10 and you don’t need to be on twitter to check it out!

I have finally landed in Lafayette after a nearly 36h trip. My suitcase, however, hasn’t but I’m just glad to be here. Iwill be speaking a little after 4 PM CT (in a little more than an hour.)

The whole conference is webcast at http://livestream.com/fiberfete if you want to check it out.

Clearly, if my stats are to be trusted, no one reads me on a Friday. Still, a few interesting things came up stateside this week (which was actually made last week but I only picked it up today…) which I thought were worth sharing:

A long AP article entitled Verizon Winds Down Expensive FiOS Expansion hints at the fact that the further deployment of FiOS beyond areas in which it is already deployed or in deployment is unlikely. One of the reasons, it seems, is that the crisis has hit Verizon's business revenues hard and therefore the cash might no longer be there to deploy much further. This leaves a number of pretty big communities like Baltimore with limited hope of seeing FTTH in the foreseeable future.

In order to accelerate the penetration of MDUs in large cities where Verizon (just like about everybody else) is struggling, Verizon has launched a service aimed at landlords and tenants called Verizon Concierge. DSL Reports has some info, that's something I'll need to dig into.

Google is closing applications for its Experimental FTTH network tonight. According to a blog post by James Kelly on the Official Google Blog, over 600 communities applied. Google will announce where it has chosen to deploy at the end of 2010, quite a bit later than what I was expecting. Still, a landmark is passed tonight, and Google has already achieved one thing: put the issue of NGA in America firmly on the map.

Ironic announcement from Qwest, they intend to apply for RUS stimulus money in order to upgrade their network to FTTC. And not just a little money: $350m. Qwest will generously fund the remaining 25% of the investment out of their own pockets. See Qwest wants $350million from Uncle Sam to deploy VDSL. I've said it before and I will say it again: public money should go to projects that will power broadband growth for the next 50 years, not the next 5 years (if that).

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!

Giga Om's Stacey Higginbotham wrote a really interesting article yesterday (Broadband Boosts Economic Development… To A Point) on a study undertaken by the Public Policy Institute of California. I'll let you read the article (and the study if you have the time) but what I take out is this: while there is a clear impact on employment in a given location once you get real broadband competition in place in that location, the employment gain might not be for inhabitants of that location (as new workers will come to places of employment) and it's not evenly distributed amongst professions.

One of things that really puzzles me in the table Stacey put up is the negative impact of broadband deployment on median household revenue. I guess I'll have to read the study to figure out where this one comes from.

I'm also wondering how applicable these results would be to Europe where worker mobility is much more limited.

Surely you all remember this monument of absurd humour that is the All-England Summarize Proust Competition. I'm hoping that my attempt to summarize Ecomm is not quite as absurd, although I'm slightly worried considering James' complete cop-out and Brough's systematic factual approach.

Rather than comment on all presentations I attended (as I've been known to do in the past) or even just to locate the highlights for me, I've decided to take more of a global approach to summarizing the event by listing what I believe to be the key questions or issues that it raised. These – incidentally – are issues that I might address from my own viewpoint in future blog postings.

Clearly the very first question that jumped at us at about 9.05 AM on the first morning of the conference was Can Telcos Change? I find that the telecom world is divided into three essential categories when it comes to answering that question. The first, and largest, doesn't understand why they should. The second believes that they can and must. The third believe that they can't and will die or transform through collapse. Sadly, very few of the first category were present at Ecomm or they would have perhaps swiftly changed their outlook on telco future. Many presentations during the conference addressed this, from Martin Geddes' insight on redefining what a voice service might be to Julien Salanave's future scenarios for the industry and Stefan Hopmann's presentation of Swisscom's Open API program.

Another thread that emerged as soon as James Enck took the stage centers around the economic contribution of the telco sector. James' presentation was a welcome smack in the face for those optimists who think that the crisis is over, or that the telecom sector escaped unscathed. One of the questions he raised (in his darkly humorous way) was What do telecoms have to contribute to the bigger picture? (The Kindle, he pointed out, wasn't gonna cut it.) If I understood his point correctly, there's a futility around the obsession the telcos have with hollywood and leisure services when their infrastructure and services could be contributing to so much more. A few other presentations gave us a glimpse of what that 'so much more' could be although to be fair I sensed a bit of a paradox here when numerous other presentations seemed to be themselves focused on 'feel-good' as opposed to 'necessary' services.

A third issue which I found really interesting though a little hard to grasp for a wireline focused guy such as myself centered around the Future of Mobile, both as a network and as a purveyor of services. Brough Turner, Sascha Meinrath and William Webb – amongst others – explored the issues around spectrum allocation and the potential for non-regulated wireless services. Moray Rumney gave a masterful presentation on mobile technologies all the way up to LTE and why the obsession of vendors and mobile operators alike on top speeds as opposed to average speeds might spell their doom.

Finally, to me the last crucial question which came back time and again in presentations and discussions centered on Redefining Communications for the 21st Century. Throughout the three days it became very apparent how legacy technologies – and perhaps more importantly legacy mindframes – were stopping a much needed rethink of communications. Martin Geddes touched on this looking at what a modern Voice Messaging service should be, the strong presence of Google Wave people hinted at what collaborative communication might look like, and various innovative vendors like Rebelvox and Voxygen examined what communication services should be when redesigned from scratch. (Note to self, if I ever start my own business, don't use "Vox" in the name)

There were, of course, other topics touched on during these amazing three days of conference, things around Augmented Reality, Mobile Devices, and a variety of other interesting subjects. But these didn't necessarily get my mind juices pumping like the above four threads did. My own presentation was focused on aspects of the FTTH business model and I have uploaded it to slideshare.

This was my first Ecomm, and it's an understatement to say that it fulfilled its promises and then some. The organisation was spotless, the speakers were of very high caliber both content-wise and as speakers, the informal socialising was excellent and I came back loaded with business cards of really interesting people. If anything, I wondered at times if it wasn't too much. It suggests that perhaps there is a virtue in the occasional guy doing a sales pitch you care nothing about as it gives you an opportunity to check your emails or go to the loo…

I probably won't be able to make the San Francisco event in 2010, but I have every hope of attending a future European event and maybe heading out to California in 2011 if Lee will have me again. For a sense of what the conference and the speakers looked like, I have uploaded my photos of the first day of speakers and the evening social.

Kostas Troulos posted yesterday about OTE's announcement of a VDSL roll-out under the title OTE announces VDSL rollout and upsets Greece's FTTH Plans. I encourage you to read his account of OTE's announcement to roll-out VDSL. What I find interesting here is not just that the incumbent seems to be deliberately trying to put the government's FTTH deployment plans off-balance, but that Deutsche Telekom who is clearly itself struggling with it own strategic vision when it comes to FTTx has a direct stake.

Having said that, it's not all that surprising that more than a year after the original announcement and with no clear guidelines emerging the various stakeholders would start looking at alternatives. The Greek government has fallen into the classic trap of the administrative/political quagmire that's used as a justificationby the "private is always better" guys currently running the commission.

Let's hope that the whole plan doesn't fall off the wayside as a consequence of this.

The following video has recently started airing in the Netherlands. It's the last in a long line of cable adverts that use the word fiber as a differentiator even though cable is not fiber. It is also heavily inspired by HKBN's wacky "pipe" advert, but without the distinctively silly humor. This raises an interesting question: if fiber is so good for you, why aren't cable operators deploying it?

Thanks to Rudolph for pointing this one out.