[Market/Policy] SFI's Glass says broadband is crucial

dahamsta

SFI's Glass says broadband is crucial
Tuesday, November 04 2003
by Dick O'Brien

Science Foundation of Ireland's head of ICT Research has warned that any compromise on broadband may hinder the country's development as a digital economy.

According to Alastair Glass of SFI, it is essential for Ireland to have high quality broadband connections in every home if it wishes to develop as an information society. When asked whether it was impractical to connect rural areas, Glass responded by saying that the same thing was said about electricity.

The comments come a week after the ESRI criticised the government for investing in broadband initiatives in rural towns and said the matter should be left to the private sector. When asked about the ESRI's criticisms, Glass said the government had to invest in the Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) because the private sector was unable to move quickly enough. He argued that the country should aim for a minimum standard of 10Mbps connections in every home in the ten years.

[...]

More of this sort of thing. The sooner the man in the street starts seeing the Internet as a right and not a luxury, the better.

adam

vinnyfitz

Broadband in every home
a must, says SFI


05.11.2003 - Broadband networks with bandwidth of at least 10MB should be plumbed into every home within 10 years if Ireland is not to be at a competitive disadvantage to other economies, a top government scientist has warned.
Dr Alastair Glass, head of the ICT division at Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), told journalists at a briefing at SFI’s Dublin headquarters yesterday: “A hundred years ago, people were saying that not every home needed electricity but look at how things turned out. Ireland should be at the leading edge when it comes to broadband. The Koreans have already rolled out broadband, with good results.”

Glass, who also sits on the broadband committee headed by the Department of Communications’ technology guru Brendan Tuohy, looked forward to the completion of the Government’s 19-town fibre network rollout next spring when “industrial parks and schools” would be connected by the high-speed system. Sounding a note of caution however, he said that the network would only be useful if the technology community developed the applications and services to take full advantage of it. “The infrastructure is not where the value is; the value lies in the applications. The gaming application is the one people always talk about but I hope it’s not the only one!”

dahamsta

I'm getting more and more convinced that the Government should be sitting down right now with local councils, industry leaders and technologists to seriously consider a long-term FTTH policy. Obviously it's not financially viable in the short to medium term, but the future is FTTH and now is the time to start planning it. Let's get the jump on everyone else and get foundations laid!

adam

Moriarty

I agree. Laying out proper plans for even mandatory ducting (created to a strict set of standards) at any new building sites/road maintanence - which will remain the property of the local authority - would, for the moment, go some way to recifying the complete lack of forward planning that we are currently experiencing. Policys like this wouldnt cost the moon, its just a matter of good forsight and the will to actually do something about the lack-lustre state of the current telecoms infrastructure.

De Rebel

Originally posted by vinnyfitz
Broadband in every home
a must, says SFI

............ technology guru Brendan Tuohy...........

Has somebody being doing night classes ????

De Rebel

Moriarty, while I agree with your suggestion, do you really believe that there is the slightest chance of something like this happening. Everything we see in the 80 years of this state's history in terms of infrastructure planning, development, maintenance suggests that we We Just Don't Have What It Takes, whatever “It” is. The ESB is about the only example of a job done reasonable well, and even they have a few issues. But the rest, roads, rail, water, sewage, communications, is one long list of embarrassing episodes. And its not for want of thought, ideas or initiatives. I am honestly coming to the conclusion that We Just Don't Have What It Takes.


Incidentally, on the idea of street-side ducting, the first one I heard speak about this was my grandmother, about 20 years ago. She wanted to patent the idea of putting a zipper in every pavement, so that all the useless skangers (not her work) who come along to dig it up and do stuff could do it without leaving the usual mess behind them. Some woman, 30 years ahead of her time!

[ot rant]
And about the mess they leave behind, is there anything worse than the sight of a newly laid asphalt road surface being dug up by some bunch of monkeys in a rusty white hi-ace to lay a cable, and passing by the following day and feeling the alloys sink into the newly strewn tar and chip, and knowing that the pothole will be there for the next 8 years. Have the local authorities not control/redress in relation to these “road openings” ?
[/ot /rant]

dahamsta

De Rebel, resigning matters because of past history is plain-jane political and social suicide, it's the Oirish way and it's something we have to correct. Yes, if I look at past history I wouldn't believe for a second that we could organise FTTH in ten or twenty years, but we have to be pragmatic and get on with the job.

Not all politicians are corrupt and/or incompetent, and it's up to us to dig out the good ones and push them on their way. Eamon Gilmore's recent release on electronic voting is an excellent example -- he consulted with people who knew what they were talking about and produced an excellent, informed paper on the subject. And FG got it assways, which we have to prevent.

Giving up isn't the answer though. Every intelligent technologist knows that FTTH is the future, so how about starting out by getting intelligent technologists sitting around a table and talking about it. IrelandOffline has organised seminars before...

adam

Chowley

I dont have a clue about the fibre optic BB thing tbh.

Would the FTTH be fed off the figure of 8 straight to the home or what?
And who would control it, would it go to the ISP's? I cant see that helping at all to be honest, I think they'd just fiind another way of failing everyone and overcharging and capping etc.They would probably find a newer far worse way of hindering it.

Is FTTH a reality? within the next 10 years anyway.

dahamsta

Would the FTTH be fed off the figure of 8 straight to the home or what? And who would control it, would it go to the ISP's?

I don't know -- what do /you/ think? This is what I'm talking about -- because FTTH is relatively far in the future, there don't need to be any preconceptions about it. There's loads of time to think about it and develop it as a "what if" project. If after a certain amount of time the "what if" scenario looks impossible, then there's plenty of time to come up with a realistic, workable approach. (Of course the ultimate goal is to come up with a "what if" scenario that is realistic and workable. But compromises are all part of the game.)

Is FTTH a reality? within the next 10 years anyway.

It /has/ to be. In ten years every household in countries like Japan and Korea - and probably Sweden and Finland too - will have it, and many other countries will be close behind them. We should be at the forefront in this, beating down other countries that don't have the ability to move quickly. (We don't always move quickly, but we can if we want to. Look at electronic voting for example.)

And there's no reason it can't be. Even if we spend 5 years planning, if that planning is done right we should be able to plough the streets getting fibre to people's homes. And frankly five years is four years too many. There's no reason a good rollout plan couldn't be developed in one.

adam

Chowley

Thats good to hear, it actually could happen.
Unfortunately it seems most likely that it will fall into to the hands of one of our ISP's.
Do the government have any plans for ftth do they even know what a benefit it could be?:rolleyes:

Moriarty

If a decision was taken by the government to roll out a ftth network to most houses around the country it would require a pretty substantial capital investment. The gov have seemingly learnt their lesson about selling off critical infrastructure with the sale of eircom, so the most likely outcome would be a Managment Services Entity similar in idea (if far larger) to the MSE that was recently tendered for the local MAN projects. This MSE would then sell wholesale access to the network (presumeably for the same cost anywhere in the country be it dublin or ennis like the current mans) to anyone that wants access. This would be the likes of eircom, esatbt and utv, but you could also soon find new companies sprouting up to provide things like cable tv and telephony over the network, aswell as internet access.

dahamsta

I haven't thought about this a whole lot to be honest - that's the whole point of consultations, obviously - but one thing that has been tweaking at me is the idea of trickling FTTH out over the years, rather than trying to pull some kind of miracle that requires massive, massive investment. I'd be interested to hear others' opinions on this. Is is viable at all do you think? How would you approach it?

adam

bk

Originally posted by dahamsta
I haven't thought about this a whole lot to be honest - that's the whole point of consultations, obviously - but one thing that has been tweaking at me is the idea of trickling FTTH out over the years, rather than trying to pull some kind of miracle that requires massive, massive investment. I'd be interested to hear others' opinions on this. Is is viable at all do you think? How would you approach it?

adam

Well it will be many, many years before FTTH becomes a reality.

At the moment not only would it be monumentally expensive to lay the fiber to all homes, but the termination gear is very expensive and make it a non starter for home users at the moment.

The only place in the world where there is some FTTH is parts of Asia. There they have massive (> 20 storey) apartment blocks that house thousands of residents. They have fiber running to these buildings and then use regular ethernet LAN to distribute the connection to all the residents. So in fact it isn't really FTTH there either, it is Fiber to the building.

It is really a matter of population density, which we simply don't have. The equipment costs will have to come way down before it becomes economic in Ireland.

However, having said all that, we should be working towards it and planning for it now.

The things you need before you can even start thinking about FTTH are:

1) Excellent, competitive international bandwidth. - Yes we have this.
2) Excellent, competitive national fiber networks - We seem to be getting this now with the Aurora and ESBT networks.
3) Excellent, open fiber networks ringing all towns in Ireland and attached to the national network.

This is what we are doing now with the MAN project. If you want to work towards FTTH, then we need to complete all three phases of the MAN project. BTW the MAN projects will have a more immediate impact with the wireless companies.

I suppose the next step after the MAN projects would be fiber to the curb, this would enable VDSL and very high speed/short range wireless (like Ultra Wide Band).

And then finally FTTH.

As you can see this is a very long term objective, but one we should and (sort of) are working towards.

One thing that we should be doing now is laying ducting in all new roads and estates. This ducting should be owned by local authorities and space in it rented to the utility companies. This would simplify FTTH rollout later.

dahamsta

There is certainly progress, but I'd be very surprised if FTTH is being considered as a major factor in the plans so far. And we all know what happens if things aren't planned with the future in mind: They have to change and they get more expensive. Government building contracts (Eircom Park) are one example of this, but another more appropriate one is roads being dug up over and over again. So you're absolutely right, ducting should be a priority. The whole approach to ducting seems slipshod in Ireland though, there's doesn't seem to be a concerted national effort to prioritise it. The utilities are still digging up freshly laid tarmac for god's sake...

adam

Chowley

What about adsl 2 as a stp gap, seeing as it allows you to be slightly further from the exchange and can handle higher bandwith.

andrew163

The problem there is that it involves relying on Eircom and our brilliant regulators to make the first moves....

Chowley

LOL stupid of me to think of that idea.Eircom hardly want to make it easier for us to get BB.:rolleyes: