[Article] Ultra-Fast Broadband Is Here (Here being Sweden)

damien

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=6067639

Livewire: Beep! Beep! Ultra-Fast Broadband Is Here
Wed Aug 25, 2004 10:30 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - For Rainer Kinnunen, life has been a bit of a blur since he signed up for a superhigh-speed Internet service three years ago.

The 31-year-old Swedish student's computer has supplanted the television as the most vital link between his home and the outside world. He watches television shows and movies, makes phone calls, surfs the Web and plays multiplayer shoot-'em-up games through his high-speed connection -- often doing one or more activities at once.

His 10-megabit-per-second service from telecommunications company Bredbandsbolaget is up to 20 times faster than conventional cable modems, enabling a user to download a two-hour movie in a matter of minutes rather than hours.

For Kinnunen, the result has been a lifestyle change that, though not revolutionary, is certainly noticeable. "If my child wants a movie, I can download it instantly," he said. "And I haven't been to the neighborhood music store in years."

Since going superhigh-speed, Kinnunen has set up two computer servers in his apartment in the Stockholm suburb of Eskilstuna. One supplies his digital photos to friends and family. On the other, he duels it out for hours a day with other players of the "Half-Life: Day of Defeat" online war game.

And he has enough bandwidth and server space left over to broadcast his DVDs from his apartment to his friends' computers in case they want to watch along from across town.

UNITED STATES LAGGING

Bredbandsbolaget (http://www.bredband.com/se/index.jsp) also offers 100-megabit-per-second service for 595 Swedish crowns ($79.49) a month in select neighborhoods where the telecom wiring is state-of-the-art. More than 1,500 households have signed up for the service, the company said.

Also in Sweden, Nordic telecommunications giant TeliaSonera (TLSN.ST: Quote, Profile, Research) (http://www.teliasonera.com) offers an 8-megabit service that analysts refer to as multimegabit broadband. Elsewhere in Europe, Italy's e.Biscom (BISC.MI: Quote, Profile, Research) (http://www.fastweb.it) provides a similarly speedy connection.

For now, North America has missed the high-speed revolution occurring in homes across Europe, Japan and South Korea. U.S. companies like Qwest Communications International Inc. (Q.N: Quote, Profile, Research) (http://pcat.qwest.com/pcat/residential.do) are just beginning to break through the 1 megabit threshold in certain markets.

But within the next two years, multimegabit broadband will be a reality in most countries, analysts said, as telecommunications companies invest vast sums to upgrade their phone networks with high-speed chip sets and new fiber lines.

"The move to higher speeds is upon us," said analyst Graham Finnie of consultancy Yankee Group. "There's a very strong incentive for providers to offer this. As traditional broadband prices fall, the higher-speed offerings are necessary to keep margins from falling with them."

MULTIFUNCTIONALITY

For the consumer, it means one company can offer television, movies-on-demand, phone service and Web surfing, pitting smaller upstart Internet service providers against local cable companies.

"We see ourselves as an alternative to the local cable operators," said Peder Ramel, chief executive of Bredbandsbolaget. "That's our pitch."

Like its slower predecessors, multimegabit broadband services have limitations. Most notably, customers must live near -- between a quarter- and half-mile -- of the telecoms exchange point.

"Initially, this will be a service only for city dwellers," said Yankee Group's Finnie.

And, the speeds advertised refer only to downloading, the transfer of data from the Internet to a personal computer. Sending large files to others is considerably slower, but still much faster than through conventional modems.

Finally, multimegabit broadband can be twice as expensive as conventional broadband.

But prices are dropping rapidly, and demand is strong. "There are no longer any compelling technical reasons that service providers cannot push up to higher broadband speeds," Finnie said.

($1=7.485 Swedish crown)

dlofnep

Within the next two years, multi-megabit broadband will be a reality in most countries

For Rainer Kinnunen, life has been a bit of a blur since he signed up for a super-high-speed Internet service three years ago.

The 31-year-old Swedish student's computer has supplanted the television as the most vital link between his home and the outside world. He watches television shows and movies, makes phone calls, surfs the Web and plays multiplayer shoot 'em-up games through his high-speed connection -- often doing one or more activities at once.

Kinnunen's 10-megabit-per-second service from telecommunications company Bredbandsbolaget is up to 20 times faster than conventional cable modems, enabling a user to download a two-hour movie in a matter of minutes rather than hours.

For Kinnunen, the result has been a lifestyle change that, though not revolutionary, is certainly noticeable. "If my child wants a movie, I can download it instantly," he said. "And I haven't been to the neighbourhood music store in years."

Since going super-high-speed, Kinnunen has set up two computer servers in his apartment in the Stockholm suburb of Eskilstuna. One supplies his digital photos to friends and family. On the other, he duels it out for hours a day with other players of the "Half-Life: Day of Defeat" online war game. And he has enough bandwidth and server space left over to broadcast his DVDs from his apartment to his friends' computers in case they want to watch along from across town.

United states lagging
Bredbandsbolaget also offers 100-megabit-per-second service for 595 Swedish crowns (£43.77) a month in select neighbourhoods where the telecom wiring is state-of-the-art. More than 1,500 households have signed up for the service, the company said.

Also in Sweden, Nordic telecommunications giant TeliaSonera offers an eight-megabit service that analysts refer to as multi-megabit broadband. Elsewhere in Europe, Italy's e.Biscom provides a similarly speedy connection.

Sounds fun..

mr_angry

Once again it shows just how far behind Ireland's broadband infrastructure is lagging behind the fore-runners of the technology. Yes, things could be worse, but not much.

garthv

mr_angry wrote:

Once again it shows just how far behind Ireland's broadband infrastructure is lagging behind the fore-runners of the technology. Yes, things could be worse, but not much.

Ffs we cant even get 512k working,imagine how much trouble we'd have with 100mb connections.
I'd sell my first born child for a *working* 100mb connection tbh.

Boro

Knowing Eircom, if they ever offered it, it would be with a 4 gig cap

zAbbo

I have 2 swedish friends who have 10mb connex, they laugh at us when we mention caps, in fact i had to explain it

naitkris

whatever about 100Mbit you can get 155Mbit in many densly populated places... boy do i wish i was back in Sweden... sigh...

Ripwave

Garth_Vader wrote:

Ffs we cant even get 512k working,imagine how much trouble we'd have with 100mb connections.
I'd sell my first born child for a *working* 100mb connection tbh.

Did you ask yourself how come only 1,500 Swedish households are availing of this service?

in select neighbourhoods where the telecom wiring is state-of-the-art

. There's a thread here about a trial going on in Dublin 16 that delivers multi-megabyte downloads, and the local cable networks in Dungarvan and Longford already offer 5Meg services. But just wait until you hear the bithcing and moaning about it not being fair that it's not available everywhere if eircom provided it in "select neighbourhoods"!

Stephen

Eh... DSL was available only in "select" areas for ages, much like NTL cable still is.

dlofnep

Ripwave wrote:

Did you ask yourself how come only 1,500 Swedish households are availing of this service? . There's a thread here about a trial going on in Dublin 16 that delivers multi-megabyte downloads, and the local cable networks in Dungarvan and Longford already offer 5Meg services. But just wait until you hear the bithcing and moaning about it not being fair that it's not available everywhere if eircom provided it in "select neighbourhoods"!

That Dungarven ISP is now offering a 9meg service.

And yeah, the 100meg service is pretty limited at the moment, but they do have the 10meg service rolled out from what I gather..

OfflerCrocGod

dlofnep wrote:

That Dungarven ISP is now offering a 9meg service.

B0llox!! Nearly good enough reason to move there! When I saw this article in The Reg I though I'd be seeing it here soon enough Really makes you appreciate what we don't have in this rain-soaked country.

Ripwave

dlofnep wrote:

And yeah, the 100meg service is pretty limited at the moment,

You have to live within half a mile of the exchange, for a start.

They've been building about 20,000 apartments a year every year for the last couple of years in Ireland. These are relatively high denisty dwellings, and the typical apartment dweller is exactly the sort of demographic that is likely to be interested in broadband. Yet I don't know of any apartments that have been built with broadband connectivity in place, so that an ISP could deliver a single highspeed connection to the building, and sell broadband services in the complex.

It'd add maybe €200 to the cost of a €200K apartment. It almost makes you believe that there really isn't any demand out there for this sort of service.

muffen

The 100MBit service in Sweden is only available to people connected to the BBB fibernetwork. Currently it costs 120euros a month, with a 300gig DL cap.

It should be noted though that the apartment blocks that get connected have to pay a fee, which generally causes an increase in rent.

I just moved back to Sweden, I bought an apartment on "söder", which is on the south side of the city center.
As my apartment is not connected to the BBB fiber (most apartments aren't), I cannot get the 100 MBit. In all honesty, I don't think I'd get it anyways, as 120euros is kinda a lot of money.

My exchange is upgraded to support vDSL, meaning I can get the 26 or 24MBit connections (just under 50euros a month, uncapped). However, and this is the case for most exchanges in the stockholm city center, my exchange is full.
They are working on extending the exchange (actually, they are extending about every singe exchange in the stockholm city center right now), they told me I have to wait about 3 months before I can use vDSL.

If I want Internet right now, 8MBit down and 1Mbit up is the best I can get (uncapped, about 30euros a month). 8Mbit ADSL is available to over 75% of the population. Even my dad who lives in a small town about 2 hours away from any city with more than 100K people has 8Mbit (althought outside the big cities you can only use Telia, the eircom of Sweden, and then it costs 45euros a month, uncapped).

I can tell you though, if you live in a place where you can get 26Mbit (or even 100MBit if you choose your location), 8Mbit just isn't good enough.
Not sure what to do, if I sign up for the 8Mbit I have to stick with it for a year, but I don't want to wait three months.
I'm thinking about just walking around in the apartment knocking on doors and offering like 100Euros if someone with vDSL can release their connection so I can take it... just might work ... otherwise I guess I'll have to be stuck with 8Mbit for a year...

Well, on the bright side, I don't need to get a phoneline at all in order to get the 8Mbit connection... although the linerental in Sweden is only 13 euros a month (and a phonecall costs 5cents off-peak, regardless of how long it is or where in the country you make the call).

So, Sweden does have good connections, and 8Mbit is pretty much available everywhere... but it isn't that easy to get anything better right now in Stockholm (in the suburbs or any other large city you should get 26MBit no problem, but stockholm citycenter is kinda full)...

seamus

Ripwave wrote:

It'd add maybe €200 to the cost of a €200K apartment. It almost makes you believe that there really isn't any demand out there for this sort of service.

Broadband availability hasn't exactly been a "pull" factor for buying apartments in Ireland in the last 5 years. People are more concerned with actually getting somewhere to live and not being screwed over by estate agents and builders.

We know from the massive takeup of DSL and cable services in recent months that the "no interest" line was a load of bull. I woudl guess that ISPs and/or management companies aren't willing to preinstall large pipes to apartments blocks in case it doesn't take off. Exactly like DSL for the past 3 years.

No supply doesn't indicate no demand.

dlofnep

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

B0llox!! Nearly good enough reason to move there! When I saw this article in The Reg I though I'd be seeing it here soon enough Really makes you appreciate what we don't have in this rain-soaked country.

Indeed, and dungarven is just outside my city. It's like I can just about touch it but then I fall

AdMMM

dlofnep wrote:

That Dungarven ISP is now offering a 9meg service.

Everyone doesnt get a 9mb connection though. Being the cowboy that Casey is, every connection shares the same bandwidth and ften the connection is slower than 56k!

Ripwave

Stephen wrote:

Eh... DSL was available only in "select" areas for ages, much like NTL cable still is.

Eircom only introduced retail DSL offerings (at €108/month) a little more than 2 years ago (early 2002). The ramp up to fairly widespread availability was a lot faster than it felt at the time. As was obvious to everyone except eircom at the time, demand was always going to be limited until the price got down to reasonable levels.

As much stick as eircom take for all the ares that can't get DSL, can you imagine the noise if they offered ultrahigh-speed connections to the 5% of their customers who are within 1km of an exchange? They could do it tomorrow, if they thought it would be financially or politically viable. But they'l have to pitch it at an unattractive price to stave off the inevitable complaints from the usual suspects, and then then find that it's barely financially viable, because the demand for reasonably priced broadband is far, far higher than the demand for ultra-highspeed broadband.

dlofnep

|.Murderer.| wrote:

Everyone doesnt get a 9mb connection though. Being the cowboy that Casey is, every connection shares the same bandwidth and ften the connection is slower than 56k!

Really? I didn't know this. My friend has the service and she thinks its "super dooper". I'd have to see it for myself. Surely the contention ratio can't be that high?

What way is his system rigged up that it would drop a line capable of 9megs to 56k speed? Highly unusual..

Ripwave

seamus wrote:

No supply doesn't indicate no demand.

No demand means that nobody is going to step up to the plate and provide the service.

Eircom is a single company, that had a single company policy. There are dozens of companies building apartment blocks all over the country. Yet not one of them has bothered to build a "broadband friendly" complex. These guys know what sells, and what doesn't, and you can be pretty damn sure that if there was any real interest, they'd be building it in.

Ripwave

|.Murderer.| wrote:

Everyone doesnt get a 9mb connection though. Being the cowboy that Casey is, every connection shares the same bandwidth and ften the connection is slower than 56k!

That's the way cable broadband connections work - shared bandwidth on the local cable. Every cable broadband system works that way.

seamus

Ripwave wrote:

Eircom is a single company, that had a single company policy. There are dozens of companies building apartment blocks all over the country. Yet not one of them has bothered to build a "broadband friendly" complex. These guys know what sells, and what doesn't, and you can be pretty damn sure that if there was any real interest, they'd be building it in.

Plenty of complexes have been built with cat5 networks built in. These guys don't have to try sell apartment blocks, or at least they haven't had to. For the last 5/10 years it been a simple case of throwing them up, and people will buy them regardless.
More often than not, the apartments are poorly finished, snag lists not even done, let alone fixed, and services substandard. Many blocks are left months without any kind of policy on refuse, car park lighting, maintenance. Management company contracts are given to the builders brother who employs 3 young lads with wheelbarrows, shovels and no skills to look after the place.

Do you honestly think that any developer in this country would have the foresight or the desire to have the block hooked up with broadband, when they're cutting corners everywhere else?

Ripwave

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=1869530&postcount=12

seamus

I'll let Moriarty decide if he wants to move that here and merge or move this there and merge....

Moriarty

I've merged the two threads, and moved it all back to the ireland offline forum with a redirect left in the broadband forum.

SkepticOne

The other thing that Sweden has is Municipal Fibre. The supplier, Bredbandsbolaget, is an advocate of such fibre.

This 2000 inteview is with the founder of that company, Jonas Birgersson:

"Given a dark fibre network, we can bring the force of technology to
bear in a positive way so long as strong interests are not allowed to
take control. One of the biggest breakthroughs for the Internet came
when the American regulatory body decided not to regulate the
applications layer. That was fundamental. In the same way, if the
regulators don’t regulate the transportation layer, or if they make the
dark fibre available to anyone at production cost, it will make a
phenomenal difference. In Sweden, it will trigger flat rates for phone
calls – even for mobile phone calls in the long run."

Note the phrase "so long as strong interests are not allowed to take control". This is the main problem in Ireland - that the incumbent (the fiercest critic of similar municipal fibre in Ireland), is a major subsidiary in the very company appointed to manage that fibre. Meanwhile their message that the government here should avoid "duplication" of fibre already in the ground, seems to have been taken up by people who, perhaps, should know better.

You can clearly see why Eircom would be strongly opposed to such dark fibre. The fear for them is that companies like Bredbandsbolaget will get started. Then, like Telia Sweden, they will have to start making the maximum use of their copper network in the hopes that Bredbandsbolaget doesn't expand too fast.

The only hope for Ireland (if we want such services) is that we start looking to what the Governments of countries like Sweden and South Korea actually did to get the services they now enjoy - not simply complaining about the lack of them here.

SkepticOne

seamus wrote:

Plenty of complexes have been built with cat5 networks built in. These guys don't have to try sell apartment blocks, or at least they haven't had to. [...]Do you honestly think that any developer in this country would have the foresight or the desire to have the block hooked up with broadband, when they're cutting corners everywhere else?

So what was the idea with the cat5?

seamus

SkepticOne wrote:

So what was the idea with the cat5?

Someone had the good sense. They also tend to do it on a per-customer basis - i.e. before the wiring goes in, the builder offers to have the place wired with cat5 for an extra €50.

Fenster

seamus wrote:

Someone had the good sense. They also tend to do it on a per-customer basis - i.e. before the wiring goes in, the builder offers to have the place wired with cat5 for an extra €50.

Aye, my brother lives down in a new estate in Loughrea and the builder wired up his house for €100.

eircomtribunal

seamus wrote:

Do you honestly think that any developer in this country would have the foresight or the desire to have the block hooked up with broadband, when they're cutting corners everywhere else?

Fully agree with you there.
A reminder that it's also the fault of this fool


that the roughly 200 000 houses built in 2002, 2003 and 2004 are not broadband-ready.

Link to our March article is here.

P.