How Amsterdam was wired for open access fibre

probe

bk wrote: »

Probe, you do realise Numericable is cable and DOCSIS 3, sort of spoils your point, no?

BK – you are living in the past – TV 1.0 era!

No it doesn’t spoil my point. France doesn’t have a Gigabit FTTP infrastructure shared among all the carriers. It has numerous independent fibre platforms that arose out of unbundling the local loop. Eg Iliad (ie free.fr) offers DSL with internet, TV and phone. Lots of households use it for TV and are aware that when TV is being watched, broadband speeds slow down. Iliad is a profitable company and decided to roll out fibre to replace the copper loop to remove the speed problems caused by TV watching. It also removes their dependency on France Telecom loops. France is a big country with long copper loops in many areas – making fibre to the premises the only option for the future.

5GB/s will me more then enough for a very long time to come. Remember the node can be subdivided over time reducing contention. That is the beauty of cable, it has a lot of potential and it can be gradually reconfigured to offer faster speeds, as consumer demands increase, without massive cost.

While you can tinker with it, cable is still going to be a monopoly in the absence of an open fibre platform. The copper loop is incapable of competing as use of the net gets more multi-media oriented. If you have 3 TV sets in the house, you need a bandwidth allocation for each channel or VoD title they are watching. In a previous posting above, you stated that UPC's capacity will allow "166 30mb/s 1080p full bluray quality video streams!" 3D BluRay requires about 50 Mbits/sec per video stream. If the father is watching a sporting event in 3D, and the wife is watching a movie, there will be precious little capacity for the children to surf the net. And your local UPC node is going to be super-saturated. People will get really pissed off if they can't watch certain sporting events. Others will be equally pissed off it they can't do what they want online - due to system inadequacies.

Telcos on the other hand are stuck, they either stay on the dead end DSL technology or spend a fortune upgrading to FTTH.

Precisely my point. Which is why Ireland needs a planned FTTH platform for the 21st century. I can see iterations of good money being thrown after bad with half baked interim technologies that have no long-term shelf life. Otherwise you will have high prices, and UPC’s anglo-saxon monoculture tabloid TV, leading to further generations of multilingually illiterate Irish. A population incapable of competing in a multi-lingual Europe.

As for your fear of UPC becoming a monopoly, you have to be kidding, right?

They (UPC) have only been playing with broadband for a few years, and already have 150,000 broadband users. Ireland is very dozy and slow to adopt new technologies – but when the word of mouth finally gets out, people typically go out like sheep and buy from the biggest monopoly!

UPC have only 20% of the wired market, Eircom have just shy of 80%. UPC have a very long way to go to become a monopoly and Eircom certainly isn't going to stand aside and let them do it, not over the long term.

If you started an open FTTP programme tomorrow, by the time 25 to 30% of premises had access to FTTP in say five years time, UPC will probably have close to 70% share of broadband market in the areas they operate in. I'd call that a monopoly.

And even if it was true, then the only alternative is we continue with the Eircom monopoly, only with much higher prices and much lower speeds!

Unless you have another alternative to suggest?

I have suggested the alternative, which would be open to eircom, upc, bt, digiweb, imagine, the mobile phone networks, and anyone else interested.

I suspect you are just spamming my posts for some ulterior motive! Who do you work for? Or do we have to guess!

paulm17781

probe wrote: »

BK – you are living in the past – TV 1.0 era!

No it doesn’t spoil my point. France doesn’t have a Gigabit FTTP infrastructure shared among all the carriers. It has numerous independent fibre platforms that arose out of unbundling the local loop. Eg Iliad (ie free.fr) offers DSL with internet, TV and phone. <snip>

Again, cable doesn't work that way.

bk

probe wrote: »

BK – you are living in the past – TV 1.0 era!

LOL, would you like to talk about my setup:

- Top of the range, reference level, 50" Pioneer Kuro 1080P Plasma
- Full 5.1 surround sound setup
- Sky+ HD
- Playstation 3 (BluRay)
- Nettop attached to TV, running XBMC, connected via gigabit ethenet to media server in study with 4 TB's of storage!.

I've been playing with media centers for years (MythTV, Windows Media Center, etc.) and I was one of the first people in Ireland with a TiVo (hacked Linux Series 1) years before Sky+ arrived.

I've also suffered with supposedly brilliant NGN IPTV over FTTB for two years, having tried out both an MPEG 2 system and MPEG 4 system

So trust me I'm well beyond TV 1.0 :rolleyes:

probe wrote: »

While you can tinker with it, cable is still going to be a monopoly in the absence of an open fibre platform. The copper loop is incapable of competing as use of the net gets more multi-media oriented. If you have 3 TV sets in the house, you need a bandwidth allocation for each channel or VoD title they are watching. In a previous posting above, you stated that UPC's capacity will allow "166 30mb/s 1080p full bluray quality video streams!" 3D BluRay requires about 50 Mbits/sec per video stream.

No it doesn't. I went to an extreme specing it out based on 30mb/s, that being the norm for BluRay, but the actual highest bit rate for normal HD TV is actually about 14mb/s for BBC. Remember broadcast TV is normally 1080i, rather then 1080p. Sky's 3D TV broadcasts are about 20mb/s

probe wrote: »

If the father is watching a sporting event in 3D, and the wife is watching a movie, there will be precious little capacity for the children to surf the net. And your local UPC node is going to be super-saturated. People will get really pissed off if they can't watch certain sporting events. Others will be equally pissed off it they can't do what they want online - due to system inadequacies.

But not everyone will be watching the TV at the same time, some will be at the pub, work, school, gym, on holidays, etc.

Also you could use multicasting or a hybrid QAM/IPTV system to share the bandwidth for the most popular channels.

And again remember nodes can be sub divided as demand increases. Eventually the cable company can go FTTH eventually themselves when the need arises, and for much cheaper then the telcos as their existing HFC network is much closer to peoples homes then telcos exchanges.

That is the massive advantage of cable, a nice steady, clear, cost effective upgrade path to meet customers needs.

probe wrote: »

They (UPC) have only been playing with broadband for a few years, and already have 150,000 broadband users. Ireland is very dozy and slow to adopt new technologies – but when the word of mouth finally gets out, people typically go out like sheep and buy from the biggest monopoly!

Yes, people are doozy sheep for picking the fastest and cheapest product available to them :rolleyes:

They would be much better off paying twice the price for half the speed from Eircom!

You are making so much sense now Probe.

probe wrote: »

If you started an open FTTP programme tomorrow, by the time 25 to 30% of premises had access to FTTP in say five years time, UPC will probably have close to 70% share of broadband market in the areas they operate in.

So we would end up with a situation where Eircom et al are forced together to roll out FTTH, with a product offering superior in both features and price to UPC in order to win back customers, which in turn forces UPC to drop prices to remain competitive.

Sounds like the ideal scenario to me, competition at it's best.

probe wrote: »

I have suggested the alternative, which would be open to eircom, upc, bt, digiweb, imagine, the mobile phone networks, and anyone else interested.

Which I would also love to see. But their is currently no sign of this happening and until it does, I'm glad UPC are here offering real compeition to Eircoms rubbish products.

probe wrote: »

I suspect you are just spamming my posts for some ulterior motive! Who do you work for? Or do we have to guess!

No particular secret, lots of regular boardsies know me in the real world. I was originally a committee member of IrelandOffLine when it was originally formed as a result of the Esat No Limits controversy and that is the reason for my knowledge and interest in the area.

I've never worked for any ISP, telco, cableco, etc. I work as a software engineer for a large US multinational IT company.

The only reason I'm responding to your posts is to bring some balance to your frankly crazy and illogical rantings.

probe

bk wrote: »

LOL, would you like to talk about my setup:

- Top of the range, reference level, 50" Pioneer Kuro 1080P Plasma
- Full 5.1 surround sound setup
- Sky+ HD
- Playstation 3 (BluRay)
- Nettop attached to TV, running XBMC, connected via gigabit ethenet to media server in study with 4 TB's of storage!.

I've been playing with media centers for years (MythTV, Windows Media Center, etc.) and I was one of the first people in Ireland with a TiVo (hacked Linux Series 1) years before Sky+ arrived.

I've also suffered with supposedly brilliant NGN IPTV over FTTB for two years, having tried out both an MPEG 2 system and MPEG 4 system

So trust me I'm well beyond TV 1.0

Your thinking is no different to the B&W broadcast TV era!

While one couldn’t fault your Pioneer Kuro plasma (as a 2D display device), your set-up is Television 1.3 in my books (1.0 = monochrome analog, 1.1 colour analog, 1.2 = digital, 1.3 = HD, 1.4 = 3D).

Let’s put your and my set-ups to one side for the moment. They are irrelevant in the global scheme of things for the future.

When you are hunting for content online, you go to a search engine – let’s assume Google. Using keywords, you generally find the stuff you are looking for.

My starting point for TV 2.0 would be a google type search for the video content you are looking for – be it a particular movie, an item on the RTE 21h00 news on date x, y or z, live, or near live coverage or a horse race be it in Dubai or Leopardstown or wherever, or some sporting event that is taking place or took place anywhere on the planet. The item of content is either free or you pay per view or is included in some type of subscription package (which includes TV “licenses”). If it includes advertising, the advertisements are relevant to you and the advertiser.

The content comes in high quality – eg 1080p, 3D, 4K whatever (over an HDMI 1.4 connection into a TV or your PC depending on where you are) – rather than todays typical youtube quality.

Google appears to have a set-top box in the works

http://gizmodo.com/5495856/a-google-tv-set+top-box-is-coming

A set-top-box is only a transition device – the TV will probably evolve to be an HTML5 browser based IPTV client. It will be open - anybody can provide links to video content, in the same way as anybody can set-up a website. If www.rte.ie is your TV's "homepage" EPG, that would be your default starting point for video and audio content. RTE could incorporate DTT URLs within their code, causing your TV to switch over to a conventional DTT channel to get a live programme rather than downloading it over the net.

It will give opportunities to small content producers to sell their programming material directly to the customer – like itunes – or provide it free, and get paid by advertising. If you see an interesting TV programme, you can email a link to it (even though it is an hour long 1080p HD MPEG4 file) to a friend who might be interested – allowing viral marketing of content. Or give a gift of a BluRay quality copy of a movie to a friend – simply by emailing a url to the individual.

The remote control could well be one’s mobile phone (working over Bluetooth with the set-top-box). If you pause a programme to go out, the system will retain your settings. Meanwhile someone else can use the same TV with their mobile phone and their settings.

No it doesn't. I went to an extreme specing it out based on 30mb/s, that being the norm for BluRay, but the actual highest bit rate for normal HD TV is actually about 14mb/s for BBC. Remember broadcast TV is normally 1080i, rather then 1080p. Sky's 3D TV broadcasts are about 20mb/s

Sky is a non-standard walled garden service that uses a proprietary conditional access system. You are locked into buying a sub-standard box ordained by Sky incorporating their card technology. Most other satellite TV systems in Europe use a standard access card (eg Viaaccess) (like a GSM mobile phone card – you can plug it into any brand of phone) giving you a large choice of good quality satellite receivers that can pick up multiple platforms. Sky’s “3D” broadcasts will not be BD quality – you need about 50 Mbits/sec to deliver BluRay 3D. The audio quality on Sky is poor – I get live broadcasts of concerts on Astra 1 in AC3 sound from several German radio stations and the sound is as good or better than DVD audio. Sky is the equivalent of an internet that only allows you to access websites based in Britain.

But not everyone will be watching the TV at the same time, some will be at the pub, work, school, gym, on holidays, etc.

Of course – but there will be times when everybody will be in the house wanting to do their own thing – each consuming lots of bandwidth.

Also you could use multicasting or a hybrid QAM/IPTV system to share the bandwidth for the most popular channels.

This will only work within your TV 1.0 frame of mind. Would you wait for a website where the page you wanted was “broadcast” only once an hour ? :-)

That is the massive advantage of cable, a nice steady, clear, cost effective upgrade path to meet customers needs.

You are sounding like the cable guy again – someone who has a vested interest in cable and whose mindset is stuck in 1.0 era.

Have a listen to Daisy Whitney’s This Week in Media – she covers the dirty tricks that the old media getting up to against Google video services – among other related topics. Old media - content producers and cable just don't get it.

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.libsyn.com/media/thisweekinmedia/twim_176_aud.mp3

Here are the exhibits in support of Google video -v- Viacom:
http://www.google.com/press/youtube_viacom_documents.html

Archive of This Week in Media netcasts:
http://www.pixelcorps.tv/this_week_in_media

bk

BTW I do a lot of the TV 2.0 things you talk about here, XBMC, Boxee, Orb to my Iphone, youtube on my iPhone and will probably add a Slingbox and iPad to my arsenal of devices soon.

I'm completely sold on all that and I'm as close as possible to having that sort of setup as any consumer can currently be. So it really was a little disingenuous of you to accuse me of 1.0 thinking when you know nothing about me.

The only area we differ on is that I'm more of a realist. I don't think the majority of these technologies will become a reality for Joe Public for many years to come. Many of them are still a little too geeky, unpolished, unintegrated and hard to setup for the general public. They need a lot of work on integration and human interface design.

Really the only area we disagree on Probe, is that I'm happy that UPC are in the market now at least offering some competition to Eircom, while you are off dreaming about FTTH that there is currently no sign of happening and will take many years to rollout when it does.

Interestingly UPC's presence in the market is likely to force Eircom to work with the other ISP's to create a combined FTTH network much sooner then if UPC weren't in the market. If we didn't have UPC, Eircom would probably just sit back and relax, selling 8mb ADSL and not bother rolling out FTTH. Now that UPC is offering such competition to them, Eircom will be forced to rollout FTTH to compete, but since they can't afford to do it on their own, they will be forced to join with the other ISP's and telcos to form a shared open access network.

Probe you will get exactly what you want, ironically due to the presence of UPC, the company you hate so much.

You see, I don't love UPC, I don't even have them, I just like open and fair competition, as I believe it drives innovation and better products and pricing for consumers, something that has always been liking in the Irish ISP market. It is just a pity it didn't happen 8 years ago, we might have FTTH and a high quality DOCSIS 3 cable network aggressively competing by now if it did.

Ash.J.Williams

I have a fibre line running past my City centre door. Smart Telecom quoted me 25,000 euro to bring the line into our premises. The cost included closing down a lane of taffic, and out of hours work for the council to carry out the dig!!

probe

bk wrote: »

The only area we differ on is that I'm more of a realist. I don't think the majority of these technologies will become a reality for Joe Public for many years to come. Many of them are still a little too geeky, unpolished, unintegrated and hard to setup for the general public. They need a lot of work on integration and human interface design.

The key issue is not “unpolished” or “geeky”. Rather it is control by a country over its media (in the cultural sense). Ireland has lost control of the electronic media to purveyors of the Anglo-Saxon lowest common denominator – ie Murdoch and UPC, peddling their Bart Simpson society sponsored by a crap Pizza company (a company that wouldn’t exist in a city with a decent Italian pizzeria!) No other country in Europe allows a single neighbouring country to dominate its media to anything like the extent that Ireland does.

It is anything but “geeky”, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Google will be selling set-top boxes in several countries within 12 months. Google makes its money from advertising. The more eyeballs interacting with services via Google, the more ad clicks are sold. When Google does it, every TV network in the world will have to have their own html EPG box/setup – or else Google will take control of the space and other channels (ie their channels) might become hard to find…. on page 23 after 5 or more clicks…

There are three markets – conventional internet, mobile phone and television/video. Google wants to own them all in terms of advertising control.

The concept I described IS integrated, and it is up to the people designing the IP based EPGs (electronic programme guides) to polish the design. Given that the design is based on a webpage, it is easy to polish and there are millions of people out there capable of working with html and related standards. Unlike proprietary code behind the appallingly bland, almost DOS-like, legacy set-top boxes of today.

There is nothing “geeky” about switching on the TV and seeing an RTE web based EPG. Click here for RTE1 live, there for TnaG live. Click “what’s on now” to see a prog. listing across channels. Click somewhere else to watch a video on demand – featuring “Iron Man2” this hour, (brought to you by Dunnes Stores – with their awfully irritating advertising every 5 minutes!) – unless you pay an extra €2 for the advertising-free version of the movie….

You can put anything on the home page of an EPG, and before long, grannies who have never used the internet in their life will be playing interactive bridge on their TV screens. All they need to prompt them is a “Play Bridge” icon on their TV screen and if they are into playing bridge they will get around to clicking on it sooner or later… And if granny A finds bridge on the family TV set, she will tell granny B to get a Google box. Granny B might live in the next village (she also plays bridge, but lives alone). Viral marketing.

All it takes is a user-friendly interface and a bit of creative thinking. The controller of an EPG home page doesn’t have to deliver all the services offered – the online movie rental button could be “outsourced” – ie clicks on it sold to video download companies. When Google started off, it was purely a search engine – email, maps, videos, news, etc were added later.

An interface builder could start with http://www.rte.ie/player/# on a set-top box EPG model on peoples’ TV screens - add in the options for movies on demand [€], online games [€] (kids to grannies), websearch and navigation (ie general browser functionality access), educational courseware [€], integrated email/voicemail/fax [€], Yellow and white pages, Pay per view sporting events [€], etc etc. The VT4 TV channel in Belgium has a good website (running on Drupal) which would make a good EPG starting point from a design perspective when one switches the TV on. http://www.vt4.be


One of the biggest mistakes that Irish indigenous companies make is that they under-estimate the sophistication of their customers. This is why there is such a gap in export performance and other KPIs between Irish companies and multi-nationals.

Really the only area we disagree on Probe, is that I'm happy that UPC are in the market now at least offering some competition to Eircom, while you are off dreaming about FTTH that there is currently no sign of happening and will take many years to rollout when it does.

You are thinking in terms of 2010. I’m thinking five years down the road. It takes time to install new infrastructure and time for monopolies to roll their tentacles out into every home. Eircom and other companies that rely on DSL will have declining revenues and a greatly reduced customer base – aside from big corporate clients and similar. You might think that 4G mobile will provide competition to cable. The reality is that 4G is even slower than 3G in the real world, unless you are right next to a 4G cellsite.

It would cost about €2 billion to get Gigabit FTTP on the road. It could be half funded by government and half by the industry. Rollout work could be outsourced competitively – in the same way as motorways are built by private companies and the tolls are collected by private companies – but the gov still controls the motorway system.

The system could offer perhaps two speed options to the end user – 100 Mbits/sec up and down and 1 GB up and down for a higher monthly fee. There could be buy-in options where people or entities could pay for the capital cost of their end of the infrastructure – and benefit from reduced monthly charges – analogous to one either renting an apartment or buying an apartment and paying service charges.

Ireland is supposed to be focusing on being an innovative society. FTTP is at the core of any movement in this direction.

probe

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

I have a fibre line running past my City centre door. Smart Telecom quoted me 25,000 euro to bring the line into our premises. The cost included closing down a lane of taffic, and out of hours work for the council to carry out the dig!!

You could be living on the side of a road anywhere, with fibre running by (eg a fibre cable that carries all the telecommunications traffic between two towns or cities) - and if you wanted to break it outside your door and provide service into your house -it would cost €25,000 - perhaps a lot more.

FTTP is a planned firbre infrastructure designed to bring fibre connectivity to your home.

This is no different to living next to a natural gas pipeline carrying gas between Russia and Germany at very high pressure. It would probably cost millions to provide a domestic gas supply to your home from this pipe...

paulm17781

bk wrote: »

Eircom would probably just sit back and relax, selling 8mb ADSL and not bother rolling out FTTH.

You're totally wrong, there is nothing to imply we'd even have 8Mb DSL if it wasn't for UPC's presence.

As for Probe's fantasy rambles, I'm not even reading them anymore. He made a good point at one stage but now it sounds like Dungeon and Dragons or something.

probe

paulm17781 wrote: »

You're totally wrong, there is nothing to imply we'd even have 8Mb DSL if it wasn't for UPC's presence.

As for Probe's fantasy rambles, I'm not even reading them anymore. He made a good point at one stage but now it sounds like Dungeon and Dragons or something.

Probe can't help wondering who palum17781's sugar daddy might be.... :-)

French fries and Dunn, (Roberto to his friends) spring to mind.... as possible candidates. Bedfellows of Rupert Murdoch.

paulm17781

probe wrote: »

Probe can't help wondering who palum17781's sugar daddy might be.... :-)

Look through my history and see how critical I am of UPC where they deserve to be criticized. Be warned though, my telephone 9.2 is far more powerful than your TV 1.4.

jor el

probe wrote: »

Probe can't help wondering who palum17781's sugar daddy might be.... :-)

I suggest you cop on with the mindless accusations.

bk

probe, look at what Eircom announced today as so called Next Generation Broadband, "upto" 8mb/s ADSL (not even ADSL2+) with a 10 GB cap for frankly outrageous prices.

Basically a big price hike, dressed up in marketing bs.

Right now UPC offer 30mb/s for less money then any of Eircom's joke products and UPC will likely offer 120mb/s by the end of the year.

I for one am very glad UPC are here, otherwise things would be completely hopeless.

If you seriously think Eircom is going to even think about rolling out FTTH in the next 5 years, you are seriously mistaken.

Here is how it will go, they will advertise "upto" 24mb/s BB, which will only be available in a small number of ADSL2+ exchange and even then no guarantee of a decent speed due to line quality and length, while actually selling this crappy "upto" 8mb capped product to the majority of people who will end up really only getting 1 to 3mb/s.

Then in about a years time they will lob some VDSL2+ DSLAMS in a couple of exchanges (not FTTC), allowing them to advertise "upto" 100mb/s BB, while in reality most people won't get speeds any faster then they currently have.

In a couple of years time, when they are really under pressure from UPC, they will then start thinking about slowly rolling out FTTH.

In the meantime, UPC will be our only hope for good speeds and decent prices. I wish and hope that I'm wrong, really I do, but I fear I'm not.

BTW I don't consider 4G as much of a competitor to wired bb. It will make for decent mobile internet experience, like it was designed to do, in particular due to it's low latency characteristics, but nothing more. It would be painfully ironic if Eircom came to depend on 4G because they couldn't afford to upgrade their wired network.

probe

bk wrote: »

probe, look at what Eircom announced today as so called Next Generation Broadband, "upto" 8mb/s ADSL (not even ADSL2+) with a 10 GB cap for frankly outrageous prices.

Basically a big price hike, dressed up in marketing bs.

One would tend to agree. There is nothing “next generation” about it that offer I can see, other than next gen price inflation and “smaller product size”. The “next gen” eircom bar of chocolate is now 75g (down from 300g in the old packaging). Useless for virtually any form of multi-media interaction, aside from Skype calls, which no doubt they see as a very eircom-friendly application!

Shared FTTH is the best solution for 2010. If you have multiple networks competing and duplicating their infrastructure – house A uses network X, house B uses network Y and house C uses network Z. X Y and Z have to run their networks past each door to provide coverage in an area. You are tripling the cost of the last km – which is the most expensive part of any network. Each network is effectively paying about three times as much per premises served in terms of network costs – compared with a shared last km FTTP solution. Each network has to be maintained separately. The consumer ends up paying for this needless waste in infrastructure, and gets a poorer quality product if it is not FTTP.

It is far more expensive to install FTTP in phases – by starting off with FTTC and later on taking the fibre to the set top box.

FTTP has to be planned like a motorway network, by a government agency. Government doesn’t build the motorways – it uses contractors, it doesn’t perform the toll collection task – this is outsourced, and the cars, trucks and buses that use the motorways are not owned by government (most of them anyway). But government has to get the show on the road – if they didn’t, the private sector would not take it upon themselves to build the infrastructure. The cost of FTTP is tiny relative to the cost of building the road network. The benefits are similar (to a road network).

Anyone who doesn’t believe that IPTV HD video on demand won’t be increasingly viewed on the TV set (at ever higher bit rates) might take time to watch this pleasant film on the future of the planet, funded by PPR group (http://www.ppr.com) and made the French multi-mediaorgrapher Yann Arthus Bertrand*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU (English language sountrack version)

(It would be even better in 3D using HTML5 video support coming down a platform that could support 50 Mbits/sec MPEG4!)

Intel and Nokia have announced a new Linux open source based operating system for TVs and set top boxes – among other devices - Meego. The TV is going to be another internet appliance in every house – a very hungry one when it comes to bandwidth.

http://meego.com/devices/connected-tv


* http://www.yannarthusbertrand.org

bk

probe wrote: »

One would tend to agree. There is nothing “next generation” about it that offer I can see, other than next gen price inflation and “smaller product size”. The “next gen” eircom bar of chocolate is now 75g (down from 300g in the old packaging). Useless for virtually any form of multi-media interaction, aside from Skype calls, which no doubt they see as a very eircom-friendly application!

Yup, it really is scandalous what they are doing.

probe wrote: »

Shared FTTH is the best solution for 2010. If you have multiple networks competing and duplicating their infrastructure – house A uses network X, house B uses network Y and house C uses network Z. X Y and Z have to run their networks past each door to provide coverage in an area. You are tripling the cost of the last km – which is the most expensive part of any network. Each network is effectively paying about three times as much per premises served in terms of network costs – compared with a shared last km FTTP solution. Each network has to be maintained separately. The consumer ends up paying for this needless waste in infrastructure, and gets a poorer quality product if it is not FTTP.

Yup, but what is the betting that Eircom eventually decide to roll out PON rather then Point to Point fibre in order to make it harder for LLU fibre to happen.

probe wrote: »

It is far more expensive to install FTTP in phases – by starting off with FTTC and later on taking the fibre to the set top box.

Yup, that is why KPN has canceled there original planned FTTC/VDSL2+. Not that much cheaper then FTTH, while a lot less future proof.

They are now just doing VDSL2+ in the exchange (wouldn't be much benefit to most people) and then FTTH.

probe wrote: »

FTTP has to be planned like a motorway network, by a government agency. Government doesn’t build the motorways – it uses contractors, it doesn’t perform the toll collection task – this is outsourced, and the cars, trucks and buses that use the motorways are not owned by government (most of them anyway). But government has to get the show on the road – if they didn’t, the private sector would not take it upon themselves to build the infrastructure. The cost of FTTP is tiny relative to the cost of building the road network. The benefits are similar (to a road network).

Agreed, but the question is will the government do it, when and how do we get them to do it?

Talking about it here is all well and good, how do we actually achieve this?