U.S. broadband: Almost as good as Malaysia?

Submitted by acohill on Fri, 06/13/2008 - 06:41.

Once again, fairly small countries are far ahead of the U.S. in thinking about broadband. Malaysia has announced an ambitious but entirely doable plan to take fiber to major areas of the country, with the Federal government paying about 30% of the cost in a deal with the biggest telecom company in Malaysia. In the U.S., it would be the equivalent of the states making deals to write checks directly to the incumbent providers (which some states already do). The fiber system will have 100 megabit capacity, with a starter package of Internet access at 10 megabits.

The good news is that U.S. communities and regions still have the opportunity to surpass Malaysia. Malaysia's deal with the incumbent telecom will not increase competition and will not be likely to encourage the rollout of innovative new services. Open service networks like those in Europe are beginning to gather momentum here in the U.S., and open networks tend to lower prices and bring lots of new services to businesses and residents. Five or six years from now, Malaysian cities will be behind many broadband community efforts in the United States.

Undersea cables were cut by improper anchoring

Submitted by acohill on Mon, 04/14/2008 - 07:49.

The undersea fiber cables that were cut a couple of months ago were the subject of numerous conspiracy theories, but satellite photos have revealed the culprits--cargo ships that were anchored in the wrong place. Sometimes Occam's Razor (the simplest explanation is the likeliest one) is exactly right.

The object lesson for communities is to plan for cable outages by making sure local networks have redundant cable paths. Sometimes this is quite expensive to do when just getting started with community telecom investments, so an alternative to a second fiber cable is a high capacity wireless link that can handle local traffic (perhaps with somewhat less throughput) while repairs are made.

Is WiMax the silver bullet?

Submitted by acohill on Mon, 03/24/2008 - 08:47.

An Australian wireless ISP who has operated a WiMax network for more than a year unleashed a blistering attack on the protocol, calling it a "disaster" and that it "failed miserably." Unfortunately, the article provides little detail on exactly what frequencies were used (WiMax is a catch all term for the protocol, which can use several different chunks of frequency spectrum). The interesting thing about the comments is that the firm is planning to deploy more traditional WiFi as part of their wireless network. This article illustrates that wireless systems are not a panacea, and that they have to designed and engineered carefully to get good performance.

Europe rockets ahead in broadband

Submitted by acohill on Thu, 03/20/2008 - 05:41.

According to a New York Times article, Europe is pulling far ahead of the United States in high performance broadband deployment. European countries, led by Sweden, Denmark, Holland, and Finland, are adding 50,000 broadband lines a day.

In Europe, most countries have required the incumbent telecom firms to allow other broadband firms to lease their infrastructure, which has led to heavy competition and lower prices. While many of the new connections are still copper-based DSL, many places have gone to citywide fiber deployments. In Paris and Vienna, 100 megabit fiber connections are widely available.

One hour TV show in ten minutes

Submitted by acohill on Sun, 02/10/2008 - 22:06.

If you live in Paris and have the new 100 megabit fiber to the home service, it only takes about ten minutes to download a high quality version of a one hour TV show. Here in the U.S., the FCC has announced that more than 95% of the U.S. has broadband. The FCC defines "broadband" as "anything faster than 256 kilobits, or about 400 times slower than the current Parisian definition of broadband.

Redundant cables, diverse routes

Submitted by acohill on Fri, 02/01/2008 - 17:27.

Two fiber cables on the floor of the Mediterranean were cut, causing huge disruptions in Internet service to the Mideast and Asia. A fisherman's anchor apparently snapped the two cables, which were the primary and backup links to a major Internet exchange point in Egypt.

The problem highlights an increasingly important economic development issue in the U.S. More and more businesses, as they consider where to relocate business operations, are asking not only if there are two or more fiber cables serving a community. They also want to see diverse routes, or two completely different paths. Unfortunately, in a lot of places, there may be two cables, but they may both share the same right of way, meaning an errant backhoe would cut both of them with one swipe.

If your region wants to attract new businesses, you should be planning to address the need for redundant cables and diverse routes for those cables. It will give your region a key marketing edge if a) you already have that essential telecom infrastructure in place, or b) you can talk knowledgeably about the need and show a specific plan for achieving redundancy and diverse routes.

85% take rate for multi-service open network

Submitted by acohill on Mon, 12/10/2007 - 09:05.

The community of Nuenen, Holland has great news for those interested in multi--service open networks. The community broadband project, which had hoped for a 35% take rate, has seen much, much better results:

"The 'pitch' in Nuenen is not about 'bandwidth' 'fibre' or anything techie. Nuenen has an elderly community, consequently Ons Net aimed to appeal to a 75 year old woman who does not own a computer nor used the internet," he explained.

It is local services supporting security, home care, events on the local TV channel and improving the community that are attracting people.

In order to secure the necessary funds Ons Net was looking for an initial 35% sign-up rate. In fact it got closer to 85% and posted a £1m profit in its first year.

In Nuenen, residents get connected to a 100 megabit capacity fiber network, and buy individual services like Internet access, telephone service, and TV service. This is a fundamentally different business model that creates real competition among service providers and tends to lower service costs. Communities in the U.S. pursuing this approach include Palo Alto, California; Seattle, Washington; Gainesville, Florida; the 15 community MegaPOP project in Mississippi; Danville, Virginia; and The Wired Road project in southwestern Virginia. The last two communities are being assisted by Design Nine.

Japan leaves the U.S. in the dust

Submitted by acohill on Wed, 11/28/2007 - 10:46.

Japan continues to rocket past the U.S. when it comes to fiber deployment. Japanese businesses and residents can get fiber broadband connections in more than a third of the country, compared to less than 2% of the U.S. Japanese broadband customers also pay much less; a 50 megabit fiber connection in Japan sells for under $30 a month.

The fiber connections are enabling all kinds of new services, including telemedicine and telehealth applications. Japan is already well beyond the tired "triple play" that still gets most of the attention in the U.S. (voice, video, and data). An open, multi-service network can provide communities with access to innovative new services far beyond the old monopoly-style services we have today.

Net speeds challenged

Submitted by acohill on Thu, 10/11/2007 - 08:55.

Internet access providers in the UK are being challenged on their broadband speeds, which their customers claim are not as advertised. An independent study showed that 62% of customers were getting less than half the advertised bandwidth that their provider had promised.

The article has an unintentionally humorous quote from a member of the commission studying the problem, who said, "...there were good technical reasons for the gulf between advertised and actual speeds." Yes, like the service providers have not bothered to provision their equipment to actually deliver the advertised bandwidth.

Network architecture is important, and communities looking at making investments have to make sure they pick the right network architecture. A properly designed Layer 3 multi-service, open access network can easily deliver advertised bandwidth to customers, and some communities in America are already moving to this architecture, and away from the older systems that have been used for the last fifteen years. Design Nine designs ONLY multi-service networks that can deliver advertised speeds, because if communities are going to make these investments, businesses and residents need to know they are going to get their money's worth, rather than empty promises from equipment vendors selling systems that can't deliver.

Japan rolls out fiber and new applications

Submitted by acohill on Sun, 09/09/2007 - 16:24.

This article talks about Japan's investment in broadband networks, including a nationwide fiber deployment with speeds of 100 megabits. The country has a built in advantage because of its small size; short distances between telephone switches and homes means DSL can run faster over existing copper cables--at speeds higher than is possible in most parts of the U.S. But the country regards copper as obsolete and sees DSL as a stopgap measure until fiber connections are ubiquitous.

As the 100 megabit connections become more common, new applications no one ever thought of are being rolled out. One example cited is using the high speed fiber to examine tissue samples remotely. Patients not near pathologists can now get a better diagnosis because the network can transmit very high quality images quickly, enabling doctors at remote facilities to make more accurate examinations.