MORE FIBRE IN THE DIET
Not all operators are hedging their bets with a hybrid approach. Throughout Europe, municipalities and incumbents are deploying fibre to the home (FTTH). According to Frost & Sullivan, FTTH deployments reached over 2.5 million homes in 2006 and will reach 14 million in 2012.
Fastweb (Italy), Bredbandsbolaget (Sweden) and City of Amsterdam are among the leading FTTH challengers, while in Denmark incumbent TDC has deployed fibre in 50 urban areas. France Telecom is the largest European player to so far commit to FTTH. BT has limited itself to a small-scale trial, deploying a fibre network to 9,500 homes in Ebbsfleet Valley, Kent, in February.Europe trails Japan, South Korea and the US in the adoption of fibre. By the end of 2006, Verizon already had 687,000 customers on its FiOS pure fibre broadband service, and South Korea had 2 million FTTH subscribers.
FUELLING THE WAR AGAINST NET NEUTRALITY
The furious debate between ISPs and Google in the US centred on whether service providers are obliged to provide fair access for all, is impacted by court rulings that make ISPs responsible for the customer actions. By insisting that an ISP can and should filter traffic for one purpose, such as blocking piracy, it is a small step for the same technology to be used to block traffic that is not premium-rated or if a service provider falls into dispute with a content provider.
In the net neutrality war, Google is campaigning against US government regulation that would allow broadband operators to create two tiers of internet traffic. This would effectively give service providers a stranglehold over what their customers have access to. The ISPs’ response is that next-generation content cannot be adequately provided over the internet’s current free-access-for-all approach and that some form of traffic prioritisation is critical to the success of video-on-demand and IPTV. Google fears that any content providers, such as itself and the ordinary user, could be frozen out of the fast lane, if it doesn’t pay to play.
NEWS IN BRIEF
Imtech customers Pipex and PlusNet have been rated as two of the top five fastest and most reliable ISPs in the UK according to the Q2 Internet Performance Indicator Report from Epitiro. The benchmarking report assesses the services from the ten largest competing consumer ADSL broadband providers in the UK.ISP ntl:Telewest Business in July announced that it is working with St Helens and Knowsley Hospitals NHS Trust to build a community network linking all healthcare providers. The network will join up 170 sites and serve the 350,000 residents of the area. The five-year contract is worth £4.2 million and the Trust will save £1 million per year in improved productivity and lower telephone costs.
In September Imtech Telecom UK join forces with Turin, the leading supplier of multiservice-powered, metro service edge network equipment. As bandwidth-intensive, IP-based applications such as Multiplay and Ethernet access continue to boost bandwidth requirements, Turin’s metro service edge solutions enable diverse network operators to rapidly deliver new services over a high-capacity Ethernet/IP optimised infrastructure, for the lowest possible cost.
JANET has successfully delivered its first 40 Gbps service in a production environment across the UK’s national research and education network, using Ciena’s CoreStream Agility Optical Transport System. This is the first time that a national research and education network in Europe has deployed a true 40 Gbps signal across a single optical wavelength to carry live production traffic between sites. It was delivered across a dedicated optical fibre link connecting the Canary Wharf and Kings Cross PoPs in London.