Category : Blog

Fujitsu is a step closer to its goal of connecting five million UK homes to fiber, after hooking up its first customers to a trial network.

The ICT firm is the first in the UK to connect consumers to a fiber to the premise (FTTP) network routed over ducts and poles owned by incumbent BT’s wholesale division Openreach. Fujitsu’s progress has spurred BT into pledging to launch its physical infrastructure access (PIA) services later this month.

While access to existing infrastructure is widely tipped to be a major boost for rural fiber deployments, allowing operators to bypass street cabinets, Fujitsu’s trial is being conducted in an urban area. Fujitsu Telecommunications Europe chief Andy Stevenson says there are “still some points of detail we’re working through,” before launching commercially.

The firm’s UK and Ireland division announced its aim to offer wholesale fiber access in April, revealing it has already secured deals with ISPs Virgin Media and TalkTalk to access the network. Fujitsu is leveraging an Ofcom ruling that Openreach must offer access to its physical infrastructure on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.

France Telecom-Orange says it has signed an agreement with fellow French service provider SFR to spur deployment of fiber to the home (FTTH) outside of very densely populated areas of France.

The agreement covers 9.8 million homes where both companies planned to deploy FTTH. SFR will serve 2.3 million of these residences and France Telecom-Orange will serve the remaining 7.5 million, the two carriers agreed.

The two carriers also say the agreement designates the operator responsible for deployment in each community under an optimized deployment schedule and network coverage.

France Telecom-Orange and SFR also will maintain a commercial presence in the areas covered by the agreement. Each will purchase wholesale services from the group that will ultimately deploy the local network. Other service providers also will be provided access to the infrastructure deployed by either operator, including through co-financing projects.

The two carriers have agreed to complete their respective deployments within five years, once the projects begin.

Responding to criticism from the Swiss Competition Commission (ComCo), Swisscom has renegotiated its agreement with energy company IWB and will restart the deployment of fiber to the home (FTTH) infrastructure in Basel.

Swisscom halted its FTTH work in Basel – as well as in several other Swiss cities – when ComCo ruled that its agreements with local energy providers gave Swisscom too much influence in the determination of how competing service providers might share the resulting networks. Swisscom says that after what it termed &”intensive negotiations” with IWB, “certain clauses have been removed and/or amended,” to address ComCo’s concerns. Specifically, clauses related to “investment protection” and Layer 1 exclusivity have been deleted. ComCo has been informed of the amended agreement, and now Swisscom says it is free to begin FTTH deployment again.

The method for compensation payments has also been “clarified.”If one partner makes considerably more use of the infrastructure than its share of the investment warrants, the other party will receive compensation. This mechanism will not apply until after completion of the basic expansion in Basel, which is slated for 2018.

Swisscom says it will spend more than CHF 100 million for the FTTH expansion.

The Swiss national carrier did not comment on any changes to the agreements behind its other suspended FTTH projects.

AT&T (NYSE: T) is the first U.S. pay TV provider to offer subscribers set-tops that don't require technicians to drill holes in walls, deploying a wireless box from Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) that relies on WiFi.

The set-top vendor's ISB7005 wireless set-top receives programming delivered from its VEN401 Wireless Access Point. The Wireless Access Point can deliver programming to up to two wireless set-tops, which could allow a subscriber with U-verse installed in the family room to access subscription video programming in a bedroom or the kitchen without requiring a technician to install additional outlets.

The wireless set-tops could allow AT&T to reduce labor costs since it can reduce the amount of time technicians spend at each home that requests a U-verse install. The boxes are also another marketing tool AT&T could use to woo customers from rivals such as Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA), Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) and DirecTV (Nasdaq: DTV).

After hitting U-verse subscribers who want the wireless box with a one-time fee of $49, AT&T is leasing the wireless set-tops to subscribers for $7 monthly, which is the same fee it charges for its standard IPTV set-tops.

AT&T is the first distributor to use the wireless set-tops for its IPTV service, but Cisco is pitching similar set-tops to other customers. "Cisco was selected as the sole provider of this technology for AT&T, however this is not an exclusive contract. Cisco will continue to pursue interests in our wireless TV solution from other wireline service providers in North America, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Middle East and Asia," said Cisco public relations manager Sara Cicero.

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) thinks it would like to replicate the community Fiber to the Home (FTTH) network idea it's implementing in Kansas City in a European country.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, David Drummond, Google's senior VP, said during a recent meeting of the French Industry Ministry that the Internet search giant is "looking very closely" at developing a fiber initiative Europe.

However, Drummond gave little details about where or when any project would take place.

News of Google's Continental ambitions comes at a time when the European Commission has launched a new plan to help finance new broadband networks built by both incumbent carriers and emerging competitive carriers like local electric utilities.

That's not to say that Europe isn't big on fiber-based broadband already.

Led by aggressive European countries such as Russia, a recent IDATE report revealed that FTTH networks pass about 33 million European homes, and the networks continued to grow at a rate of 21 percent throughout 2010. In addition to Russia, eight other countries, including Sweden, Italy, France, Lithuania, Norway, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Turkey are making progress with their respective FTTH networks.

Similar to its efforts to launch FTTH networks in the U.S., any move that Google will make in Europe is all about getting the attention of existing service providers and regulators.

Vermont Telephone Company (VTel) is breaking ground on its hybrid 4G LTE wireless and wireline Fiber to the Home (FTTH)-based plan to extend broadband services to its rural customers in Vermont.

Set to extend 1 Gbps speed services to over 15,000 customers throughout the southern Vermont service area by 2012, the new project is made possible through $129 million in broadband stimulus grants via the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA).

To make 1 Gbps to the home service possible, the service provider is putting optical network terminals (ONT) at subscriber premises with point-to-point GigE technologies to serve as the connection point for its Wireless Open World (WOW) network.

When the project, which got underway in September, is completed in 2013, VTel said it “will extend 4G/LTE wireless broadband to every unserved Vermont community, and … extend its fiber to 200 community anchors in three states.”

Broadband access is only one part of the overall program. The service provider plans to deliver digital literacy training through a number of Rural Broadband Farm Forums, which were patterned on the Rural Radio Farm Forum used successfully in rural America in the 1940s to help create jobs and share community ideas.

Verizon's (NYSE: VZ) wireline segment may have faced a number of challenges as it wrapped up the third quarter, but that did not get in the way of the service provider reporting gains in its consumer and business segments.

Broadband services: Broadband service continues to be strong performer in Verizon's wireline portfolio. At the end of the quarter, the service provider had 8.6 million total broadband connections, a 2.8 percent increase. Similar to other recent quarters, new FiOS Fiber to the Premises (FTTP)-based connections offset declines in DSL broadband connections. In total, Verizon added 20,000 broadband connections during the quarter.

Video services: Consumers continue to tune into FiOS TV. During the quarter, Verizon added 138,000 new FiOS Internet connections and 131,000 net new FiOS TV connections. At the end of the quarter, Verizon had a total of 4.6 million FiOS Internet and 4 million FiOS TV connections. After it gets through the FiOS installation backlogs caused by the storms and strike, Verizon said it will add about 200,000 FiOS Internet and 200,000 FiOS TV customers in Q4 2011.

Business services: Buoyed by its growing suite of next-gen services, including its Terremark data center, cloud services and Ethernet, Verizon reported that global enterprise revenues rose 2.1 percent since Q3 2010 to $3.9 billion. Strategic service revenues were up 15.6 percent versus Q3 2010 and now represent about 50 percent of its global enterprise revenues. At the same time, Verizon's aggressive build out to service multinational corporations in international markets such as Asia Pacific, Europe and Latin America also paid off as the international business sales were up 9.8 percent year over year.

The European Commission (EC) has laid out more elements of its €9.2 billion ($12.59 billion) plan to help finance the buildout of new broadband networks.

Through its Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) initiative, the EC has allocated €7 billion ($9.58 billion) in debt/equity financing and guarantees to build out broadband networks in underserved areas with the remaining amount coming in grants to build digital network infrastructure supporting a single market.

To fund the purchase of broadband network infrastructure, the CEF funding would complement private and/or public investments.

Similar to broadband projects paid for by broadband stimulus funding in the U.S. market, the EC expects to see project proposals from not only traditional incumbent service providers, but also emerging providers including utilities, cooperative organizations and local government organizations.

Ultimately, the EC hopes that the CEF could drive €50-100 billion ($68.4 – USD136.9 billion) in new broadband investment. This money would then be applied to the €270 billion ($369.7 billion) cost to meet the EU's broadband goals outlined in its Digital Agenda.

Click for more information on the Connecting Europe Facility initiative.

Brazilian state-owned telecoms company Telecomunicacoes Brasileiras (Telebras) has revealed it plans to complete the deployment of a backbone network in the cities of Fortaleza, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro by the end of the year. The telco said it recently finished the rollout of a fibre-optic backbone network in the capital Brasilia, and work is expected to be completed in Porto Alegre in early 2012.

Seperately, Telebras has been tasked by the Brazilian government to establish a countrywide broadband plan and build out a 23,000 km open access fiber backbone network.

Two thirds of Austrian homes will be covered by fiber broadband networks by 2015, new plans from incumbent Telekom Austria reveal.

The operator plans to connect 2.75 million homes in urban and rural areas to its fiber-optic GigaNet network in the next five years and will begin deploying LTE early 2012 with the aim of offering 4G coverage in all main towns in the same timeframe.

Fiber coverage is due to penetrate 50% of homes by end-2011, as the group seeks to meet growing demand for data services, and to cash in on the digital economy. “Broadband rollout is not a luxury, but an essential infrastructure requirement for any country,” chief Hannes Ametsreiter says.

With that in mind, the group also plans to deploy high-speed fixed and mobile networks in areas where it isn’t economically viable, to avoid creating a digital divide. Doris Bures, federal minister for technology explains the goal is to “catapult Austria to the top of the ICT nations,” by ensuring equal access to broadband for all citizens.