There has been a wide range of news around FTTH over the past few days. It is striking to see on how many fronts FTTH is gaining momentum.

• DIY trench digging: already 80% of Lyse's customer base. But that's Norway.
• Emerging markets: fiber coming to Lebanon, India, India again, the Philippines, Iran and Estonia.
• Infrastructure-based competition: Swiss utilities are banding together and Swisscom is abandoning VDSL in larger cities in favour of FTTH.
• Munifiber: UTOPIA is picking up steam. Focus is on businesses now and Integra Telecom is added as a business-oriented service provider. Meanwhile, FuzeCore launched a 100/100 Mb/s service at 147 $/mo in the residential market.
• Business VAS: Eurofiber (a Reggefiber sister company in the Reggeborgh holding) launched a surveillance service with a third-party SP, DIT is beveiligen.
• Separation: Telstra may be allowed to buy into the NBN (capped at 49%), by first contributing fiber assets in exchange for 20%. One condition would be for the company to be functionally (?) separated.
• DOCSIS 3.0: Virgin is testing a 200 Mb/s service, but here is why it stands no chance against FTTH.
• 3-D: Digital Hollywood wants it to come to our homes and indeed one consultancy expects up to 10% of homes to be upgraded by 2012. Meanwhile, the new Pixar film UP opened the Cannes festival.

FTTH: Axia NetMedia, separation, FTTN and SLU

Three important developments this week in FTTH:

• Axia NetMedia (discussed before) detailed its plans for Australian NBN. If they have it their way, they will build FTTP, not FTTN.
• The same firm bids on the active layer of the Singapore network (NGNBBN), with Cisco. It's somewhat puzzling to see Axia bid alone (on the Australian NBN, but naturally they need partners), with SingTel (on the NGNBBN passive layer), or against SingTel but with Cisco (here). Maybe there's room to band together before contracts are signed.
• Swisscom has the revolutionary idea of laying 4 fibers to each home in its FTTH plans. It will use one itself, leaving room for three competitors to engage in infrastructure-based competition.

Plus: a worthwile interview. with TransACT's former CTO Paul Brooks. Question: "Telstra said it is 'impossible' to build or maintain a network if structural separation is enforced, is this true?" Answer: "No, of course not. They might not enjoy the same levels of cross-subsidisation they currently access regarding basic network infrastructure costs and high value-add retail products, but that's an economic argument, not an argument about whether it is possible or not. (...) If the wholesale arm actually had incentive to make things easy for their customers, then the business case for the separated retail arms becomes even stronger."

Plus: an Australian opposes sub-loop unbundling (SLU), but a New Zealander points to the reality of it, albeit it in FTTN + VDSL deployments.

Poll #5: clarification (?)

Perhaps my latetst poll needs some more explanation (apart from what we did in this post).
First of all, the question (how many infrastructures do we need?) relates to access networks, be it fixed or mobile.
Next, it requires a sort of high-level view of competition. OPTA says "two is not enough", referring to a telco/cableco duopoly. So then, how many networks will suffice? Or will just one do (and share it, to avoid capital destruction).
To round off: to support the case for four: Swisscom decided to roll out FTTH with four strands of fiber to each home (see slide 3 in this presentation), for easier competitor access (now of course things get complicated: is this one network, or four?).

Pick your gut feeling!

FTTH in the UK: small leap of faith needed

Yesterday Analysys Mason published its fiber-in-the-UK report for the Broadband Stakeholders Group. Recently, there has been a wide range of FTTH related developments. Let's first make a little list of them:

• Incufiber: KPN is steadily, if not stealthily, rolling out through its Glashart ('heart of glass') joint venture with privately owned Reggefiber. New towns are coming on board on a near daily basis. Telefonica is launching its network October 1. Swisscom is getting serious too. Makedonski Telekom (owned by Deutsche Telekom) is rolling out in Skopje. SureWest (USA) is progressing too.
  
• Munifiber, utility fiber, etc.: Greece and Mauritius launched a big plan, whereas Australia (primarily targeting FTTC) and New Zealand are still stuck in the debating phase. Saudi Arabia is building a new city for 2m people, with FTTH from Ericsson. In the US, progress was made in several towns. Localised initiatives are found in Ireland and Australia too.
  
• Altnetfiber: Smart Comp is building in Brno. Over in Korea, Hanaro Telecom is getting its act together.
• Cable. There are several initiatives worldwide, most recently in Hawaii (Time Warner Cable), Japan (Suo Cable) and the US (Corn Belt Communications).
  
• Open access. Europe is fighting for the extension of open access obligations from copper to fiber. Companies as diverse as KPN and Telstra are saying they are in the OA mood. But not Telefonica. Interestingly, in Utah the iProvo network was acquired by Broadweave, which subsequently tried to end competition by buying up two independent service providers. But those deals fell through.
• Upgrades. 100 Mb/s isn't the end of it, 1 Gb/s is now in sight. FastWeb (controlled by Swisscom) still has to upgrade to 100 Mb/s first. Somehow, I have a feeling we will see more of that tomorrow ...
  

Here are my very easy comments:

• Of course the Brits need to do FTTH. Is anybody listening? Access networks are bottlenecks - FTTH is the end game - it takes 20 years to build - video is coming - and there are indeed socio-economic benefits, as this very convenient study from Eindhoven University shows (in relation to the well-known networks of Nuenen and Eindhoven in the Netherlands).
• Check out the new (second) Akamai report on the State of the Internet, as observed through their network. There is a lot about security, but Akamai also ranks countries by the percentage of connections above 5 Mb/s. Comparing the Q2 report with the Q1 report, some minor things catch the eye. The top 10 is pretty much the same, with South Korea #1 with an unchanged 64% of connections faster than 5 Mb/s. Belgium and the US make a big leap forward, both to 26% (from 21 and 20% resp.).
• Things are complicated. Analysys Mason produced an impressive report, but it's just a cost model, in other words: one half of the equation. There are so many variables, a decisive report, including a revenue model, is totally unrealistic. Why not then make a little leap of faith and play the end-game?
  

WiMAX round-up

Just for convenience:

• Technology: IEEE proposes the new 802.16m standard.
• Hardware: Palm rumoured to plan a WiMAX Treo - ultra-thin, mind you.
• Roaming: WiSOA sets up the first alliance.
• IPOs: Clearwire debuted as the #3 pureplay (after xG and Towerstream).
• Plans: Vodafone and Sprint provide views.
• Tenders: Italy, Taiwan, Israel, Thailand.
• Trials: Swisscom, TVA (Brazil), Worldmax (Netherlands), Altech (South Africa).
• Deployments: BSNL in India, Dialog in Sri Lanka, Nexcom in Bulgaria, Åre Network in Sweden, Neotel in South Africa, Emax in Peru, UHT in the Ukraine, Arab Telecom in Kuwait, ABC in Canada, EgyNet in Egypt, the state of Catalonia, Telecom Namibia, ICE in Costa Rica, etc.

REGULATION://Extending fiber deeper into the network challenges LLU

Deutsche Telekom is switching back to ADSL2+, apparently to have wider coverage for IPTV (T-Home). VDSL roll-out is haulted and stays at 10 cities (original target: 50).

Big changes are ahead in the European telecom sector. DT cites regulatory uncertainty for haulting the VDSL deployments.

Upgrades to ADSL2+ left the competitive landscape, based on LLU, unchanged, but VDSL and FTTH have created different environments. I believe Europe will support the survival of 'inter-copper' competition, but now it has to come up with an alternative to LLU. This is a hot topic in Germany, but even more so in the Netherlands, where OPTA has to come up with a fully-fledged alternative to LLU. Watch out for this to happen in Q2. OPTA will host an analyst meeting in The Hague next Friday (Jan 19).

So now operators have a choice:

• ADSL2+, with fiber not extending beyond the exchange. This is the case at BT, which sees no business case for FTTN/FTTC, let alone FTTH. This makes the UK an attractive market for LLU-based competition.
• FTTN + VDSL: KPN, Belgacom, DT (now haulted), TI. This renders LLU-based competition quite uncertain at the moment. Will regulaors find a fully-fledged alternative, and/or will altnets be prepared to step up their investment program to keep track with the incumbent?
• FTTH: FT (at least partly, further decisions in 2008). FT is responding to both Iliad and neuf cegetel (and Verizon), by making the network future-proof.
• A mixture of all: Most notably at Swisscom and Telefonica, but I suppose in many other countries too. FTTH is probably pretty common now for new builds.