Aussies and Kiwis sampling Dutch broadband (8)

Cisco was the host for the Australian and New Zealand Trade Mission in Amsterdam. And out of courtesy Cisco was put on the program to say something about the company. And I - thought that we were going to hear a lot about the boxes they sell. But the Cisco representative Mr Nicola Villa, director public sector; Internet Solutions Group of Cisco Systems International, had a surprising story.

He started from the broadband end. He distinguished three phase in the development of broadband:
- backbone focus with connectivity problems;
- access focus with upgrades to Fibre to the Home and wireless;
- content services focus with the scaling up of services.
Geographically phase 1 takes place in Catalunya (Spain), Italy and Greece. An exception to this situation in Italy is FastWeb in Milan, which offers access services to 0,5 million users: internet; soccer and sports; video surveillance. In the Netherlands we are moving from the access focus to content services. Stockholm (Sweden) has reached phase 3 and is working on financial sound, social and sustainable content services.

Presently Cisco finds itself in phase 3 and is developing content services and other services in the field of mobility, technology and environment. Cisco wants to use broadband to solve environmental problems. To that end Cisco has associated itself with the Clinton Global Initiative, connecting urban development with environment. One of the initiatives is the carbon to collaboration program. Cisco has set 20 million US dollar apart for 5 years to reduce carbon in the cities of Amsterdam, Seoul and Los Angeles. Cisco aims at reducing 60 percent of the carbon output it produces amongst others with travelling. For this reason it has developed its tele-presence solution, which eyes like you have all the people in the meeting on the same table. At the same time the company will invest 20 million US dollar in collaborative software to make tele-working more effective.

The idea of the program is to reduce energy consumption. Together with the municipality of Amsterdam an attempt will be made to empty six buildings by an integrated policy of nomadic working (working at home or at tele-presence centres, traffic management, using public transport, smart communities and new urban business. In Singapore every car has a RFID used for road charging, but also congestion. In Paris Public transport is using wifi to optimise the use of buses. And there are more green models under development, which move from a centralised to a distributed situation. Problem is often that governance is missing. Once projects in the Clinton Global Initiative are working, they will be copied to other cities.

Blog Posting Number: 699

Tags: broadband, environment, RFIDbroadband, environment, RFID

Aussies and Kiwis sampling Dutch broadband (5)

Especially the civil servant in the Aussies and Kiwis trade delegation were eager to hear about the involvement of the government in the pushing of Fibre to the Home (FttH) networks. The first that they arrived they already upset the program set up by Paul Budde and Fred Kappeteijn. While in Amsterdam they wanted to know everything about CityNet and how do you get it off the ground. Also on Tuesday it remained a subject of interest. And when they were in Almere they still were eager to learn how to set up an FttH network and keep it an Open Net.

Of course Amsterdam is the most interesting case as the city has invested 6 million euro and is now under scrutiny of the European Commission. The municipality of Almere has not put any money in it the FttH network, which will be laid from 2007 till 2010. Also the municipality of Nuenen did not put money in the network.

(c) Elaine Sullivan

The Netherlands is not the only country working on FttH networks. IN Japan 300.000 FttH connections per month will be realised by 2008. In Europe the battle for Paris is on. The Iliad network will go after 1 million homes at 1 billion euro. Neuf Cegetel wants to have 250.000 FttH connections at 50Mbps for 29,90! The incumbent France Telecom starts FttH connections at 100/10 Mbps for 44,90 in Paris, Poitiers, Marseille, Lille, Toulouse and Lyon. Noos Numericable puts in a massive investment. In the department Haute-de-Seine 1,5 million household connections are aimed at as well as 100.000 SME connections at 50 to 70 million euro. All in all no less than 100 broadband projects are under way in France. In Cologne in Germany a broadband project is going on as well as in Schwerte, Norderstadt, Hamburg and Gelsenkirche. But there are also projects in Vienna (Austria) and Zurich (Switzerland), while in Denmark an FttH network project has been taken up by an energy company, which will connect 35 percent of the homes and reach 50 percent of all Danish people. In the UK there is a project in Oxfordshire. In the rest of the UK the slogan is: 12/1 Mbps is enough for all and ever. Of course FastWeb in Milan is the most operational project in Europe.

Essential to the Open Net is the three layer model. There is a point to point connection for an unbundled local loop; this provides the largest capacity for future growth. The active layer has active Ethernet. On top of that is the application service layer. Any service provider can use the application service layer against the same conditions.

In Amsterdam the municipality is represented in the board of network. And Amsterdam has invested 6 million euro. Amsterdam claims that it did so under company conditions. In Almere the municipality is also represented in the board, but it will not invest in the network. In fact the municipality does not have to do this as an investor has been found and an operator, most likely KPN, will take care of the operations.

In all cases people ask, why an open network is the option. The answer comes from economics. A closed network will give a return upon investment of 8 percent, while an open network will yield 10 percent return upon investment.

Blog Posting Number: 696

Tags; Open network, FttH