Japan to get 1Gb/s in the home

[Werewolf]

He's just being realistic and saying it doesn't make sense for this country... there would be so much fibre to be dug it would be ridiculous... and that's just the start. Switches and other network equipment require serious capital expenditure... which, especially in the current economic climate isn't going to happen.

Yup

It's relatively cheap to run fibre to every house if they are close together, and you can use overhead lines (IIRC Japan use telegraph pole type things in a lot of areas where population density goes down), it's very cheap (per customer) to run it to a block of flats and use the same fibre to provide telephone coverage as well in comparison to running dozens/hundreds of individual copper lines.
It gets very expensive when most of the population is in individual, existing dwellings even just 50 feet apart, each requiring individual lines, and the road/pavement to be dug up (if you're building a new estate at the very least it makes a great deal of sense to lay ducting for fibre etc at the same time you put in the other utilities).

IIRC VM won't run new cables to individual dwellings, even if they are just a hundred feet outside of their current area (or inside but require more than just a run from the existing kerb access point), but will run it if say a small block of flats has enough people willing to sign a contract in advance (or if you're a business and willing to pay something along the lines of the true install cost).

Basic business sense says you don't generally spend thousands of pounds to connect up a single customer who might only be with you for a year, on a £20 a month contract - and that is one of the reasons VM aren't expanding much at the moment (the other being they are still massively in debt from getting their current network up).

One of the things I really wish people would do when they compare the UK's BB with that of other countries, is compare like for like - we have (from memory) much better overall coverage for BB than many other countries, what we tend to lack is the ultra high speed connections.



On a vaguely related note, isn't there some work on a DOCIS 3 variant that can offer something like 200mb? (50mb being the version VM are going with for now).

 

[bigredshark]

On a vaguely related note, isn't there some work on a DOCIS 3 variant that can offer something like 200mb? (50mb being the version VM are going with for now).

There is I believe, however Virgin's backbone network is almost certainly not up to it without massive contention. We've put in a few orders for Gigabit circuits with NTL business recently and all have been delayed for weeks while NTL worked out if they had backbone capacity available...

 

[Zarf]

Theres a few different topics here - Firstly, we only have ourselves to blame for poor speeds in England, BT offered to put Fibre to every home back in the 80's, in return for being able to run TV services over the network, but it was blocked by Thatcher.

Price wise, It's a lot cheaper for Japanese counties to provide services, because almost all their traffic stays in the country thanks to the language barrier, whereas in England a lot of traffic, especially P2P, is abroad, which costs the ISP's more.

As for whether there's a need for that much speed, If the service is there, people will find a way to use it. I for one would probably use it for remote data storage and backup. I could probably even go completely diskless on my local box, and network boot over the internet to a fast RAID array. With enough bandwidth you could probably even have decent remote desktopping, capable of full screen 60fps gaming - then all you would need in your house is a low power terminal and have all the hardware in a datacenter somewhere. Imagine instead of building or buying your own PC, it becomes a service you can rent where a dedicated company keeps a server farm, Once they sort out graphics virtualisation this could be a very cost effective way of doing things.

 

[Ignition]

I work for BT and the 21cn (in house name for the fibre network) is slowly gaining more momentum. There's something been said between BT and the gov (as far as I know) that BT will get a decent time to recoup money on the infrastructure so might not be too long.

21CN is a name, both in and out of house, for replacing the legacy TDM based switching systems and ATM backbone with a pure MPLS over IP network, using soft switches to route voice calls, and unifying the entire network underneath that platform replacing old architecture with a much lower maintenance call switching platform.

In addition it involves connecting all lines to an MSAN to supply a 'broadband dial tone' and its' only relevance to broadband is an ADSL2+ rollout in no way related to fibre deployment and the availability of new access products, WBC / Wholesale Broadband Connect and WMBC / Wholesale Managed Broadband Connect, but hey if you think it's about fibre to the home that's all good, I'm sure BT would like to know that too

 

[Ignition]

There is I believe, however Virgin's backbone network is almost certainly not up to it without massive contention. We've put in a few orders for Gigabit circuits with NTL business recently and all have been delayed for weeks while NTL worked out if they had backbone capacity available...

That's scary considering the imminent release of the 50Mbit product. I do hope this is a shortage of available fibre rather than IP capacity.

 

[Ignition]

I did a little consulting on one project looking at FTTH, assuming you propose a private company, starting small and concentrating on a big city (which is going to be london, lets face it) then the amount of start up capital you'd need is actually relatively small (like < £100m).

There are two problems. Firstly that assumes even the young the technically literate are prepared to pay out £40+ a month for their 100Mbps or 1000Mbps broadband, which is very questionable.

Second, the return on investment is based on consistent growth for 4-5 years. I don't think the market looks anything like today in 5 years. I think the iphone is a game changer as strategists are so fond of saying and people come to expect internet everywhere, on every device, and connectivity at home stops mattering so much.

So if you want to offer a high bandwidth home connection then you need something to stand out, like TV over IP on the same connection. If you're offering HD content on demand and fast internet at £50 you have a hope, but that market is cornered by sky with their vast pool of media, nobody pays £50 for a TV package which they can't get the big sports on...

Either way, I don't see us getting FTTH or anything similar except in small, geographically limited deployments (sewer broadband in wherever it is as an example) but I'm not sure it'll matter as the way we use the internet changes...

All fine but it's not about the £50 a month packages. It's about offering a variety of packages. A new FTTH deployer will be wanting to sign up as many homes as possible to makes the sums on cost per home passed look a bit nicer, and to only offer top level tiers is suicide.

A lot of the attraction to FTTH is the cost saving on the maintenance of such a network. Fibre doesn't really get noise issues to speak of so no HFC CATV type maintenance of lining up coaxial amplifiers and clearing noise up from the access network, throwing telephone calls down it gives an immediate 21CN type layout of an all IP network with soft switching.

Take the customers off the incumbents by doing it that little bit better at similar price points, because you can, because your network is better.

You don't need to use IPTV to deploy television services, remember that you can throw a full 1GHz+ cable TV spectrum of TV channels down a series of QAM carriers on a different wavelength on the fibre as Verizon have done.

 

[TheRedZealot]

They would just donwload the internet in a few hours.

 

[Ignition]

Absolutely their right if they are paying for a service that allows them to

 

[Energize]

The government should ensure that fibre is laid across the country. I'm sure it could be done with the JSA funds.

 

[jaybee]

I'd happily settle for 10mb synchronous personally, never ever needed anything faster than that.

I used to feel the same about 1mb but then I sampled faster and faster, and you kind of become used to it. Having said that, I don't see the "need" for 1gb symetric line for legal purposes.

 

[bigredshark]

That's scary considering the imminent release of the 50Mbit product. I do hope this is a shortage of available fibre rather than IP capacity.

I don't know, it's core capacity is as much as they tell us. But it was enough of a problem they needed a few days to decide if they could fulfill some of the orders at all...

It was bristol and surrey which were the latest problem connections as I remember. Then again every connection with NTL/Telewest/Virgin Media seems to be a struggle to provision these days.

 

[Moeks]

I would very much like a Gigabit connection, not so much because I would truly use it's full capabilities, I wouldn't. But for a reasonable price I would have it just because I could, and it would leave me virtually endless scope/breathing room to do essentially what ever I wanted with regards to bandwidth use.

Practical/expensive or not, I think we should have fibre services just because we can. When it is said that Japan is a more tech oriented society than ours and is ahead of us technologically. Well I don't just accept that, I say why? ...they have laid down the gauntlet so lets pick it up and challenge them for technological supremacy, and lets win.

There is no 'good' reason to me, why we can't. Money is no object, I don't care how much it costs, make it so. And honestly, £60 a month for 100mbit, I'd pay that. I pay £35 for 20mbit now and the only reason I don't have faster is because faster isn't really available. Price is a concern, but at current UK prices I think £50-£60 a month would be ok for 100mbit, and I would pay for such a service provided there were no limitations, no STM, no download limits at all, unfortunately no one offers it so I can't have it anyway. Even though I'm ready and waiting, willing to pay for that.


It'll be the same with the Olympics in 2012 I just know it, good 'ol Blighty trying to save a few pennies (few billion) and putting on a half-done show, just because people are too apathetic and tight to do it properly. China laid down the gauntlet, again, we can do better, so we should, it is possible after all. Albeit it difficult and expensive, but that didn’t stop us with Concord. Still, there we go, look what happened there. Anyway I'm going to bring this rant to an end as I'm going way off topic now. I think I've made my point well enough.

 

[Energize]

It'll be the same with the Olympics in 2012 I just know it, good 'ol Blighty trying to save a few pennies (few billion) and putting on a half-done show, just because people are too apathetic and tight to do it properly. China laid down the gauntlet, again, we can do better, so we should, it is possible after all.

China's GDP is $0.5 Trillion greater than ours and we don't have slave labour like they do. So it really isn't possible to outdo them.

 

[zzzJonny]

To people saying that 10mbps will do them, it may not do for longer as the internet is expanding with new content.

 

[Moeks]

China's GDP is $0.5 Trillion greater than ours and we don't have slave labour like they do. So it really isn't possible to outdo them.

I really don't care if the Chinese are spacemen with previously unknown technologies and weath beyond the ken of mortal man and such. We're Great Britain, populated by the Great British, of course we can do better.

Same goes for Japan and internet access.

 

[Locky]

I would love to have 10 meg never mind 20 or 50, my 5 megs costs the same as people on 20+

 

[FrenchTart]

I really don't care if the Chinese are spacemen with previously unknown technologies and weath beyond the ken of mortal man and such. We're Great Britain, populated by the Great British, of course we can do better.

Same goes for Japan and internet access.

Rofl.

Thanks for a laugh early in the morning.

 

[Moeks]

Rofl.

Thanks for a laugh early in the morning.

It isn't that funny though really is it? ...or it isn't to me, it's more worrying than anything else.

What happened to the 'Great British' spirit?
There was a time that we could do anything, and led the world in pretty much everything that was of much consequence. We've done it before and we can do it again. This may have only been internet access speeds in this case, but you see us getting trodden on, beaten and generally outdone by others in all sorts of things now.Why? ...we can do better, and many of us know it. But for some reason, we don't do it. We're turning into a nation of teachers, we can tell everyone else how to do it, but we don't seem able to do it ourselves. Grrr.

 

[FrenchTart]

It isn't that funny though really is it? ...or it isn't to me, it's more worrying than anything else.

What happened to the 'Great British' spirit?
There was a time that we could do anything, and led the world in pretty much everything that was of much consequence. We've done it before and we can do it again. This may have only been internet access speeds in this case, but you see us getting trodden on, beaten and generally outdone by others in all sorts of things now.Why? ...we can do better, and many of us know it. But for some reason, we don't do it. We're turning into a nation of teachers, we can tell everyone else how to do it, but we don't seem able to do it ourselves. Grrr.

Well, that attitude is decades old and sadly for us we live in the here and now. We're a small country and we've lost most of the advantages we had as a nation that allowed us to out-do the larger, less-developed countries.

 

[ANDARIAL]

I would love to have 10 meg never mind 20 or 50, my 5 megs costs the same as people on 20+

Luck Beggar my 2meg costs me £40pm(Can`t get any faster ,frequent resynchs too )