The decision last month by the Federal government to build the National Broadband Network using Fibre to the Home technology rather than Fibre to the Node is proving to be the right decision.

Recently several other countries have also made a similar decision to Australia.

United Arab Emirates

Etisalat, the UAE-based telecommunications services provider, will migrate 712,000 customers onto its proposed Fibre to the Home network with plans to connect the entire country by the end of 2011.

Abu Dhabi will become the first capital city in the world to be fully connected by Fibre to the Home a senior executive of Etisalat said. "With its high-speed Internet offering speeds up to 100 Mbps, this technology will boost adoption of new age internet services like IPTV, Video On Demand, and online gaming, creating future smart homes," Etisalat Vice President for Consumer Marketing told a roundtable on the opening day of Middle East Communications, or MECOM, on Monday.

The planned network by Etisalat will provide a high-speed connectivity for families and businesses through the use of optical line terminal and optical network terminals. Huawei last year announced that it had been chosen by Etisalat to build a large-scale commercial FTTH network in the UAE.

United States

Now to the United States which has the second largest FTTH deployment in the world. Officials have released an historic government plan to spend tens of billions of dollars constructing a nationwide, state-of-the-art broadband network featuring speeds 100 times faster than today's technology. Haven't heard about this yet? That's because the announcement was made last month in Australia, rather than in states and was missed by much of the press.

Susan Crawford, special assistant to the President for science, technology and innovation policy and a member of the National Economic Council, recently said she is "personally intrigued" by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's ambitious goal to build a national Fibre to the Home network.

Even with this year's US$7.2 billion cash infusion from Congress to stimulate domestic broadband investment, experts acknowledge that gaps in availability and bandwidth will remain, with pockets of the United States left with no service or antiquated technology.

"Simply put, a digital economy requires fiber, and Australia is making the determination that for that to work it will require a utility approach," Crawford said, noting that Singapore is making a similar investment and Britain and the Netherlands are exploring the concept.

"These governments understand that a wholesale network can deliver massive social and economic benefits," she said, referring to capacity that would be made available to carriers at reduced rates.

Spain

In another announcement this time in Spain, according to a market growth projection made by the country's telecom regulator, Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones (CMT), almost half of Spain's 14 million households could have fiber-to-the-home connections by 2023.

The regulator, as part of a feasibility study on next-generation networks, gave what it called a "conservative" estimate that between 43 percent and 46 percent of Spanish households in 2023 would have fiber-access broadband, most likely from a PON based access network.

Those connections would be provided by national operator Telefónica plus alternative operators, such as Orange Spain and Jazztel plc, that would be using the incumbent's fiber ducts and trenches. Telefónica is still in the early stage of fiber-access deployments, with fewer than 100,000 lines of fiber-to-the-home or fiber-to-the-building rolled out.

Phillipines

And in the Phillipines, the encumbant and government owned carrier, Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT), has announced it is launching within this year its “fiber to the home” (FTTH) program as part of its efforts to intensify its broadband deliver platform.

Pilot areas for FTTH include Bonifacio Global City, Forbes Park, Urdaneta Village, Ayala Alabang, Dasmarinas Village, Wack-Wack, Ayala Heights, Valle Verde and certain places covered by PLDT Subictel and PLDT Clarktel.

Lebanon

Lebanese Telecommunication Minister Jebran Bassil has announced that FTTH will be installed in selected areas of Beirut. The cost of the deployment, which is subject to cabinet approval, is estimated to be €11.3 million and should take 10 months to complete. At present, there are close to 100,000 DSL broadband subscribers in Lebanon. This project would bring 70Mbps FTTH services to a total of around 75,000 Internet subscribers.

Portugal

Portugal Telecom has provided more detail on its investment plans for FTTH. The €650 million development will follow guidelines prescribed by national regulator Anacom, and keeps the operator on track to meet its ambitious target of 1m FTTH subscribers by the end of 2009.

Croatia

T-Hrvatski Telekom (T-HT), a Croatian telco is facilitating mass next-generation broadband deployment for its customers. T-HT has announced an accelerated programme of broadband internet access network expansion, including upping investment in FTTH. 50,000 customers should be connected to new FTTH services by the end of the year, and the telco is set to invest more than HRK1 billion in the development of fixed line broadband services during 2009.

While the United States is busy debating whether to spend $6 or $9 billion on a new broadband stimulus package to deliver 100Mbps, and we here in Australia are debating about 12Mbps, South Korea has just decided to spend $24.6 billion on their own broadband infrastructure plan.

South Korea's plan will create 120,000 jobs, with the goal of boosting residential connections to 1 Gbps broadband (FTTH) and 10 Mbps (WiBro), and migrating all voice to NGN technologies using packet based technologies by 2012. Only about $1 billion of the money will come from government the rest will come from carriers.

Fibre to the Home in India is now truely becoming a reality. Several Indian Telcos have already announced their plans for fibre deployment, but ATS Paradissco is already deploying.

This project covers 1000 flats in Greater Noida, outside New Dehli. It's an interesting video because it points to a number of advantages that are often not presented to the public and it's also a nice promo for GPON too!

Thanks to Costas for pointing out this video for me.

You and hammer another nail into Australia's competitiveness in the Global Digital Economy as another incumbent carrier has announced an FTTH roll out in SE Asia.

State-owned fixed line and broadband operator Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) has launched multi-play services in New Delhi. In partnership with local fibre-optic cable firm Aksh Optifibre, MTNL is offering services including high-definition IPTV services over its new fibre-to-the-home network. Commenting on the launch R.S.P. Sinha, MTNL’s chairman and managing director said, ‘We are working closely with technology partners like Aksh to meet the challenge of providing fibre-based solutions to all homes in our area of operation. This fibre technology will enable us to bring faster higher-quality, high-definition content and more interactive capabilities to our subscribers than any other platform which exists today.’

The overseas FTTH market is set for another boost, this time in the Indian sub-continent as at least two major Indian operators plan to deploy Fibre to the Home networks over the coming years.

In his keynote address to the 100 or so senior operator executives who attended Light Reading's inaugural industry seminar in New Delhi, Rakesh Kumar, VP of Broadband Planning for Bharti Airtel Ltd said there was "no point in building copper access networks any more", and that the operator, which provides fixed broadband services in 94 cities in India, would be deploying GPON from now on. Kumar said the operator had issued an RFP for a trial network, and expected to push ahead with a broader FTTH deployment later in 2009.

However according to thevarticle by Ray Le Maistre of Light Reading, Bharti Airtel isn't the only Indian operator with high-speed fixed access plans. BSNL, which currently has about 2.4 million DSL broadband customers, has been considering PON deployments for a few years and has now decided to invest in an extensive deployment.

In his keynote address, Shri R. K. Agarwal, director of planning and new services at BSNL, said the carrier is committed to a FTTH strategy that will see the technology rolled out in 100 cities across the country.

However according to Kumar about 70 percent of the cost of building an FTTH network was eaten up by payments to local authorities and the organizations involved in digging up the roads.

According to Korea's Communications Commission (http://eng.kcc.go.kr), former state-owned telecoms operator Korea Telecom has passed the million subscriber mark for its fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband service. The news indicates a rise of 66% over the six month period from December 2007, when the operator had 600,000 such subscribers.

The KCC attributed the rapid rise to the expansion of Korea Telecom's network infrastructure, stating that it had begun switching subscribers from DSL based services to FTTH. According to the telco they are aiming to increase their FTTH network coverage nationwide by 2010, envisaging a total investment of KRW1.2 trillion (USD1.18 billion) for the project.

According to a Dow Jones Newswires, a company spokeswoman from Axia NetMedia (a Canadian telecommunications carrier based in Alberta) is considering a role in Australia's multi billion dollar National Broadband Network.

Axia has been hovering around both state and federal governments for several years, making presentations on the success of their broadband network in Alberta. One such presentation was to the Western Australian government which later spawned the "State Broadband Network" EOI. This seems to have gone the same way as the Queensland government's AU$550 million Brisbane FTTH network - NOWHERE!

Axia is best known as the company who built the Albert Supernet, a high-speed network that connected 429 communities across the Canadian state. The Government contributed to the building of the state-of-the-art IP network on the proviso it connected 4,200 government locations that included health, education, and municipal facilities.

Most interesting is the Alberta SuperNet uses an open access model which means any service provider in the province can use the SuperNet to deliver ultra-high speed services, including Internet access, to retail and business customers.

Axia is also the leading player in a consortium named OpenNet, which recently announced that it was bidding on the Singapore government's NBN project.

OpenNet proposed a comprehensive plan for a truly open access Fibre to the Home Network to cover the entire Singapore population. It intends to accomplish its "pristine open access" through:

• No individual parties having control over OpenNet;


• Three of the four OpenNet owners are not integrated telecommunications players hence there are no conflicting interests;


• Network is specifically designed to enable choice by OpenNet customers, large and small;


• Interests are aligned as OpenNet’s commercial success depends on its customers’ success.

In the proposal, OpenNet (which is made up of Axia NetMedia 30%, Singapore Telecommunications Limited 30%, Singapore Press Holdings Limited 25% and SP Telecommunications Pte Ltd 15%) will leverage SingTel’s existing extensive high-quality ducting network and turn it into an ultra-fast broadband network. Reliability is also guaranteed as the subterranean ducting system is least vulnerable to damage. OpenNet can deliver a resilient tamper-proof fibre-to-the-home network by 2010, at least two and a half years ahead of schedule.

With SingTel expressing some interest in bidding for Australia's NBN outside of the Optus lead TERRiA (formally G9) consortium, perhaps they are going to hitch up with their stable mate from OpenNet.

Senator Conroy should have taken a long hard look at the Singapore approach before running head long into our own NBN. In Singapore, they have created a three level operating model: NetCo - the network owner, OpCo - the network operator, and the retail providers who purchase wholesale services on the network. This ensures complete structural separation and ensures everyone is playing on a level field.

Japan's encumbent carrier, NTT, has been rolling out its FTTH network since 2001. At the first AsiaPac Fibre to the Home conference held in Tokyo back in 2006, I had a tour of NTT to see just how they were delivering their fibre services. What amazed me was their target of 30 million subscribers by 2010.

The bad news is, as of September last year NTT is lagging behind its schedule of new connections and they ONLY had 10.5 million subscribers. Subsequently NTT has slashed is projection from 30 million to 20 million by 2010. I think by 2010 Australia will be lucky to have 30,000 FTTH subscribers.

What is most interesting is the continued fall in the number of DSL subscribers as their FTTH network takes over. By the mid this year, there will be more FTTH connections in Japan than DSL - and we still kept talking about FTTN!