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.

As the NBN is nearing closer to being awarded, a report has been compiled in the United States about the prospects of take up by the community if a similar rollout was to occur.

The Obama administration has already committed $US6b (A$10b) to the expansion of Fibre to the Home in regional America, and when Obama was a Senator he co-sponsored the 100Mbit nation - a strategy to rollout 100Mbps to the majority of the United States.

The report, released yesterday by Pew Internet and American Life Project found that even if high-speed Internet service was available to the entire nation, about one-third of Americans not currently using broadband still wouldn't because of the expense.

The report was based on two surveys of 4,254 people last year and illustrates a potential hang-up in President Obama's goal to bring broadband Internet to rural and other under served areas: If they build it, it's not clear that people will come.

Will the same apply to regional Australia? The Rudd government has been pushing a rollout to 98% of households and business in Australia, which could add significant cost to the rollout. If only a 66% take up is achieved can the networks be rollout out and achieve its financial goals. In my opinion the target should have been 87% which would have covered the top 50 cities in Australia.

"There are multiple reasons why people don't have broadband, and the hope is that if you are a policymaker you would take away from this report that a focus on availability and price will only get you part of the way there," said John Horrigan, an associate director of research at the Pew project and author of the report.

The nonprofit group One Economy has urged lawmakers to include provisions in a stimulus plan that would renovate public housing so that all units in a building would have access to a shared data network, thereby reducing monthly costs per home by several dollars a month. Rey Ramsey, chief executive of One Economy, said prices of about $10 or less per month is the threshold for greater adoption.

NASHVILLE - The upgrading of North America's last mile networks with end-to-end fiber is continuing at a robust pace, with fiber to the home (FTTH) arriving at more than 1.6 million households over the past year, bringing the total number of FTTH subscribers to 3.76 million, according to a study released today by the Fiber-to-the-Home Council.

The study, by RVA Market Research (www.rvallc.com), pegged the annual growth rate for fiber to the home in North America at 76 percent, the highest of any country or region in the world. (Editor's Note: Actually Australia's growth rate is over 200% in FTTH connections for the past year)

The updated deployment statistics were announced at the FTTH 2008 Conference & Expo, which is being held this week in Nashville, Tennessee.

The study also shows fiber to the home networks now passing 13.8 million North American homes, up from 9.55 million a year ago, and that the number of homes receiving video services over FTTH more than doubled over the past year, from slightly more than one million in September 2007 to nearly 2.2 million today.

Meanwhile, the overall "take rate" - the percentage of those offered FTTH service who decide to subscribe - went up for the fifth straight six-month period, and now stands at more than 30 percent.

"This continued growth in the number of connections and in the take rate is evidence of what consumers think about fiber to the home - it is fast becoming the technology of choice for receiving high-bandwidth Internet and superior video services," said Joe Savage, President of the FTTH Council. "In addition, we are continuing to see enormously high customer satisfaction rates for FTTH services when compared to other types of broadband and video providers."

The study also found that average data download speeds for FTTH subscribers continued to rise - to 7 megabits per second from 5.2 Mbps a year ago - as providers increased available bandwidth in their service offerings. This compares to a median real-time Internet download speed of 2.3 Mbps among all Internet users, as determined by the Communications Workers of America in their recent Speed Matters survey of more than 230,000 people.

Mike Render of RVA LLC, who authored the study, noted that the sustained high growth rate for FTTH connections is disproving many of the claims that skeptics made about the technology just a few years ago. "They said FTTH would never work for overbuilds, in rural areas, in multi-tenant buildings or in places where there was already competition to provide these services. They said no one would ever need or pay for 7 megabits of download speed. And now we are finding that those concerns are not panning out."

A presentation containing the underlying data for the study can be downloaded from the FTTH Council website by clicking here.

Render said that most growth in the U.S. can be attributed to either Verizon FiOS rollouts, or independent local exchange carriers with special fiber projects.

Source: FTTH Council

One of the most interesting aspects of Verizon Communications' marketing approach for its FiOS broadband service has a been a referral program that gives customer's $50 for each friend they refer who then becomes a Verizon customer. It seemed like an especially good idea as Verizon has begun to enter the multi-dwelling unit market. The telco has not revealed details about the success rate of the program, but Verizon has decided to add voice service to the customer referral program, indicating that it has had some success with it. Customers can earn up to $150 worth of billing credits if the referred customer buys three Verizon products, and customers can refer up to 12 friends per year. At a time when voice revenues and lines are dwindling, it certainly couldn't hurt. Perhaps the Australian FttP service providers should look into such marketing ideas influenced by the social network world.

Read the full story at Multichannel News.

Last week a resolution was introduced into the House of Representatives (USA) calling for the establishment of "a national goal for the universal deployment of next-generation broadband networks... by 2015". The resolution defined next-generation broadband as having "transmission speeds of at least 100 megabits per second, bidirectionally" and should "have the capabilities to provide access to important bandwidth-intensive information, services, and applications being developed and can readily increase these capabilities for future developments"

The resolution was introduced by U.S. Representative Anna Eshoo (Califonian Democrat) and co-sponsored by Ed Markey (D-MA) the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, and Mike Doyle (D-PA). It is a companion bill to Senate Resolution 191, introduced in the Senate last year by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV) and co-sponsored by Senator Barack Obama - the Democratic nominee for the Presidential election later this year.

According to Joe Savage, President of the FTTH Council (North America), "This resolution recognizes that America needs a strategy - a 100 Megabit National strategy - to ensure that our citizens keep pace with the advancements of the Information Age,"

Savage noted that with currently available equipment, fibre based solution can easily carry 100 Mbps symmetrical services (and more) to households. FTTH now passes more than 10 percent of U.S. households (approx 13 million homes) and more than three million of those are connected using high speed services such as Verizon's FiOS solution.

"Technologists are predicting that by 2015 the average American home will need 100 Mbps service to access available online applications and video services, and that many times that bandwidth will be needed in the decade that follows," said Savage. "The fibre we put in today can deliver that and much more, so it is essential we get on with the task of [reticulating] fibre [to] every home for the future."

In March 2007, the FTTH Council called on the government to adopt a "100 Megabit Nation" policy as a means of ensuring that a majority of Americans can access next-generation broadband connections by 2010, with universal availability by 2015. The Council noted that some Asian and European nations are already well ahead of the United States in deploying high-bandwidth, fibre to the home networks.

For information on the resolution view the document at the Library of Congress

In a recently published report by EDUCAUSE, a group that represents IT managers at over 2,200 colleges and universities across the US, ghe United States is facing a crisis in broadband connectivity. The demand for bandwidth is accelerating well beyond the capacity of the current broadband networks which are predominately DSL or HFC. According to the OECD the United States continues to full further behind in the percentage of connected homes and the average advertised speed.

EDUCAUSE has proposed the creation of a new federal Universal Broadband Fund (UBF) that should be used to build open, big broadband networks of at least 100 Mbps to every home and business in the United States by 2012. They estatement the construction of this network will cost approximately $100 billion, with one-third of the funding provided by the federal government, one-third by the states, and the remaining one-third by the private sector.

Its interesting the United States can build a FTTH network for $100 billion for a population about 12 times larger than Australia, yet Telstra claims it will cost us $30-$50 billion. If we work this back, $100 billion / 12 = ~$8billion. Didn't the FTTH SIG recommend that FTTH for Australia would cost only $9.8 billion?

In an article published by Ed Gubbins of TelephonyOnline, Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) is now being marketed to more than 10 million North American homes, based on the latest report from RVA Market Research & Consulting. And FTTH networks pass nearly 12 million homes, or nearly 10% of all the homes in North America.

Nearly 3 million homes are connected to fiber, and 770,500 of those (or 26%) were added in the last six months.

The Fibre to the Home Council (North America) has published the latest report from RVA which can be viewed here.

http://www.ftthcouncil.org/documents/137785.pdf