Market research firm Infonetics Research predicts that overall worldwide PON equipment revenue will top US$2 billion in 2009 for the first time. That figure will more than double by 2013, the company adds, when it will reach US$4.2 billion.
Archive 2009
Internet Censure – Big Brother in our neck of the woods? Dec 17
1 CommentA battle of words is raging in Australia over the Government’s decision to impose internet filtering, ie censure on the web sites we are allowed to visit. The right of free speech seems to be fragile under the present Minister Steve Conroy and his Labour majority.
Here are some of the comments published yesterday and today:
“Welcome to National Censorship Day”
“Conroy’s blind adherence to his net filtering plan will abandon net neutrality ideals and push ISPs down a slippery slope of unprecedented responsibility for a callously politicised Australian internet.”
“Brave Labor MP rejects Conroy’s filter plan”
“NSW Labor MP Penny Sharpe has slammed her Federal colleagues’ plan to censor the internet.
Sharpe said the announcement was “a backward step” that, if adopted, would be “a triumph of fear and false promise [over] good sense”
“The Australian Government’s plan for mandatory filtering of a broad range of ‘refused classification content’ will put Australia at odds with almost every other liberal Western democracy and align it with states such as Belarus, Eritrea, The UAE, Yemen and Zimbabwe that force all ISPs to remove ‘inappropriate content’ from their services, according to a new research study.”
Anybody who has tried to use the internet in China would have encountered the nonsensical blocking of innocent sites which have no political bias or cultural sensitivity. Some public servant in a back room just decides that this or that site is not good for local consumption and bingo, its gone!
It will be a sad day if Australia adopts this course. And I hope that Wellington is not even thinking about it.
Scientists squeeze more out of light Dec 10
No CommentsScientists at the University of Adelaide, Australia, have put the squeeze on light. By discovering that light within optical fibers can be squeezed into much tighter spaces than was previously believed possible, the researchers at the University’s Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing (IPAS) have claimed a breakthrough that could change the world’s thinking on light’s capabilities, especially when it comes to its use in telecommunications, such as fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), computing and other light sources.
To get light to travel along an optical fiber, it must concentrated, aimed and bounced along the inside walls of the fiber which acts like a pipe for light. But as the size of the fiber shrinks (in our never-ending quest for smaller, faster, better), the light becomes more and more confined too, until it reaches the ultimate limit – the point beyond which it cannot be squeezed any smaller.
This ultimate point occurs when the strand of glass (fiber) is just a few hundred nanometers in diameter, about one thousandth of the size of a human hair. If you go smaller than this, light begins to spread out again.
The Adelaide researchers say they have discovered a way in which they can push beyond that limit by at least a factor of two. They can do this due to new breakthroughs in the theoretical understanding of how light behaves at the nanoscale, and by using a new generation of nanoscale optical fibers being developed at the institute.
This discovery by IPAS Reserach Fellow Dr Shahraam Afshar is expected to lead to more efficient tools for optical data processing in telecommunications networks and optical computing, as well as new light sources. Federation Fellow at the University of Adelaide and Director of IPAS, Prof Tanya Monro, says Dr Afshar’s discovery is “a fundamental breakthrough in the science of light”.
“By being able to use our optical fibers as sensors – rather than just using them as pipes to transmit light – we can develop tools that, for example, could easily detect the presence of a flu virus at an airport; could help IVF (in vitro fertilization) specialists to determine which egg should be chosen for fertilization; could gauge the safety of drinking water; or could alert maintenance crews to corrosion occurring in the structure of an aircraft,” says Professor Monro.
Another IPAS researcher, Dr Yinlan Ruan, also recently created what is thought to be the world’s smallest hole inside an optical fiber – just 25 nanometers in diameter.
“These breakthroughs feed directly into our applied work to develop nanoscale sensors,” Prof Monro says. “They will enable us to study the applications of light at much smaller scales than we’ve ever thought possible. It will help us to better understand and probe our world in ever smaller dimensions.”
IPTV Trials by TelstraClear in New Zealand Nov 30
1 CommentThis morning TelstraClear announced that it had completed trials of an IPTV system they hope to offer to their broadband subscribers throughout New Zealand. This of course is on the back of the Government’s plans for a National Ultra-fast Fibre Optic network.
If the IPTV service is enabled, I just wonder what TelstraClear will offer in the way of programming.
Of course the 10 or so Freeview channels. These are “free to air” and you can distribute them in the country and without any special permissions.
However SKY TV has built up such an impressive subscriber base, mainly due to the exclusive rights they have for major sporting events and other speciality channels. The distribution rights for these channels cost a pile of money and are heavily protected by contract, copyright, encryption schemes etc.
Outside of what SKY offers, there’s not very much out there in the way of programming of interest to Kiwi viewers. Ethnic channels, baseball, gridiron football… not worth paying for I suspect.
So I imagine that TelstraClear would have to chum up with SKY. They do already in the markets where they have their cable networks (Wellington and Christchurch). It’s entirely on the cards, time will tell. It certainly is a time of change for media distribution.
Change and passion with FTTH Nov 23
1 Comment
I suspect that most of my readers have met me, know my background. I’ve had a wonderful career in electronics: design, prototyping, programming, test, installation… patent applications. At an age when most of my my peers have disconnected, I find myself “born-again” professionally with the advent of FTTH. My work in the transport of Digital Radio and TV over fibre has given me great satisfaction. I’m having a ball! I recently switched my membership of the U.S. FTTH Council to the Asia-Pacific group. The latter’s visit to Auckland this past week gave me again great encouragement to develop my skills and experience in this new field within our region.
The FTTH Council is a “non-profit” organisation, offering free (and unbiassed) advice to those who solicit their support.
Networking and communication is SO important in propagating experiences, knowledge, successes and failures to our peers.
I follow closely the evolution of FTTH around the world, the political, commercial and technical trends. Alongside my purely technical work, I enjoy sharing this general information with my many contacts in several countries.
Tonight I was pleased to discover the following article from David Braue of ZD Net in Australia. As he tells, the Telcos in Australia are not a write-off at all! Let me know what you think…
Forget the NBN, 100Mbps is already here
Posted by David Braue @ 11:00 28 comments
It’s amazing what telcos can do when they put their heads to it. Telstra, TransACT and Optus announced last week that they would switch on 100Mbps internet services — making ADSL customers green with envy and, one might suspect, Stephen Conroy green with worry.
The NBN isn’t the only way Australians can get 100Mbps services, the telco giant has proved; it is now up to the government to match and exceed Telstra’s example.
With actual, purchasable 100Mbps consumer services out there in the real world, Australia’s broadband market will change dramatically — not in terms of what most speeds people are actually getting, but in terms of what everybody else’s services are compared to. Bet your booties that all three companies, which have first-mover advantage thanks to their turbo-charged fibre and hybrid fibre-coaxial networks, will be working to raise the bar as high as they can.
Let the services begin, as they say in the classics. What services? The long-elusive triple play — telephony, television and data — is a good place to start. They may be a footnote to its ongoing political intrigues, but Telstra has been steadily building its credentials as a triple-play provider: increasingly flexible Foxtel packages now reach mobiles, smartphones (including, recently, the iPhone), and even allow viewing of video via the web.
It’s all part of a strategy to add more flexibility to shift its video interests online — not only because it sounds cool, but because a data-based video stream allows Telstra to look beyond the edges of its own network and onto the eventual NBN.
For now, however, Telstra’s 100Mbps customers are limited to its own HFC network, which makes these initial services as much about expectation-setting as anything else. But there is a bigger game afoot here as Telstra proves a very big point with the government.
The proven ability to deliver 100Mbps services to large numbers of customers is a big step for Telstra — like when your little brother says he can eat more worms than you, and then does. In delivering real 100Mbps services like it said it would, Telstra has shifted the onus onto a government that now faces even more pressure to deliver the NBN as designed.
If problems derail the NBN, or if it cannot deliver the same experience Telstra’s cable network can, Telstra will score no small amount of philosophical bragging rights. Ditto TransACT, which has long provided some pretty excellent triple-play services to residents of a few select pockets of the ACT; its content offerings already well established, the addition of 100Mbps is not so confrontational as evolutionary.
Even Optus — which will be third to the market with 100Mbps but still has good reach with its HFC network — isn’t going to be sitting around waiting for the NBN.
So, while Telstra’s HFC network is still limited to the same 2.5 million households or so that it has always serviced, its head-start in building customer loyalty should not be underestimated. Telstra has several years to set customer expectations for 100Mbps internet in Melbourne, potentially becoming the favoured provider — and developing strategies to counter the eventual introduction of the NBN.
Even as the government continues to back the NBN’s ponderous roll-out, Telstra, Optus and TransACT will use their lead time to tweak pricing, charging a premium for their 100Mbps services today to recover their capital investments — and build up a data-based infrastructure that’s ready to be switched onto the NBN at a word. Telstra’s new T-Box is another extension of this, combining PVR capabilities with access to Telstra’s increasingly data-based content library over any network capable of carrying it.
Little wonder Conroy is so eager to wrest control of the HFC network from Telstra: if Telstra plays its cards right, it can build up a strong 100Mbps following and create the same kind of inertia that for high-speed broadband that it has long enjoyed on the copper local loop. This, in turn, will diminish the NBN’s natural market and create new forms of competition for Conroy’s biggest project.
Pricing, marketing and bundling will of course be critical for the success of these new services. But by living up to its promise to bring 100Mbps services before year’s end, Telstra has scored a direct hit on the government. The NBN isn’t the only way Australians can get 100Mbps services, the telco giant has proved; it is now up to the government to match and exceed Telstra’s example. From 1 December, every day the NBN is not operating, is another tiny win for Telstra.
Excellent thoughts on Aussie NBN Nov 06
1 CommentTonight Google threw me this article, written only a few hours ago. I found it very logic and sensible. Who is Tom Worthington? Well as I found out, a pretty savvy and successful technical academic in Canberra. According to his website, he looks like this:
I tried to find a contact or email address on his website: nothing! So Tom, if you read this, don’t sue me for not asking authority to reproduce! Only one major criticism, no details on the delivery of TV. Just one vague mention about IPTV. It amazes me that nobody seems to know anything about the “3rd wavelength” for TV Broadcasting. Just pull TV off the data link. It doesn’t need to be there. In any case Foxtel, Austar and Sky TV aren’t at all ready to deliver anything over IPTV. Even if they were, why dump TV on the data link when you don’t have to?
Here we go, otherwise very sensible words to my mind! Particularly about level 1 and 2 services.
Friday, November 06, 2009
Designing the National Broadband Network
The Australian Telecommunications Users Group (ATUG) held a National Broadband Network Reference Model Forum in Sydney this morning (there will be another in Melbourne on 12 November 2009). Based on the morning’s discussion, my view is that a simpler internet model be used in place of the Communications Alliance model. This will be technically simpler to implement and will also avoid many difficult regulatory issues with telephone and broadcast services. In essence the NBN will be “an internet”, which will be part of “the Internet”. The NBN can carry many different services using internet protocols, including services which emulate the plain old telephone service (POTS), cable TV and broadcast TV, without being limited to only providing those services or providers.
Paul Brooks, Lead Consultant, NBN Project of Communications Alliance gave a detailed overview of the Communications Alliance High Level Architecture Options for the NBN in detail. His view is that it is likely that the NBN will use a passive optical network for Fibre to The Home (FTTH). This will provide considerable bandwidth to the home, but it is not clear how far this will extend through the network.
While NBN will own and install the connections to the home, there is no architectural distinction between NBN and non-NBN back end networks. The Communications Alliance model operates at level 2 . It is likely that IPv6 will be used or services such as VoIP at the higher layers of the model. Issues to be resolved include how many points should other providers be able to connect at (options range from 5 to 500).
At the home termination, it is not clear how the consumer will connect. Options range from a socket to which any equipment can be connected to an NBN supplied set top box. One issue which I raised early on the the NBN process was the need for operations in disasters during mains power failure. This seems to have been taken up with discussion of who provides the backup batteries.
Stepping back from the details, Paul Brooks pointed out a principle should be customer choice. Each service may be connected to different devices from different suppliers ad networks. The example given was a smart electricity meter provided by the energy company, which the householder has little control of but still has to have working over the NBN.
It occurs to me that in all this some points have been lost:
1. Its the Internet: The primary purpose for the NBN is to provide access to the Internet. It is likely the system will be implemented using internet protocols. The simplest way to provide Internet access via an internet network is with internet protocols. Therefore the the NBN should be designed as an internet. Much of the Communications Alliance model discussion seems to be about old fashioned connection based network design which is not needed and not relevant for an internet.
2. Layers aren’t real: While there s much discussion of Layer 1 and Layer 2, these are abstractions and so of little use for practical decision making. In the discussion it does not seem to be made clear even which multi-layer model is being discussed (the ISO OS model has seven layers, whereas IP has only five).
Peter Hitchiner, Australian Computer Society – Telecommunications Society of Australia, gave a more general overview as to what the NBN should do (similar to the ACS talk I gave to ATUG in Canberra). He pointed out that the nature of the NBN service is not clear, in particular is “layer 2″ access the preferred industry approach. A major question is will IPTV services be treated equally (a major policy question for the Federal Government).
At this point the forum moved into a discussion to explore some of these issues. This proved very interesting and useful. On the access issue Paul Brooks mentioned that the home access box might have four ports (presumably Ethernet copper cable ports), plus possibly a telephone and a TV port. It seemed that he envisioned each port would provide a distinct “service” from a separate “service provider”. In the subsequent discussion it became clear that the model the Communications Alliance’s proposing is to emulate a point to point service over the NBN, on top of an underlying IP network.
Stephen Wright, from Gibson Quai-AAS – Telecommunications Consultants (GQAAS) then talked about the network resilience required. Telstra provides about 99.90% reliability for telephony services (PSTN). Stephen suggested we should aim for 99.95% or higher for the NBN. My view is that it should be relatively simple and inexpensive to achieve this level of service for the NBN for telephony services. This assumes that the NBN is configured to provide different levels of reliability for different services, with emergency services having priority. As an example, the household is likely to want enough bandwidth to call an ambulance in an emergency, and will accept that this should take priority over being able to watch TV. With the NBN configured to provide enough bandwidth to provide TV most of the time, there should be enough capacity to handle lower bandwidth services, such as telephony almost all the time.
The Communications Alliance proposed model is not a good one, is not in the public interest and should not be adopted. Its complexity comes from trying to reproduce the restrictions of the old telecommunications system in order to support old business models. Instead I suggest accepting that the NBN will provide an Internet service. The model then becomes very much simpler, with an unlimited number of service providers able to provide services to the home over one Internet connection. Where a service provider needs a high level of security for their service, for example a telephone, smart meter or a TV set top box, they would need to ensure that the software or hardware they provide to the home has the needed security built in. There is then no need to worry about how many ports to provide or what types. Only one port is needed which can support all the services required.
This would be similar to the electrical sockets provided in the home. These are all wired in parallel and provide the same service. The householder can purchase their own devices to plug in. The householder can also purchase multiple adaptors to plug in. If the householder wants to plug in a refrigerator from a particular supplier, they do not need a special power point installed which only provides one brand of electricity.
The NBN will likely replace the current telephone, broadcast TV and cable TV services. I suggest replacements for these services be done in a way which does not limit the availability of new services. This would be a change in the previous government practice which has been to protect encumbent providers from competition from new services. As an example, the conversion to digital TV in Australia was designed so that the existing analog TV stations retained their oligopoly, even though the new digital technology did not require this.
There is a case for providing telephony and TV as part of the basic NBN service, but architecturally these can be simply services on top of the Internet. In this way the household will not be locked into a new monopoly unnecessarily. As an example, the householder would be able to pay a service provider to provide an ordinary telephone POTS type service from an Australian telecommunications provider. But the householder should be able to use the same NBN equipment to make free Internet calls and to sign up with several other telephone providers, including companies located anywhere in the world, if they wish.
Similarly, the house holder could use the NBN to watch Australian free to air TV and cable TV. However, the householder should be able to also access any other TV-like service available over the Internet from anywhere in the world. The fact that Foxtel might wish to provide a restricted pay TV service using NBN, should not stop other provision of TV like services for free by others.
The issues of telephony on the NBN are not technically complex, compared to the regulatory and public policy issues. TV type services over the NBN are slightly more complex technically, but are dwarfed by the complexity of the public policy issues. There is not sufficient time to work through all of the sectional interests involved in time to implement the NBN. With the current timetable, Australian will still not have transitioned completely from analogue to digital before it will be time to start replacing the digital TV broadcast service with the NBN.
I suggest the Australian Government take the opportunity to short circuit the process by setting some simple goals for the NBN in delivering services over an internet and then let the NBN company get on with the implementation. The NBN is not building a telephone network, nor a pay TV network, it is building a network which can be used for carrying such services.
Labels: ICT Policy, NBN, Telecommunications
posted by Tom Worthington at 1:11 PM
Meeting the two Steves Nov 05
No Comments
Steve who? you say…
Well Steven Joyce, New Zealand Minister for Communications and Information Technology, and Stephen Conroy, Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.
Both were present and co-opened the KANZ Broadband Summit at Sky City yesterday.
They seemed to know and appreciate each other, with mutual banter about Rugby, the weather, “G’day cobber” etc.
But what amazingly opposite origins! I learned from the M.C. that Steve Joyce (National Party) had built the New Zealand Radio Network, sold out to CanWest and retired at age 38.
Steve Conroy (Aust. Labour Party) had worked his way into politics via the Union Movement (Transport).
This really displays how the left and right of politics have closed the gap, at least in some areas.
Both presentations were concise, factual and interesting.
There followed two streams of presentations from Australians, Koreans and New Zealanders.
Many times the proposed Government investment figures in the new generation networks were mentioned: Australia AU$43 bn and New Zealand NZ$ 1.5 bn. Australia has five times the population of New Zealand, and much longer distances, but the reasons for this investment disparity were never raised.
Some of the digital video presentations were stunning.
I have again met a lot of wonderfully interesting people involved in the broadband field, one way or another. As always, the conversations, the swap of business cards and the ongoing exchanges will promote excellent professional networking opportunities.