Martijn Blanken, MD of Telstra Global

Martijn Blanken, managing director of Telstra Global, told the CommunicAsia event in Singapore that the idea of ‘owning’ a customer as a sure path to financial success is also flawed, and that CSPs would do better to focus on what he called the core telco basics.

“The best way to achieve success is by focusing on customer experience to achieve financial outperformance and working in concert with partners,” said Blanken. “Getting the basic elements right, like having solid network coverage, is a pre-requisite to success, along with ensuring secure and high quality services.”

Blanken added that the threat from over-the-top (OTT) players is very real in some sectors, but for everyone else there is enormous potential, as they are driving traffic and activity on networks and platforms, and in many cases actually boosting revenues.

The Telstra Global exec also had some words of advice for incumbents struggling to keep prices low enough to attract customers and service quality good enough to retain them, stating: “I believe that for those markets where you can’t win, wholesale is better than no sale.”

Tilgin’s Flexible Premises Solution is starting to win orders

Norwegian regional service provider Enivest has ordered fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) solutions from Swedish firm Tilgin to simplify the deployment and maintenance of FTTH connections for its subscribers.

The Flexible Premises Solution chosen by Enivest includes fibre termination units, home gateways and an auto configuration server – all part of ongoing efforts to reduce field visits and offer self-installation options to its customers.

Eric Hjelmestam, vice president of solution management & marketing at Tilgin, said: “Today, our concept is a reality, a solution we can deliver to our clients. It provides our customers a solid business case; the flexible premises business case.”

Rural households could swallow up two-thirds of the total cost of wiring up the continent to superfast broadband, says Point Topic

Despite all households in the European Union now having access to basic internet connectivity, significant challenges remain before the same can be said of high-speed services, not least of which is the high cost of wiring up rural areas, according to UK research firm Point Topic.

Piggybacking on the European Commission’s latest release of its Digital Agenda Scoreboard, which recently revealed that just over half of Europeans currently have access to speeds above 30Mbps, Point Topic estimates that only 12 per cent of rural households are currently covered by Next-Generation Access technologies such as DOCSIS 3.0 cable, VDSL and fibre-to-the-premises.

However, while the EC currently predicts that wiring up the whole continent to superfast broadband will cost in the region of €180-240bn, Point Topic believes it could be done for as (relatively) little as €82bn – with two-thirds of that figure being needed for rural areas.

Of Europe’s big four economies, France – as the most rural – has the biggest investment need at €17.5bn. The UK on the other hand, although similar in population, needs only €7.5bn, according to the research firm.

The €52 billion estimate also assumes that superfast investment will be capped at an average of €2,000 per household. “Most of that amount will have to be funded by the taxpayer in one way or another,” said Point Topic’s Tim Johnson “and we think that’s about as much as they will stand for. But we think that a large proportion of rural Europe will get wired up on that basis.”

Asia will account for the majority of broadband subs by 2018

The number of broadband subscribers worldwide will increase by around 50 per cent over the next five years to reach 940 million by the end of 2018, with Asia-Pacific driving much of this growth according to new figures from UK research firm Point Topic.

This is lower than previous estimates from Point Topic, due to low fixed internet penetration in the developing world, although the one billion subscriber mark is expected to be reached (and exceeded) by the end of the decade.

By the end of 2018, South and East Asia is expected to have the greatest volume of broadband subscribers by some distance – around 340 million compared to the 150 million expected for Western Europe, the next-largest market.

Point Topic forecasts that Asia’s subscriber numbers will grow by 70 per cent over the next five years, due mainly to strong growth in Indonesia and Thailand.

Europe’s telcos “must innovate or die”, says IDATE

Europe’s telecoms and media companies must embrace innovation in key areas such as mobile, cloud computing and big data, as well as forge strong strategic relationships with other industry players like content delivery networks, if they are to survive the current revenue squeeze, according to think tank IDATE.

European telcos suffered a sizeable drop in revenues last year, according to IDATE, with growth decreasing to 2.7 per cent after two steady years of recovery, and the TV market hit hardest, dragging down the entire consumer electronics market by seven per cent.

Increased competition in the smartphone and tablet markets offers a glimmer of hope however, according to the think tank, which adds that the services markets also appear to have weathered the storm. Over-the-top (OTT) services are the sole bright spot, growing by an average of 20 per cent last year.

IDATE’s Didier Pouillot said: “Telcos do have certain leverage to deal with this change, starting with creating more value from network access now that OTT services are increasing user consumption.

“NGN technologies allow telcos to increase speeds and to introduce noticeable quality improvements, both of which can differentiate their offerings. But it is clear 2013 is a pivotal year and telcos must embrace innovation. A simple Darwinian case of evolve or die!”

Major cities like Oslo will benefit most from Telenor’s new investment plan

Norway’s telecoms incumbent Telenor has committed itself to investing NOK4bn (€500m) in fibre-optic broadband services for businesses, citing the rise in enterprise demand for cloud and video services.

The telco adds that DSL broadband over copper will “still be the technology that offers the best coverage across Norway for a long time to come” – and plans to upgrade its copper infrastructure accordingly.

Bjørn Ivar Moen, business market manager at Telenor, said: “The opportunities for savings through the use of cloud-based services are substantial, but services such as email, document storage and sharing, and accounting software require a stable and secure internet connection with high capacity.

“We have therefore set in motion a vigorous investment programme into fibre optic broadband for the business market, both in terms of internet access and virtual private networks (VPNs). With fibre optic broadband, we will ensure companies are ready for tomorrow’s digital solutions.”

The new organisation will push for a smooth transition to G.hn

Two industry bodies supporting wireline home networking have merged to create a single organisation that counts more than 70 members, including 28 service providers such as AT&T, BT and Telefónica.

The HomePNA Alliance and HomeGrid Forum are uniting under the name of the latter with the stated mission of promoting the smooth transition of all current generation wireline home networking technologies to G.hn, the ‘any wire’ technology defined by ITU-T open international standards.

The newly-merged organisation will continue to offer support for the installed base of over 40 million certified HomePNA devices in use worldwide, protecting the investment of both HomePNA equipment manufacturers and their customers.

Commenting on the merger, HomePNA president Eran Gureshnik said: “The obvious future direction for all wireline home networking is to migrate to G.hn. Therefore, it made sense for us to merge the HomePNA Alliance with the HomeGrid Forum at this time, providing a clear, strong vision to existing and new customers.”

Hyperoptic is planning to connect 500k homes within five years

UK fibre-to-the-home specialist Hyperoptic has closed a large round of funding worth £50m ($75m) to roll out FTTH connections to as many as ten cities around the country by the end of the year.

Hyperoptic has already connected more than 20,000 homes in London to 1Gbps broadband, and is now aiming to connect more than half a million households nationwide within the next five years.

Boris Ivanovic, chairman and co-founder of Hyperoptic, said: “Today’s investment is a resounding vote of confidence in both our business model and the bright prospects for FTTH technology in the UK.

“As momentum continues to build for ‘smart cities’ and an increasingly technology-fuelled economy and society, the need to future proof our infrastructure has become absolutely critical and Hyperoptic will play a key role in doing just that.”

Hyperoptic is also reportedly planning to launch a number of other new services on its FTTH network in addition to super-fast broadband, such as IPTV and cloud computing.

Point Topic estimates the total cost at €80bn

Providing super-fast broadband to the whole of the European Union could be much less expensive than previously thought, according to UK research firm Point Topic, which estimates that the whole economic area could be served for €80bn – less than a third of the €270bn estimated by the European Commission in its Digital Agenda.

Defined as delivering at least 30Mbps of data downstream, super-fast broadband services have long been championed by EC Commissioner Neelie Kroes, who has taken on the mission of ensuring that all EU households can access these speeds by 2020.

However, both operators and national governments have balked at the cost, so it will come as welcome news to many that the cost may be much lower.

The main reason for Point Topic’s reduced estimate is that super-fast networks have already covered about half of European homes, using a variety of technologies in addition to expensive fibre-to-the-home (FTTH), such as cable and copper-based VDSL, which Point Topic has used as the main connection method in urban areas in its models.

Of the €80bn total, around two-thirds (or €52bn) will be needed to hook up the areas of lowest population density, defined as having less than 100 people per square kilometre.

Tim Johnson, lead author of the report, said: “Most of that amount will have to be funded by the taxpayer in one way or another,” says Johnson, “and we think that’s about as much as they will stand for. But we think that a large proportion of rural Europe will get wired up on that basis.”

MoCA is driving home networking sales, says Infonetics

Multimedia over coax (MoCA) helped drive the global home networking device market to $4.9bn in the second half of 2012, up five per cent on a sequential basis, according to US firm Infonetics Research.

MoCA-enabled video gateways are identified as a key growth area for home networking device manufacturers, particularly those targeting North America.

Deployments of MoCA-enabled set-top boxes are also “slowly reaching a boil”, according to Jeff Heynen, directing analyst at Infonetics, with sales estimated to have risen 23 per cent in the second half of last year alone.

Meanwhile, revenue from shipments of broadband routers grew six per cent in the second half of last year on a sequential basis, thanks to shipments of higher-end 802.11ac and 802.11n WiFi routers in North America and EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa).

In-home media streaming is on the up

US broadband homes are increasingly choosing to place their router in the living room rather than home office in order to better serve their connected video devices, according to The Diffusion Group.

Over four in five US broadband households now have home networks installed – up a few percentage points from 2011 – with over a third of routers now found in ‘primary living spaces’ – nearly twice the number found in spaces dedicated to home offices.

Michael Greeson, founding partner of The Diffusion Group, observes that just a few years ago, network use was dominated by data-centric activities (email, messaging, productivity applications, etc.), with few consumers actually using their home networks to access and share digital media.

“Today, however, 62 per cent of networked households are using their network to stream digital media,” adds Greeson.

TDG believes that both router placement and primary use are highly correlated with age: the younger the head-of-household, the more likely it is that the router is located in the primary living space, and that the network is used to stream digital media.

According to TDG’s data, nearly eight in ten Millennials (aged 18 to 34 years old) use their home networks to stream media, a rate that also declines as age increases.

Australia’s National Broadband Network will eventually cover 93% of the country’s population with fibre

An additional 1.3 million Australian households are being added to the country’s ambitious National Broadband Network, bringing the total number of premises where NBN construction will commence or be complete by June 2016 to more than 4.8 million.

The country’s Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy, has released an updated three-year rollout plan for the NBN, stating that he and his party (up for re-election in September) “believe all Australian households deserve access to the NBN’s fast, reliable and affordable broadband”.

According to Senator Conroy, there are already over 50,000 Australians using the NBN today, with NBN fibre construction commenced or completed for almost 1mn homes, businesses, schools and hospitals in over 80 communities across the country.

Broadband speeds continue to soar in the UAE

Du, one of the two major telcos in the United Arab Emirates, has awarded a contract to Alcatel-Lucent to build the second phase of its high-speed 100G coherent optical transport network throughout the country.

The new optical transport network is expected to dramatically boost the speed and capacity of Du’s existing network, and support surging demand for cloud, video and other data-intensive applications.

The solutions being supplied to Du include Alca-Lu’s soft decision forward error correction technology, described as capable of extending the reach of 100G signals to much longer, more usable distances.

There were just over 1 million broadband subscribers in the UAE by the end of September 2012, with Du accounting for 136,000 of them and rival Etisalat taking the rest, according to Informa Telecoms & Media.

Copper remains dominant in the UK’s broadband network

The UK has passed 9 million unbundled broadband lines, according to new figures from watchdog Ofcom.

This figure represents a 70-fold increase in the number of unbundled lines since 2005, when incumbent BT agreed to provide local loop unbundling services to rivals on its copper phone network.

Super-fast broadband services also continue to grow in popularity, with around 13 per cent of all residential connections super-fast by November 2012 – more than double the 5 per cent reported one year earlier.

Ofcom reports that it expects fibre deployment and investment to increase rapidly in the UK over the coming months.

Despite this rise in unbundled connections however, BT does remain the UK’s dominant broadband provider by far, with a 29 per cent share of the country’s 18 million subscribers, followed by cableco Virgin Media with 20 per cent.

Ranulf Scarbrough, BT

We speak to Ranulph Scarbrough, director of the Superfast Cornwall broadband programme at BT, about winning last year’s Broadband InfoVision Award in the ‘Changing Lives’ category.

This year’s Broadband InfoVision Awards will take place in Amsterdam on October 23rd. For more information and to register, please visit: www.broadbandinfovisionawards.com

Can you bring us up to speed on where the Superfast Cornwall project is now?

Superfast Cornwall has continued to make great progress. Coverage is now around 80% of Cornwall and we expect to complete the rollout next year.

We recently announced, based on how well things have been going, that we expect to take fibre broadband to 95 per cent of Cornwall (up from the previous plan of 80 per cent).

And we also announced we would take fibre to one of Europe’s most isolated communities – the Isles of Scilly – comprising just 2,000 people on five islands 40km off-shore into the Atlantic. This innovative scheme will re-use two international service cables while navigating one of Europe’s most environmentally protected zones.

Take-up is also building strongly with over 24,000 subscribers through 32 service providers, including over 3,000 small businesses. Businesses continue to do great things with these connections.

We are also pushing ahead with our Research & Innovation programme with local universities “Superfast Cornwall Labs” doing lots of work on superfast broadband.

In what ways has winning the Broadband InfoVision award helped raise the profile of what you are trying to achieve?

In several ways: within Cornwall it has helped people recognise the importance and uniqueness of the programme that is underway and encouraged them to get involved. So we’ve seen great take-up as a result.

More widely in the UK it has helped us to highlight to other regions the impact that superfast broadband can have and the need to use it to enable economic and social transformation.

As a result we have had a large number of visits to Cornwall to find out more and many UK regions are now building their own replica programmes, with a number already underway.

And internationally there has been a lot of interest in the public-private partnership model we have pioneered as a means of bring networks sustainably to rural areas.

What has been the most surprising feedback you have had from winning the award?

There has been a real mix. When we have brought fibre to remote communities in Cornwall they have often been very surprised and then a little sceptical. When we tell them that the programme has won a world award it starts to make them realise how lucky they are.

Probably the most fun is when you meet people from central London or other cites that can’t get more than ADSL and they just can’t believe this is happening in such a remote and rural corner of Europe.

How do you plan to further raise public and industry support for the project this year?

We have been promoting the project at a number of industry conferences during the year to get the word out there and we are starting to see other replica activity around the world.

But its important to remember that this is not just about building the network, but about getting people connected and seeing them do new things, work in new ways and be more competitive and productive.

These latter elements are often missing from programmes. We expect to publish research later in the year evidencing how businesses in Cornwall and being more competitive and productive and the maco-economic and social impact of this.

Robin Mersh, CEO of Broadband Forum

We speak to Robin Mersh and Jason Walls of industry body the Broadband Forum, winner of last year’s Broadband InfoVision Award for ‘Outstanding Contribution to Broadband Success’ for its TR-069 CPE WAN Management Protocol.

This year’s Broadband InfoVision Awards will take place in Amsterdam on October 23rd. For more information and to register, please visit: www.broadbandinfovisionawards.com

Can you bring us up to speed on where development of the TR-069 protocol is now?

Jason Walls: “Compared to where things were this time last year, we are very close to pushing out amendment five of the protocol, which is going to have lots of improvements, and that is probably going to be a stable release for quite a while.

“We are also working a lot more with external parties on developing official data models for certain devices. So a group will come to us and say, ‘we want to use TR-069 to control our devices or to have devices that can control this protocol’, so they will work directly with us to make sure they are doing it right, and a lot of those end up being official Broadband Forum data models.

“It is terrific finishing amendment five, and we are now taking a look down the road to what we want to do next. The most recent stuff that we added includes looking into how TR-069 can enable certain machine-to-machine communications, even if it is just from a management perspective, so that service providers can know what devices are out there and what their connection details are.”

In what ways has winning the Broadband InfoVision award helped raise the profile of the Broadband Forum’s work?

Robin Mersh: “One of the things that is challenging when doing standards development work is knowing how successful you are – we are always talking about different kinds of metrics, and one of the things we can’t do is just look at device sales, because we aren’t a product company.

“A measure like this is very useful, to be able to say that it has had industry recognition is a very good thing, for an organisation like ours, because it is fairly unusual to get awards like this, and we were the first organisation of our type to win an award in this category with Informa.

“So that was a really good step to take, and believe me we have definitely been using this in our marketing, and making sure that people on the stand are aware that the award does mean something. When we got back to the next quarterly meeting after the awards last October we had a small reception and took stock of how far we had come.

“For people like Jason who chair the technical working group for BroadbandHome, there is a lot of work involved which is on top of their day job, and done in their own time.”

What has been the most surprising feedback you have had from winning the award?

Robin: “One thing I did hear about during last year’s Broadband World Forum was that our member companies that have promoted their adoption of the TR-069 protocol were saying it was a great win for them, as it highlighted the value of TR-069.

“So the fact that they can relate to it and the fact that it is award-winning is very useful and has a knock-on effect to our members that implement TR-069, so I think there were definitely some knock-on effects form winning this award.”

Glenn Booth, Alcatel-Lucent

We speak to Glenn Booth, VP of wireless portfolio & strategy at Alcatel-Lucent, about winning last year’s Broadband InfoVision Award for ‘Best Broadband Access – Wireless’ for the lightRadio solutions portfolio.

This year’s Broadband InfoVision Awards will take place in Amsterdam on October 23rd. For more information and to register, please visit: www.broadbandinfovisionawards.com

Can you bring us up to speed on where development of the lightRadio portfolio is now?

We are thrilled with the progress we have made with lightRadio and its three pillars of LTE, small cells and cloud architecture.

In terms of the progress that we have made in the market, the LTE lightRadio solution is shipping today, we have 38 LTE wins around the world, so a lot of these are service providers that are leading the market in LTE, including the biggest networks in the world like Verizon and AT&T.

We have customers in Europe who are starting to move more aggressively, including Orange, and we have really a dominant position with the two biggest builds that will happen in 2013 for LTE with Sprint and China Mobile.

So it’s been an exciting time for us, we’ve got excellent traction with our lightRadio small cells portfolio as well, which has won more than 50 customers to date, and a lot of those are with new customers, so we are seeing that adoption rate continue to steadily increase.

That adoption rate is being fuelled by the lightRadio product portfolio, on which we have driven a number of new products to market in the past 12 months, such as baseband products, wideband radios, an IP management system.

On small cells we have continued to add new band classes, new form factors, from enterprise and our metro portfolio in particular.

In what ways has winning the Broadband InfoVision award helped raise lightRadio’s profile?

It’s been important for us, third-party validation of lightRadio has really been very good across the industry.

We have won more than 20 industry awards in the short time since we launched lightRadio, and winning the Broadband InfoVision Award is really an honour.

We take it as a strong proof point recognising that the innovative vision that we have for the mobile broadband market is actually being realised in our product deliveries and in our market traction.

This really reinforces our image and our identity in the marketplace as an innovator in mobile broadband.

What has been the most surprising feedback you have had from winning the award?

The feedback has been reassurance from our customers that we’re innovating and delivering our products. We went out with a big vision 18 months ago with lightRadio, and are seeing this really now as a real proof point that we have delivered against that vision.

That’s been very important for us and it’s reinforced the idea that we have for the market that as we develop the next generation of infrastructure with LTE and small cells, it gives operators this unique ability to drive multimedia services that they can use to win in their markets and really differentiate against their competition.

So that feedback loop has been very positive for us as a result of the awards.

How do you plan to further improve the portfolio this year?

If you look at the strength that we’ve had, it’s been really focused on having success with the first movers and those that want to win in their markets by deploying next-generation broadband – and that’s at the heart of lightRadio.

So that’s high-speed data, high capacity for LTE and for small cells, and it’s those that want to deploy in a decisive manner, which means a complete deployment versus a complement to what they already have in their network.

So if you take that into account for our lightRadio portfolio plans, we will be dramatically adding capacity to our new BBUs, so that we can support the data explosion and success that our biggest customers have had with LTE.

We will also have a strong emphasis in terms of broadcast and carrier aggregation, and also voice over LTE, which we believe is going to be tremendously important to carriers that are driving this new world of voice and data blended together.

We will continue to drive the completion of our small cells lightRadio portfolio so that we can augment this capacity, there is an almost infinite number of bands that we are getting demand for from our customers, as well as different form factors.

So we will be increasing the completeness of our portfolio and using that as a complement of the macro portion of lighRadio through the remainder of 2013.

The LTE World Summit, the premier 4G event for the telecoms industry, is taking place on the 24^th-26^th June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. Click here to download a brochure for the event.

1 Gbps broadband is coming to Provo, Utah – probably

Google has revealed plans to brings its super-fast broadband project ‘Google Fiber’ to the city of Provo, Utah, by acquiring the city’s existing fibre network for a nominal fee of $1.

The agreement with Provo city council (owner of the existing iProvo network) is not complete yet however.

It is dependent on a vote by the city council scheduled for today (Tuesday 23rd April), although reports suggest that the city council is overwhelmingly in favour of the deal.

If it goes ahead, Google plans to commence network upgrades immediately, and will start offering its free 5 Mbps service to every home connected to the iProvo network in late 2013.

The search giant plans to roll out its high-speed 1Gbps service and IPTV service ‘Google Fiber TV’ at a later date.

VDSL vectoring boosts copper line speeds to near-fibre levels

Paris-based telecoms equipment vendor Alcatel-Lucent has passed the milestone of one million line shipments of its VDSL2 vectoring technology, which boosts broadband speeds to near-fibre levels by eliminating line noise between multiple copper lines.

Alcatel-Lucent’s one million VDSL2 vectoring lines have been delivered to 11 different service providers, including Belgacom and Telekom Austria, and the company has been involved in more than 40 trials for the technology.

Amongst those operators trialling the technology are P&T Luxembourg, which has implemented the world’s first trial combining VDSL2 vectoring with bonding, a technique claimed to double the distance over which 100Mbps can be provided.

Federico Guillén, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s Fixed Networks business, said: “Many broadband customers around the world still only get 2 to 8Mbps connections at home. Knowing that their existing DSL plug in the wall could provide up to 100Mbps is very exciting.”

1 Gbps broadband is coming to Austin, Texas

Google has confirmed that residents of the city of Austin, Texas will be next in line to benefit from its Google Fiber project, which delivers super-fast broadband speeds over a dedicated fibre-to-the-home network.

The company aims to start connecting homes in Austin by mid-214, and will offer a similar choice of services as those available in Kansas City, including 1Gbps broadband and an IPTV service called ‘Google Fiber TV’, which currently offers nearly 200 HD television channels. Prices will be “roughly similar” to those available in Kansas City.

Kevin Lo, General Manager of Google Fiber, commented: ”In Kansas City we’ve been amazed to see how Gigabit connectivity has really been able to bring people together. We think its even more awesome if you can get multiple communities in multiple cities. That’s why we’re so excited to be here in Austin, Texas.”

Google will also offer customers in Austin the option of a “free” 5Mbps internet connection for seven years – provided they shoulder the one-off construction fee (which costs $300 in Kansas City) – and will connect many public institutions such as schools and hospitals with a 1Gbps connection for free.

Milo Medin, Vice President of Google Fiber, described Austin as a “mecca for creativity and entrepreneurialism”, adding that the city has thriving artistic and tech communities, as well as the University of Texas and a new medical research hospital, and predicts that residents will “do amazing things with gigabit access”.

Google’s fibre ambitions do not appear to stop at Kansas City and Austin either: Medin added that he hopes this latest installation will “inspire communities across America to think about what ultrafast connectivity could mean for them”.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Kevin Lo, General Manager of Google Fiber, will be a keynote speaker at the Broadband World Forum 2013, to be held in Amsterdam on 22nd-24th October. For more information and to register, please visit www.broadbandworldforum.com