Spanish carrier Telefónica has indicated that it will install fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) connections across the Spanish capital this year, with 1.3 million homes and businesses in Madrid to be provided with 100Mbps connections.
Mobile operators worldwide should be preparing for an impending surge in traffic over the next several years, with mobile users in 2016 consuming an average of 6.5 times as much video, over eight times as much music and social media, and nearly ten times as much games than in 2011.
UK telco BT has celebrated a considerable milestone for its fibre broadband project, having now passed ten million homes and business with its roll-out, months ahead of its end-2012 target.
Tore Kristoffersen is the CTO of Altibox, an internet, IPTV and VoIP service delivered over FTTH in Norway and Denmark. Kristoffersen is speaking at the LTE World Summit, taking place on the 23-24 May 2012 CCIB, Barcelona, Spain. Ahead of the conference we speak to him about where LTE fits into this fibre provider’s strategy.
City Telecom, one of the biggest telecoms operators in Hong Kong, has signed an agreement to sell its telecom and broadband assets to local company Metropolitan Light Co. for around HK$5bn ($644m).
Henry Yeung is head of network development at Hong Kong Broadband Network. He is speaking on the subject of Cloud TV on Day One of the Broadband ip&TV Asia 2012 conference, taking place on the 15th-16th May 2012, KL Convention Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In this interview he explains why network speed is at the core of what the operator does but that coverage remains a challenge.
Graham Mitchell is CEO of Crown Fibre Holdings, a group tasked with bringing ultra-fast broadband to New Zealand. He is speaking on Day Two of the Broadband ip&TV Asia 2012 conference taking place on the 15th-16th May 2012, KL Convention Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He tells Telecoms.com how New Zealand’s ambitious initiative of rolling out fibre could help others learn from its experience.
A report from Point Topic finds that smaller network operators are beginning to find a niche for high-speed broadband services in the UK, despite BT and Virgin Media gaining real scale with their own market-dominating services.
If you have recently been frustrated by buffering while watching an HD video-on-demand stream, then hold that thought. For those in the less developed parts of the world, watching HD video at all, is, quite literally, something of a pipe dream. In these countries, for those fortunate enough to be able to move past existential concerns such as food and housing, internet connectivity and bandwidth is still a mere fraction of what those in developed countries are used to. It’s a pain point of which Dileep Agrawal, chief executive of Nepalese ISP WorldLink, and a speaker at the Broadband ip&TV Asia conference in May, is only too aware.
Shayan Sanyal, Chief Commerical Officer for Bluwan, talks to telecoms.com about the challenges operators face in delivering large amounts of data and how they can use small cells to overcome this challenge cost effectively. But small cells themselves raise new challenges in terms of backhaul.
UK telco BT has successfully trialled the delivery of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband on an on-demand basis in St Agnes, Cornwall, delivering speeds of up to 300 Mbps
Sky, the UK TV broadcaster and ISP has announced that it is adding a fibre broadband product to its internet packages, while also for the first time offering an á la carte internet TV service to compete with UK newcomer Netflix.
Sky’s fibre service, based on the UK incumbent BT’s wholesale network, will offer download speed of 40Mb at a cost of £20 a month, undercutting BT. Sky said that the fibre package would be available to 30 per cent of UK homes, and that this would increase in line with BT’s fibre rollout.
France Telecom-Orange has signed a partnership agreement with Bouygues Telecom to share the Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) networks it has deployed across France.
UK incumbent telco BT has added a further 178 exchanges across the country to its fibre deployment programme. These new exchanges cover more than 1.8mn homes and businesses, and the majority of them will be enabled in 2012.
A raft of new names are poised to enter the UK’s super-fast broadband market and challenge incumbent BT by building alternative fibre-based networks, according to UK analyst firm Point Topic.
Croatian incumbent T-Hrvatski Telekom has said that it is locked in a stalemate with the country’s regulator over fibre broadband, which is hindering the country’s economy. The operator added that it cannot see a resolution in the near future to the stand-off, which has already dragged on for two years.
Dutch telco KPN has announced a number of measures designed to strengthen its involvement in Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) networks in the Netherlands, including the acquisition of four fibre service providers.
The European Parliament and the EU’s Council of Ministers is considering a proposal from the European Commission for an ambitious project, worth up to €100bn ($140bn), to fund the rollout of fibre broadband and associated services across the EU.
BT expects to have connected two-thirds of UK premises to its fibre-based broadband network by the end of 2014 – one year ahead of its original target of 2015 – thanks to its recruitment of 520 new engineers, most of whom will be ex-armed forces.
EU Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes has announced a public consultation looking for ways to make copper-based telecommunications networks less attractive to operators in a bid to spur investment in fiber.
Consolidation, convergence and competitionCalls for consolidation in the European mobile market grow louder by the week and four-operator markets look increasingly challenged. Now, those mobile operators that have already built scale seem to be suggesting that there is no option but to expand yet further through diversification.
It is testament to Telstra’s aggressive approach to mobile broadband that an operator in a country of just over 23 million people should rank in the top ten operators worldwide in terms of LTE subscriber numbers. Mike Wright, Telstra’s executive director for networks and access technologies talks to Telecoms.com about the firm’s plans for further enhancing its LTE operation with fresh spectrum and LTE-Advanced capabilities.
Jonathan Bell, VP of Marketing at OpenCloud, discusses how policy and pricing are just two dimensions along which telecoms operators can differentiate their propositions. By adding a third dimension, the service behaviour itself, operators can define and bring true innovation to the market that surpasses the traditional approaches of the past, he says.
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With summer supposedly fast approaching, many look to trim some fat and get in shape for the sunny months. The Informer has never been a huge fan of gyms; in fact his favourite machine in the gym is the one that sells chocolate. Telefonica’s UK arm O2, is one business that is looking to get lean for the holidays, though, and this week it announced that it is to trim 3,500 UK employees.