1Gbps Fiber at home

1 Gbps Fiber Comes Home

Posted by Sam Churchill on June 7th, 2011

A new development on the shores of Lake Ontario will offer Internet connections 500 times faster than most homes, offering speeds of up to 10 gigabits a second for businesses or 100 megabits for residential use. It’s modeled on similar undertakings in Seoul, Tokyo, Stockholm, London and Paris. The Toronto broadband project is expected to be a crucial draw for the residential and commercial space east of downtown Toronto.

Acccording to Dan Armstrong, chief executive of Beanfield Metroconnect, the telecommunications company that won the Internet tender, “Having this sort of capacity available to residents will allow for a whole new world of applications we haven’t even conceived of yet.”

Each home and business in the 2,000 acre zone will be hooked up to a C$30 million fiber optic network that is guaranteed to be one of the seven best in the world for ten years after the last building is finished.

South Korea has launched a nationwide broadband upgrade to rid themselves of 100Mbps service for $38 a month. By the end of 2012, South Korea intends to connect every home in the country to the Internet at one gigabit per second and slash the monthly price to just $27 a month.

GigOm compiled a list of places that offer 1 Gbps residential connections:

• Hong Kong: The Hong Kong broadband network currently offers a FTTH/FTTB 1 Gbps service for $215 a month and is available to nearly 800,000 households.
• South Korea: The Korean government has a plan to spend $25 billion that over the next five years to bring fiber-based 1 Gbps connections to each home in South Korea.
• Cologne, Germany: Netcologne, a German city carrier, is looking to launch a service that will allow consumers to buy 1 Gbps connections in the city of Cologne sometime this year. Nearly 70,000 homes in Cologne currently buy broadband from the service provider.
• Canberra, Australia: TransACT, an Australian service provider, is trailing a networkwith speeds of up to 1 Gbps for residential customers.
• Portugal: Portugese cable operator Zon Multimedia has announced the availability of a 1 Gbps service for home users. It costs about 250 euros ($342) a month. (via)
• Amsterdam: GlasvezelNet Amsterdam (GNA), BBNed and InterNLnet have conducted a pilot of 1Gbps symmetric fibre-optic connections. The trial was carried out in the Amsterdam districts of Osdorp, Zeeburg and Oost/Watergraafsmeer. This Open FTTH effort has been rolled out in Amsterdam and is available to about 100,000 households. Reggefiber, another Dutch carrier is going to upgrade all its networks to 1 Gbps in 2010. Reggefiber is active in > 40 cities, half a million homes passed with 320,000 homes connected, thus making it one of the largest 1 Gbps deployments anywhere.
• In the US, Sonoma County will soon be home to some of the fastest residential Internet anywhere in the United States. Sonic.net, the hometown Internet provider that began 17 years ago, is only a few weeks away from completing the first phase of a fiber optic network that will run directly to people’s homes in Sebastopol. The fastest connection, which will be 1 gigabit per second, will cost $69.95 per month and include two phone lines and unlimited long distance calling. The company will also offer a 100 megabit per second connection for $39.95 monthly. Chattanooga, Tenn., will soon get 1 Gbps broadband from their municipally-owned network operator, EPB Fiber Optics.
• In Japan, both NTT and KDDI are offering 1 Gbps services to residential buildings.
• In Sweden, a 1 Gbps network has been in place since 2007.

There are several other such offerings in Scandinavia. Singapore is also building a 1 Gbps network that will be ready by 2012.

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn is pushing to bring high-speed fiber-optic connections to businesses in the city, starting in Pioneer Square. Portland’s Strategic Broadband Planaims to lay fiber to schools, hospitals and community centers, first, then build out from there.

Last Friday, the United Nations released a report that said internet access should be a right of all people:

“Given that the Internet has become an indispensable tool for realizing a range of human rights, combating inequality, and accelerating development and human progress, ensuring universal access to the Internet should be a priority for all states. Each State should thus develop a concrete and effective policy…to make the Internet widely available, accessible and affordable to all segments of population.”

ABI Research indicates that among the three broadband technologies, 65 percent of worldwide fixed broadband consumers subscribe to DSL, 25 percent to cable, and 11 percent to fiber broadband services. Fiber subscribers are increasing fastest, showing a compound annual growth rate of 20 percent from 2008 to 2014.

According to ABI Research:

• Singapore plans to cover 95% of household with 1Gbps fiber optic broadband access by 2012.
• Australia targets to connect 93% of household with 100 Mbps fiber optic broadband by 2017.
• New Zealand government has set plans to roll out 100 Mbps broadband access to 75% of households by 2019.
• China plans to increase fiber optic broadband penetration and broadband coverage with five years plan from 2011 to 2015.
• Malaysia aims to cover 1.3 million homes with high speed broadband network by the end of 2012.

China is giving a boost to the worldwide wireline broadband base with its massive fiber-based program led by the Chinese government, says Infonetics. China has set a 20Mbps benchmark for all broadband subscribers, where most today receive 2Mbps to 3Mbps at best,” notes Stéphane Téral, Infonetics Research’s principal analyst for mobile and FMC infrastructure.

Mobile broadband subscribers passed wireline broadband subscribers in 2010 (558 million vs. 500 million), says Infonetics Research. The number of cellular mobile broadband subscribers jumped almost 60% in 2010 to 558 million worldwide and should top 2 billion by 2015. WiMAX subscribers grew 75% in 2010, with more strong growth ahead, reaching 126 million in 2015.

The GSM Association predicts 1 billion HSPA connections by the end of 2012, while some 300 million LTE connections are expected by 2015. Telecom operators will invest almost $100 billion in improved and faster mobile networks over the next five years, according to a forecast by the GSM Association.

According to Ericsson, smart phones generate approximately 10 times more traffic than normal feature phones, while a mobile PC user generates 100 times more traffic than a feature phone. Worldwide smart phone sales will reach 468 million units in 2011, a 58% increase from 2010, according to research firm Gartner.