Been lurking for quite a while and I know there's an abundance of knowledgeable people here.
We all know the future IS the net. How it fosters job and economic growth can't be forecast, nobody knows but I bet it pans out to be 1000x the estimates. What we do know is that without it we are not in the game. If we don't start building soon we will be so far behind we'll never catch up. (Smart people with marketable skills needing the internet for a living will move out of country, simple as that.)
If we agree on that we also agree that we need FTTH. So how do we do it? Do we bust up the big players and copy South Korea? Do we Nationalize the net?
The one thing I KNOW for sure is with our vast natural resources and a nationwide FTTH network Canada would be unbeatable.
Totally agree.. I explain whats going on to everybody I know, some look like naked shivering sheep when I'm done with them, others are still too stupid to grasp it.
Thing is we need to protect our friends and families, can't expect everybody to be geeks like us.
The indy isps need to start rolling out FTTH or FTTP in selected areas that they can profit and grow off of. They need to get off the incumbents teets.
How about a nationalized FTTH network?If verizion can see profits as quick as they did off their investment why not use taxpayer $$ and use future profits to expand to remote communities?
The indy isps need to start rolling out FTTH or FTTP in selected areas that they can profit and grow off of.
Verizon just dumped a whole bunch of their FIOS because it wasn't profitable. The problem is, it costs money upfront to put FTTH it into effect, people want to pay less not more. It's easier to lower prices on existing infrastructure, not new....The majority of people don't know the difference between speed tiers, sure a forum dedicated to the internet will, but i'd be willing to bet that 95% of customers are on the slowest and 2nd slowest speeds (I include 2nd because here in MB, the slowest DSL is 256/256, other locations it's a bit quicker). They simply do not want to pay more, meaning profit is probably a decade away
I'm happy with the current approach of pushing fibre closer and closer to the home that DSL and cable providers in Canada are taking now. There's a pretty smooth transition path from one end to the other for both DSL and cable, and they both end up on PON. PON is shared fibre, kind of the fibre equivalent of cable internet, but massively faster. It's the ultimate end-goal; it's probably unlikely that we'll ever have active fibre networks, but PON is good enough. The current best is 10GPon, which delivers a shared 10Gbps to 128 homes, fast enough to provide a triple play and gigabit internet to each home.
Here, to me understanding, are the migration paths for DSL and cable. When those in the industry read this, please suggest corrections, since I'm probably getting some stuff wrong.
DSL
Fibre to the CO Description: Fibre delivers connectivity to the CO, traditional phone loops are used for access Performance to customer: 3-8Mbps (no line-level bonding supported) Bell offering: Sympatico ADSL1 Status: Still in use for customers outside of Bell's FTTN/FTTC/FTTB deployments
Fibre to the Node Description: The telco deploys fibre-fed remotes in neighbourhoods. Customer phone lines terminate at remotes rather than CO. Shorter loop lengths enable higher ADSL access speeds. Performance to customer: 10-16Mbps, or 20-32 with bonding Bell offering: Sympatico ADSL2+ Status: Widely deployed to most of Bell's network, available to most customers.
Fibre to the Curb/Fibre to the Basement Description: The telco installs cabinets closer to customer homes, or in the case of MDUs, in the basement (wiring rooms). This is the shortest copper loop lengths can get, and enables VDSL2 to be used to serve speeds of up to 100Mbps with pair bonding. Performance: 25-50Mbps, or 50-100Mbps with bonding/vectoring Bell offering: Fibe VDSL2 Status: Deployed in parts of major cities like Montreal.
Fibre to the Premises Description: The telco replaces the short copper loop between the cabinet and the home with shared fibre, producing a passive optical network. This is the ultimate end-goal. Doesn't scale as high as active fibre (where each customer gets a dedicated strand), but active fibre is not economically practical on a large scale, and passive networks scale into the gigabits per second at the moment, with more forseen in the future. Performance: 1Gbps+ Bell offering: N/A Status: The next and final step in Bell's transition to FTTP. Already deployed in various parts of the world.
Cable
Fibre to the Node Description: Due to the shared nature of cable, with many customers connected to a node, this was the only practical way to deliver cable internet from the start. It's the traditional cable internet setup: fibre delivers connectivity to the node, which serves hundreds or thousands of homes through multiple loops. Performance: 7-15Mbps Videotron offering: Classic Videotron service, up to DOCSIS 2 Status: Available to pretty much all Videotron customers
Fibre to the Last Amplifier Description: Fibre is pushed deeper into the network, eliminating the need for amplifiers. No active devices are needed on the coax between the node and the customer. Can serve as few as 125 customers per node. Performance: 30-120Mbps today, possibly some multiple of that with more DOCSIS 3.0 channels later. Will probably not hit a gigabit per second. Videotron offering: Videotron's DOCSIS 3.0 services Status: Available to most Videotron subscribers in major cities, although the highest speeds are only available in limited areas.
Fibre to the Premises (RFoG) Description: The cableco replaces the last mile with fibre, but continues to use their existing hardware on both ends. The customer has fibre going into their home, but a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem is still used for internet connectivity (RFoG stands for Radio Frequency over Glass, the ONT (Optical Network Terminal) converts it to coaxial copper in the customer's home). This is a stepping stone to a PON. Performance: Hundreds of megabits per second, possibly 1Gbps in the future due to lack of noise and ability go over 1GHz Videotron offering: N/A Status: The likely next step for Videotron, although they're still pretty far away from maxing out FTTLA.
Fibre to the Premises (PON) Description: The same last mile is used as in the previous step, but internet connectivity is switched from RFoG with a cable modem to Ethernet from the ONT. Some PON providers like Verizon FiOS still use RFoG rather than IPTV for television connectivity for convenience; it allows even old analog TVs to connect to the service without any extra hardware since the ONT provides traditional coaxial output. Performance: 1Gbps+ Videotron offering: N/A Status: We should see this relatively shortly after RFoG. Videotron may even skip RFoG for internet entirely and just go this route, although they'd probably still use RFoG for television.
As you can see, both Bell and Videotron have a pretty clear migration path, and they're both pushing through the steps at a decent rate. They might not quite as far along as other providers, but unlike many people, I don't have any problems with Bell or Videotron's technological progress. A bit more aggressive would be nice, but we're currently moving at a pretty good clip, and DOCSIS 3.0 is putting a lot of pressure on Bell to pick up the pace. Most of the problems we have with Internet access in Canada (pricing, speeds, throttling, caps) are policy rather than technology.
We need to sit down with a cooperative government and look at what plans are realistic. Choose one, and make it so.
It is just a question of telling the nation that this is a goal and getting it done.
JFK set a goal to get a man to the moon. They achieved it. JFM, if elected as Prime Minister, would set a goal to get FTTH deployed as open network and would achieve this.
Implementing it like Australia is very costly. But some commercial cooperation with incumbents might work better. But the specifics of such project still need to be developped.
BTW, the song is from a troup called "Avenue Q" which is an adult satire of Sesame Street. A very populat show on Broadway and has traveled the world now. The male signer is "Trekkie Monster" (a satire of cookie monster). You can see the original on youtube of you search "Avenue Q".
The government could fix this mess very economically really. Force end user network providers to either sell off their end user networks to an unbias 3rd party for all to use fairly and be priced fairly, OR force them to sell their retail internet service business to a 3rd party.
Myself, I would love to see a 3rd party fiber network built that all cable, telecom and ISP's can buy into for end user access, but I just don't see this kind of investment. Another option is each city, town etc. offer dark fiber like they do for water and sewage services, only make it so that Telecom, cable and other providers are forced to use this shared service instead of running their own wires in a community. With everyone investing buy buying rights access to the fiber, will pay to provide this service. This requires vision.. something very few political types have.
Last I checked we were doing too good compared to the g8 and 20.. Dollar up to 1.03ish...
We are rich compared to the rest of the world.. Problem is it's not getting shared or reinvested.
You realize that's because the American dollar is down, and not because ours went up in value right?
A higher dollar is very detrimental to Canadian businesses, it pushes American and Foreign investments and exports away.
An American builder now has to pay more to get BC lumber because of the dollar. So ultimately contracts, and other arrangements will get shifted to other countries and Canada would loose a lot on exports.
I'm happy with the current approach of pushing fibre closer and closer to the home that DSL and cable providers in Canada are taking now.
The AT&T approach is to delaying investment until cable has caused you to lose so many customers that you have no choice but to go FTTH or die. Best short term interest of AT&T shareholders. Not necessarily long term because the justification for FTTH will only arrive once the telco has lost so much market share that it will no longer have a choice. This is exactly what happened in Québec City where Bell didn't do upgrades and got its ass beaten by Videotron.
This may not be in the best interest of a nation where the internet has become an essential utility and where a nation's economic growth depends on the internet at high speed being widely available.
Railways were considered strategic to nations. Then highways. Now, it is the internet.
When John A McDonald decided that railway was strategic, he set forth a plan and promised to have rails from coast to coast. This is part of the constitution. And he made it happen. He paid CP Rail handsomly and gave it all that land to put its tracks and stations. Yes, CP Rail got a hell of a lot more "freebies" from Canada than Bell Canada ever did.
And this project is enshrined into the constitiution to a point where when Mulroney castrated Via Rail, BC went to the supreme court and won its case, forcing Via Rail to re-instate the Victoria to Courtenay train service. (which doesn't take cyclists BTW, but one of 2 remaining rail services using Budd RDCs in north america).
The transcontinental railway didn't get built overnight. It was a huge challenge. And a FTTH nationwide service won't happen overnight either. So you need to start now and have systematic and constant progress.
FTTN is no big deal. Bell only brags about it because it wants to convince CRTC to allow exhorbitant rates. You need to realise that in many cases, underground conduits already exist. This is just a glorified extension cord that allows Bell to install a DSLAM next to a sidewalk instead of inside a central office. In most cases, the underground conduits already existed and were populated with copper pairs. And the new DSLAMs re-use the same copper pairs from the existing JWI to the homes.
What is not clear is whether Bell will re-use the same DSLAM locations for optical splitters or whether it will put optical splitters closer to homes to reduce the amount of fiber that needs to be laid. (aka: optical splitter for 32 homes instead of 128). Doing so also happens to increase bandwdith available to each home since fewer homes share the same 1gbps carrier.
In the case of Québec City, since none of that had been done and it was mostly still an all aerial plant, they could choose the best locations for the optical splitters without any bias dictated by existing neighbourhood dslams.
Since upgraded areas like montreal and toronto will likely be last to get gpon, it may take a while before we know whether the existing curbside dslam locations will be re-used for optical splitters or whether Bell will choose different locations.
It also depends on whether the copper plant is fully aerial, hyrbid (trunks underground, copper pairs aerial), or fully underground. So we may end up seeing some neighbourhoods getting optical splitters serving 1238 homes whole others serve only 32 homes.
I suspect some research people within Bell engineering would have spent time looking at different scenarios for different urban/rural scenarios. But we're not likely to see this unless some kind Bell employee would be willing to leak such powerpoints to someone like me <hint ! hint >
Fibre to the CO Description: Fibre delivers connectivity to the CO, traditional phone loops are used for access Performance to customer: 3-8Mbps (no line-level bonding supported)
Why not just say "DSLAM in the CO" ? This is the better description. And you can still have a VDSL2 DSLAM in a CO to serve the homes immediatly around the CO.
Fibre to the Node Description: The telco deploys fibre-fed remotes in neighbourhoods. Customer phone lines terminate at remotes rather than CO. Shorter loop lengths enable higher ADSL access speeds. Status: Widely deployed to most of Bell's network, available to most customers.
FTTN is Bell marketing speak. In many cases, the fibtre was already there to serve ADSL1 or ADSL2+ DSLAMs. Bell simply upgraded the DSLAMs to support VDSL2.
Also, there is still copper continuity for POTS and "surplus" customers when there are no free ports on the local DSLAM. So the POTS service doesn't get terminated at the remote, except for certain types of remotes.
I am not sure how much the "widely deployed" status really applies. Cities like Ottawa are like québec city, unupgrded. Bell chose to do Ottawa as FTTN instead of FTTH, possibly for political reasons.
Fibre to the Curb/Fibre to the Basement Status: Deployed in parts of major cities like Montreal.
Same as "FTTN".
VDSL2 is only officialy deployed in Montreal and Toronto to support IPTV. IPTV only serves those two marklets at the moment because Bell only has 2 server farms. I suspect they will be deploying a new server farm for Québec city to add IPTV to their FTTH package.
Fibre to the Premises Description: The telco replaces the short copper loop between the cabinet and the home with shared fibre, producing a passive optical network.
Not that simple. The install an ONT in the CO. Use fibre to the optical splitter in a neighbourhood, possibly reusing the fibre for existing DSLAM (and possibly extending it) and then striong fibre from the splitter to the homes.
Economics and urban architecture will dictate whether the telco uses the DSLAM location as an optical splitter location or whether the will put optical splitters even closer to homes. Those are decisions which I don't think Bell has taken yet and will also depend on equoipment and average instrallation costs at the time Bell does it.
Cable Fibre to the Node
They moved from coax from the CMTS to home to "fibre to the node" for many reasons:
range: extend further from the CMTS while keeping signal quality good.
bandwidth: provide greater number of channels with newer equipment.
#customers: with shorter coax segment and fewer customers per coax, you can increase total number of customers with good quality. Put too many customers and the TV signal quality degrades.
The upgrades to RFOG also coincided with deployment of bi directional internet, so they used those upgrades to also ensure bi directionality by adding 42mhs upstream repeaters. (now, thsi 42mhz is proving to be a limitation, and they would have to upgrade all those nodes on telephone poles to increase bandwidth, but before this happens, they will configure multi-channel docsis-3 upstream channel bonding in that 42mhz range, but have to move some analogue TV channels to free up bandwidth in that 42mhz range.
One thing mr Guspaz did not discuss is the possibility of cable going IPTV. AKA: one channel per home (or per active TV). In a node with some 128 homes, this takes up far less bandwidth on the coax than broadcasting all channels all the time. IPTV also allows video on demand on a large scale.
Right now, video on demand for cable can only work on a small scale because they only have a relatively small number of TV channels usable for dynamic allocation and if those channels are all being used by the neighbours, when you want to see your own program, there may not be any channels available for your program.
Going IPTV solves all of that. Also makes it possible to switch from old MPEG2 to MPG4 which also saves a tremendous amount of bandwidth.
Does Bell often use the remote DSLAM for regular DSL?
For some reason they would only keep me at the CO for regular DSL service, despite the fact there is a remote only 300 m away. This becomes a big issue for regular DSL speed in my home.
Mind you, I was with a third party reseller and already at connected at the CO, so I wonder if they just felt it was a waste of time and effort to connect me to the remote.
They are going to make you pay more to get on the remote. My understanding is that for retail, you will have to be a on Fibe plan and for wholesale on the new, pricier GAS-FTTN service. I expect that over time, they will groom legacy GAS and retail subscribers currently on remotes back to the CO to free up ports and create an incentive to upgrade.
Here, to me understanding, are the migration paths for DSL and cable. When those in the industry read this, please suggest corrections, since I'm probably getting some stuff wrong.
I would simply answer that we don't need FTTH right now. We only need lower caps and lower price. FTTH won't solve any of our current problems. We get high enough speeds without FTTH. 30/50/120 Mbps cable is more than fast enough for our current needs. Even DSL is quick enough with VDSL2 and ADSL2+. But if your whole neighborhood is served by a Gbps fiber cable, it doesn't really mater if individual clients are connected with fiber or coper. The bottleneck is still the shared Gbps link. If we had FTTH, I bet the caps wouldn't be any better anyways (and the shared link would still be unused at night).
The same goes for wireless. Please stop. 21 Mbps HSPA+ is enough for the next few years. Just make sure that your network is not congested, lower prices, raise caps, and we will be happy.
FTTH is certainly an end goal and would be great, and sure I would like it tomorrow if possible.
What we need though, is a proper plan for broadband which will be enforced strictly.
In the short term we need prices to lower, caps to be abolished, and speeds to steadily increase to match what's available internationally. Not only for home internet but for mobile as well.
In the long term we need to ensure we can catch up, and then surpass the quality of networks being deployed internationally, such as what we're seeing in europe, australia, parts of asia and even in the united states, and that includes FTTH.
How do we implement it? It's all politics so I have no idea. I'm an IT person, not a politician. Let me know when we start the technical stuff, if it isn't soon enough you'll be able to find me somewhere else, maybe I'll go to nigeria, they'll soon have better internet than us.
I think you are absolutely correct, FTTH is the Future and Verizon in our country is the only Company that has seen this. So even a Company as large as Verizon can't implement this for our entire Nation. I worked and retired from a Telco during the Boom years of the Internet, and now I live in a Community of 5000 homes that didn't have have Broadband when I moved in 11 years ago. I quickly joined a Community Committee, and within one year we had Broadband from Time Warner and Verizon. It's hard to control a Nation, but you can control your Community. So if you really want FTTH in your Community, form a group and come up with a plan to achieve this goal.
How about a nationalized FTTH network?If verizion can see profits as quick as they did off their investment why not use taxpayer $$ and use future profits to expand to remote communities?
Point of order; Verizon is not seeing the profits they thought. FiOS is on an indefinite hold until they get more subscribers in the areas where FiOS is deployed. The average sign up rate is 30%; ouch.
Does Bell often use the remote DSLAM for regular DSL?
Mind you, I was with a third party reseller and already at connected at the CO, so I wonder if they just felt it was a waste of time and effort to connect me to the remote.
A CLEC cannot provide DSL from a remote as there is no room for collocation. The ILEC only offers 3 Mbs as the T-carrier from the CO to the remote has limited capacity. It was designed for voice as DSL did not exist when it was engineered.
IF Verizon Kept raising prices on non-Fios tiers like Bell does to their grandfathered customers.. that rate will probably change quite quickly.
Only 1/2 of Verizon's area is wired for FiOS and in Verizon's core North East US area the completion is fierce. My cable company, Cablevision, now offers a 101/15 for $55 a month bundled for one year. I can see FiOS a few streets from me but that feeds from a different CO. Verizon is now offering 10 to 15 ADSL2+ out of my CO so the glass that is hanging on the poles in my area is dark and most likely will stay dark for some time. Verizon spent 21 billion for 1/2 their area and only 30% signed up. Verizon needs a return on the first 21 billion before they spend another 21 billion.
