UK homes to get super-fast fibre

Source: BBC News


Laying fibre in sewers saves costly and disruptive road digging
The UK's first "fibre town" could go online in the autumn, delivering speeds of about 100Mbps (megabits per second) to consumers' homes.

Fibre firm H2O provides super-fast broadband via the sewers and either Bournemouth, Northampton or Dundee will be offered the service first.

It will compete with more established companies, such as Virgin Media, which is speeding up its cable network.

It follows government concerns that the UK is not embracing next-gen broadband.

Transforming services?

While other countries' plans for next generation broadband - offering speeds of up to 100Mbps - are well advanced, the UK has slipped down the speed league tables.

For consumers, super-fast net connections could create a range of new applications including on-demand high definition (HD) TV, DVD quality film downloads in minutes, online video messaging, CCTV home surveillance and HD gaming services.

Last month BT announced that its own fibre to the home trial at Ebbsfleet in Kent would see the first homes connected by August of this year.

But this will initially be limited to around 600 new houses. The development will eventually have some 10,000 homes connected via fibre with speeds of up to 100Mbps but the project will take until 2020 to complete.

We are talking here about fibre speed; not that dreaded word broadband
Elfed Thomas, H20

Future broadband technologies
While BT has pledged to provide all new housing estates in the UK with fibre connections it has not yet made clear its plans for existing homes.

The current telecommunications system was never designed to carry data and many have called for an urgent fibre upgrade.

BT has argued that with costs of up to £15bn to roll out such a network it needs to be convinced of demand and have assurances from the government that it will be able to recoup its investment.

At the end of last year, Virgin Media announced that it would be upgrading its entire cable network - which covers half of UK homes - to provide speeds of up to 50Mbps (megabits per second) and this is expected to begin towards the end of this year and be completed in 2009.

London-based firm Geo, which also offers fibre via the sewers, serves mainly businesses but also leases its fibre to consumer providers such as Tiscali and Carphone Warehouse.

Broadband caution

Antony Walker, head of the UK's Broadband Stakeholder's Group, cautioned that the H20 scheme could not create a fibred Britain alone.

"There are clearly benefits to using the sewers and this fibre deployment is good news but it is only a small piece of the jigsaw," he said.

The burgeoning fibre market is going to be a tough one for providers, according to Ian Fogg, an analyst with JupiterResearch.

"An optimistic view is that they will need penetration rates of between 15 and 20% of households in a particular area and with so many providers offering services that makes the business case very challenging," he said.

Mr Thomas of H2O is confident that its mega-fast service will have instant appeal for consumers and is pleased to be the first to offer such high speeds.

"We are talking here about fibre speed; not that dreaded word broadband," he said.

The service will be delivered to individual homes via a four-inch box attached to the house.

It will also serve local businesses and council services.

Bournemouth, Northampton and Dundee have been selected because H20 has already installed its fibre service to local council buildings.

The fact that the sewer-based fibre takes advantage of existing ducting means there is no need for expensive and disruptive road digging, making the system faster and cheaper to deliver.

"While deploying traditional fibre over a two-kilometre area would be six to 12 months in the planning. We can do it in four hours," said Mr Thomas.

Mr Thomas said the sewers solution was a lot cheaper than the conventional route of digging up roads.

"An average town of 75,000 homes would cost someone deploying traditional fibre between £50m and £70m. We can do it for 20 to 30% of that," said Mr Thomas.

H20 said it is in "advanced talks" with media partners and internet service providers who will offer the service to consumers. The first of these partners is due to be announced next month.

Roll-out in the chosen town will begin in September and take 18 months to complete.

Mr Thomas hopes to add another 14 towns over the next five years.

IF YOU NEED TO PURCHASE HARDWARE FOR FTTH PROJECTS PLEASE CONTACT ME BY PHONE +31650730710 OR BY MAIL DESIGNFORIT@LIVE.NL

BT to Launch 100 Mbps FTTH Greenfield in Kent

BT’s local access network business announced a greenfield FTTH deployment scheduled for this August in Ebbsfleet Valley in Kent.

The deployment will encompass Land Securities’ 1,000 acre new build project with approximately 10,000 new homes planned.











BT plans to offer data speeds of up to 100 Mbps, enabling multiple HDTV channels to be watched simultaneously, HDTV gaming, and near instant music downloads.













Openreach will offer all its products on a wholesale basis to all UK communication providers allowing for competition at a retail level.

BT already provides some 120,000 businesses across the country with fiber connections.

BT said it is also committed to increasing broadband speeds over copper, introducing services of up to 24 Mbps from Spring 2008.

IF YOU NEED TO PURCHASE HARDWARE FOR FTTH PROJECTS PLEASE CONTACT ME BY PHONE +31650730710 OR BY MAIL DESIGNFORIT@LIVE.NL

Sectra and BT partner to provide Pacs service to London hospitals

Source:CBR

Sectra, an IT and medical technology services provider based in Europe, has signed a deal with BT for the provision of picture archiving and communications system (Pacs) products and services to public hospitals in London.

Sectra will be a subcontractor to BT and take complete responsibility for support and maintenance of the systems. It will work on and supply additional Pacs products.

Sectra, which develops and markets IT-systems and products for radiology, mammography and orthopedic departments in the healthcare business, claims that more than 950 hospitals worldwide use the system.

Sectra says that the company also offers direct Pacs service and support to customers who have previously purchased Sectra products through partners.

Torbjorn Kronander, president, medical operations, Sectra, said: "This agreement confirms our ability to provide timely, first-class service and support. To be chosen to take over the service responsibility of such a large group of critical radiology operations is an acknowledgement to our very capable staff."

BT, which is the local service provider (LSP) for the NHS London Programme for IT (LPfIT), has been supplying Sectra's Pacs - which enables the handling of radiology images electronically - to London Trusts through a former partner of Sectra.

LPfIT says that the group comprises 25 hospitals that together perform more than 4 million radiology examinations a year. The programme's purpose is to offer better and safer patient care through technological innovations and new services. It uses computer systems to network general practitioners and community services to hospitals. LPfIT‚ aims, to ensure that healthcare professionals have easy access to patient information.

BT Selects Ciena’s CN 3000 Ethernet Access for 21CN

BT has selected Ciena’s CN 3000 Ethernet Access Series as one of its preferred Network Termination Equipment (NTE) platforms for its 21st Century Network (21CN). Ciena is supplying the CN 3000 Series through an OEM agreement with ANDA Networks. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The CN 3000 Series encompasses a range of copper and fiber-based NTE platforms and complementary NTE aggregators fully compliant with Metro Ethernet Forum specifications. It includes both carrier-to-carrier network demarcation devices as well as customer-located Ethernet access devices, designed specifically to allow service providers to extend homogeneous coverage of managed Ethernet services.

The CN 3000 also features Ethernet Operations, Administration and Maintenance (OAM) functionality that is integrated with Ciena’s ON-Center Network and Services Management Suite. These capabilities enable service management, Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees and end-to-end SLA verification, while ensuring operational savings, as Ethernet services can be remotely provisioned and monitored without site visits. Additionally, the flexibility of the CN 3000 Series means that devices can be upgraded remotely using software.

The agreement extends BT’s partnership with Ciena, which already supplies optical Ethernet transport and switching solutions for the 21CN transmission domain, by enabling BT to provide Ethernet access in the last mile to support the roll-out of new 21CN services and applications.
http://www.ciena.com

In February 2007, ADVA Optical Networking announced that BT had selected it as a supplier of Ethernet last mile access products for its 21st Century Network (21CN). Specifically, BT’s 21CN will deploy the ADVA FSP 150 as the Network Termination Equipment (NTE) throughout the network. The ADVA FSP 150 portfolio provides Ethernet demarcation, extension and aggregation.