Networked HomeLife Solutions
VersaLink 7501 Voice-over-WLAN Gateway
Service Provider Benefits
Easily Delivered Home Networking Provide customers with wired and wireless networking that is self-installed and ready to support new services Ensured Quality of Service Deliver wireless VoIP or UMA services that stand up to high-speed data traffic Advanced Gateway Performance Deploy a carrier-class device that is network compatible, consumer friendly, and ultimately reliable
Broadband networking with high-performance wireless and advanced Quality of Service (QoS)
VersaLink Model 7501 addresses the broadband networking demands of multiple users with wireless voice and data performance that puts service quality first. VersaLink easily connects wireless, Ethernet, and USB devices and securely delivers side-by-side services without compromises. Fully Connected in the Home A 4-port 10/100 Mbps Ethernet switch, 802.11b/g wireless access, and a USB 1.1 host provide connections to desktop and portable PCs, wireless handsets, and shared printers. The gateway supports up to 253 users behind its NAT router an sophisticated stateful packet inspection firewall. High-Performance 802.11b/g Wireless VersaLinks internal antennas and 400mW of output power provide extended range and throughput for all devices. Fewer dropouts and higher speeds define the wireless experience. Voice-over-WLAN Quality For VoWLAN applications, advanced QoS features ensure that voice quality is unaffected by high-speed data traffic in the home. VersaLink provides a separate SSID for VoWLAN devices and power management to extend handset battery life. Simple Installation and Operation A built-in setup wizard allows quick installation and configuration through a standard browser interface. Setup is further simplified by VersaLinks automatic detection of WAN connections and mapping of LAN devices.

DATA SHEET

VersaLink Voice over WLAN Gateway
Product Specifications WiFi Certified WPA - Personal WPA2 - Personal WMM WMM - Power Save System Requirements Pentium Class PC or higher Microsoft Windows (Vista, XP, 2000, ME, NT 4.0 or 98 SE) installed Macintosh OS 9.X or OS X or Linux installed USB Version 1.1 or higher compliant port (for USB connection only) Operating system CD-ROM Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher or Netscape Navigator 7.x or higher 64 MB RAM Ethernet 10/100 Base-T interface 10 MB of free hard drive space Compliance FCC, Part 15 Class B Safety ANSI/UL 60950 CAN/CSA C22.Third Edition Regulatory Approval UL, CSA, FCC Part 68, Industry Canada CS03, LE ACTA 968-A
Power Supply Routing Routing and Firewall Up to 253 users NAT, DHCP, DNS Integrated Stateful Packet Filtering Firewall IPQoS Transport and Application Protocol Support Support for PPTP/L2TP/IPSEC VPN Tunnel through NAT Router Bridged PPPoE from PC simultaneously with NAT Router PPPoE session Physical H x W x D: 1.3 x 7.0 x 4.9 (in.) Weight 0.55 lbs. (0.25 kg) without Power Supply Environmental Ambient Operating Temperature: +32 to +104 F 0 to +40 C) Relative Humidity: 5 to 95%, non- condensing 120 VAC to 12 VDC wall-mount ENERGY STAR qualified Power Consumption Less than 8W typical from 120 VAC LED Indicators Power E1, E2, E3, E4 Wireless USB WAN Connectors Power: Barrel connector Ethernet: 8-pin RJ-45 USB 1.1: 4-Pin Type B connector Wireless Features IEEE 802.11b/g 400 mW High Output transmit power Dual internal antenna design Wireless security via WEP, WPA, WPA2 WMM, WMM Power Save Push button wireless LAN setup

Wireless LAN

VersaLink Gateway

ADSL Cable FTTX

M odem Modem

Network

Ethernet Ethernet
Corporate Headquarters Westell, Inc. USA 750 N. Commons Drive Aurora, Illinois 60504 1-800-323-6883 www.westell.com VersaLink 7501 - 121508

Enter Google

Which will be more stimulating for fiber to the home the federal broadband stimulus program or Googles latest venture?
By Masha Zager Broadband Properties

Preview

Learn about fiber-to-the-home deployment challenges and successes at the Broadband Properties Summit in Dallas, April 2628, where FTTH deployers of all kinds will share their experiences with attendees.
Why does Google refer to its FTTH project as an experiment? As FTTH technology is well beyond the experimental stage, any experimentation seems likely to involve the open-access business model which has been less successful in the United States than in Europe and new uses for gigabit broadband. Google has a history of trying to act as a catalyst for the telecom industry in particular, to push it toward greater openness. In 2008, it succeeded, without actually buying any spectrum, in making open access a condition of sale in a major auction of wireless spectrum. And by championing open mobile devices, the company spurred other vendors to give smart phone users a wider choice of applications. Clearly, Googles primary business stands to benefit in the long term from innovation and competition in broadband services. For example, imagine the advertising Google could sell on an ultra-HDTV YouTube service. But whatever Googles FTTH experiment proves to be, we look forward to bringing you news of its progress in future issues. MZ
e expected this issues fiber deployment roundup to feature the award of $4 billion in broadband stimulus funds and the news that fiber-to-the-home networks were being built across the land. In fact, several FTTH stimulus awards had been made as of press time (see below), and I hope that additional awards will have been announced by the time you read this. But decisions about the stimulus funds have been frustratingly slow, and even media outlets that dont often cover broadband issues in any comprehensive way, such as National Public Radio, have begun asking pointed questions about who or what is stalling the program. The exciting news this month didnt turn out to be the stimulus program at all, at least not the official one. In a surprise move, Google said that it planned to build one or more open-access FTTH networks, and it invited municipal officials, broadband activists and ordinary residents to nominate their communities as sites for the networks. Within a few days, cities began to announce that they were interested in Googles proposal, and the company seems likely to have as many applicants as the stimulus program does. For an indepth discussion of Googles potential future as a network operator, see this issues Bandwidth Hawk column.

INDEPENDENT TELCOS

RUS Fiber
Fiber-to-the-home projects took center stage in January when Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that the Rural Utilities Service had made 14 broadband stimulus awards totaling $309 million 11 of them including FTTH. Independent telco awardees included the following: Rural Telephone Service Company, a cooperative telco that was one of the first companies in the United States to deploy fiber to the home, along with its subsidiary, Nex-Tech, will receive a grant of $49.6 million and loan funds of $51.6 million to develop broadband
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services in unserved and underserved areas of central and western Kansas. Most of the project will use FTTH technology, although some remote rural areas will be served with WiMAX. According to CEO Larry Sevier, this massive construction project will span more than 4,600 square miles and bring service to 21 towns and 26 rural areas in 11 counties. Nearly 23,000 households and businesses, including 335 community anchor institutions, will benefit, and more than 400 jobs will be created. Project partners include engineering firms RVW, Finley Engineering and HunTel Engineering along with contractors Michels Corporation, Midwest Contractors and Sellenriek Construction. Although Rural Telephones numbers are large, they dont tell the whole story. Emphasizing the importance of broadband to quality of life, Rural Telephone wrote in its application, Consider the Bolings, a deaf couple who desire broadband access to communicate with friends. Or Karen Buss, a widow trying to run a farm with her two college-age daughters, who could prepare for their futures through distance learning opportunities. The Gallentine family would benefit from telemedicine, as their doctor is 60 miles from their home. NTELOS, a large ILEC in Virginia, was awarded an $8 million grant and an $8 million loan to build an FTTH network to deliver triple-play and other services to unserved and underserved homes, businesses and critical community institutions in rural Alleghany County. The proposed service area includes an estimated 4,216 households, 233 businesses and 36 community entities. NTELOS anticipates that longterm benefits from the initiative will include enabling home-based jobs for homebound residents and those who cannot find local employment enabling home-based job training attracting new businesses and employees that require access to robust broadband Internet, data and video services improving health care by supporting

In the most recent batch of broadband stimulus awards, nearly all the last-mile projects included fiber to the home. The largest of them covers 23,000 homes and businesses.
the requirements for telemedicine capabilities, both in-home and at medical facilities improving educational opportunities for children improving communication capabilities of public safety personnel and facilities. Audeamus (Latin for let us dare), a subsidiary of Sebastian Enterprises, which owns two small ILECs in California, was awarded a $2.7 million grant and a $2.7 million loan for its Westside Broadband Project for Rural Central California. This all-fiber network, using active Ethernet equipment from Occam Networks, will provide Internet access at speeds between 3 Mbps and 100 Mbps in the farming communities of San Joaquin, Tranquillity and West Fresno. The project will pass 1,368 unserved and underserved households, 125 businesses and 24 community anchor institutions. C-M-L Telephone Cooperative Association, an Iowa ILEC, received a $1.5 million grant and a $1.5 million loan and contributed $1.5 million in matching funds toward a fiber optic network that will provide the rural communities of Archer and Meriden with high-speed Internet access at speeds exceeding 20

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Mbps, along with digital television and telephone service. Another Iowa ILEC, F & B Communications, received a $1.6 million grant and a $1.6 million loan to bring highspeed Internet services over fiber to the rural areas surrounding the communities of Bennett, Delmar and Lowden. Services include high-speed Internet access at speeds exceeding 20 Mbps, along with digital television and telephone service. North Central Telephone Cooperative in northern Tennessee received a $24.7 million grant and a $25 million loan to build out fiber in the communities of Westmoreland, Lafayette, Pleasant Shade and Defeated and to complete the builds it began in two other towns. The company will provide advanced voice, video, and data services. Northeast Louisiana Telephone Company will use its $4.4 million grant and $8.1 million loan to build an active Ethernet FTTH network with symmetrical speeds of 20 Mbps in Morehouse Parish. BEK Communications Cooperative, whose North Dakota FTTH build was featured in the January 2008 issue of this magazine, will use its $1.9 million grant, $2 million loan and $2 million in leveraged funds to provide FTTH broadband service to underserved homes and anchor institutions in Burleigh County. In the nearby area where BEK already provides broadband service, it has achieved 53 percent penetration, and 22 percent of users derive household income from using the Internet. BEK expects to duplicate this in the proposed area. Halstad Telephone Company in Minnesota received a $2 million grant and a $2 million loan to provide 100 Mbps broadband access via FTTH to 430 unserved homes and businesses in rural Hillsboro, N.D. Gervais Telephone Company, a cooperative in Oregon, was awarded a $314,430 grant and a $314,430 loan. Gervais will extend its existing fiber network to provide broadband connectivity in Marion County to residential and business end users, as well as four anchor institutions.

Other Independent Telco News Syringa Networks, a privately held provider based in Boise, Idaho, is expanding its fiber optic network into the Wasatch Front region of northern Utah, a rapidly growing area that includes Salt Lake City and Provo. This network expansion more than doubles the companys total addressable market. The expanded fiber plant will provide high-speed, self-healing fiber optic network services to businesses throughout the Wasatch Front. Greg Lowe, CEO of Syringa Networks, says, Utah businesses that have connection needs into rural Idaho have limited options with their current carriers. As eastern Idaho, Boise and Salt Lake City continue to grow, there will be increased needs for high-speed connectivity within this market. Our expansion makes it easier and more cost effective for businesses with distributed
branch offices to implement advanced telecommunication services. Wireless cellular and data carriers in the area can meet smart-phone bandwidth demand through Syringa Networks fiber-to-thetower (FTTT) program. Medicine Park Telephone Company in Oklahoma selected the Motorola GPON solution for its fiber-tothe-home network, which will allow it to offer dramatically higher-capacity broadband services, including new video offerings that use Motorolas line of RF set-top boxes. Motorola is partnering with distributor Power & Tel to reach rural providers such as Medicine Park. Etex, a subsidiary of Etex Telephone Cooperative in eastern Texas, has deployed voice, high-speed data and high-definition video services to consumers and businesses over a Brocade IP network. Etex deployed the Brocade NetIron MLX 10 GbE routers and

Vendor Spotlight

Aksh Optifibre. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.akshoptifibre.com Alcatel-Lucent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.alcatel-lucent.com Amino Communications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.aminocom.com Brocade. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.brocade.com Cisco. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.cisco.com Conklin-Intracom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.conklin-intracom.com EchoStar Satellite Services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.echostarfixedsatellite.com Enablence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.enablence.com Entone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.entone.com Ericsson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.ericsson.com Finley Engineering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.fecinc.com Genexis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.genexis.eu Geo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.geo-uk.net HunTel Engineering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.htleng.com Michels Corporation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.michels.us Microsoft. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.microsoft.com Midwest Contractors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.midwestcontractorsks.com Minerva Networks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.minervanetworks.com Motorola. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.motorola.com NetNordic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.netnordic.no Occam Networks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.occamnetworks.com PacketFront. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.packetfront.com Power & Tel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.ptsupply.com Pulse Broadband. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.pulsebroadband.net RVW. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.rvwinc.com Sellenriek Construction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (636)488-3151 Tilgin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.tilgin.com Uptown Services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.uptownservices.com Westell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.westell.com Zhone Technologies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.zhone.com

Velocity Achieves Takeoff Speed
Minnesotas Twin Cities area may soon have a fiber broadband option, thanks to competitive provider Velocity Telephone. Velocity recently launched its first fiber-tothe-home build in the community of Eagan, south of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The Gigabit Ethernet network will provide triple-play services for business and residential customers. Velocity will begin by targeting about 250 small and mid-sized businesses in Eagans business district, offering the fastest Internet connection at the lowest cost in the Twin Cities area, along with colocation, hosting, data backup and disaster recovery services as well as a hosted VoIP service. In mid-2010, Velocity plans to expand to nearby residential neighborhoods with voice, data and IPTV services. Video is new for Velocity, which up until now has resold Internet access and other voice and data services over Qwest infrastructure. Unless an existing provider steps in to offer video services over Velocitys fiber network, Velocity plans to form a separate company, the Minnesota Open Video Network, to operate the video service. Velocity has made a number of unusual choices in terms of technology, marketing and finance. Metro Ring Technology The active Ethernet network will be based on a smallfiber-ring architecture in both business and residential areas (blue lines on the map are fiber rings). As company president Jim Hickle explains, Well be daisy chaining the fiber from business to business and from house to house. This redundant, self-healing architecture is designed to reduce deployment costs, increase network reliability and minimize repair costs. Its easier on my technicians in the long run, Hickle says. I wont have to send them out at two in the morning. Another innovative technology Hickle is considering is a set-top box that integrates over-the-top (OTT) video on demand with over-the-air (OTA) linear channels, with a single interactive program guide. Velocitys initial video service in Eagan will be a traditional cable offering, but if the OTT/OTA solution proves feasible, Hickle may offer it in other communities to avoid local franchising battles. Franchise agreements are kind of a dinosaur, he says. Marketing Innovations Before beginning to build out fiber in Eagan, Velocity approached businesses there to preregister them for the service. Its offer was simple: Buy copper-based services from us today, and once the fiber is in place, you can have 10 Mbps Internet access over fiber for the same price. Many businesses including both current and new customers have already signed up for fiber, so Velocity has a guaranteed take rate from the day it turns up service. In the past, much of Velocitys marketing has been
through word of mouth (We cant yell loud enough to compete with Comcast and Qwest, Hickle says), and the company will continue that approach with its fiber network. It plans to market fiber services with the help of fiber sponsors, customers who agree to help spread the word by showing their neighbors how fiber-based solutions can improve their businesses. Financing the Build Velocity aims to build FTTP networks covering the entire MinneapolisSt. Paul metropolitan area. At first, the company sought municipal partners to finance open-access networks but failed to find any takers. Joint financing arrangements, such as secondary letters of credit issued by municipalities, are prohibited under state law. That left the company on its own to find financing. As a small company in a capital-constricted time, were not going to get $1 billion at once, Hickle says with characteristic understatement. Rather than miss another construction season, he decided to start small. He would build as large a project as he could finance (in this case, about $750,000 worth), make it cash-flow positive as quickly as possible by presigning customers, and move on to the next project. He selected Eagan for the trial run because it is a community with a high demand for broadband lots of high-tech companies and telecommuters that is largely underserved. After the Eagan network is up and running, whats next? Hickle is still optimistic about municipal financing, which would allow the company to build networks in multiple communities at the same time; he says municipalities are showing more interest now that Velocity is actually building a network. If public financing doesnt materialize, however, he will continue with his piecemeal approach. There are plenty of underserved communities in the Twin Cities area.

Municipal Fiber

Three Municipalities Move Ahead With Citywide Fiber
The city of Salisbury, N.C., selected Zhone Technologies MXK and zNID fiber-to-the-home solutions as the platforms for its municipal broadband initiative now under way. In addition, Ericsson will provide the IPTV technology for Salisburys deployment. Salisbury officials cite interactive HDTV, telemedicine, advanced emergency services and greater community cohesion as potential differentiators in attracting knowledge workers and seeding new business growth in the digital economy. We dont want to rely on the technology or timeline of existing carriers to meet our goals for a communications network that gives us a competitive advantage in attracting new businesses to our city, says Mike Crowell, director of broadband services for Salisbury. Ketchikan Public Utilities Telecommunications Division (KPU) selected Enablence technology for its FTTP rollout in Ketchikan, Alaska, a community of about 14,000. KPU, which currently operates a DSL network and has deployed FTTP on a trial basis since 2007, will now transition its network from DSL to fiber and offer high-speed voice, data and digital HDTV. Through a contract worth approximately $660,000 over the next three years, Enablence will provide its MAGNM-20 chassis for an active Ethernet network, along with indoor and outdoor versions of its E-1320 optical network terminal. Cedar Falls Utilities in Cedar Falls, Iowa, which has been building FTTP in new subdivisions since 2006, has launched a project to replace its citywide hybrid fiber-coax broadband network with FTTP over a six-year period. The city of Dover, Ohio, which provides fiber optic services to businesses and is considering adding residential service, has received a completed design for an FTTH network from engineering firm Uptown Services. Uptowns designs were delivered in late 2009 and presented to the city council in February. Dover has not yet committed to deploying fiber broadband to residences, but the completion of the detailed design is a critical milestone in its decision process. UTOPIA, a consortium of 16 Utah cities that operates an open-access fiberto-the-home network, announced that Voonami had become the eighth service provider on the network. Voonami, a cloud computing and data center solutions provider, will offer business voice, Internet and private networking services, including virtual desktop, managed services, dedicated servers, collocation and IT outsourcing services. BBP

Other Providers

Electric Cooperative Wins Stimulus Funds
Ralls County Electric Cooperative in Missouri is the only nontelephone company in the most recent batch to receive stimulus funds from RUS for a last-mile project. Its $9.5 million grant and $9.5 million loan will provide a fiber optic network for residential and commercial members of the cooperative and for the underserved safety and anchor agencies in its service area. The cooperative plans to offer Internet access at speeds up to 20 Mbps downstream/10 Mbps upstream and automated meter reading. In addition, it is also considering providing high-definition television, telephone and security services. This project has been designated as a state of Missouri demonstration project, and nonproprietary data will be shared. The cooperative is working with Pulse Broadband, a contractor that helps small operators deploy and manage advanced broadband networks. Pulse will use its proprietary optical tapping technology, which is also the basis of CommScopes BrightPath solution. (For more details, see Optical Tapping in Rural Applications in this issue.) Case Western Reserve University announced a partnership with Genexis for its inner-city gigabit network. (See the January 2010 issue of BBP for a full description of this initiative, now called the Case Connection Zone.) Genexis will provide its 1 Gbps optical communication gateway to the Cleveland-based initiative. Installed in the home, the gateway converts signals on optical fiber to in-home services including voice, television and Internet. Significantly for this project, the gateway can provide multiple services from a variety of providers at the same time. Access to broadband communication is a necessity for fully engaged economic and social development, says Lev Gonick, Cases vice president for information technology services. With a gigabit fiber network, communities can access services such as health care and e-learning and at the same time provide people with open access to the economic opportunities that the Internet enables. This combination of strengthening the

community structure and providing people with a superhighway to the digital world is vital to improving lives in American cities. In the end, communications and Internet is not about just technology; it is about people, Gonick continues. Genexis has understood this very well and has developed products for the home that
enable people to use the full potential of broadband in a simple and user-friendly way. In addition, the gateway is power-efficient and installer-friendly, a key factor when installing fiber in urban areas. Novus Entertainment, a Vancouver broadband provider, is now offering the fastest Internet speeds in Canada 200 Mbps over a fiber-to-the-building
network. Offerings include a 200 Mbps symmetrical service for home businesses and an asymmetrical residential service. With the stated vision of becoming one of Metro Vancouvers major communications service providers, Novus is continuing to expand services in Vancouver and Burnaby and plans to launch services in Richmond in 2010. BBP
Google To Build FTTH Networks
A search engine an advertising platform a leader in cloud computing a supplier of desktop software a smart-phone vendor and now a fiber-to-the-home deployer. Google continues to evolve its corporate identity in new and unexpected ways. The technology giant says it plans to build and test ultra-high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States, delivering Internet speeds of 1 Gbps over fiber-to-the-home connections. It will offer services at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people. Locations for Googles networks will be selected from communities that respond to the companys request for information by March 26. Municipal officials, broadband activists and ordinary residents are encouraged to nominate their communities as candidates for Google FTTH networks. Googles stated goal is to experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better and faster for everyone, including next-generation apps new deployment techniques openness and choice. Consistent with its past advocacy of net neutrality, Google says it will operate an open-access network and manage it in an open, nondiscriminatory and transparent way. Can the experiment work? Other open-access network deployers in the United States have had difficulty attracting service providers to their networks. Some of these deployers have resorted to providing services themselves; of those prohibited from doing so, some have faltered when their service providers could not meet customers expectations. In part, this is an issue of scale: Open-access FTTH networks generally have not been large enough to attract established service providers. For example, although large, nonfacilities-based ISPs such as EarthLink and Covad have publicly called for the Federal Communications Commission to unbundle FTTH networks, they do not provide services on open-access FTTH networks, such as UTOPIA. Nor have open-access networks attracted nontraditional providers willing to experiment with next-generation apps. This suggests that Google may need to scale its network at the high end of, or even beyond, its stated plans if it is to achieve the effects it hopes for. Will the experiment push public policy toward requiring more open access in broadband networks? If new applications and new business models arise out of the experiment, that gives [Google] an arrow to shoot to the FCC, comments Occam Networks marketing director, Juan Vela. Google has a couple of years to get the experiment proven in. The current administration is willing to look at open models. If it makes sense for the economy and for businesses as a whole, they will support it. If it fails miserably, that could be the end of it.

RBOC UPDATE

FiOS Deployment Speeds Up; Customer Acquisition Slows Down
FiOS Internet and FiOS TV each added 153,000 net customers in the fourth quarter of 2009 only about half the number added in the second quarter, according to Verizons most recent financial report. These additions brought the total at year-end to 3.4 million total FiOS Internet customers and 2.9 million total FiOS TV customers. FiOS penetration (customers as a percentage of potential customers) has been increasing steadily. Internet penetration was 28.1 percent by the end of the fourth quarter, with the product available for sale to 12.2 million premises, compared
with 24.9 percent penetration and 10.0 million premises open for sale at the end of the fourth quarter 2008. FiOS TV penetration was 24.5 percent by the end of the fourth quarter, with the product available for sale to 11.7 million premises, compared with 20.8 percent penetration and 9.2 million premises open for sale at the end of the fourth quarter 2008. This slowdown in new customers, coupled with increases in penetration, would seem to imply that network construction has slowed. However, 900,000 homes were passed in the fourth quarter, a much higher number than in any recent period. As of the end of 2009, the FiOS network passed 15.4 million premises, up from 14.5 million at the end of the third quarter and 400,000 ahead of the planned total. Verizon has not yet begun marketing services to more than 3 million of the homes it has passed with fiber and it is continuing to build out the network faster than it can bring serAMT 28075 CED Magazine:AMT 27603 vices to market.
Verizon is aiming for 40 percent FiOS TV penetration, compared with todays 24.5 percent. The service is still new in much of the FiOS footprint, and take rates rise over time.
New York City is one place Verizon is marketing FiOS intensively. Rollout of FiOS TV is on the fast track in the city, says Christopher Creager, president of Verizons Northeast region. In 2009, the company expanded FiOS service into an additional 140 New York City neighborhoods, located throughout the five boroughs, bringing its fiber optic network to a total of about 810,000 households. And FiOS TV is expected to be available in parts of dozens more neighborhoods by the end of this year. Average revenue per user (ARPU) for FiOS users is more than $140, nearly 2/9/10 10:23 AM Page 1 double Verizons overall wireline ARPU of $77. Consumer ARPU overall grew by 12.6 percent from the fourth quarter of 2008. At a recent investor conference in San Francisco, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg said FiOS was close to becoming operating-income positive in 2009, and could become net positive in 2010. He also announced a goal of 40 percent penetration for FiOS TV a long way from todays 24.5 percent. Taking advantage of GPONs capacity, Verizon added a new 35 Mbps symmetrical Internet service tier for both consumers and small businesses. This tier is designed to enable videocon-

ferencing, working at home, online multiplayer gaming, telemedicine, electronic home-energy and security monitoring and data transfer and to help small businesses look as if they have the IT capabilities of Fortune 500 businesses. The company adds, And, unlike some providers, Verizon does not penalize customers for using all the speed they need. U-verse Voice Reaches the 1 Million Mark AT&T announced that it now serves 1 million AT&T U-verse Voice digital home phone lines. The milestone comes two years after AT&T introduced the advanced VoIP service, which is now available to millions of homes across 22 states. U-verse Voice is delivered over the AT&T U-verse network. The company says more than 67 percent of new U-verse TV customers bundle the voice service, more than 90 percent of Uverse TV customers bundle high-speed Internet and more than 75 percent of U-verse TV customers have a triple or quad play. AT&T added 248,000 U-verse TV subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2009, totaling 2.1 million U-verse TV subscribers nationwide, and added 1 million U-verse TV customers in the last year alone. Canadian Incumbents Roll Out Fiber Canadian ILECs announced several major FTTH projects. New Brunswick: Bell Aliant launched its FibreOP FTTH services in two New Brunswick communities last year and is now accelerating its deployment. In 2010, the company will more than double its 2009 spending on fiber technology to pass 140,000 homes with fiber by the end of the year. CEO Karen Sheriff says, With this investment, we are accelerating and leveraging our natural assets of aerial footprint and low-density geography to invest for the future. We expect to continue to gain efficiencies in our capital program, and this, in combination with the completion of a significant capital project in 2009, will allow us to advance our fiber network this year without increasing our overall capital spending from 2009 levels. She adds, Having access to the fastest and most innovative technology will undoubtedly help New Brunswick attract and retain new and existing talent in the near future, furthering the goal of economic prosperity provincewide. By end of 2010, Bell Aliant will have invested $80 million to bring FibreOP technology, with 60 Mbps/15 Mbps Internet speeds, to 35 percent of homes and business in New Brunswick. By mid-2011, it expects to extend the service to 45 percent of homes and businesses in the province. Manitoba: MTS has launched FTTH services in Waverly West, a large new housing development in Winnipeg. The company is delivering triple-play services with Internet speeds of up to 25 Mbps and potential for future speeds above 100 Mbps. MTS president Kelvin Shepherd says that, although MTS existing VDSL network provides excellent services today, over the long term, customers will be looking for home services that

The French government is providing $2.7 billion to subsidize the buildout of fiber to the home in rural areas of France.
Zhone to Sigmanet, a neighboring wireless service provider that was planning to deliver FTTH services in Campinas Brazil, a city of 1.1 million and major telecommunications hub for the state of So Paulo. Sigmanet will now use terabit-scale FTTH platforms and optical network terminals from Zhone to provide VoIP, HDTV and ultra-highspeed data to corporate, residential and multitenant unit customers throughout the city. Growing from an all-wireless network to a fiber network with the highest capacity platforms available not only expands our service model, but it represents an extraordinary expansion in the way we view our possibilities as a company, says Mucio Camargo de Assis Filho, administrative director for Sigmanet. BT: To Infinity and Beyond The retail arm of British incumbent BT launched its new fiber-based broadband service, BT Infinity. The new consumer service, delivered over fiber to the cabinet and fiber to the home, offers download speeds of up to 40 Mbps for as little as $31 per month. Upstream speeds will be the fastest in the UK, reaching speeds of 10 Mbps. Business services will offer the same speeds as consumer services, for somewhat higher prices; the extra charge ensures that business traffic will receive priority at times of contention. These services will be available to 4 million homes and businesses by the end of December 2010 and to 10 million premises by mid-2012. In Manchester, U.K., the Manchester Digital Development Agency (MDDA) engaged Geo, a firm that designs and builds fiber networks, to install fiber optic infrastructure in the high-tech business area of the city known as the Corridor. Households and businesses will be able to purchase services over the 100 Mbps open-access network. (MDDAs announcement adds, somewhat mysteriously, There is also potential for services and applications to be made available for free without having to go through an Internet service provider.) The projects initial phase, which starts this spring, will provide connectivity to 200 homes and businesses around the Corridor area. Connections to an additional 1,500 homes and businesses will be phased in over the next 12 months. In France, Prime Minister Francois Fillon said the government would provide telcos with 2 billion ($2.7 billion) to accelerate FTTH deployment in the less densely populated areas of France. The plan follows the European Commission guidelines on state aid for broadband deployment. According to Marcela Perez Sirio of research firm Ovum, by mid-2010, operators should have the regulatory clarity they need to invest in both the densely and less densely populated areas of France. Additional details on the greenfield fiber project in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, mentioned in BBPs November/ December issue: This network, built in the housing development of Wohnen am Bachlauf by municipal utility GelsenNet, is based on GPON technology from Alcatel-Lucent. Alcatel-Lucent also managed the network installation and integration and will support the maintenance of the network. Alcatel-Lucent installed its 7342 ISAM FTTU optical access platform, its 5520 AMS access network management software and its latest generation of optical modems.

Norway Canada United Kingdom Netherlands Germany France Switzerland Turkey Lithuania
International deployment activity

India Honduras

Malaysia

Brazil

International Deployers
BSNL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.bsnl.co.in BT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.bt.com Desktop. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.desktop.com.br Gelsen-Net. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.gelsen-net.de Grupo Cable Sula Manchester Digital Development Agency. . . . . . . . . www.manchesterdda.com Norsk Fibernett. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . norskfibernett.no Reggefiber. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.reggefiber.com Sigmanet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.sigmanet.com.br Superonline. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.superonline.com Swisscom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.swisscom.ch TEO.www.teo.lt/en TIME dotCom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.time.com.my
Jrgen Katzer, vice president of sales and carrier account manager for AlcatelLucent in Germany, explains, The Ruhr area has one of the highest population densities in Europe. Next-generation access networks are particularly effective in such settings, and so the Gelsen-Net GPON network is a lighthouse project for the region as a whole. Gelsen-Net is performing first-class pioneering work to enhance the attractiveness of the new housing estate. Residents of the new development have access to a triple-play offer that includes an Internet connection of 100 Mbps downstream/10 Mbps upstream, analog and digital telephony services and video. 200 Mbps Is the New 100 Mbps Zeewolde will be the first town in the Netherlands with symmetrical Internet
speeds of 200 Mbps, according to vendors Cisco and Genexis. FTTH operator Reggefiber is deploying the fiber optic network, Internet provider XMS will offer services, and Cisco and Genexis have been selected to supply the equipment. As demand grows, the bandwidth can easily be increased to 1 Gbps. Cisco will supply its 7609 routers for the central office and its Catalyst 4506 switches for distributing broadband Internet signal to homes in Zeewolde, and Genexis, a Netherlands-based company, will supply gigabit home gateways. Peter Kamphuis, Reggefibers director of operations, views the launch of the 1 Gbps network as the first step toward a new standard in FTTH networks, saying, 1 Gbps equipment will replace the current 100 Mbps equipment. Before the end of this year, Reggefiber plans

to upgrade its other FTTH networks to the new standard and to introduce 200 Mbps symmetrical service. TEO, the largest integrated telecom provider in Lithuania, announced its new ZEBRA Internet plan, which offers residential customers up to 200 Mbps Internet access services. TEO is deploying fiber at a rapid pace; its fiber optic access network currently operates in more than 30 Lithuanian cities and is available to nearly one-third of the countrys residents. More than 62,000 customers are using FTTH-based services today, and TEO expects this number to exceed 100,000 by year-end. Norsk Fibernett, an association of several fiber networks in Norway, provides broadband over open-access networks to about 4,000 customers in Oslo, Bergen and five other cities. To
consolidate these networks, Norsk Fibernett will use PacketFronts BECS provisioning and control system, ASR routers and DRG customer-premises equipment. NetNordic, PacketFronts Norwegian partner, will deliver and implement the solution under a three-year contract. Norsk Fibernett will extend its newly consolidated network with several thousand connections per year and plans to continue building out regional fiber networks throughout Norway. Fiber to Every Swiss Household Swiss incumbent telco Swisscom is rolling out FTTH services to every household in Switzerland. As of last September, the company had 1.8 million broadband subscribers. Swisscom will use Ciscos ASR 9000 series aggregation services router as the edge platform, citing its ability to support the simultaneous use of three high-definition television channels, Internet connections of 50 Mbps downstream/5 Mbps upstream
and telephone services. Chief technology officer Guido Garrone says that, in addition to providing the capacity for network bandwidth growth and quality of service, the Cisco router also helps simplify network operations. Superonline, a subsidiary of Turkish telecom provider Turkcell, is deploying a fiber-to-the-building network with a 100 Mbps Ethernet connection to each home. Superonline is using a solution from Ericsson and Tilgin to provide high-speed Internet connections and IMS-based IP telephony. Tilgin will provide home gateways and software for the first phase of Superonlines project, which will pass some 300,000 homes with fiber during 2010. Local implementation will be managed by Ericsson and Tilgin, together with Superonlines staff. Indian state-owned telecom provider BSNL launched its first FTTH service in Jaipur, using technology from fiber cable supplier Aksh Optifibre. BSNL will provide multiplay services with high-definition content and 100 Mbps
Internet access to more than 30,000 customers in Jaipur and will eventually bring FTTH to its 8 million customers across the state. In Malaysia, competitive provider TIME dotCom (TdC) launched TIME Fibre Broadband, an FTTH-based Internet access service offering speeds of up to 50 Mbps. Launching the new service, TdCs CEO Afzal Abdul Rahim said TdC is the only telecommunications provider in Malaysia offering 100percent fiber optic connection to the home. TIME Fibre Broadband is the answer to the long-awaited needs of Malaysian Internet users, providing the highest speed and bandwidth capacity available in Malaysia, Afzal said as he demonstrated the capabilities of the new service by performing multiple video calls, streaming HD content, downloading multiple HD movie trailers and playing a game online. The service is currently available in Mont Kiara, with coverage expanding over the next few months in the Klang Valley area. BBP

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