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Many European cities lack a cable TV infrastructure, preventing the use of faster DOCSIS connections like in the US. On the other hand, digging the densely popu
by ferongr 14y ago
Many European cities lack a cable TV infrastructure, preventing the use of faster DOCSIS connections like in the US. On the other hand, digging the densely populated European cities to install extensive optical fibre networks terminating either to buildings or local cabinets (with the remaining loop length being under 300 metres) is an extremely costly affair.
For those cases ADSL over PSTN is the only practical choice for broadband Internet access, but since the incumbent telephone operator (usually an ex-state owned company) owns the entirety of the PST network and related facilities like exchanges (subsided over the decades by the state, directly or indirectly) that puts other providers at a huge disadvantage, being unable to even offer any service.
That's why the LLU scheme was devised. Providers rent the telephone loop, rack-space and in some cases backhaul connectivity at the incumbent's exchange, install their own DSLAMs and provide both telephone and ADSL service. It's the only practical choice for competition in the ISP field. And at least for my country, Greece, it has worked marvelously with prices racing to the bottom and speeds jumping to the maximum of the protocol ever since the LLU scheme started.
Small steps are being made in many cities where fibre-optic networks are slowly being deployed, usually (and in our case) subsided by EU funds and planned to be offered under a scheme similar to LLU but it's a very long time until population (as opposed to geographical) coverage can reach good levels.
- henrikschroder 14y ago> On the other hand, digging the densely populated European cities to install extensive optical fibre networks terminating either to buildings or local cabinets (with the remaining loop length being under 300 metres) is an extremely costly affair. In Stockholm, the city-owned company Stokab has been doing exactly this for the past 15 years or so. They started out by laying fibre in the inner city and leasing it to businesses. They've been pretty profitable, and reinvesting all their profits into extending their network, moving to less and less profitable areas. The last year or so they've started connecting every apartment building in the entire city, suburbs and all, and they'll be done in a year or so with that. They hooked up my building last month, for free. And then it's up to us in the coop to pick an ISP and connect each apartment. They were also smart enough to put in one fibre per apartment, so in some not-too-distant future, it should be possible to upgrade the building LAN to fibre, which means that every apartment gets an unbroken fibre all the way to their connection point. And that in turn enables the same business model as we have with DSL now, i.e. each apartment can freely choose ISP, and different ISP can then compete for the privilege of lighting up my fibre and give me internet. Digging up suburbs to lay down fibre is extremely costly as you say, but renting that out is extremely profitable.