Today's Top Stories Syracuse, N.Y., is tired of waiting for its two local service providers Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) to give it better broadband service so Mayor Stephanie Miner is investigating how the city could build its own fiber-based broadband network. Miner told Syracuse ABC television affiliate WSYR-TV that high-speed Internet is "the modern day equivalent of infrastructure," adding: "It's clear that broadband is going to be a foundation of our new economy." However, questions remain about how taxpayers would pay to fund a fiber deployment. While Miner and her team are just in the investigation phase, she said that they would like to be able to provide up to 1 Gbps speeds like Chattanooga's EPB provides to residential and business customers today.
Verizon has been holding fast to its contention that it will not expand its fiber to the premises (FTTP)-based FiOS service into any new areas. "As far as FiOS expansion is concerned, Verizon is presently focusing its resources on meeting its franchise obligations to those municipalities where it currently provides cable television service and has no plans to expand FiOS in New York," Verizon said in a statement released to WSYR-TV. The telco said it will focus on fulfilling franchise agreements in various markets while upgrading what it calls "chronic" copper customers to fiber. Fran Shammo, CFO and EVP of Verizon, told investors earlier this week that it still has 1 million homes left to convert from copper to fiber before it wraps up its entire conversion plan that it has been working on for three years. For more:
- LocalSYR.com has this article
- Syracuse Post-Standard has this article Related articles:
Upstate New York mayors say Verizon is ignoring pleas for FiOS service
5 cities complain Verizon's cable deal ensures they'll never get FiOS
Verizon's Shammo: 1M homes still need to be converted to fiber Read more about: Broadband Service
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BT Openreach (NYSE: BT) has begun the second phase of its VDSL vectoring trial, which it claims could enhance the speeds of its "up to" 80 Mbps-capable hybrid copper and fiber-based fiber to the cabinet (FTTC) network by reducing crosstalk on its existing copper lines. A previous multi-month trial that BT began last September successfully enabled it to deliver top speeds of up to 80 Mbps, according to an ISPreview.co.uk report. Set to run for at least three months, the second phase of the trial will focus on the same three street cabinets in Barnet (London) and another three in Braintree (Essex). BT said that several new enhancements are also being introduced to the trial in order to help improve FTTC performance and tackle interference. One of the key elements it will use during this round is an enhanced Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) vectoring engine that the telco claims could cancel out significantly more cross-talk interferes per line, which means end-users could see an even bigger improvement in their service speeds. However, the one drawback of using the ASIC is that it could increase costs because it would require replacing some hardware in each street cabinet that houses the network electronics. Openreach told ISPreview.co.uk that it was not ready to say if it would use either a System-Level or Node-Level Vectoring solution. "We're currently focused on ensuring that the trial of the ASIC engine is successful," an Openreach spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk. "Beyond that we will be considering all commercially viable options to further enhance the customer's experience." It will also begin the second trial with three ASIC vector engines at the sites in Braintree and Barnet, while another three will be activated at the trial sites over the coming weeks. For more:
- ISPreview has this article Related articles:
BT, Avaya team on cloud services
BT Openreach to conduct customer experience trial with carrier customers Read more about: fttn, vectoring
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América Móvil is anxious to shed some of its wireline and wireless assets so it can gain regulatory freedom, but Mexico's Federal Institute of Telecommunications (IFT) told company owner Carlos Slim that the company can't present a plan until it names a buyer. The Mexican tycoon wants to break up his domestic subsidiaries Telcel and Telmex as a way to reduce their market share below 50 percent in order to avoid a number of proposed anti-monopoly regulations. While América Móvil has to get the IFT's approval of any possible sale, the regulator won't hear the conglomerate's plan until it confirms a buyer for the assets. "The only way the Institute can verify that the person who will receive the assets is independent is to know who it is," said IFT President Gabriel Contreras in a Reuters article. Both Telcel and Telmex hold large pieces of Mexico's wireline and wireless market segments. According to recent figures from TeleGeography's GlobalComms Database, Telcel controls about 70.6 percent of the Mexican mobile market, while sister company Telmex occupied 64.2 percent of the broadband market and around 59.9 percent of the wireline sector. Any potential suitor that strikes a deal to purchase América Móvil would begin with a 20.6 percent share of the wireless market, 14.2 piece of the broadband segment and 19.9 percent of the wireline market, becoming the second largest service provider in each of those market segments. In July, América Móvil announced that it would sell off "certain assets." At that time, the Mexican government said that it wants to attract about $19 billion to $232 billion in investments from new telecom firms entering the market, of which about $10 billion will be used to provide service through a publicly owned telecom network the government will begin leasing this year. For more:
- Reuters has this article
- TeleGeography has this article Related articles:
America Movil blinks first, says it will sell assets
Mexican telecom overhaul regulation targets Carlos Slim's business
América Móvil's offer for Telekom Austria shares becomes mandatory
AT&T sells off America Movil stake for $5.6B as part of DirecTV deal Read more about: Telmex, Telcel
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SaskTel is continuing to make progress with its rural Saskatchewan broadband expansion effort, announcing that it will bring two of its basic DSL tiers to Paddockwood, Domremy and Loreburn. Residential customers in these three towns will be able to get a choice of two DSL service options: SaskTel High Speed Basic Level 2 and SaskTel High Speed Advanced, which offer download speeds of up to 5 and 10 Mbps. Bringing service into these additional towns is part of a country-wide initiative to increase the availability of broadband service in rural Saskatchewan that was introduced at the 2013 Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities annual conference. Under SaskTel's Rural Strategy, the service provider plans to upgrade its copper network facilities in more than 220 existing rural communities to support up to 10 Mbps service, while expanding the Basic Level 2 5 Mbps offering to 50 additional communities. Sasktel continues to make good on its rural broadband promise. Earlier this year, it announced that it would enable residential and business customers in 30 communities to get access to the service provider's High Speed Basic Level 2 package that offers speeds of up to 5 Mbps and 10 Mbps. Outside of the rural areas, Sasktel introduced a new plan to invest $55 million on its fiber to the premises (FTTP) consumer and fiber to the business (FTTB) program. With a goal of passing 33,700 homes with fiber, the FTTP program will focus on connecting 18,000 more residential customers to its inifiNet brand service in Regina, Saskatoon, Moose Jaw and Prince Albert. For more:
- see the release Related articles:
SaskTel to invest $55M on residential, business fiber-based broadband networks
Canada allocates another $278M to expand rural broadband availability
SaskTel to deepen rural broadband coverage in 21 communities Read more about: Canada
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Adtran has introduced a new technology called Frequency Division Vectoring (FDV) that it claims can enhance the capabilities of next-gen G.fast and VDSL vectoring on existing copper wiring by enabling both methods to effectively coexist in across a single subscriber line in the service provider's network. The vendor said that the new patent-pending technology will allow service providers to take advantage of G.fast's advertised performance gains without having to transition their subscriber base from VDSL2 to G.fast. FDV could help service providers like BT leverage and extend their investments in their fiber to the cabinet (FTTC) infrastructure by doubling data rates and increasing the reach of intermediate-rate services--between 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps--to 80 percent more subscribers. "While G.fast and VDSL2 have always been seen as complementary technologies, the limitations of G.fast have been exposed when forced to operate in a VDSL2-compatible mode at higher rates," said Jeff Heynen, principal analyst, broadband access and pay TV, Infonetics. "As service providers look to build out their G.fast adoption strategies, ADTRAN's FDV technology has a key performance impact by allowing G.fast and vectored VDSL2 technologies to work in concert to boost performance." By using FDV, a service provider could broaden their use of G.fast from fiber to the building (FTTB) and fiber-to-the-distribution points (FTTdp) to existing remote terminal (RT) cabinet locations. While FDV has just debuted on the market, it could potentially resonate with a host of incumbent telcos such as AT&T (NYSE: T), BT (NYSE: BT) and eircom, all of which have advocated a FTTC-type architecture. BT Openreach just began the second phase of its VDSL vectoring trial with the goal of enhancing the speeds of its "up to" 80 Mbps-capable hybrid copper and fiber-based FTTC network by reducing crosstalk on its existing copper lines. Likewise, Ireland incumbent eircom said it will reach 1 million homes via its (FTTN) architecture this summer. Using a mix of fiber and existing copper, eircom expects to deliver up to 100 Mbps to users by using a combination of VDSL2 and vectoring technologies. For more:
- see the release
Related articles:
Adtran says European service provider consolidation will benefit its international expansion
ADTRAN's Q2 international sales drive up revenues to $176M
BVTC enlists ADTRAN to bring 1 Gbps FTTH to rural Kansas
Comporium brings 1 Gbps fiber broadband to Rock Hill, S.C. Read more about: Adtran, FTTdp, Service Providers
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