BYOB: Bring your own broadband

ADSL at 20 Mbps / ADSL à 20 Mega

2009-06-05T19:49:00.001+01:00

My DSL line came back online last night and a speed test with speedtest.net showed a throughput of 20 Mbit/s. I'm thrilled. I've gone ahead and made several changes to my network configurations here at home as a result.

I have a WAN router at home which patches together the DSL and cable Internet subscriptions. I can assign different applications to different networks or simply use it in "rollover" mode where the second line is used automatically when the first line goes down. In the past I've used cable as the primary connection but it was down more than half of the time so I was constantly getting cut off from VPN access when the access line switched. Now I'm able to use DSL as the primary connection and use cable only if the DSL line drops.

I'm excited to have the new, faster connection. It seems to really make a difference.

Switching the lines to the new exchange - Changement des lignes au nouveau NRA.

2009-06-03T20:21:00.001+01:00

My house is now 797 meters from the DSLAM instead of 4,500. Sam pointed out in a recent blog comment that France Telecom has the new exchange up and running and that Free's DSLAM would be installed soon. I saw it today.

Now if only my line weren't dead so I could enjoy it.

My DSL connection went down yesterday at noon and has been out for 36 hours. My DSL provider (Free) is actually very stable but the line speeds have been very slow. My cable connection with Numericable is just the opposite - fast when it works but out of order more than 50% of the time.

If DSL goes down it's because they are doing something at the exchange. Any problem in the past I've had has been an inadvertent disconnection by FT. I knew something was up when my neighbor across the street came by with his Freebox to test it on my line because his line was down too.

I waited for my cable connection to come back up and then quickly hopped online to check the details of my line. What I found was great news. My line has been shortened by connecting to the new exchange. The bad news is something is wrong with the connection.

Then today I was driving home and saw the large France Telecom manhole at the edge of the village open with workers inside. My son and I walked down and talked to the workers, taking a few pictures of the manholes.

The workers were really helpful and let us snag a few pictures of them at work in the underground chamber. I was surprised by how large it actually was.

The next person I encountered we knee-deep in water in a second manhole working to reconnect some of the thousands of lines which have to be rerouted.

Then I walked the rest of the 797 metres and arrived in front of the actually exchange, which they call a NRA(HD). The France Telecom person there was very helpful and answered my questions about the fibre routing and how the exchange was upgraded. Simple telephone lines are still connected to the old exchange but any DSL lines in our village now terminate in the new village exchange.

I was able to snap a few pictures of the exchange with the door open from the fence. You can see the patch panels on the right but the DSLAM's aren't visible in the shot. They are on the left (Free and Neuf).

I was finally able to get through to Free to tell them my line was down. The earliest they will send a technician is in 7 days. That's a long time to go without our fixed line...

New DSLAMs / Nouveaux DSLAMs

2009-05-11T20:23:00.001+01:00

Sam posted a comment tonight that our exchange will be upgraded by the end of May and that Free will also install their own DSLAM very soon. He mentions that he expects to receive at least 10 Mbit/s once the new DSLAMs are turned on.

I live fairly close to the exchange and it will be interesting to see what the new speeds will be. The thing I'm looking forward to most is finally being able to take advantage of the television channels through Free. We haven't had access since we've moved here.

I haven't posted recently but I have been doing a lot of work dealing with fiber as part of my day job. It has been such a busy time lately that I haven't been able to post or progress with this project. I'm also in a bit of a wait-and-see mode until I know what changes there will be with the new exchange.

Upgrades at our exchange - Construction de notre nouveau commutatuer

2009-02-11T20:49:00.001Z

I drove by the exchange in our village tonight and they've delivered a new building (actually a big rectangle box) and put it inside the fence of the exchange. It looks to be the size of a shipping container which sits on the back of a semi-truck.

I looked at the sign posted on the site which gives information about the proposed construction. It says that the old exchange is 11 square meters but will be upgraded to 25 square meters.

It looks as if they're making progress. That could mean faster broadband - but no fiber - pretty soon.

The long silence - Le long silence

2009-01-20T22:01:00.001Z

I'm still here. It has been quiet but I'm still here and still thinking about fiber. I haven't been able to do much recently with the St Nom broadband project because I've been distracted by other events in the sector.

This is a busy time for telecom analysts because there seems to be a big shift in the way people are thinking about infrastructure and telecommunication investment in general. Broadband has jumped up on the radar of political leaders during the crisis and it looks as if there may be some government money coming to extend networks. At the same time, telecommunication investment is dropping like an anchor in the private sector. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

Probably the biggest reason for my delay is I haven't had time to look into the legal structure of starting a French association. As a recap, my status here in France will be a problem for creating and running a company. I deposited the capital to create the SARL at the bank and they've been calling to set up the accounts for the money they're holding. I'm going to have to back out of that though and work on starting an association instead.

I haven't heard any news from the village either on the DSL upgrade. I haven't seen any activity around the site of the exchange so I figure we're still a long way off from getting the new building and the shorter loops.

I'm hoping to pick back up the project after the end of the month.

Business problems - Un problème de l'entreprise

2008-10-16T20:04:00.001+01:00

I ran into a bit of a problem registering the fiber business. Everything is ready to go (bank, documents, etc) but there is a lingering question about my work status here in France. I have a peculiar visa which likely won't allow me to be the person running it, the "gerant".

I think I've found another solution though. I'm going to start a non-profit fiber "association" in the village instead of a business. From discussions with my lawyer friends I think I have the right to work with a non-for-profit association as long as I'm not paid.

One of the big differences for me will be tied to the money I put in. The money I put into a non-profit venture could be repaid (possibly with interest) but nothing more than that. I gave it some thought and had to think back to the reasons I started this project. I want to have a fiber connections to our homes, but even more, I want the experience of planning and installing a fiber network. Profit or no profit the mission is the same.

I'll do some research this weekend about starting the association and post my findings.

Too late for changes - Trop tard pour les changements

2008-10-05T21:55:00.001+01:00

I received great advice from the Dutch about how municipal government should build the new exchange next year in order to promote competitive fiber development. The problem is I'm a bit too late.

I received word this weekend that the contract and negotiations with France Telecom were too far advanced for the municipality to be able to make changes. It's too bad that the village will be paying for the construction of the building (for France Telecom's benefit) but won't be able to dictate any new terms for fiber. I'm taken back that an exchange being built anywhere in the world in the year 2009 would lack space for competitive fiber equipment.

Hopefully other villages poised to give EUR 50,000 to France Telecom will be able to use the excellent advice I received from my Dutch friends to promote fiber competition in the future.

This means that I'll have to approach this a different way - possibly with a separate fiber shelter next to the copper exchange. Each of the competitive operators has fiber passing through the exchange already so we'd simply have to put the fiber shelter next to this line so they'd be able to interconnect easily.

I'll work on setting up a meeting with the competitive operators this week to discuss a plan.

Planning a new exchange / La planification pour un nouveau commutateur

2008-10-05T21:30:00.001+01:00

As I mentioned in my earlier posts, one of the key items in our village may be the design of the new telecommunications exchange they are building next year. I wrote to some Dutch friends (fiber experts) asking for their advice on a number of key questions.

Here is my attempt to paraphrase their answers:

Question:
Would it be better to build a separate exchange for fiber next to the copper exchange or to put the ODF in the same physical building?
Answer:
It is extremely important that the incumbent operator can't "hold anyone hostage" if fiber is going to terminate in the same building as copper. There are a number of points to consider in such a case:
- There needs to be a room which is separate from the main DSL equipment and that is accessible from the outside for the ODF and fiber interconnection. This room needs to be large enough to accommodate operator's active equipment if necessary.
- The municipality needs to have the key and control access rights to this room.
- There needs to be a conduit from the room to the perimeter of the land owned by the incumbent and this needs to be large enough to accommodate all the fiber coming in (see size questions below).
- There needs to be a separate power supply from France Telecom - essentially a second meter for the municipality to the room.
- The room needs to be large enough to house a UPS and air conditioning if necessary.
- There needs to be a hole in the wall between the fiber room and the ISP's equipment which is large enough to pass 3000+ fibers (1500 households x 2 + some spare)
Question:
How much space in the building/room is necessary to house an ODF?
Answer:
One ODF will support 800 fibers and it measures roughly 1 meter x 50 cm, including space for patch cords. You need to be able to access the ODF from the front and the back.
One 19 inch rack will support the electronics for roughly 400 users, dissipating 3-5 watts per user. The rack needs to be accessible from the front side.
Question:
In planning for conduit access, how many fibers should we plan on for each home?
Answer:
There is no need for more than 2 fibers per residence. The trend is actually moving to one fiber per residence with three colors per fiber (data upload, data download and television). Putting in two fibers at the same time is a good way to hedge your bets though.
Question:
How much space will we need inside existing conduit to push out point-to-point fiber from the exchange point to the village?
Answer:
One of the projects in the Netherlands uses cables with 96 fibers inside. They can bunch 6 of these cables (6 x 96 = 576 fibers) into one 50 mm HDPE duct. It would take 6 of these 50 mm ducts to provide 2 point-to-point fiber connections to each of the 1500 households in the village, with a little to spare.
Using these numbers, the space we'd need for the conduit leaving the exchange (before disaggregation) would be 100 mm x 300 mm.

As always, I'm grateful to my Dutch friends for their advice.

Working together with the municipal government / Collaboration avec le gouvernement municipal

2008-10-02T22:15:00.001+01:00

The meeting today with Bruno DIDIER and Philippe CHIVOT (les maires-adjoints) from the municipal government went extremely well. We spent almost 2 hours talking about the status of broadband development in the village and the best ways to move forward with a fiber project.

There were a number of key issues and developments:

The new, upgraded exchange is due to be built early next year
This is a huge development and is tied to a EUR 50'000 investment by the municipality. The deal is rather complex as I understand it. France Telecom owns the land where the exchange will be built but our local government will pay for the construction of the new building/shelter. After 20 years the building will be deeded back to France Telecom.
I was never very happy with this arrangement but luckily the papers have not been officially signed and approved. This is excellent news. One of the key points of our discussion in the meeting was how to restructure elements of the deal to accommodate fiber rollouts.
Competitive operators likely are coming
The new exchange will be built to accommodate competitive operators and from the look of it there are some who may be interested in coming with their own equipment. Obviously there are no "done deals" yet but this would be a good sign if it turns out to be correct.
Operators would install their own DSLAMs for DSL (and hopefully FTTH equipment at the same time) when the exchange opens. For the residents in my area that means DSL speeds at 400 meters, instead of 4500 meters. Others farther up and away from the exchange won't be so lucky but there is a bit of geography in our favor as well. Generally the farther you get from our exchange the more expensive the homes become. That means the most expensive lines would be installed to the most expensive houses where residents could pay more for the installation. All operators already have a fiber presence which passes through the exchange using the Yvelines Numériques backbone.
We are all islands (private residences)
It turns out that St Nom La Bretèche is different than many other French towns because we are largely made up of islands of private residences (where the roads are owned and maintained by the residents). This set-up actually makes rolling out fiber easier because the conduit in each of these private residences belongs to the residents, not France Telecom. The challenge is linking these various islands together by crossing streets or through France Telecom's conduit - and then back down to the exchange.
We talked about ways to facilitate "bridges" (conduit) between these islands (subdivisions) and the municipal government seems very ready to help. I asked for a list of any proposed work on roads ahead of time so that we could put in manholes and conduit across streets between these "islands" whenever there was work planned.
The really good thing about the island approach is that each private residence will only have to build out to the nearest "fibered" island and not all the way back to the exchange. it will take some planning to ensure we have enough fibers passing through each residence to ensure point-to-point connections back to the exchange but it is possible.
Ensuring the new exchange is "fiber-ready" and open to competition
As long as the village is going to be footing the bill to build the exchange for France Telecom why not insist on including space for an optical distribution frame which becomes the property of the village? That is one of the nice things about the government paying EUR 50'000 to build something for a private company. They have bargaining leverage. If France Telecom were against the idea the municipality could simply take the 50'000 and build their own public fiber exchange right next to the copper one instead.
We spent some time talking about the details of what the municipality should require in the deal and I promised to get some feedback from experts in the Netherlands. I'll post their responses.

I left the meeting very excited for the project. The next step is contacting the competitive operators (with the help of the municipality) about putting a workable fiber plan into action.

Broadband subscriptions = 2, Internet connections = 0 / Abonnements a l’Internet à haute vitesse = 2, Connexions a l’Internet = 0

2008-09-29T06:32:00.001+01:00

I've been trying to post all weekend but neither of my two Internet connections is working. I subscribe to both DSL and cable to ensure that this doesn't happen but both connections have been out for days.

Cable via Numericable: Our cable connection at home works less than 50% of of the time. It's a 30 Mbps connection so it's fast for buying iTunes content when it is working. It's so unreliable though that I keep the computers connected to the stable but slow DSL instead. Over the past few days uptime has been less than 5%. Numericable ran a number of tests (while I paid for a EUR 20 mobile call to tech support) and they'll send someone to check it next Saturday.
DSL via Free.fr: This is the real disappointment in terms of customer service. We use this line (essentially 1 Mbps) for almost everything because it has been reliable. It is our main fixed line telephone as well. The modem stopped synching on September 24th at around midnight. Free said they couldn't send someone to check it until October 7th - nearly 2 weeks later. That means our fixed line phone is down until then. The last time this happened our connection was out for 3 weeks because of a problem at the DSLAM.

Broadband operators really need to be better than this. We rely on these connections too much to have them stop working for weeks at a time. It makes me nervous to be a dark fiber provider which partners with an ISP because I don't want the residents coming and throwing their modems through my windows if their phones stop working for three weeks.

Preparing to meet with the Mayor's cabinet / La préparation pour une réunion avec les Maires-Adjoints

2008-09-27T11:37:00.001+01:00

I called the office of our Mayor (Manuelle WAJSBLAT) last week to ask for an appointment to speak with her about fiber. There are a couple of things I wanted to talk about.

The status of France Telecom's upgrade of our exchange
The need for a small space next to the exchange (which the village owns) for fiber termination equipment
The plan eventually to extend our network to other residences
Coordinating fiber planning with any civil work in the village

Her office called me back to set up a meeting for today with the heads of two municipal commisssions (les maires-adjoints).

Bruno DIDIER
Urbanisme, Environnement, Développement économique, Transports, Sécurité
(Urbanism, environment, economic development, transportation and security)
Philippe CHIVOT
Travaux, Entretien du Patrimoine, Marchés Publics, Ordures Ménagères
(Work, maintaining historical elements, public works and trash collection)

Before the meeting I spoke with a friend of mine who had a similar post in another city government and he gave me some key things to focus on for the discussions. He told me how it is important to focus on the benefits to everyone involved - the users, the businesses and even the political leaders.

I realized as I was going through my speaking points that there are some huge benefits for a village with fiber. First, it will add value to our homes at a time when people are worried that their house values are falling. We'd also move from having some of the worst connections in our department to having the best. We could also take advantage of the regional network backbone investments put in place by our department which have been, so far, underutilized. Finally, symmetric connections for telecommuting could help ease traffic congestion, improve business traffic for local merchants and help the environment. Those are some big social benefits.

Residence Picnic / Pique-nique de la residence

2008-09-21T21:55:00.001+01:00

Today was the annual residence picnic with our neighbors. We were excited to go to get to know people better and also to talk a bit about the fiber project. Turnout was good from the stand-alone homes but I didn't get to meet anyone new from the apartments.

I prepared a handout in French (PDF here) to give to each family telling them the status of the project and the next steps. There was overwhelming support from the people I spoke with.

The status report lays out the two main steps of the project:

Installing fibre to each house/apartment in the residence
Obtaining a connection between our residence and the local exchange

I also explained the four things I'm going to need from the residents:

A place to install an ODF or manhole for aggregating the connections
Access to the existing conduit in the residence
One-time access to their garage to install/terminate the fibre.
An idea of how many homes would be willing to change providers to fibre once we attracted an operator

Item #4 actually got me the most questions. People wanted to know whether we would all have to subscribe to the same operator or if they would have a choice among operators when switching to fiber. I had to answer that we'd likely start with one operator but that the plan is to offer the fiber lines to any operator willing to connect with us. My goal is for households to be able to choose from a number of different fiber providers using the same line but we probably will need a larger (i.e. expanded) subscriber base before multiple providers would be willing to participate. That means initially it would probably be a "first-in takes all" scenario.

The update letter explained that we would probably need 80% of homes committing to switch if we wanted to attract an operator to build out to us. Otherwise, we'd likely have to pay ourselves to build back to the exchange in step 2.

One of the residents suggested I organize a meeting to answer questions. It wouldn't be an official meeting of the residence but rather something informal where they could ask questions. I think it's a good idea and I'll set it up.

Two steps behind - Deux pas derrière

2008-09-21T20:26:00.001+01:00

Talk about missed opportunities. This is the residence just next to ours which dug up their sidewalks this week - without putting in any new fiber or conduit. It is really too bad we are not better coordinated in our village because this is one of the next two residences I wanted to target for expansion of our own network.

They do have existing conduit which we could probably use but this would have been an opportune time to put in a telecommunication chamber (hand hold) as well.

I'm going to try and schedule a meeting with the mayor soon so we can get an idea when these projects are going on.

One step behind - Un pas derrière

2008-09-16T09:25:00.001+01:00

I walked past the spot of my preferred aggregation point this morning on the way to work and saw workers getting ready to redo the surface of the parking area. It's too bad I didn't know about it because it would have been an excellent time to drop in the box.

It's not too bad though because I still don't know who owns that particular parking spot I wanted to use and whether they would have let me put the box there. Also, I started wondering how I would be able to tap into France Telecom's box which was in the middle of the public street. It may be better for me to simply move one "hop" back onto onto the communal property and put the box there.

Still, it highlights one of the difficulties of planning a network like this. It is difficult to coordinate work.

Perfect aggregation point? Or not. - Un point d'agrégation parfait? Ou pas.

2008-09-14T20:03:00.001+01:00

I probably made a number of neighbors nervous yesterday walking around with my map and GPS in hand trying to locate hand holes in their property from the sidewalk. However, the exercise helped me decide on the area were I think it would be best to place the aggregation point. I found it at the bottom of the residence, right next to the small shops and across the street from the France Telecom trunk conduit.

I initially looked for a place to install an ODF because it allows faster access to the connections and seems to be easier to add connections if we expand outside our residence. I was interested in an ODF from Pacific Interconnections, LLC in the US (see photo). However, I quickly realized I'd take a big risk putting an outdoor ODF in an area of the residence which has lots of delivery trucks.

I'm probably more sensitive to trucks backing up in the residence because we came home from vacation this year and someone had backed into our car parked on the street. The paint from the vehicule that hit us was green and high up on the car - leaving the police to assume it was a rather large truck. The damage to our car was expensive to fix but nothing like trying to repair a damaged ODF. That's why I think it may be better to have a splice enclosure in a hand hole in the street.

As I mentioned in my last post, I think the best place would be next to hand hole 021 on my distance map. I took pictures of the spot this weekend (see below).

The road with the existing France Telecom boxes (shown to the left) belongs to the village, not our residence. That means it would be much more complicated to get permission to dig and install our own boxes. However, the land with the cars parked on it is part of the residence. This parking area is in fairly desperate need of a renovation and would be an excellent spot to pass off the residence connections into France Telecom's own conduit.

The nice thing about the hand hole in the two pictures is that it's one "hop" away from the main conduit which goes down 330 meters to the exchange. I would like to put our hand hole in front of the silver parked car in the picture.

The only catch is the parking spots are actually owned by individual tenants in the residence, not communally. That means I'd need to get permission of the owner to put in the box. I'm not quite sure how or if that would work.

The residence DOES own the road in front of the white garages (in the middle-left picture) if the parking spot doesn't work out. There are two FT hand holes there as well which could provide easy access. In that case I'd look at putting the hand hole next to waypoint number 020.

Finally, I inserted another waypoint out at the exchange to do the calculations for Part 2 of the project, going from the residence to the exchange (see below).

Topology and layout ideas / Idées pour la topologie

2008-09-13T22:02:00.001+01:00

I had lunch with Vincent MONVILLE again this week and we talked about some of the fiber details of the project. I was interested in his estimate of installation costs (to see if I've set aside enough) but he explained that first I had to decide exactly how I was going to distribute and split off each connection. Only then would it be possible to get a better grasp on the prices.

He was right so I took out my trusty Garmin GPS III Plus and marked all the handholes specified in the France Telecom map. That allowed me to get a pretty good estimate of the distances from each handhole back to the main aggregation point for telephone lines in our residence.

Here are the numbers I came out with.

Total length of all fiber pair segments to the handhole (handhole to aggregation point): 3934 meters
Total length of all fiber pair segments to the house (generous estimate of home/apt to aggregation point): 4719 meters
Average loop length to handhole: 79 meters
Longest loop length to handhole: 220 meters
Shortest loop length to handhole: 19 meters
Best aggregation point: In the street next to waypoint #021

I figure the best way to distribute the 50 lines is using some sort of microconduit within the existing conduit in the street. That way the line would be protected at the split-off points. I'm not sure though so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

UTOPIA Speed Update / UTOPIA Nouvel essai de vitesse

2008-09-06T15:22:00.001+01:00

In July I posted about the slow speeds I found when testing a UTOPIA connection. Ben, one of the roommates in the house, wrote and said the slow result was likely the due to the groom's slow computer which I used to run the test.

Ben kindly ran a new speed test using his computer and Google's new Chrome browser (which gave better results than both IE and Firefox). His new results are much better and show the line is producing high speeds.

I was impressed with the high upload speed, particularly because it was better than the download side.

Next Steps: Business formation / Etapes prochaines: formation de l'entreprise

2008-09-06T15:07:00.001+01:00

Get an attestation of the original funds blocked in the bank (completed)
The bank sent me an attestation today which shows that I put EUR 1000 into an escrow-type account for setting up the business. I need this to move forward with the business registration and it's called a:
"CERTIFICAT CONSTATANT LES VERSEMENTS DE FONDS SOCIETES EN FORMATION"
It essentially says that the bank has the money and a copy of the statuts of the business.
Registering the business information with the tax authority
Now that I have the attestation showing the funds are blocked away the next step is submitting the business registration to the tax authority. They need a copy of the "Status" of the business. This is an 18 page document that my friend (an attorney here in France) helped me prepare. It describes the nature of the business and sets up the framework of the business.
They put a stamp on the original statuts when I register them.
Register with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry
The next step (as I understand it) is taking the information to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Once they have the necessary documents they give me the business license, called a "Kbis" here.
Return to the bank with the stamped "statuts" and the Kbis to create a real bank account
Once I have both the Kbis and the stamped statuts I can open up a real bank account and start doing business.

Now, I'm no lawyer and I'm still a bit in the dark about how this registration system works. I'll update this page if I have any new (or improved) information though.

There is one thing I do plan on doing to learn more about the process. The Versailles Chamber of Commerce and Industry has a free seminar once every month where people starting businesses can go and learn about setting up a business in our area. I plan on attending the one on October 14th if possible.

Appointment with the bank - Rendez-vous à la banque

2008-08-23T22:10:00.001+01:00

I made an appointment for next Saturday to open up a dedicated bank account - one of the key first steps to starting a business here in France. The bank told me they need four things from me.

Projet de statuts (official paperwork for the business)
Pièces d'identité (Proof of identity like passport or resident card)
Justificatifs de domicile (Proof of residence from the town)
Dépot du capital (Initial capital for the business to be put in the account)

A good lawyer friend was really helpful with the paperwork for the projet de status but it is taking me a bit longer than I had planned to gather up all the paperwork - including proof of marriage. I will likely pay someone to handle all the paperwork once I have everything checked off the list.

France Telecom: map of the conduit - France Telecom: Carte des fourreaux

2008-08-23T21:41:00.001+01:00

I came back from the US this month and my neighbor had a big surprise waiting for me. He had called France Telecom to get more information about the conduit in the residence and to request a map.

He presented it to me at the door the day I got back. It's great. Now I can see where I need to put my own aggregation point (bottom right of the communal property) in order to get back to the exchange in the most efficient way.

There is, however, still some confusion over who actually owns the conduit. My neighbor was able to dig up some information from the original builder but it is information already had (Article 14: Passage de Canalisations). It is fairly clear that even if we don't own it we have a right to have the communal antenna (RF over fiber on the second pair) in the conduit.

He gave me the name of his contact at France Telecom and I'll follow up with him this week.

Slow speeds sting UTOPIA FTTH - Une vitesse réduite gêne des abonnements de UTOPIA

2008-07-17T08:32:00.001+01:00

I'm in the US for a wedding in Portland and I helped the groom move his things out of his current house in Utah this week. I found out he had a UTOPIA FTTH connection so I asked him if I could take a look. I snapped this picture of his installation in the basement and I was excited to try out the connection.

Luckily he had given me some warning so I wasn't too disappointed. It was very slow and I was unable to get more than 3 Mbit/s download from speedtest.net to an ISP in Utah. Sure there are a lot of factors at play with these speed tests but it did get me thinking. UTOPIA (and iProvo) face some serious challenges and it will be very difficult to convince consumers to switch to fiber if the offers and services aren't better than the one I tried with UTOPIA. In fact, it took us over 10 minutes to upload the pictures I took of the installation to a mail account. The ISPs need to do much better than that if they want these rollouts to obtain high penetration rates and cover their costs.

Now contrast this US FTTH deployment with an apartment LAN fiber test I did in Korea the month before using Powercom. I was able to achieve 12 Mbit/s down and 20 Mbit/s upstream all the way to the server in Japan on a Sunday afternoon (screenshot below). I believe the only way to make FTTH projects viable is to offer fast enough speeds to differentiate the offers from DSL and Cable. Sadly, UTOPIA didn't have to stretch too far to outshine cable and DSL but the service I saw wasn't even able to do that.

Residents association meeting 2008 - La réunion de l’association 2008

2008-06-13T15:59:00.001+01:00

Last night was the resident association meeting and it went well. As always, there were some crazy, heated moments but there seems to be a new consensus that everyone will pay to redo the roads and sidewalks. Part of the impetus is that the value added tax in France on these projects is 5.5% now but will jump up to 19.8% after next year. That means we would had to pay more for the same work after that.

The road work comes out to be EUR 3200 (USD 4800) per house and less for the apartments. It makes the additional cost of a fibre rollout at the same time seem pretty small. At one point the engineer was explaining how they would dig the road and re-install the electrical conduit in the roads to reach the lamp posts. One of the older residents raised her hand and asked where the fibre optic conduit was going to be put! I was thrilled because she was looking forward to it.

I spoke up and explained that we will likely use the existing conduit but may need to cross streets with new conduit in certain places. That can be done at the same time they are doing the road work. I have very little time left (only 2-3 months) to get things ready before we vote officially on the road work. I need to have a proposal ready for them before the vote and I'm translating a handout right now which I'll pass out to all homes in the next week or two. I'll post the handout shortly.

Progress Report (May 2008) - Rapport sur mon progrès

2008-05-24T22:49:00.001+01:00

Just a quick progress report. I've been quiet about the project for the previous few months but I'm still pushing forward.

Funds
I should have most, if not all the money set aside that I need to run fibre to all the homes in the residence using the existing conduit. I'm planning on installing point-to-point connections to each home and terminating them in small box inside each garage. The future service provider will only have to run their own cables from the box in the garage to the modem in the house when they do their initial install.
We added a bit more to the fund last month when we bought a newer used car and sold our old one. I put the money from selling the old one directly into the fiber pot. We didn't get much but I figure it will be good enough to fiber one or two homes.
Registering the company in France
This step has been a real killer. I don't think the process is very complicated but there are legal terms and ideas that I don't understand well. We had a lawyer friend's family over this evening and he helped me go through the application and fill in the parts I was missing. In summary, I'm going with an SARL and will elect to collect and pay VAT because it's worthwhile to not have to pay VAT myself when we install the network. I've also decided to pay someone to set up the company for me given my workload at my day job. I spoke with my lawyer friend and he's arranging to have someone take care of it for not much more than it would cost if I did it myself.
Elections
There's a new mayor in town and her party complained about broadband at some point during the election. As soon as the company is registered then I'll make an appointment with her and talk about the planned civil works in town. I want to be putting my own infrastructure in every time someone comes along and digs up a road.
Installation
I've left several messages with Draka Comteq here in France but haven't received a response about them possibly doing the installation. I have the money ready and now I need to find a company with expertise who can install the fibre through the existing conduit in the residence. I not too worried that they haven't called back since I can contact them more formally once I have the company completely set up.

My lack of posts doesn't reflect diminished interest in the project. Indeed, I think now is a better time than ever to put fiber down. Plus, I'll need it in the future when I ask my job if they'll let me telework a day or two a week.

Upgrading the exchange? / Travail sur notre NRA?

2008-04-02T08:45:00.001+01:00

I was doing some research for work on Neuf/Cegetel today and decided to use my phone number as a way to look at the current offers. The site churned for a few seconds and then left this message:

Ligne en maintenance technique France Télécom a lancé une opération de maintenance sur votre ligne. Cette opération vise à déplacer la terminaison physique de votre ligne dans un autre central téléphonique. Lorsque cette opération sera achevée, d’ici une à six semaines, vous pourrez connaître les offres haut débit disponibles sur votre ligne. Nous regrettons cette situation et vous encourageons vivement à revenir tester l’éligibilité de votre ligne dans les prochaines semaines.

In English:

Line undergoing physical maintenance France Telecom has started maintenance work on your line. This operation will change the physical termination point of your line to another telephone exchange. Once this operation is completed in 1 to 6 weeks, you will be able to find out which offers are available on your line. We regret this situation and encourage you to come back and test the eligibility of your line in the next few weeks.

This could be really good news if France Telecom is actually moving our lines back to the exchange in our village. As I've mentioned in earlier posts, we have a France Telecom exchange roughly 500-600 meters from our house but it does not support residential ADSL. It's a small exchange and they've used it essentially to serve business customers. That means that all residential ADSL lines connect to exchanges in neighboring villages which are 4-5 km away - leaving us with very slow broadband.

Our previous mayor struck a deal with France Telecom where the village paid EUR 50,000 directly to France Telecom to upgrade the exchange so people could subscribe to "at least 8 Mbit/s". I thought it would take them a long time to pull off - and we will see. However, the fact that Neuf notified me that the work is in progress makes me think that we could have significantly faster DSL rather soon. This would allow us to finally take advantage of the TV over ADSL packages that many of us are already paying for in our triple-play packages.

Ramifications for the FTTH project:
I'll be the first to say that upgrading our exchange will be great for everyone in the village. At the same time, it may make it a bit difficult to convince people to shift to FTTH. It's a lot easier to sell when people have terrible connections but this just means we'll need to educate people a bit more about the benefits of open-access fiber. I'll still go ahead and put in the fiber in the residence. It may also be an opportune time to talk with the competitive operators before they being installing their own equipment (DSLAMs) in the upgraded exchange.

Conduit photos - Photos des fourreux

2008-03-03T22:07:00.001Z

	This photos shows one of the original concrete boxes in front of the garage of a house in the residence. This photo gives a good idea of the distance between the box and the house. The conduit typically runs between the box in the driveway and the floor of the garage.
	This box has a concrete top and has not been cleaned. It has many more cables than the other concrete boxes I've seen because it takes one aggregated cable and splits it out into six different phone lines. The orange conduit at the top of the screen takes the large (thick) white cable out to the telecom cabinet on the street. This cabinet then splits it out to individual lines which come back through the same orange conduit and head out to individual homes.
	The box shown in this photo had a new cover put on last year by France Telecom. It is closer to the home than most other boxes in the residence.
	This box was cleaned out in 2007. The large conduit going from left to right runs parallel to the street and connects box to box. The small 40mm conduit at the top runs between the box and the home. The light cords are telephone and the dark black cords are the old coax cables from a common antenna.

Rules regarding conduit in our residence - (Article 14: Passage de Canalisations)

2008-03-02T23:05:00.001Z

Today my neighbor passed on something he found that talks about conduit in the terms of our resident association. I was also able to locate it again in the papers we received from the notary when we bought our house.

The document is called the "Cahier des Charges du Lotissement et Association Syndicale" in French and my copy is dated 14 October 1970. Article 14 deals with the conduit in the residence.

Article 14: Passage de Canalisations
Les propriétaires de chaque lot seront tenus, sans indemnité, ni pouvoir s’y opposer, laisser passer dans leur sol ou sur leur lot, tous conduits nécessaires ou utiles a l’un quelconque des autres propriétaires pour l’alimentation ou le service de ses bâtiments, ainsi que pour les raccordements aux antennes collectives de radio-television (deux au total).
Dans chaque lot pourront passes des réseaux souterrains utilises au profit de l’un ou l’autre des lots.
Les occupants ne devront au droit de ces réseaux ni construire ni planter de végétations a racines longues susceptibles de les détériorer.
Le ou les propriétaires bénéficiaires de ces canalisations, réseaux et autres conduits seront tenus de remettre en état, a leurs frais, les lots qui auraient eu a subir des dégradations (tranchées par exemple) du fait de la mise en place, de l’entretien ou de la réparation des canalisations, réseaux ou autres conduit ce dessus vises.

The section starts by saying that the lot owners must allow the installation of conduit in their lots for the delivery of services. This includes a common antenna for radio/television. I understand the second paragraph to say that networks are allowed to run through the lots of any owner for the benefit of any of the lot owners. It goes on to say that the owners can't put bushes over the manholes or plant vegetation with long roots that could deteriorate the conduit.

I'm no lawyer but I understand the whole article to say that we should be allowed to run the fiber through all the conduit regardless of whether the lot owners approve or not. I'm not sure why they would actually object to another line in an existing conduit they'll never see. It is also interesting because the common antenna for radio/television isn't in use anymore (although pieces of it remain in the conduit) but some operators are installing a second fiber in their rollouts and using it to broadcast RF radio and television. It could be a way to justify the rollout legally if it ever came down to that.

Conduit map of our residence - La carte des fourreaux dans notre résidence

2008-03-01T21:24:00.001Z

I was able to pull a great map of the residence off of the French site: http://www.cadastre.gouv.fr this morning. It's a government site where you can put in your address and they give you a map of your area with the official information about the lots in the area. After printing a copy, I went out early this morning looking for manholes to mark.

I noted them all down on paper and then updated the digital map with all the box locations using Skitch. The blue circles on the map are original boxes and the red diamonds are the same boxes but with a France Telecom cover. Finally there were a few other boxes and I didn't know what exactly they were so I marked them with triangles. I may have missed a few boxes because I didn't want to go snooping in people's yards but I'll try to fill them in tomorrow.

Most of the boxes are really old and are made of concrete. I assume they were put in when the homes were initially built. Today an older resident told me the homes were first sold in 1971 so Zed's comment about the ducts belonging to the residence are probably correct. However, some of the boxes have fallen apart over time and they've been replaced with new France Telecom boxes. One of my friends in the neighborhood had France Telecom replace their box in the driveway this past year. I'll try and talk to him tomorrow to see how that worked and why France Telecom put in their own branded box.

I ran into a couple of residents while I was looking for the boxes and they all seem pretty excited about the prospect of better connections via fiber. I'm going to send off my application for the company (SARL) to my friend who is a lawyer tomorrow to have him look over before submitting the application next week. That will then allow me to contact the operators directly.

Breakthrough: Who owns the conduit? - Qui est la proprietaire des fourreux?

2008-02-29T08:31:00.001Z

I stayed after the FTTH Council Meeting ended to talk to with some vendors about equipment and a friend introduced me to ACOME, a French infrastructure company which does fibre, conduit, etc. They were all getting ready to celebrate the end of the conference - unpacking the champagne from the back room of their stall - but were nice enough to talk with me and give me some advice.

I was interested in the costs of conduit and fibre but the person I spoke with (Arnaud PARIZET) wouldn't discuss anything more than whether there were existing ducts in my residence that I could use and if those ducts still had any sort of pull cables. I pulled out my computer and we took a look at the photos I posted earlier when we opened up one of the boxes.

We couldn't see much on the screen but I left the exhibition thinking that I needed to gather a bit more information. I was also very glad to see the comment from Vincent giving a bit of information about sharing ducts. It means there is still a possibility of using existing ducts and conduit for all the fibre runs - particularly all the way to the exchange which would reduce the EUR 40,000 estimate for that installation.

The breakthrough happened last night when I went home and is thanks to my wife leaving the parking lights on in the car by accident. I noticed them when I walked in the door but forgot to go back out and turn them off. One of the long-time residents drove by, pulled over his car and rang the doorbell to tell us the lights were on. He is the person who helped me open the cover of the box in his driveway to take the picture so I explained where I had been during the day and said I wanted to open up the box again this weekend and take another look to see if there was space.

That's when he said there would be plenty of space because we could simply take out the cabling inside that is no longer used for an old shared antenna in the residence! I hadn't even considered that. Apparently all the houses were connected to one centralized antenna perched somewhere in residence. However, he said that antenna was taken down in 1991 but the cables were all left in the existing conduit - the same one used by France telecom! That's great news for a number of reasons. First, it's not clear to me anymore that the conduit is even France Telecom's to begin with in the residence if there is a second set of cables for the old antenna system inside. That means we may not need permission to put our own fiber in. Second, those cables are no longer used so we could probably pull them out when we install the fiber. In some cases they could probably act as the pull cable as well!

This is great news and I'll go and take a new look inside this weekend and post the results.

FTTH Council Europe - Notes and advice from equipment manufacturers

2008-02-28T11:46:00.001Z

I'm here at the FTTH Council Europe meetings in Paris and it has been great because there are all sorts of equipment operators who can answer my questions about the rollout. I've been here with my day job but was able to stop by vendor booths over lunch.

The opening session had the CEOs of Free, Neuf/Cegetel and Numericable in addition to the head of Orange's FTTH project. They discussed a lot of issues but at one point someone in the audience asked whether the operators were interested in connecting suburban areas with FTTH. The CEO of Neuf/Celegtel Michel PAULIN was honest and said, "We have no plans to go out there. It's not cost effective". I don't think the operators plan on coming anytime soon.
I ran into the CEO of a conduit company (GM PLAST) whom I had met in Iceland a few years ago. We talked for a minute about the project and he mentioned that they may have some conduit I could buy cheaply that they couldn't sell otherwise because it has the wrong printing on it, etc. That's good news considering I don't need much. In speaking with all the conduit providers, microconduit seems to run between EUR 2-5 per meter - depending on a range of factors. That helps give me an idea of costs.
I also spoke with Corning Cable Systems and they were very helpful about suggesting the most cost-effective way to rollout for my case. They said that microconduit is the best way to go and that I should connect everyone at the same time. They have solutions that allow operators to quickly add new subscribers but that's not what I'd need. After talking with them I see better how I should connect the fiber within the homes as well.
Iit seems as if France Telecom has now made an offers for access to ducts in the previous few weeks. I'll look that up and see if it could apply in our case given we have space in the ducts going through the residence.
On the other hand, there is an issue of getting OUT of the box in the driveways and into the homes. I spoke with Radius and they said that drilling out of the box to the house wouldn't be that difficult. That's also good news.
KPH talked about something interesting in NL about raising awareness for FTTH. They gave little little flags to people who signed up to put in their lawns. It raised awareness and allowed neighbors to ask why their neighbors hadn't signed up yet. We don't really have fronts lawns but it was an interesting idea.

It has been very interesting and helpful in my planning.

Existing conduit - Foureaux existant

2008-02-15T20:24:00.001Z

One of my neighbors came over to my house the other day and asked if I wanted to come open up the box in driveway to take a look at the existing conduit in the residence. The good news is the France Telecom conduit in front of most of the homes in the neighborhood. Each drop box seems to service one or two homes.

There is also plenty of space in the conduit running between boxes. When we looked in there was a lot of dirt but the cables themselves took up only a small fraction of the entire space in the tubes.

If we were able to make use of the existing conduit I can still see a problem. I don't know exactly how we would be able to get from the inside of the box out to each home. There are lines going out to each home but I figure we'd probably need to dig something new ourselves. This could pose problems as well because most of the drop boxes are in driveways.

It's certainly a possibility to consider - assuming that we could get permission from France Telecom.

Starting a business in France / Commencer une entreprise en France

2008-01-10T17:28:00.001Z

One of my good friends is an attorney here in Paris and I asked him for some help setting up an official company. I need to work through a company in order to do digging or provide telecommunication services. He sent me a template for registering a business here in France and it has been a huge help. He has done work for telecommunication firms in the past so he kindly filled in some of the telecom-specific areas.

His recommendation is to set up the business as a "société à responsabilité limitée" or SARL. This is comparable to a "limited liability corporation" (LLC) in the US. I'll base the company out of our house to begin with.

I've heard that the process of registering a business isn't too difficult here in France but I have waited to do it because it seems a bit daunting to a non-native French speaker. Once I have the process underway I'll put together a template and make it available on the site for others. I'll keep notes of the process as well and post them so someone else could mimic this easily.

Numbericable's 100 Meg set-top box / Numericable modem de 100 Mega

2008-01-09T16:49:00.001Z

I got home from work on Monday evening to find our new set-top box from Numericable. I was excited to install it and test the speeds. The television portion of the connection works just fine but the Internet does not. The modem does not assign me an IP address with DHCP. I had an external address momentarily and I was able to ping www.lemonde.fr but it disappeared after a power cycle never to be seen again. I am unable to register the MAC address of the box for normal connectivity without an initial connection.

I called Numericable 4-5 times yesterday (spending roughly EUR 10) without ever getting through to support. They put you on hold at EUR 0.34 per minute and then finally tell you to call back later or the line simply disconnects after 5-6 minutes of waiting. Interestingly, EUR 10 is the addition cost per month to have this triple-play package versus a simple data connection.

The most interesting thing for me was the lack of documentation that came with the box. You have to put in the village "frequency" but there was no listing or pamphlet that came with the modem giving frequencies by zip code. Luckily I knew where to find it on the Numericable site because I'd seen it before. I was also lucky to have my backup ADSL connection to use.

Finally, I upgraded to a triple-play plan with video, data and voice but there is no RJ-11 phone jack on the set-top box and no documentation. I wonder if this means I need to keep my old modem connected somewhere else in the house to use the RJ-11 jack it had.

If I've had this much trouble setting up a simple connection I can only imagine what this must be like for people who don't work in this field.

Broadband reliability / Fiabilité de broadband

2008-01-05T09:07:00.001Z

I've always assumed that one of the main drivers for fiber connections would be telework. Benoît Felten has a wonderful piece this week on Fiberevolution about how FTTH facilitates telework and how that, in turn, would have a key impact on the environment. I absolutely agree.

However, this will only happen if fiber is more reliable than current cable and DSL connections. Case in point, my cable modem connection (via Numericable) starting blinking in and out of service for a few days before losing the connection altogether. During my EUR 7 call to Numericable they tested the line and couldn't reach my modem so the problem was on their end. However, they also said they couldn't send someone out to look into the problem for at least one week. This is why I pay for both a DSL and cable connection at home. When one goes out I can quickly jump on the other.

The telecommunication world has long used statistics on the number of PSTN line faults and how long it takes operators to fix those faults once they've been notified. In the monopoly days, a week-long wait wasn't uncommon. However, now most PSTN faults are restored within 24 hours. It seems therefore that we are still be in the early stages of broadband development and operators treat residential connections as luxuries to users, rather than necessities. Until that mindset changes teleworking can't be a viable option for most users.

Slow broadband is becoming political in St Nom La Bretèche /L’Internet a haute vitesse devient plus important a St Nom La Bretèche

2008-01-01T00:44:00.001Z

Happy new year.

I went out to my mailbox today and found a newsletter we receive in the village. It's called "La Parole est aux listes - Journal d'expression des groupes au Conseil Municipal de Saint-Nom-La-Bretèche". I always try to read through it and today I was happy to see some attention to the ADSL situations here in St Nom. In this issue the group "Saint Nom Tout Simplement" writes:

Suite à une demande pressante auprès du conseil municipal, Orange a obtenu l’accord d’implanter une antenne relais sur le terrain de football. Nous avions insiste pour qu’en échange et au préalable, la commune obtienne des engagements sur le déploiement de l’ADSL rapide dans la commune (3/4 des foyer sont aujourd’hui limites a 512 kbit/s). Malheureusement, cette facilite a été donnée sans obtenir de contrepartie pour l’accès a internet. Aussi, 4 mois plus tard, Orange revient très dominateur avec une proposition de couverture à 92% de la commune en ADSL rapide, moyennant une participation de la commune estimée a EUR 50k. Et c’est “maintenant ou jamais”. Le pouvoir de négociation a évidemment changé de coté. Quant on réalise que la seule alternative a l’internet 512k dans notre commune, c’est Noos/Numericable…, on comprend mieux l’attitude aujourd’hui intransigeante d’Orange. Dommage!

I'll try to give a quick and dirty translation into English.

Following a request in front of the Municipal Council, Orange received permission to install a relay antenna near the football field in the village. We had insisted that in exchange for permission the commune should have obtained promises that fast ADSL would be deployed in the community (3/4 of homes in St Nom are currently limited to 512 kbit/s). Sadly, the permission was granted without any accompanying promise for Internet access Also, 4 months later, Orange has come back in a very dominant position with a proposition to cover 92% of the village with fast ADSL as long as the village covers half of the cost of the upgrade estimated to be EUR 50,000. They say it is either "now or never". The negotiation power has clearly shifted to Orange. When we realize that the only other alternative to Internet access at 512 kbit/s in our village (it's Noos/Numericable), we can more easily understand Orange's intransigence.

I was happy to see that the broadband issue has been raised to all residences in St Nom through this handout. People do want better broadband. Noos/Numericable may say they are offering 100 Mbit/s but my connection has been off and on for the past 3 days and it will cost me EUR 15 to call them to report it. I'm using my backup ADSL connection for now.

I don't know what the mayor has decided about the EUR 50,000 but I hope he hasn't paid it. They will upgrade the exchange without the money, particularly if Numericable is sweetening their offer.

More importantly, there is another option. Our fiber-to-the-home plan is only for the 50 homes in our small area of the village but we could expand to other areas fairly quickly once we get a fiber line down to the local exchange. Just the fact that we're moving ahead with a fiber plan should hopefully spur Orange into upgrading their own offering here in St Nom.

I find it interesting that for not much more than EUR 50,000, the Mayor and the Municipal Council could run an open access fiber from the telecommunication exchange at the edge of the village all the way to the Mairie. From here different "residences" could tap in and access services from competitive operators over fiber. Orange should not have the bargaining power to demand village money to upgrade their own exchange. They just need some competition.

The car and my wife / la voiture et ma femme

2007-12-28T20:50:00.001Z

My wife has been wonderful supporting my plans to build this network. I've mentioned in earlier posts that my two goals of the project are (1) learning everything I can about building these networks and (2) having an open access fiber connection to my home. I'm much less concerned about getting initial investment back.

My wife agreed to let me shift some money away from a car fund that we keep and use it for putting in the conduit. That has been the plan all along and the money is sitting there waiting for when the residence does the road work.

Then the car problems hit.

It's not that we haven't seen the problem coming. Our car has nearly 250'000 KM and now things are starting to go. We have had the car towed twice in two months and she's had to taxi back with the rest of the family from where they were stranded. It started to look as if we'd have to actually use the money for the car.

Things worked out though and we were able to buy a used car for less than half the money of a new one. We picked it up last weekend after buying it from a friend's family. That means that we will still have money available for the conduit and now have a more reliable car.

Crisis averted.

More on the Numericable offer in St Nom / Plus sur l'offre de Numericable a St Nom

2007-12-28T20:45:00.001Z

Now for a bit more information that I've been able to gather on the offer from Numericable. They advertise 100 Mbit/s downloads but only 5 Mbit/s upload speeds on their offer. Not bad, although the upstream is important to me for the ability to telework.

I got a call today from an independent company to verify the change of my account - essentially ensuring that I did agree to upgrade my connection and pay more each month. They weren't able to answer any questions though about the connections such as when it would be available.

I have noticed that my connection is actually much faster now than it was just a few months ago. I don't know what kind of changes they have made but today I was able to reach 16 Mbit/s download from Speedtest.net. That's closer to what I should have already been getting with my "30 Mbit/s" connection I pay for now.

The graphic above shows the upgrade schedule for St Nom La Breteche on Numericable's website. Cities with 100 Mbit/s are marked with the year of the upgrade. Those in the process of being upgraded are marked with one of the codes on the bottom right showing which quarter or semester the upgrade should happen. Interestingly St Nom isn't even given a timeline for a fiber upgrade.

A large part of our village doesn't even have cable coverage so I wonder if the headend for our residence is located elsewhere.

I'll update as I find more information. However, with a limit of 5 Mbit/s upstream I'll still go ahead with the investment.

The plot thickens

2007-12-20T11:19:00.001Z

I've had a number of posts partially written, waiting to be finished up over the holidays and uploaded to the blog. I'll write them up over the next week but I just hung up from a phone call 30 seconds ago which could possibly change the game plan.

Numericable, our cable operator, just called with a new package bundle. They didn't say who they were when I answered and asked for my wife so I passed her the phone. Once they announced who they were she passed the phone back to me.

The man said they were now offering 100 Mbit/s over fiber in our area as part of a triple-play package. EUR 29.90 gets you 100 Mbits, 110 television channels and free PSTN calls to 32 destinations.

Numericable does have conduit in our neighborhood but I have a hard time believing they are doing true FTTH - particularly here. I did notice that the advertised 30 Mbit/s connection that I pay for now has recently jumped up from 3 to 10 Mbit/s in actual throughput so they've obviously upgraded something somewhere.

I signed up to the new offer and we'll see how it goes. If this is real then it may be more difficult to convince other residents to sign up to do our own fibre. However, given Numericable's previous record I'm not going to believe it until I see it.

Broadband and the role of municipalities /l'Internet à haute vitesse et le rôle des gouvernements municipaux

2007-11-28T19:45:00.000Z

I recently spoke with a number of people running community broadband projects as part of my job. I was very interested in their own experiences from both a professional and personal standpoint. We've recently seen the meltdown of a number of municipal Wi-Fi projects and I believe there are still some questions surrounding the most appropriate role of governments in telecommunications. That's why it was so interesting to talk to people "in the trenches" and hear about their own experiences and struggles. I was particularly interested in their experiences with fiber.

The people leading these projects seem to be driven overwhelmingly by the desire to improve their communities over the longer term. Many of these communities lack good broadband infrastructure and the people pushing these projects see new broadband networks as a way to build sustainable communities - often outside of major city centers. They believe that the investment models of telecom and cable firms are focused too much on the short-term. Fiber isn't a 3-5 year return proposition and the CEO's of telcos and cable companies often don't even last that long. Instead, fiber evangelists argue that their communities need fiber and that these investments should be evaluated over a much longer time span. That could make them less interesting for the private sector.

The arguments for government intervention should be tied more to positive externalities. Private firms are concerned with short-term returns on investment. Communities, on the other hand, often have other social goals in mind. Private firms want to maximize profit while governments often aim to maximize welfare (utility). That means the the private sector and local governments may come to different conclusions regarding when a project is "worthwhile." Private firms will come when it's profitable. Governments may step in when it is net welfare enhancing.

Municipalities typically aim to cover costs of the network but there may also be other social benefits such as drawing a high tech employer to the area and stimulating demand. This could still make the project socially worthwhile even if it weren't profitable. It's interesting because the effects of externalities are typically neglected from discussions of fiber infrastructure. However, similar externalities are front and center when cities give millions of dollars in tax rebates to developers for building shopping centers or manufacturing plants. I think these externalities deserve more attention.

I'm taking a different approach by building this network as a private citizen but I will still rely on these positive externalities as a selling point for the network. The difference is I'll need to convince people to pay a little extra for these benefits while governments typically can use taxes for the same purpose. I'm hoping that the residents in my neighborhood will be able to recognize these benefits and then support the project by signing up. The telecom and cable companies don't consider the welfare of people in St Nom La Breteche when they make their telecommunication decisions. Residents, on the other hand, should.

Another offer of funding / Une autre offre de financement

2007-11-20T08:12:00.001Z

We had a friend's family over the other day for dinner. He's a French lawyer and I had previously approached him for advice about setting up the business here in France as a foreigner. He had done some legal work on fiber networks in the past and seemed excited about the project when I initially told him about them. Then, while we were talking at the house he mentioned he'd be interested in investing in the project - even though he doesn't live in the area.

I've been a bit surprised at the two offers I've received because I've never solicited any funds. I figure I'm not to that stage yet since I'll be paying myself to have the conduit installed. The next stage is likely when I'd need to look for funding to run a trunk line out from our residence to the exchange.

I will certainly approach both friends as soon as I am farther along in the project if I decide to fund it this way. However, the fact that both of them approached me about participating gives me hope that I could raise the money necessary for our local project using small investments from a number of people. What I think is even more promising though is the possibility of getting the neighbors to invest themselves.

Attracting investors / Attirer les investisseurs

2007-10-30T17:56:00.001Z

I had an interesting discussion with one of my friends from our old neighborhood the other day. He had heard me mention that I wanted to roll out fiber-to-the-home in St Nom. We talked for about an hour and a half and I explained why the transition to fiber is so important and how I think a small scale project could work in our particular case. I also explained that I thought this could be a good test case for whether the model really will work or not, or if the project could expand at some point.

After we were done speaking he said that he'd be interested in investing in the project. I thought that was really great news, not because I'm looking for investors at the moment, but because he could see the value of the project without being someone involved directly in telecom.

I'm moving forward in steps to put this together. First, I'll work on putting the conduit in the ground in our residence. I won't need investors for that portion. The conduit would likely be a risky part of the investment because there is no guarantee that I will be able to convince an operator to connect with us. Obviously having a conduit for fiber in the ground would pay off one day (at least in terms of connectivity). The big question is how to recover that initial investment. I can take the risk because I'm more interested in learning everything about this than recovering this part of the investment.

However, outside money will likely play a part in the second stage of the project. I may need to raise some money to run fiber between our residence and the exchange in St Nom (where we could potentially interconnect with a number of operators). The numbers here wouldn't be huge - probably in the EUR 40,000 range, but this is where I'd start looking at financing options. Given the willingness of my friend to participate I may consider approaching the people in the residence in becoming co-owners of the fiber between the exchange and our residence. That could be a win-win situation because it would increase their incentive to actually use the line themselves.

How to sell fiber / Comment vendre la fibre

2007-10-23T14:53:00.001+01:00

I was recently attending a conference abroad where someone brought up an interesting point that got me thinking. The speaker was saying that we spend too much time trying to sell broadband. Instead, we need to sell people on what they can do with broadband. Essentially users don't buy lines. They buy services.

A lot of my planning recently has been how to convince people in the community that they need fiber. Maybe that's missing the point. I should focus on things they would be able to do with fiber that are not possible with standard ADSL - particularly where we are.

The big question for me (and probably the rest of the telecommunication world) is what are these services? What services could attract a 70-year old couple in the village and make it worth it to pay a little extra for fiber services?

Missed opportunity / un occasion manquée

2007-09-29T15:57:00.001+01:00

I walked down to the church today and they have indeed finished the the trench across the main street (D307) that runs through the village. It's too bad that I was not ready to put in conduit when they had the street opened up. It feels like a missed opportunity but I just wasn't ready.

However, I have learned something from this. I'm going to contact the Mairie in our village to find out if there are any other projects coming up where they'll be doing roadwork. I spoke to the Mayor in June but didn't ask about other groups getting permission to dig. This way I'll be ready the next time someone comes to town to dig up the road.

Distance to the exchange / Distance au commutateur

2007-09-28T23:07:00.001+01:00

I was driving back home tonight with the family and we started up the road where the exchange is located to get home. It's a bit of a shortcut for people going to our section of St Nom. We had the GPS turned on so I decided to reset the odometer at the exchange to see how far our residence was "as the car drives".

I was surprised to see the exchange was closer than I had estimated. Driving in the car, the bottom of our residence was only 400-450 meters away. The only problem is the road going up to the village from the exchange is cobblestone - which could certainly complicate matters for a dig.

Why our sidewalks need repair / Pourquoi nous devons réparer nos trottoirs

2007-09-27T08:36:00.001+01:00

I noticed how badly our sidewalks need repair as I was walking out of the residence the other day. The asphalt has simply broken away in certain areas. It some ways it was nice because it allowed me to look at what was going on underneath. I was a bit surprised at how shallow the asphalt actually is. There was just rock and dirt underneath.

I had never really thought about the depth of the asphalt on the road and sidewalks.

I uploaded the picture I took that morning to my flikr account along with the other photos I snapped of the gas dig in our neighborhood. I laughed as I was uploading the pictures because my account is full of pictures of dirt, holes, sidewalks and streets - all interesting to me but probably not to the general public!

Conduit for the gas network in St Nom / Conduit pour le réseau de gaz a St Nom

2007-09-26T22:52:00.001+01:00

I left the house this evening with the car and drove past the church right at the bottom of our residence. There was a whole area cordoned off around a fresh dig and a roll of yellow conduit. The dig was ready to go under the exact street that we would have to cross to get to the exchange.

In France (and probably other places) builders are required to use a certain color of conduit to put in the ground so that other workers will know what it is if they come across it in their own digs.

I knew that red was for electricity and blue was for water but I wasn't sure what yellow was for. If it was for telecom I would have taken the day off tomorrow and asked the construction crew how I could possibly lay my own conduit quickly next to theirs. If I could get across the main street the next little bit to the exchange would be much easier.

I was already planning on calling Vincent MONVILLE for something unrelated and thought if anyone could tell me what the yellow color represented he could. I asked him about the conduit and he explained that is was for gas. He chuckled when he said that it's not a great idea to try and mix fiber and gas. :)

So close...

Moment to set up the business / Le moment pour la création de l'entreprise

2007-09-21T23:53:00.001+01:00

This evening I spent time talking to a French friend of mine who has a tech-related startup (Mulot Déclic) here in France. We talked about the FTTH project as a whole and about what I would need to do to register the company here in France. He grilled me about how and if this project could be expanded later on. It was a very good exercise to try and convince him that it could work. If I ever do want to expand I'll have to make similar explanations to investors.

One of the key things we discussed was the need to set up a proper business here in France. He assured me that setting one up wasn't as difficult as it is often made out to be. He said that now it was possible to do a lot of it online and that the cost of registering the business should be around EUR 300.

He and his wife are also the brains behind the name for the company. I grabbed the domain name a few months ago and will publish it all as soon as the official business registration goes though. They're both native French speakers and were able to come up with something really catchy.

The Mayor told me I needed a proper business if I wanted to do any street work outside of the residence. It will also make things much more straight-forward when it comes to getting an agreement with our residence association. The only outstanding question is whether I'll need to take on a French partner to register the company - given that I don't have a standard French work permit. I'll look into that.

How long of a loop? / Quelle longueur pour la boucle locale?

2007-09-19T08:37:00.000+01:00

It's clear to me that one of the most challenging elements for network operators is actually mapping out the most efficient topology in terms of capacity and cost. I thought I had decided how I would lay out the network but now I'm starting to wonder if I should readjust after certain developments here in France.

One of my big struggles now is how long to make the "local loop" element of the network. I know that "local loop" typically refers to a copper twisted pair but I'm not sure exactly what you would call its replacement in FTTH-speak.

Initially I had imagined putting a concentration point in the middle of our residence (100 meters away) where I could install active equipment. Then any operator could come and patch into us to offer services at the edge of our network. However, now I'm beginning to wonder if I should plan on taking all fibers all the way back down to the exchange 600 meters away.

If I thought that I would surely stop at just laying fiber in our residence then locating the active equipment next to us would probably be a good idea. However, the situation becomes a bit more complicated if I ever decide to spread out the fixed costs of connecting to exchange by expanding the project to other subdivisions at a later date.

I'm not sure that it makes good economic sense to place active equipment in each subdivision of a small village. It's not cost effective for the equipment and it surely introduces more potential points of failure. At the same time, it may not be cost effective to run a large amount of fiber to the edges of the village several kilometers away either.

Right now this is playing out in Paris. France Telecom's PON network requires less physical space than Iliad/Free's point-to-point network. That means that Free is likely looking for property all over Paris where it can locate active equipment to terminate its fiber closer to users.

I don't need to make all these decisions now since I can wait to see how the project progresses and if other subdivisions are interested in connecting with us. One of the important decisions for now though is how big of conduit I should put in leaving our residence out to the exchange? Do I plan for something big enough to accommodate future growth - even if it will increase my up-front fixed costs?

France Telecom's FTTH - La fibre de France Telecom

2007-09-07T23:09:00.001+01:00

I recently took a tour of France Telecom's FTTH rollout in Paris and wanted to write about it for a few reasons. It wasn't related to my own fiber plans but there were a couple of inter-related items.

France Telecom is proposing to share the internal fiber wiring it the buildings it connects with competitors as long as they are willing to reciprocate. I spoke with someone before I'd gone and I didn't understand exactly what they were doing until I saw it for myself. FT puts in a cabinet in the basement of an apartment building which holds their passive GPON equipment. All the single fiber lines to apartments come down from the ceiling right beside the FT cabinet where they can easily be patched into the FT equipment (or theoretically a competitors). ARCEP, the regulator here in France, launched a consultation recently on sharing the internal wiring of buildings and France Telecom seems agree with the regulator that this is the best way to avoid having to go down the functional separation route.
A neutral fiber network within the building is not much different than a neutral fiber network in a small residence. At one point I asked one of the FT people if they would consider connecting to a residence that had put it its own fiber. Their unofficial answer was that they likely would. They also explained that they would be particularly interested if there was empty conduit in place where they could blow through their own fiber.

The whole visit pretty much re-energized me for the project because I believe that by putting part of the network in place myself I'll be able to attract operators. The idea of connecting 50 homes may not be a huge draw for them but once the network is in place I plan on making enough noise publicly when I'm looking for operators that it should be in their interest to participate.

Upgrading the exchange in St Nom - Travail sur le NRA a St Nom

2007-09-02T12:15:00.001+01:00

The other day one of my friends in the residence passed along news about our telecom exchange. He said that he heard our France Telecom exchange (NOM78) in St Nom La Breteche is about to be upgraded in December and the lines all regrouped back there from other distant exchanges. I've heard this before but haven't seen any movement near the exchange which would suggest imminent work.

Our mayor did have a meeting with France Telecom in June where they asked for more land to expand the exchange. The rumor around the village says that it was supposed to be completed next month (September) but now they've pushed the date back to December 2007.

I don't think there's much chance of it happening that quickly. If France Telecom asked for more land then they're going to need to build a bigger exchange and likely allow for collocation. The current exchange is just too small. I've lived here long enough to know that construction projects take longer than a few months to put together - particularly if France Telecom was still discussing the land issue two months ago.

There are some interesting implications however for the fiber project. Our exchange is probably 400-600 meters from the residence which means people could see a huge jump in bandwidth using ADSL2+. I would hope that competitive operators would take advantage of full unbundling at our exchange because those are the best offers in the market right now.

This is great news for the residence but could make convincing people to switch to fiber and pay more for it a bit more difficult. If they do upgrade quickly then I'm going to have to come up with an interesting "local" application for fiber that would convince people to sign up through us. I thought about a security service for their homes but it's an area I don't know much about.

Worried about the road work /Inquiété de la réparation des routes

2007-08-29T13:28:00.001+01:00

I rode home yesterday with one of my neighbors from the residence. We talked a lot about the progress of the project and I explained exactly what I'd done so far.

In the course of the discussion he expressed concern that we may not be able to convince some of the holdouts in the residence to agree to do the general road work. That could be a problem because putting in the conduit is probably only economically viable if we're already digging up the roads. The roads will have to be done eventually. It's just a question of how much time we'll have to wait.

If we have to postpone the road work one year then the positive aspect is I'll have more time to get everything ready.

Excavation work? Lay empty conduit. / Excavation? Installer le fourreau vide.

2007-08-21T21:23:00.001+01:00

Sweden really seems to get it when it comes to looking for ways to get fiber into the ground. I found this today from the government's IT Policy Strategy Group and was impressed with their foresight:

Pipe-laying should be coordinated, including the allocation of costs, the goal being that empty piping should at least be laid when excavation must in any case be carried out.
“Policy for the IT society: Recommendations from the members of the IT Policy Strategy Group”, IT Policy Strategy Group – Sweden, 26 October 2006, at: http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/574/a/76046;jsessionid=aRgt9J6DAf-g/

I've tried to break this project down into manageable steps and the first is simply getting conduit into the ground. Everything else can progress from there including the details about interconnection with ISPs. For the time being the focus should be on getting the conduit in when they dig up the roads in the residence.

The Swedes do raise another interesting point. Should I announce my intentions and offer to share the costs of putting in the conduit with the other providers? I'd be more than happy to see them come (which I doubt they would) but that could also make it difficult for me to personally recoup my own costs. That then begs the question of how many open access fibers are necessary to each home...

End of vacations in St Nom - fin des vacances à St Nom

2007-08-20T08:09:00.001+01:00

August is a very quiet time in France and our village is no exception. I've never seen things so quiet and it feels like a ghost town. That will all change in the next two weeks as people return from vacation and school starts.

I'm planning on preparing a small handout that I will pass around to all the neighbors in the residence explaining what I'd like to do for soon after they get back. It will explain what I plan on doing and where I'll need their help.

I was thinking about it last night and much of this is really going to be about marketing the idea to people. Getting people excited about fiber in English is one thing but trying to do it in French (writing) is somewhat daunting. I've decided to it first in English and then I'll get help translating it into perfect French.

I'll post my drafts of the handout here on the blog and would welcome any comments.

New networks drive innovation / Nouveaux réseaux stimulent l'innovation

2007-07-25T07:59:00.001+01:00

I rode on a new Delta Airlines plane the other day across the US and was impressed with the television/entertainment system installed in every seat. The movie and TV portion of the system were the same as you would find on any other long-haul flight. However, the new system also allows you to play interactive games against other passengers.

Delta customers also will be entertained with a suite of 10 video games, including Book Worm, Trivia, Bejewled, Zuma, Texas Hold 'em Poker and an interactive trivia game that allows for some friendly competitive play among passengers. Panasonic's eFX single aisle in-flight entertainment system gives Delta an interactive technology platform to offer even more in-flight options in the future like laptop connectivity, broadband internet, and e-mail access.
http://biz.yahoo.com/pz/060913/105167.html

My favorite was the interactive trivia game which pits travelers against one another. You can see all the participants' screen names and seat numbers alongside their scores as you play. I played round after round and was amazed at how quickly the time passed on the flight. I was struck by how this new and innovative application was made possible by networking the seats on the plane together. After seeing and trying the trivia game for the first time it seems like such a wonderful, simple and obvious use of the plane's upgraded internal network.

I immediately thought back to the FTTH network in St Nom and the struggles I've had trying to explain to people what applications will need 100 Mbit/s now or in the future. The answer is we probably don't know yet but they will appear once the networks are in place. They too will likely strike us as wonderful, simple and obvious after we've tried them the first time.

Time to think - Du temps a penser

2007-07-20T14:23:00.001+01:00

I'm looking forward to having a bit more time to stop, think and plan. We've come to the US on vacation and that will hopefully give me some time to make calls and ask some questions here in English about fiber rollouts. There are some interesting projects going on here in the US and hopefully I'll be able to make a site visit to one of them.

fSONA: Is anyone there? / fSONA: est-ce que quelqu'un est là ?

2007-07-12T23:01:00.001+01:00

fSONA makes high-capacity wireless optical systems (using lasers) that can be used for point-to-point communication without a license. I wanted to call them to ask about prices - possibly as a way to avoid digging the 310 meters from our residence to the exchange. I know. It's a longshot but I figured I'd give it a try.

The reason I thought of fSONA was because I had fairly good contact with their company in my previous job. They found an interesting niche and their marketing team was always very helpful at providing me with case studies and background information when I needed it.

Now, fast forward a few years and I'm calling as a possible client - not as an analyst. I visited their site and there was no pricing information. I waited until evening my time (in Paris) and called their US/Canadian numbers to speak with the sales department. They didn't answer and I was routed through to an outsourced answering service which offered to take a message. I gave them my information and then was hit with his doosie of a question:

Operator: "How much do you want to spend?"

Tad: "As little as possible!"

The first thing I though of was Clark W. Griswold's experience with the mechanic in "National Lampoon's Vacation".

I called back for four days straight and they don't seem to be answering their phones. Each time I leave a message for them to call me and I still haven't heard from them. It's too bad because their marketing team really stood out for how hard they worked to raise the company's visibility. Now they seem like a company that can't manage answering their own phones in the sales department. Ouch.

It certainly doesn't seem like a good sign for fSONA.

Meeting with Yvelines Numériques / RDV avec Yvelines Numériques

2007-07-11T23:02:00.001+01:00

I met up with Jean LEBRET of Yvelines Numériques today in Paris. (For a quick reminder: Yvelines Numeriques is a public/private backhaul network running through our French department). We walked over to a small cafe to talk about the project when French fighter planes cruised right above us in formation - flanking what looked to be a bomber of some sort. It happened three times on the short walk and the jets even left blue and red trails behind them. The whole ground shook as they flew by. Very impressive. We assumed it was practice for Bastille Day coming up.

Yvelines Numériques network path

Once we sat down I explained what I wanted to accomplish with the project and where our residence is located. I may be wrong but I think he was a bit surprised with my determination to see this project through. He jumped right in too saying that he hadn't heard of a similar project yet in France and thought this could actually work in our favor - helping us convince politicians to help me out.

He pulled out his computer and we started going over the maps. It turns out we are very close to their fiber backbone network - but not quite as close as their public map had made it appear. Their network actually dips down a street lower from us, away from the main road, as it comes near the church (and near us). He was able to measure the distance from the edge of the residence to the nearest possible splice point for their network (310 meters). Still not too bad.

He gave me an estimate for how much it will cost to get from our network (in the residence) to his (closer to the exchange): EUR 120 per meter.

310 meters * EUR 120/meter = EUR 37,200

Expensive. He did mention that the prices for the dig could actually be lower (down to EUR 50 per meter) if we were mainly going through fields - which I don't think we would be.

I was a bit taken back with the costs of simply getting to the backhaul but it make me think of some other options, particularly wireless. I'll write about those a bit later.

The main thing I pulled out of our conversation was that he thinks the best way to approach this is by convincing the government to help us get connected to the network. We would essentially ask the village or department to pay for (or subsidize) the connection to Yvelines Numériques as a way for them to save money on connectivity for government offices in the town (e.g. schools, mayor's office, post office). The more he talked about it the more I thought this could be an option. He gave me the names of two people in the Conseil Général to contact who may be able to help. He also suggested I go back to the Mayor and try to convince him to pool the demand for the local government as a way to justify running a fiber between the mayor's office and their network. We could take some strands as the network passed by on the road to the commercial center.

France Telecom Exchange (St Nom)

This could be politically attractive option since the Department helped fund half the backbone network and they would have an interest in seeing it lit. Yvelines Numériques only provides the dark fiber so the more cables they can light, the better. I got the impression that the network has much more capacity now than is in use. Out of the 144 fibers in their first cable it sounded like less than 10% were lit in our area. They would definitely have room for us if we could get to them. He also explained that once we'd be in contact with their own fiber the costs would be quite low to go the rest of the way to the exchange (100 meters). They charge EUR 1.80 per meter per year.

Once we made it to the exchange other operators could easily supply us with services since they also have lit fibers on the same backhaul network. The operators may not have their own equipment in the exchange now but it wouldn't be difficult or expensive to simply create a drop point.

Finally, Jean recommended I use PEHD (high density polyethylene in English) for the conduit when I lay it down in the sidewalks. By his calculation I'd need around a kilometer of it and he said the costs wouldn't be too bad.

I was very glad that Yvelines Numériques got back to me and there may be a way to work with them on this. The costs seemed high but I feel at least that this was sign that I can actually make this work.

FTTH advice from the Netherlands / Conseil de FTTH venant des Pays Bas.

2007-07-09T20:47:00.001+01:00

Vincent MONVILLE suggested I talk to someone who actually does FTTH rollouts to get an idea of what type of network topology I should choose. Then he'd be able to help me calculate the costs of putting in the network.

I've made several contacts in the Netherlands with operators who have/are putting in their own open-access fiber networks and I contacted them with the question about network topology over the weekend.

I explained that I was originally interested in having a simple "active star" topology with the fiber aggregation point in the middle of the residence and an individual conduit to each home going out from the center like the arms of an octopus. Vincent raised some concern that this could mean I'd need much bigger trenches right next to the aggregation point because I'd have to put a large number of conduit together.

I wrote to the FTTH experts in the Netherlands and asked for ideas, explaining my concerns and looking for their suggestions. They responded quickly and said that running individual conduit to each house from the center was probably the best way to proceed - given our particular geographic and cost factors. The maximum number of conduit I'd be putting in any trench would likely be 8 (with the exception of the two apartment buildings). There I could probably run a larger conduit which would support a thicker cable of fibers.

I'll get back to Vincent and ask for his advice from here.

French civil costs with Vincent MONVILLE / Discussion des coûts civils avec Vincent MONVILLE

2007-07-09T08:26:00.001+01:00

I had lunch with Vincent MONVILLE, a French fiber specialist who is a friend of Benoît FELTEN. I met him to talk about general costs and civil works here in France. He's very familiar with providing point-to-point fiber connectivity and clued me in to some of the hurdles I'm going to have to go through. I took notes and even snatched the part of the paper table cloth where he'd drawn some network diagrams.

He broke the network into three geographical parts:

Outside the residence
This is one of the most complex parts of the civil works to manage bureaucratically. He suggested this is best handled by the operator from whom we eventually purchase connectivity or bring in to provide their own services. In these areas we're also required to dig down the full 60 cm for the trenches.
Public areas of the residence (sidewalks, roads. aggregation point)
Vincent explained that in a residence I'll probably need to put my request to use the public spaces (and dig the road) to a vote of the residents. That seems natural. I then asked him if I'd need unanimous support from the residents. This could be difficult to obtain after watching some of the debates at the previous association meeting. However, he explained that the process for getting approval is different among associations. In some you only need permission of the "syndic" or president of the association. Others may require a majority vote. Finally, there are some circumstances when we'd have to have all residents in agreement. I'll have to check more on how this works for our own residence. One positive element - we may be able to reduce the depth of the trenches to 15 cm since the residence is private property. That will reduce costs.
Personal property
Obviously here we'd need permission of every owner before digging in their property. I think most will agree to this, particularly if they're not paying up front. However, there could still be cases where people may decide they don't need fiber and don't want their lawns and gardens touched. This poses a particular problem. In order to attract operators we need to have as many potential clients as possible. Skipping a house with the network (because an owner refuses) will be slightly less costly but also will decrease the incentive for operators. Vincent suggested a work-around here. We could simply put a small drop box in the public portion of the sidewalk in front of their home. As soon as the owner changed his/her mind we could pick up the conduit from there and bring it to the house.

Vincent also explained several steps before the contractors come in and start digging up the road/sidewalk in the residence:

Ask the mayor for a list of network owners
We need the list of the network owners (electricity, water, sewer, gas, phone, cable) so we can ask them for maps of where their networks are in the area. We'd need to map our own conduit around the existing infrastructure. Vincent explained this was part of a 1991 law I'll have to dig up (so to speak).
Wait four weeks for answers
The operators have four weeks to answer us with their maps. These will typically come as a PDF or as paper copies.
Present maps and plans to residents
Once I've mapped out the proposed route for the network I need to present it to the residents. This would show them where we would like to dig in the public areas and on their property.
Notifying existing network owners of the dig
The company doing the digging has to send a "DICT" to all network owners 10 business days before the work starts. This notifies them that there may be work near their own networks and I assume it allows them to come and ensure their networks remain untouched.

Vincent also gave me a bit of information about the rack I'd need to install and the elements that I'd need to put in it. I'll try to locate this in the public area of the residence which will serve as the aggregation point for the fiber connections.

Enclosure: 2m x 60 cm x 60 cm
Uninterrupted power supply
A fiber entry point
The actual switching/termination equipment
Batteries

Vincent gave me lots of good advice and suggested I speak next with people who have been doing FTTH projects to see how they would plan out the network. Once I have that information he said he'd be able to give me a better picture of the costs involved.

Olivier JERPHAGNON - (Calient)

2007-07-06T09:00:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I met with Olivier JERPHAGNON who works for Calient Networks. Dirk VAN DER WOUDE suggested we meet because of the connection between unbundling/regulatory policy and the optical switching equipment Calient produces. The gist of our discussion was about how different topologies and technologies affect the way alternative operators can access end-users. Luckily, I was also able to talk to him for a minute about this project as well.

Here are a some of the key/interesting items he brought up:

Overall

One of the competitive operators here in France is planning to have 60 POPs for all of Paris at 10,000 subscribers each. That certainly helps in terms of scale economies.
Access networks are similar to airports and harbors. If cities can promote the development of airports and harbors then they should be able to put in networks as well.
The more "pure" the model for structural separation, the more tax money will be needed to fund the rollout of the network.
VDSL and PON FTTH networks typically have a few hundred subscribers in a street cabinet compared to our 50.
Calient's equipment is useful for creating dynamic PON and end-run networks from a central point. Their equipment is usually located in a central office (exchange) but they are working on a smaller version for street-size cabinet use.

St Nom Fiber

Our project is small enough that it may be difficult to attract operators to come and provide services. He suggested that operators may only consider if they can be the sole provider.
He emphasized that the key to attracting an operator will be having everything in place for them to connect in.
One area where we may have an advantage is connecting the last 10 meters. The last few meters to reach a house and install the connection are among the most difficult and expensive for operators. We will be much more attractive to operators if, with the support of the residents, we install the network ourselves (and this last 10 meters) ourselves.
He urged me to approach as many operators as possible about coming in and connecting into the network.

Benoît FELTEN - (Fiberevolution)

2007-07-03T13:57:00.001+01:00

Two work colleagues and I had lunch with Benoît FELTEN of Fiberevolution to talk about the project and fiber rollouts in general here in France. We spent a good deal of time discussing why many operators were planning PON-based networks versus end-run fiber.

Some key points of the discussion:

First fiber in will likely solidify their position as a monopoly provider. This has huge implications for competition, network architecture and regulation.
The 50 homes in our project are peanuts for operators here in France. The key will be using this as a high-profile test case for the business model.
This little project could help apply pressure on local candidates running for office next year. Hopefully we can make open-access fiber one of the main campaign issues at least in the village.
The power of Web/Telco 2.0. This came up in two ways. First, it's so easy to make connections with other like-minded people with the interactive Internet of today. Second, and Benoît pointed this out, we're likely not long from the day where you can offer a complete third-party "triple-play" offer using Joost, Gmail and Skype.

I've also asked Benoît for help locating people with fiber expertise in the area. This is going to be really important because as interested as I am personally, I need to find someone who really knows installations here in France.

Competition / Concurrence

2007-07-03T13:50:00.001+01:00

Competition is king.

I'm a big fan of competitive telecommunication markets because that's where the action is. Consumers are better off and providers are pushed to innovate and provide the best services. France has one of the most competitive broadband markets in the world and that has both positive and negative implications for this project.

On the positive side - Paris and other large cities are getting fiber - possibly from multiple providers. Soon others (in non-covered areas) are going to start wondering why they don't have it as well. That can only help projects like this one. We also have some of the best broadband packages in the world. The operator Free offers ADSL 2+ connections at up to 26 Mbps, free fixed calls to 42 countries and 100+ television channels for EUR 29.99 a month. Free has announced that it will move people to fiber for the same price. That's hard to beat.

And therein lies the negative aspect of competition on our project. Some operators in other countries are able to sell lower-speed ADSL (and even fiber) subscriptions without the other 2 parts of the triple play package. I don't think that consumers here in France would accept that now. If you don't have a compelling video and phone offer then people simply aren't interested. Offering an up-front triple-play offer is clearly outside the realm of possibilities for me alone with this project. That means that competition will likely force me to team up with someone who can.

X is the magic number / X est le chiffre magique

2007-06-29T08:41:00.001+01:00

I had a talk with Laurent at work today and he put forward one of the most important questions:

How many users will the ISP require before they'll come and patch you into their network?

He suggested contacting the major ISPs here in France to see what their magic number (X) is. I think he's right. So much of the project will depend on whether they can make a business case for selling to 50 homes.

However, I've decided I'm going to put in the conduit/network whether or not we can find an operator who will build out to us and offer services over the fiber. My reasoning for this ties back to the overall goal of the the project. I consider this first and foremost a learning exercise and figure I'll learn either way. Second, I know that even if we can't get an operator to build out to us now they may change their minds down the road - particularly when faced with the prospect of digging up the roads to put their own infrastructure. That will save us trouble in the long run.

If we can't find someone to come in then I can also look into getting a 50-100 Mbps connection into the residence to share.

Hopefully operators would be willing to take a chance on the project because there are ways to improve the scale economies if we can show this works.

No single "best practice" / Non seulement un "best practice"

2007-06-29T08:30:00.001+01:00

I've had several discussions offline the past 2 weeks with experts who have offered their advice. What I'm starting to understand better is that there is no single "best practice" for putting in a FTTH network. All cases are different and lend themselves to different network topographies, equipment and business plans.

I knew when I started that different housing layouts would require different topologies. What I hadn't counted on was the sheer number of parameters that factor into the decision. It's not like you can just say that you want to run fiber to the home. Will that be PON or end-run? Will the deployment be arial or underground? Even if you narrow that one down you're faced with what type of underground deployment (direct-bury or in conduit, etc). Then you get into questions about what kind of fiber... The list of decisions goes on and on. Luckily I'm getting very good advice from people who want to see more fiber rollouts.

All this leaves me in a bit of a chicken/egg situation. I can't convince people to sign up for the network until I know how much it's going to cost and where it will run. However, I can't easily make many of these decisions regarding the network until I have a feel for their level of interest either (and if they'll let me dig in their yards). It's tough to show up at someone's door and ask them if they're interested if you can't give them details. That's probably exactly what I'm going to have to do though.

Backyard vs. Street / Jardin vs. Rue

2007-06-22T18:57:00.001+01:00

Street and curb in our residence

I've been having some discussions offline with several experts the past few days that have been really helpful. They've mainly been about the physical network components and topology. I'll summarize the discussions soon (along with my key findings) but one of the most interesting ideas has been where to put the conduit/cables.

I decided that I wanted to do the project when I heard that all households were being asked to pay roughly EUR 2000 to redo the roads in our "residence". I couldn't think of a better time to put down conduit in the streets to run fiber.

It's never quite that easy though. There are a couple of issues I've run into that I'd never thought about before in my life. For example, I've been going to bed at night thinking about how I could traverse the concrete curbs between the road and the sidewalk which are not scheduled for repair. There is also the question of how we'll dig the trenches too.

One of the options put forward is that I could consider actually running the network through the back gardens of the homes - rather than the streets. There are some interesting possibilities there but also some challenges.

My French friends have explained that France has a long socialist history where people band together. BUT, one area where this does not apply is in housing residences. I saw this in the meeting I attended and can imagine that there may be owners who wouldn't allow us to dig through their gardens.

Network topology / Topologie du reseau

2007-06-18T19:22:00.001+01:00

I'm very interested in getting an idea on how much this broadband rollout is going to cost, particularly for the different stages. However, I've realized that the first thing I need to do is to decide on the topology of the network.

Here's a view of our residence from the air. I've marked the outline of the area I want to cover in red. The yellow lines represent where I'm planning on putting down the fiber once the street is open. The yellow star in the middle is where I'll locate the concentrator (right next to the cable company's box). Finally, the Yvelines Numeriques network and our France Telecom Exchange are in green. (You can get an idea of relative sizes by comparing things to the tennis courts at the middle right edge of the picture).

Here are the current questions I'm working on:

Does it make sense to run a dedicated conduit to each home in the residence?
What about the 24 apartments (12 in each building)?
Would it be best to have the conduit run all the way to each home or simply go to a small box in the ground just beyond the sidewalk - which would then require further trenching the last few meters when they signed up?

I'll post what I find.

Involvement of ISPs / Participation des autres opérateurs

2007-06-18T19:18:00.001+01:00

A friend of mine in the residence is good friends with a key technical person for a very large ISP here in France. The two of them spoke about the project and we got some good feedback.

The technical friend explained that it would be very costly for us to try and tap into the Yvelines Numériques fiber backbone ourselves. That seems to be the message we're getting on all fronts. It's too bad. Nice network but too expensive for small-scale rollouts.

On the other hand, it sounded like he didn't rule out the possibility of a firm like his coming in and connecting into our small dark fiber network. That seems to be the way the project is evolving. Maybe the best way to move forward is to put the infrastructure in place in a way that makes it east for other operators to patch in and reach the end users. Bill WOODCOCK suggested making sure the conduit was ready and that there was space and electricity at the concentration point for other operators. I think that's excellent advice.

Any other comments, suggestions or experience welcome.

The association meeting / La réunion de l’association

2007-06-14T10:27:00.001+01:00

Last night was the association meeting. It started at 8:30 PM and didn't end until about 12:30 AM. It was a very interesting introduction to how these associations work.

As with all good public meetings there had to be a bit of drama. We needed everyone in the residence represented in the room in order to vote on a particular issue that required unanimous agreement. The association leadership scrambled to get everyone there, including making last minute phone calls from the meeting, and finally succeeded. However, just then, someone got up, stormed out and went home without a word. We'll get to put that item BACK on the agenda for next year. :)

There was no decision on the roads either so we'll need another meeting on it probably in December. There are various rules about calling these meetings including the amount of notice you need to give people. I think they said they needed 3 months - but I'll check to make sure. The association made very good arguments for why the roads should be done now (e.g. more costly if we wait, possible significant tax hike). However, some of the residents wanted to have an architect come and give an expert opinion on what work was necessary before continuing. That means that I'll have some time to plan everything before the work actually has to be done. I see this as a good thing.

There were a few other things that struck me which will have an impact on the project. First, the residents who have lived there from the beginning (35 years) have a very different perspective on many of the issues than some of the younger couples now moving in. The longer-term residents seem less interested in fixing roads, replacing lamp posts etc. Second, I get the feeling that the EUR 2,000 required from each household to fix the roads will likely be much more difficult to pay for some households than others. There may be a income, as well as a generational division within the community.

From the discussions, I can tell it will be very difficult to get a large number of residents to pay up front to install the fiber. Probably the only way to get this off the ground is me putting it in and then renting lines back to the residents. I may have overestimated "willingness" and "ability to pay" from a good number of residents. That isn't to say that they won't pay for broadband or triple play over fiber. I believe most will. They just don't want the upfront risk for a network they don't really understand. Education may solve some of the problem but there are others who just simply won't connect. I'm still positive about the project though.

I did have time to speak to the people arranging the bids for the road work and told them that I'd like to have some trenching included in the overall bid - even if I have to pay the difference. Someone explained to me that putting in the trenches may be fairly easy and inexpensive once the road work had started. I'll have to look into that a bit more. There is also the question of whether we could use the existing ducts of Noos.

Even though we weren't able to come to a decision on the road I still feel there is sufficient support for the project to go forward.

Help from the Netherlands / Aide du Pays Bas

2007-06-14T10:21:00.001+01:00

Today I received an e-mail from Dirk VAN DER WOUDE who is the broadband program manager for the city of Amsterdam. He passed along some great information that I'm going to start going through after the meeting this evening. I always figured the Netherlands would be one of the best places to look for examples. Dirk's information will be a big help.

One of the initial things he sent caught my eye in particular. It's a company in Sweden called Zitius which acts as a go-between for property owners and ISPs. From my understanding they operate and manage a network that allows 14 service providers to sell to any of the 50,000 homes they pass from one central location.

To me, it's a very interesting way to position themselves as a company. Certainly I think it would be great to get access to multiple providers via one pipe. I haven't heard of anything similar though here in France. There could be a market opening in areas with open-access fiber backbones for such a company to appear and cater specifically to local rollouts.

The interview Dirk passed along is from Benoît FELTEN’s blog (Fiberevolution). I don't know Benoît yet but I'm going to make an effort to. :)

The meeting with the residence association is tonight. This is going to probably be a make-or-break moment for the next year - particularly in regards to the work on the roads.

Discussions with James ENCK

2007-06-13T17:10:00.001+01:00

This week I was able to spend some time speaking with James ENCK (of the universally revered EuroTelcoBlog) about fiber. I always look forward to talking with James because he really understands telecom markets and is such an entertaining speaker. In fact, I believe he's the only person I've ever seen get a standing ovation after a telecom presentation. :)

James examines telecommunication markets from a slightly different perspective than I do - as an investor. That's one of the reasons I was so interested to get his take on new fiber developments.

One of the themes to emerge from our discussion is how investors are starting to view telecommunication firms differently in general. There is a lot of talk in various telecom circles about the business moving towards a utility-type model with longer-term investing perspectives and predictable returns.

Now how I tie this idea back in with our network. We, as users and residents, are better at gauging demand than operators since we actually subscribe to the services and know our reservation prices. Operators, on the other hand, should be better at providing services than our small neighborhood (comparative advantage).

We can both benefit if our residence puts in the dark fiber once we determine there is sufficient demand. We may also be willing to pay a premium for the faster access than operators would be able to charge - given they typically have national pricing plans. This leads to our current stalemate situation. We may be willing to pay for better access but the operators figure it's not worth their while extending faster access to us at the national rates.

Our own fiber network helps resolve the stalemate by capturing some of the extra willingness to pay in the local network rollout in exchange for faster connections ahead of the market's current schedule. We can all win because there is less risk for the operator and faster connections for us.

Meeting with head of the association for our residence / Parler avec le president de notre residence

2007-06-11T21:12:00.001+01:00

Saturday I walked down to talk to the head of our residence association about the fiber plan. He was very open to the idea of the project and we talked for about 30 minutes about what I think we should do. He said that he'd allow me a few minutes to make my case at the association meeting on June 13th.

In some ways it may be an uphill battle. The association has had trouble before convincing everyone that now is the time to redo the road. There seems to be a split among the younger residents (for the repairs) and older residents (against).

While we were talking he said that he could understand why I would want to put in the network but that the connection he has now is sufficient for their family. The mayor said the same thing when I met with him.

I think this highlights a challenge for all municipal or local rollouts. We don't appreciate what high-speed broadband can be used for when we haven't had access to it at home. It reminds me of a conference I attended a few years back where someone stood up and said that his software company of 10-15 people did just fine sharing an 64 kbit/s connection. There was an audible gasp in the room.

In these cases I typically explain how much bandwidth is required for one HDTV stream (10 Mbit/s). However, there are other applications I think will have an even larger impact on our everday lives. One of these will likely be teleworking. Sure, it hasn't panned out yet but all the new focus on reducing carbon emissions is bound to make it a more attractive option in the future.

Luckily the cable company Noos has done me a huge favor with the association president and others in the village. There is this rage directed at the company that lurks beneath the surface here among its subscribers. I've never seen anything like it with a company before. It's not just our village either. Noos was recently put under surveillance by the DGCCRF (Competition and Consumer Fraud Department of the Finance Ministry). The president of the association said that while his connection worked well that he had lots of difficulties with them over billing.

Noos is making selling this idea much easier.

Posts from the train

2007-06-08T19:37:00.003+01:00

I've gone back to do some editing of posts for typos (not substance) which didn't come across clear the first time. I thought about correcting things I may have misunderstood at the time (not uncommon for me in English, let alone French) but decided against making the changes. I'd rather have this blog reflect the progression and that will mean correcting things I didn't understand in later posts. One example may turn out to be the reach of the Yvelines Numériques network. I assumed initially it went into Paris. Now I am fairly sure it doesn't. Big difference.

I also should explain that I write the posts on the train to and from work each day. Store and forward is alive and well. :)

Response from Yvelines Numériques / Réponse des Yvelines Numériques

2007-06-08T19:37:00.001+01:00

Today I received an e-mail from the company running the Yvelines Numériques project (EIFFAGE Connectic 78). They explained that if I wanted to use their network I'd need to go through an ISP - which would then make the arrangements necessary for me to connect through the fiber backbone. I can understand that they would only deal with operators but the question is whether they will sell access to a new, small-scale operator.

I responded back just as I was leaving work with some information and a few more questions. I explained that we were in the process of speaking with ISPs about buying access through them or getting them to come patch into our network themselves. Then I put forward a few more questions:

If talks with the large operators fail, would Yvelines Numériques be willing to work with us as a new (and small) ISP?
Does your network terminate near or at an Internet exchange point?
I've heard that your network may be underutilized. If that is the case would you consider selling access directly to municipal fiber projects (assuming there is access to an Internet exchange)?

I was happy to hear back from them and they did offer a phone contact - which is not available on the website. I may call them on Monday since my spoken French is likely somewhat easier to understand that my written French.

Brainstorming with Laurent / Brainstorming avec Laurent

2007-06-07T21:20:00.001+01:00

One of the best people I've found to bounce ideas off of is Laurent at work. He's French, very smart, and someone who calls it like he sees it. He's also been such a wonderful resource in how to maneuver through the French bureaucracy. Laurent is the one who pointed me in the direction of speaking with the mayor and then the conseil général.

At the end of lunch today Laurent took a few minutes to sit down with me and go over the meeting with the mayor and the best way to proceed from here. He had many of the same feelings initially that the mayor repeated. Networks can be difficult beasts - even for engineers and I'm just an economist.

I found that putting together my arguments for Laurent helped me solidify some of the elements of the project myself in my head. He posed some pretty tricky questions about how I'm going to bring in Internet connectivity to reach the fiber network and I struggled to come up with answers.

One of his key points is that the small number of homes just isn't going to be attractive enough to competitive operators (such as Free) for them to come in and install their own equipment in our "residence". I think Laurent probably has a very good point here. However, I'm looking through the papers from the residence again on the train ride home and there are a totally of 26 homes and 24 apartments we could connect easily. That means 50 households in one swoop for a provider - particularly if there is just who chooses to take us up on the offer to come in.

I figure that 50 units would be comparable to a large apartment building and that could be seen as very attractive to an operator. That works out to EUR 1,500 a month (EUR 18,000 per year) in revenue at EUR 30 per household for broadband (the going rate in France). Assuming that EUR 10 per customer went to paying for and maintaining the local network there would still be EUR 12,000 per year of revenue left for the operator. I'll have to calculate how much their equipment and backhaul costs would be to get to but I think we'd be able to make a good case.

Should have said: "ensure unbundling"

2007-06-07T21:14:00.001+01:00

You know, there was something I really wanted to mention to the mayor but forgot before I left. He mentioned that France Telecom wanted to upgrade the exchange. I should have told him that he should insert the requirement that in exchange for more land that they would need to build a space large enough to accommodate other operators and allow them to take unbundled local loops.

There's a good possibility that this would be required anyway by the ARCEP but I wanted to make sure that this exchange "upgrade" included the options for other operators to enter in and put in their own equipment.

Speaking with our mayor / Reunion avec notre maire

2007-06-07T21:13:00.001+01:00

Today I met with the mayor of our village, Jean-Pierre GAUGENOT. I got lucky on two counts. First, he's an "informatician" (IT person) and second, he speaks English extremely well. That allowed me to jump into English when there were things I was having difficulty explaining.

It turns out he has a meeting with France Telecom scheduled for June 12th to discuss the future of their exchange in St Nom La Breteche (St Nom). I guess the municipality owns the land where it is currently located and France Telecom wants more land to expand. They've promised that they'll increase the size of the exchange (it's just for business connections now) and will give everyone in the village access to 8 Mbit/s connections with it. I quickly jumped in to say that wasn't enough.

He knew a lot about the fiber optic network from Yvelines Numeriques that passes by the town and said that he had given them the permission to build through. He wasn't sure that there was actually anyone using the network though. He mentioned that he would suggest they simply sell the network off to a private company. I figure there's little chance of that happening.

He bought up some very good points during our discussion that I'm going to have to eventually deal with.

A private individual or even a "residence" isn't going to be able to get a permit to cross a city street. I'd have to start a small company in order to even apply. He made it seem as if that may not be very easy.
There would be issues about who would be responsible for maintaining the network after it was built. He had concerns that it would be difficult to support when there were problems. I agreed and figuring out how to fix problems with the network when they pop up will be a key element of getting this off the ground.
He also suggested that pushing changes here in our village isn't easy. He said that the people love the way St Nom is right now and the best municipal projects are the ones that don't change anything.

It's a bit difficult for me to judge his reaction from the meeting. By the end of the meeting though he seemed interested in the idea and offered several good suggestions on how to proceed. I took that as a good sign.

He suggested that I try and partner with a big telecom provider to form a pilot FTTH project. He suggested contacting competitive operators to see if they'd be willing to help with the project as a model for future rollouts. I actually think that could be a good idea, particularly if I have to maneuver through a lot of red tape. I'm going to contact a few operators directly and ask them what they think.
He suggested that I write a letter to our "Conseiller Général", Colette LE MOAL. She is the elected person over our larger region and is influential in the Departement. He recommended I spell out the project to her, telling her I'd already discussed it with him. He said they were good friends I can see how that could help. He mentioned that she may have someone better to recommend as the contact for our project at her level.

I'll go ahead with his ideas and try and move this forward quickly. I'd like to have a letter ready for Ms. LE MOAL before his meeting with France Telecom as well.

Possible backhaul problem

2007-06-05T20:59:00.001+01:00

I was gathering up information to take with me to my meeting with the mayor this week when I ran across some pricing information for connecting to the fiber backhaul(Yvelines Numeriques). I read through their literature and realize that I may have a problem using their network.

Our Department had the right idea about creating a fiber optic backhaul network that runs throughout our area. We've seen similar rollouts work well all over the world. The government comes in, helps fund the backhaul, and then lets the private sector take over - typically with open access rules.

The only problem here is that they've seemed to have decided ahead of time who they want on the network - and new operators are not part of that group. Their own website states:

FRENCH: Le Conseil Général des Yvelines ne cherche pas à favoriser l’éclosion d’un nouvel opérateur de télécommunications. Il cherche en revanche à attirer les opérateurs existants.
[ENGLISH: The General Council of the Yvelines is not looking to promote the development of a new telecommunication operator. Instead, it is looking to attract existing operators.

Essentially the goal is to bring in existing operators to use France Telecom's existing copper lines to homes - not create new ones.

I believe that this reveals a lack of a longer-term vision when they developed the project. From what I understand they've had trouble attracting the big operators to come and rent capacity to reach the local exchanges. To make matters worse, a French colleague of mine explained that they're locked into the terms of the contract for the 20 years of the "concession".

This seems to be their plan. They built the network mainly to help with local loop unbundling. Operators can lease fiber backhaul to local telecommunication exchanges and then rent copper lines directly to homes from there. The costs are probably too expensive for smaller operators.

They gave some of the pricing on the web. The entry-level price for a fiber strand is EUR 0.70 per meter per year. I initially wanted to run a connection back into Paris but that would be over 20 KM - if they even go that far. I did a few calculations and figured that I'd really need a much larger subscriber base even make the backhaul pay for itself. The minimum cost of taking a fiber from our village towards Paris would be EUR 14,000 per year. We'd have to spread that among a large number of households to make it even start to pay for itself - and that doesn't include the other costs of our own network or transit at the Internet exchange.

I may need to start looking into whether it would be possible to either buy capacity from a larger player or have them come to us.

Appointment with the mayor of St Nom / RDV avec le Maire de St Nom

2007-06-05T19:29:00.001+01:00

I was at work today and I received a call on my cell from the Mairie of St Nom La Breteche. I have an appointment to see him about the project in two days at 10 AM. I'm going to have to ask my boss to let me come in late.

I don't know what kind of information to take with me to the meeting. I thought about some reports that we've written (which are translated into French) but it will probably be better just to speak with him, ask about what is going on in the village and explain what I'd like to do.

DSL progress in St Nom? / Progrès de DSL à St Nom?

2007-06-04T22:38:00.001+01:00

I rode the train home with two of my friends from the residence today (Patrick and Pascal). We talked about the project a bit and Patrick explained that France Telecom was working on building a large exchange (NRA) not too far from where we live, just across from the current (unused) exchange. The current exchange is very small (about the size of 2 refrigerators next to each other) and only serves business clients. However, he said that the new exchange is under construction just across the street from the current one and that it would be online in October. That would mean that our broadband options could increase dramatically around that time.

This is something I'd really like to speak with the Mayor about because it may have implications for the fiber project. Even if they did upgrade our DSL I think it would be crazy not to lay fiber down if we are re-doing the roads.

Patrick also explained that Noos, the cable company, has ducts in the street that maybe we could use. I figure it's probably going to be easier if we simply lay our own PVC pipe but it's something I'm going to look into. I was encouraged that both Patrick and Pascal seemed excited about the project.

The conseil général / Le conseil général

2007-06-04T22:31:00.001+01:00

One of my good friends at work gave me a good introduction to how things work on a political level here in France. I have to admit that I'm a bit daunted by the prospect of trying to work through the French system to put in this fiber. However, my French friends are a huge help and have given me some very good leads.

One of the suggestions was that I start moving my requests from the mayor up through the conseil général (the higher governing body). One of my coworkers looked through the village web site and located the names of people up the political chain whom I should contact after the mayor. My friend Laurent explained that it would be important to get convince the Mayor that the project was worthwhile and then ask him to draft a letter to the conseil général, Colette LE MOAL.

I'll put together my information for the Mayor and then work on the best way to move this up the political ladder.

Calling the mayor / Appel au maire

2007-06-04T22:25:00.001+01:00

Today I called the office of the Mayor of St Nom La Breteche (Jean-Pierre GAUGENOT) to make an appointment to see him. I didn't exactly know how to go about it so I talked to one of my French coworkers and he explained the process. My colleague said that it would be good to start with the Mayor to find out if anything else was going on in the city. It's important as well that he be on board with the project since we'd need his support to cross over any roads with the network.

The Mayor's office asked me some questions about what I wanted to speak to him about and then said they'd call me back on my mobile phone to make the appointment.

IP addresses as a barrier to entry / Les adresses IP comme barrière à l'entrée

2007-06-04T22:18:00.001+01:00

IP addresses are something I tended to take for granted. However, today I looked into getting a range of IP addresses for the first time and came away from it a bit shocked by the prices. I figure I only need "one class C" set of addresses (254 IP addresses) but it looks as if I have to pay the same registration fee as all other ISPs to ripe.net to be a member for a year. I may have it wrong but it seems as if you have to pay the same price, regardless of size.

RIPE: New Member Information

There is a EUR 2000 sign-up fee and then yearly dues of EUR 1300. Again, the system seems to favor companies with scale, rather than a start-up looking to connect a small number of houses.

I'm debating what to do on the addresses because the feeling is IPv4 addresses will all be gone shortly. It would probably be a wise decision to get some while they're still around.

On the other hand, EUR 3000 would buy a good amount of fiber or conduit. I'm going to hold off on the IP addresses as well until I figure out if I'm going to be running my own ISP or just providing dark fiber to others.

No word yet from Yvelines Numériques / Pas de nouvelle des Yvelines Numériques

2007-06-01T19:32:00.001+01:00

I haven't heard back from Yvelines Numérique yet. They are one of the big wildcards here in the project. I need to splice into their network to get from our village to one of the Internet exchanges in Paris. The price they'll charge for a fiber pair will set this project in one of two paths.

If the price is affordable then I think I'll stick with the option of becoming my own small ISP. However, if we have to sign up for a 30 year contract with them (and pay it up front), then that may not be an option. In that case I'd probably put in the duct infrastructure and fiber but wait for another operator to come along and light it.

I'm hoping their lack of response isn't the result of my terrible French. I've been warned by several French friends that this project could be an introduction to the French bureaucracy as well.

Bill's advice on conduits, electricity and perserverance / Conseil sur des conduits, l'électricité, persévérance

2007-06-01T18:35:00.000+01:00

Bill from PCH sent along the link to his presentation which covers a lot of good ideas for the project. His presentation is tailored to a large rollout but the ideas seem to be the same for the smaller type of rollout that I'm interested in. Regulating Communications Infrastructure for Growth (PDF presentation, 2 MB) Bill had some other great points in his e-mail that I think are worth repeating:

"If the roads are going to actually be _open_, then you probably want to put in home-runs of conduit from each house to a street junction box (either on the sidewalk, or in a manhole, if you can afford that), so that all new communications utilities can share it, and then put in several bigger conduit from that box out to the edges of the community, where they can meet up with utility providers."
"Having [the end runs] already in place (and if possible, power available from the electrical utility, in the box) will make you a lot more attractive for other people's deployments, as well. Once you've got the conduit in, copper and fiber are really easy, and you might as well do both. Moreover, you don't have to do all the houses at once. If only some of the neighbors want to do it, they can get copper or fiber pulled through the conduit later. All at once will be cheaper on a per-house basis, but if you can only get buy-in from a few of them, that's no problem either. The conduit is the most important part."
"Don't underestimate how much work this is going to be. Pace yourself. Don't get upset with yourself if you're only halfway done, a year from now. This is the kind of thing that's vastly more expensive if you rush it, but can be economical if you wait for bargains and synergies."

This will be a longer-term project and there are still a lot of significant hurdles but the journey is going to be fun.

Bill Woodcock from Packet Clearing House / Bill Woodcock de Packet Clearing House

2007-05-31T00:09:00.001+01:00

I was lucky to be at a meeting last week with Bill Woodcock from Packet Clearing House. I don't know of anyone in the world who knows more about Internet traffic exchange and I spent all night at dinner asking him quesitons about the project. I'm an economist - not an engineer - so parts of the discussion went over my head. However, he had some excellent ideas on the network architecture.

His suggestion was to run a 48 strand fibre assembly from the point where we connect into the backbone network back into our own group of houses. He suggested we locate the midpoint in the residence to terminate the fiber connection. From there we could run copper (or fiber) for the last 100 meters to each home and still be capable of gigabit speeds. This would require someone to put the equipment in their basement - or at least at the side of their house.

He also was able to pull together some numbers based on what I said we wanted. Of course we don't know how much it will cost to patch into the backbone network but he figured of the top of his head that we'd be able to put together the network for under EUR 24,000 to reach the 24 homes. I'm going to start looking into the equipment I'd need on the ends of the connections to get a firm idea.

He also told me he has a presentation that Packet Clearing House gives about setting up larger-scale networks but that the same principles would apply to smaller networks. I wrote to him today to ask if he could pass it along.

Contacting Yvelines Numériques / Contacter Yvelines Numériques

2007-05-31T00:05:00.000+01:00

Today I wrote an e-mail to Yvelines Numériques to ask about splicing into their fiber in our village. I decided to send the letter off in my bad French rather than wait to have someone go through it and perfect it. That may have been a mistake but I figure I'd rather get as much information as quickly as possible. I've asked them how much it will cost to splice in and then how much I'll need to pay for connectivity per month to reach one of the Internet exchanges in Paris. I specifically asked about the prices to reach POUIX or PARIX.

The bad news / La mauvaise nouvelle

2007-05-30T23:59:00.000+01:00

We live close to fiber but that doesn't mean that we're going to be able to afford splicing into it. I was at a conference in Paris earlier in the week and spoke with several backhaul carriers who were familiar with the Yvelines Numeriques project. They mentioned that since it was open access and non-discriminatory that meant that I would have to pay as much for a fiber line as a large telco which was unbundling at the exchange. That makes sense to me (from an economic perspective) but does imply that our little residential project may run up against scale economy problems. One possiblity is that we'll be able to make the initial splice and pay for capacity which can then be resold in bits to other neighborhoods in the village which may be interested.

The other bad news could be the road construction. It seems as if several neighbors have been against spending EUR 2000 each to upgrade our roads. I spoke to my wife and she thought the roads were in perfectly good shape and would probably recommend holding off on doing the road work if it were up to her. That could pose a problem - or maybe just end up leaving us another year to work out the details.

The good news / La bonne nouvelle

2007-05-30T23:44:00.001+01:00

One of the main reasons I think this project could work is that we live very close to an open-access fibre backbone ring running throughout our French department (Les Yvelines - 78). Our community (residence) within the village has 24 homes, one apartment building and a few commercial shops. At the closest point we're less than 100 meters from the fibre running down the main street of the village and then out to the rest of the department.

From my understanding the fiber ring project, Yvelines Numeriques, was built to provide companies using unbundled local loops a way to connect to local exchanges. We happen to be geographically very close to the network so the civil engineering costs should be quite low to reach the fiber ring.

The other good news is our "residence" will vote next month on whether we should pay to have our roads redone. Our road is private and we're looking at roughly EUR 110,000 to redo it - spread among the residents. If the road work does go ahead then this would be an excellent opportunity to lay the fiber.

There also seems to be a lot of support from people in the neighborhood for such a project. Everyone has trouble with their broadband connections. Our DSL was out for 4 weeks straight in April and others have had similar problems. A few people in our village work in telecommunications and others have jobs that rely heavily on Internet connections. I believe that take-up could be high, particularly among the newer residents.

Intro: The project / Intro: Le projet

2007-05-30T22:59:00.000+01:00

I'm a telecommunications economist in Paris and I spend a lot of time thinking about and using broadband. We've chosen to live in a beautiful area of southwest Paris but one which has limited broadband options. In fact, broadband is terrible for everyone in our village. The incumbent operator (France Telecom) hasn't upgraded our own exchange for DSL and that means that people in the village are connected through one of two towns, each roughly 5 km away.

I subscribe to broadband via DSL and cable. At 4.5 km from the DSL exchange I receive 1 Mbit/s via the competitive operator Free - too slow for me to take advantage of their IPTV offer for example. I also subscribe to Noos for cable Internet. I pay for a 30 Mbit/s connection but receive only 3 Mbit/s - and even that is traffic shaped. Even 200 euros of calls to the helpline at 34 cents a minute hasn't solved the problem. I am not alone. It seems that almost everyone I speak with here has similar problems and people are getting fed up.

There is talk around town that France Telecom has offered to upgrade the exchange if the town will pay the costs (roughly EUR 50K). I say no. We're going to build this network ourselves. We are going to bring our own broadband to our homes.

Our goal is simple. We want a fiber to the home network capable of gigabit speeds which will be open to services from any operator. I've spent enough time writing about "open access" networks and infrastructure-based competition at work. Now it's time to get down and dirty and build one myself.

I've decided to keep a journal of my experiences along the way in case someone wants to replicate a similar rollout. This certainly won't be the first of it's kind. That honor probably goes to Måttgränd, Sweden. I'll be contacting them shortly for advice. However, I hope this project will show whether it is indeed possible for a small provider to roll out FTTH without economies of scale.