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

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...

Planning a new exchange / La planification pour un nouveau commutateur

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:

1. 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)

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Conduit photos - Photos des fourreux

	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)

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

1. 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.

2. 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.

Should have said: "ensure unbundling"

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

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

1. 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.
2. 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.

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

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.

Intro: The project / Intro: Le projet

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.