Bits and Bytes Podcast - 4G LTE, Motorcycles Made From Car Parts, and Bamboo Clothing

Last week Mike Q and I recorded a new 36 minute and 10 second podcast covering 4G LTE, Motorcycles made from Car Parts, and Bamboo Clothing. Here's links to referenced content  in the podcast:

Verizon HomeFusion Uses 4G LTE to Complete Last Mile Nationwide  

Cariloha Bamboo Clothing

Marcin Jakubowski: Open-sourced blueprints for civilization

Google Translate Car to Motorcycle

You can listen directly in your browser clicking the play arrow below.

If you have iTunes installed you can subscribe to our podcasts by clicking here.

Will Verizon Finally Announce a Fiber To The Node Product?

The New York Times ran an Associated Press article a few days ago titled Verizon winds down expensive FiOS expansion. Here's a couple of interesting quotes from the piece:

.... Verizon is nearing the end of its program to replace copper phone lines with optical fibers that provide much higher Internet speeds and TV service. Its focus is now on completing the network in the communities where it's already secured ''franchises,'' the rights to sell TV service that rivals cable, said spokeswoman Heather Wilner.

That means Verizon will continue to pull fiber to homes in Washington, D.C., New York City and Philadelphia -- projects that will take years to complete -- but leaves such major cities as Baltimore and downtown Boston without FiOS.

Here's more:

Verizon doesn't appear to have ruled out further FiOS expansion, but doesn't have any plans, either. The economics apparently are not attractive enough: TV service carries fairly low margins compared to Verizon's phone business, according to analyst Craig Moffett at Sanford Bernstein.

And some more:

The recruitment of new FiOS TV subscribers slowed last year. In the fourth quarter, it added 153,000 subscribers, little more than half of the number it added in the same period the year before.

At the end of last year, Verizon had 2.86 million FiOS TV subscribers and 3.43 million FiOS Internet subscribers (most households take both).

Wiring a neighborhood for FiOS costs Verizon about $750 per home. Actually connecting a home to the network costs another $600.

The total cost from 2004 to 2010 was budgeted at $23 billion by Verizon.

In 2004 FiOS seemed like a smart technical decision for Verizon. At the time AT&T was trialing a Fiber To The Node (FTTN) product (now called U-verse) and were having technical difficulties getting it to work. Over the past few years though FTTN bugs have been worked out and both AT&T and Qwest have launched successful implementations.

Back in late 2008 I posted the following question in a blog post Will Verizon Offer A Fiber To The Node Product In 2009?. I stuck my neck out then and said Verizon would in 2009. I was wrong then but I'm thinking I may have missed it by a year. So....... I'm now predicting Verizon will be offering a FTTN product sometime in 2010.

The only other competitive option the company has right now to get into areas not already served by FiOS is 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) wireless service based. This could bypass land-line delivery completely....... but....... can LTE handle the load?

A Summary Of The Verizon - Frontier Deal

Yesterday, Verizon and Frontier Communications announced an agreement that would sell off a large chunk of Verizon's rural markets. Here's a quick summary taken from DSL Reports pieces on the deal:

• Frontier will give Verizon $5.3 billion in Frontier stock and take on an additional $3.3 billion in debt.
• Frontier will get Verizon landline networks in Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Washington, West Virginia. Wisconsin and some rural areas of California.
• Frontier will grow to more than 7 million access lines in 27 states and will be the largest provider of voice, broadband and video services focused on rural to smaller city markets in the United States.
• Frontier will be picking up some FiOS - 41 local franchises and the state of Indiana will be transferred from Verizon.
• Approximately 11,000 Verizon employees will end up working for Frontier.
• Verizon Wireless and Verizon Business services in the listed states will not be transferred to Frontier.
• With this deal Verizon may eventually reach 80% FiOS coverage on their remaining footprint.
• It is doubtful Fiber to the Home (FTTH) services will be expanded in any of the transferred regions (by Frontier) in the near future.

According to DSL Reports, Frontier has struggled of late to deliver even 3Mbps worth of connectivity to many of its rural users according to posts in their forums, but Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg issued a statement saying Frontier would apply their "laser focus" on the needs of rural customers to ensure a smooth transition and quality service.

The deal is expected to take about a year to complete.

2009 - Lots of Bandwidth?

Yesterday, Comcast announced 50Mbps service in Baltimore, Chicago, Atlanta, and Fort Wayne, Indiana. The service is being offerred over upgraded DOCSIS 3.0 tiers and will initially cover only parts of the listed cities.

The company is offering two new residential tiers:

• Extreme 50, offering up to 50 Mbps of downstream speed and up to 10 Mbps of upstream speed at $139.95/month.
• Ultra, offering up to 22 Mbps of downstream speed and up to 5 Mbps of upstream speed at $62.95/month.

And two new business class tiers:

• Deluxe, offering 50 Mbps / 10 Mbps tier for $189.95/month, which includes a full suite of features and support.
• Premium, offering speeds up to 22 Mbps / 5 Mbps for only $99.95/month.

The company says they will complete upgrading these cities early next year and will continue to roll out high bandwidth (what Comcast is calling wideband ) services at a rapid pace.

With the cable companies rolling out these tier levels we should see the telcos (Verizon and AT&T especially) respond pretty quickly. If you are fortunate enough to live or work in an area where there is this kind of broadband competition 2009 should be a nice year - you'll be seeing some very nice service offerings as the cable companies and telcos go after your business.

Will Verizon Offer A Fiber To The Node Product In 2009?

Yesterday, AT&T president and chief executive of telecom operations John Stankey announced the company was on track to add its one millionth U-Verse TV subscriber sometime next week. Stankey also announced plans to make the service available to 17 million homes by the end of 2009. AT&T's U-verse Fiber To The Node (FTTN) implementation involves running fiber out to a neighborhood node and then completing the connection over a copper connection to provide voice, video and data services.

AT&T has spent considerably to develop FTTN technology and along the way has had a few false starts. Launched in 2006, Project Lightspeed (as U-verse was first called) was a $4.6 billion investment aimed to reach 19 million homes in 13 US states by 2008 using a combination of fiber optic and copper network technologies.

FTTN relies heavily on set-top box techology - you can't get the same amount of bandwidth out of a piece of copper that you can out of a piece of fiber. Bandwidth limitations are made up for using caching. Early boxes had low end 386-based processors and limited memory and storage capacity. Trials in Europe were not favorable and the company had to go back to the drawing board a few times. Costs rose - in May 2007 AT&T announced the capital expenditure of Project Lightspeed would increase from $4.6B to $6.5B and the number of homes passed would decrease to 18 million; down a million homes.

Fast forward to today - the company hung in there with the technology it looks like the bugs have been worked and they've got it scaling!

Around the same time in 2006 and in technical competition (not market since the telcom footprints do not overlap) Verizon decided to go with a Fiber To The Home (FTTH) implementation - what we know as FiOS. FiOS runs an optical fiber directly to a subscribers home to deliver voice, video and data services and I've seen total Verizon investment estimates for the product anywhere between $18 and $23 billion. Initial Verizon plans were to pass 3 million homes per year starting in 2006 until they reached approximately 60 percent of their 2006 customer footprint. Estimates have changed slightly with the Verizon sell-off of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont to Fairpoint Communications but you get the idea.

Why only 60% of the Verizon customer footprint? It's too expensive to run fiber to every home. I'm a perfect example - I live in a rural small town in Western Massachusetts. My house is on a private 1.5 mile road with copper from Verizon buried down the road along with another 300 plus feet buried under my driveway. There are only 7 homes on my road, all with at least 150 feet of buried copper between the road and the house. I'm guessing but I would say my neighborhood is pretty low on the FiOS list. As an alternative, Verizon is offering me ADSL but..... I'd like a little more data bandwidth and what about video services - you can't do that over ADSL.

My only real option - cable service from Comcast (which I love and probably not give up even if I had a choice). Verizon does not have a voice/video/data product they can even try to sell me unless I go with a Verizon/DirecTV option and put a satellite dish on my house. I don't really want to do that.

Back in June of this year I wrote an entry titled Will Verizon Put More Gas In The Fiber Engine? In that piece I questioned whether Verizon was considering FTTN technology to reach out into the more difficult areas and better compete with the cable companies and their aggressive DOCSIS 3.0 rollout plans. With this recent announcement by AT&T showing FTTN technology works and scales I don't see how Verizon can ignore an FTTN option in neighborhoods like mine.

I'm gonna stick my neck out on this one with my first prediction for 2009 - Verizon will announce an FTTN product sometime next year.

Ethernet To The Home Over Fiber - A PON Alternative?

Passive Optical Networks (PONs) have been getting a lot of attention here in the United States as companies like Verizon move to deliver voice, video and data services over optical fiber to homes. Mike Q and I even did a podcast detailing Verizon's Fiber to the Home (FTTH) PON configuration last May. In the United States we seem to believe PON technology is the best way to deliver signals over fiber to residences. This is not the case in Europe though. Lightwave.com has just posted a very interesting piece titled Active Ethernet FTTH offers PON alternative.

According to Lightwave.com, hundreds of networks around the world—and particularly in Europe—use Ethernet switches to deliver high-speed voice, data, and video services to single-family homes and apartment complexes. One of the reasons, according to Lightwave, it has not caught on is because proponents of the technology have not come up with a universal name for the technology. One name that has taken limited hold is Active Ethernet, which clearly differentiates itself from passive PON technology. This term works for some but not others - according to Lightwave.com, not all implementations place the switches in the field; the Ethernet equipment can reside in the central office (CO), with a fiber running directly from the CO to each subscriber.

As a result, some companies, like Alcatel-Lucent use the term Active Ethernet to describe implementations where there are Ethernet switches in the field and Point-to-Point to describe an implementation that is directly connected over fiber without switches in the field. Other companies are using other terms - Cisco just uses Ethernet FTTH for all Ethernet over fiber configurations.

I've always been a fan of Ethernet and have believed most connections would eventually become Ethernet. It scales well and is easy to implement, configure and maintain.What's likely hurt it most in this country as a long distance option are switch power needs in the field for active implementations and the cost of direct connecting a piece of fiber from a home directly to a switch in the CO. For these reasons I suspect companies like Verizon have gone with a PON delivery configuration. But, is this only temporary? Cost differences between Ethernet and PON actually shrink as bandwidth per subscriber increases - here's more from the Lightwave.com piece:

Bandwidth levels of 20 Mbits/sec and greater generally require that the number of splits per PON shrink. This translates into more fibers in the field and more ports in the CO to service the same number of subscribers, making PON infrastructures look more like point-to-point when it comes to fibers deployed and CO ports.

Here's an interesting quote from Ian Hood, senior marketing manager at Cisco:

"What I see in the marketplace is that providers are putting in PON for I'll call it the low end of the market—best effort, small customers, small businesses, the less than 15 Mbits per customer kind of speeds. For their high-value customers and some of their businesses, they're going with an Ethernet solution, be it building-oriented or dedicated from the CO to get beyond the 25-Mbit realm. So you're seeing a hybrid approach basically in a lot of the new large city deployments."

Will PONs go the route of DSL in the United States and be looked back on some day as a temporary technology? Perhaps - the one big advantage Ethernet currently has over PON is it has the potential to deliver the highest potential bandwidth per subscriber. Here's another quote from Hood:

"If we can get the optics costs down and embed them along with the multiplexer into our Ethernet switches, then you can go beyond 100 megabits to gigabits to whatever you can run on a lambda at that kind of cost for the next evolution of speed."

Which technology will eventually dominate? Will another alternative to PON and Ethernet come along that is superior to both? Time will tell. Be sure to read the entire Lightwave.com piece linked here.

Verizon To Push Higher Bandwidth In-Home Network Equipment

An inside contact at Verizon sent along some interesting content from a Verizon corporate website post. The content describes how Verizon will start encouraging their FiOS fiber optic customers to upgrade in-home network equipment. The company will have new routers available in the third quarter of this year from Actiontec and Westell. These routers will boost in-home speeds over coaxial cable to up to 175 megabits per second (Mbps) from 75 Mbps and allow operation of multiple simultaneous Wi-Fi networks. For example, customers will be able to modify security settings on each network, allowing a Wi-Fi network for guests and visitors, one with parental controls for young users, one for computers holding secure documents, or one for teleworking only.

Here’s a list of new design features and benefits:

Higher bandwidth, offering 175 Mbps total data flow in the home.

Support for up to four Wi-Fi networks, enabling more than one Wi-Fi network to operate simultaneously. Quality of service controls to give traffic preference to critical services like voice or security devices.

Remote management of devices and services beyond the router by technicians, improving the service and support experience for customers.

Integrated dual-core processor to allow simultaneous networked data services, possibly including home security, home monitoring, network security and other applications.

Support for media sharing between home devices, such as between TVs and PCs, media servers, and other consumer electronics, using DLNA and Universal Plug and Play standards now being adopted by hardware manufacturers to support connectivity and service integration.

Enable modular expansion using a USB interface, so that shared storage servers, printers, peripherals and other devices can be added.

It makes sense to upgrade internal network devices to keep up with the fiber infrastructure.

Will Verizon Put More Gas In The Fiber Engine?

Reuters posted an interesting article yesterday titled Verizon mulls alternatives to all-fiber FiOS. The article describes how Verizon will continue to roll FiOS out through 2010 passing 18 million customers at a cost of over $20 billion. The article also hints at some plans for beyond 2010.

In an interview yesterday at the NXTcomm telecommunications industry conference in Las Vegas, Verizon Chief Technology Officer Mark Wegleitner told Reuters the company is looking at continued expansion after 2010. Here’s a few quotes from the article:

Wegleitner said "What we'd look for is another approach to Fiber to the Premise (FTTP)."

He sees room to expand FiOS after 2010 to another 18 million users, but shifting away from FTTP could help expand high-speed Internet and video into sparsely populated areas where it is too expensive to build out an all-fiber network.

"I'm not sure what the trigger point would be. There still could be more gas in the engine for FTTP," he said.

I’ve always found the 18 million customer number disturbing because it only covers about 60% of Verizon’s original footprint. With Verizon's sell-off of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont to Fairpoint Communications the 60% figure goes up a little bit but not by much.

It looks like the company may be considering Fiber to the Node (FTTN) technology to reach out into the more difficult areas. FiOS is selling extremely well so it makes sense to expand beyond the original plan. I also suspect Verizon is feeling some pressure from the cable companies and their aggressive DOCSIS 3.0 rollout plans.

Video Delivery and MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group) Podcast

Mike Q and I recorded the 26 minute and 30 second podcast "Video Delivery and MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group)" today. Below are the show note questions and some diagrams referred to in the podcast. You can listen directly by turning up your speakers and clicking here.

If you have iTunes installed you can get this one, listen to others, and subscribe to our podcasts by following this link. If you don't have iTunes and want to listen to other podcasts and read full sets of shownotes using your web browser, follow this link.
*****

Intro: The Moving Picture Experts Group or MPEG, is a working group of ISO/IEC charged with the development of video and audio encoding standards. In this podcast we look at the MPEG standards and video delivery systems.

Mike: Gordon, what sources are we referring to here?
Wikipedia and white paper from the MPEG Industry Forum at www.m4if.org/public/documents/vault/m4-out-20027.pdf. we've also got a couple of diagrams from the Verizon website.

Mike: What's the history of MPEG?

Mike: Are these open standards?

Mike: What's the history? Can you tell us about MPEG-1?

Mike: How about MPEG-2?

Mike: We don't hear much about MPEG-3 - what's up with that?

Mike: Let's talk about MPEG-4 now.

Mike: What are some of the advantages of MPEG-4?

Mike: Let's switch gears and talk about carried video delivery systems - specifically the telcos and cable companies. How is this technology used?
It's different for broadcast and video on demand (VOD) content. Let's discuss broadcast systems and look at how Verizon (as an example) is setup.

Two National Super Head Ends (SHE) - one in Tampa and the other in Bloomington, IL:

- Diversely located - Satellites collect video feeds
- Video is converted to digital MPEG-2 and packaged in a 10-GigE payload
- SHE servers “pitch” data to the Video Hub Office (VHO)
- Three OC-192 SONET (long haul) rings that drop and continue GigE to VHOs

Mike: What is OC-192? Mike: OK, these video hub offices are distributed over Verizon's footprint - what happens when they get the video?
Video Hub Office (VHO) ex. Burlington MA Combines:

- National Channels
- Servers “catch” data from the SHE servers
- Off-Air, program guide, public, education, and government (PEG) channels, and local ads are injected
- Encrypts all content
- Content sent over several 1-GigE links to local Video Serving Offices (VSO, ex. CO) over SONET (medium haul)
- VSO then sends it to the OLT and then to the PON network for delivery to customer.

Mike: Broadcast is still done using traditional RF modulation methods - correct?
Yes - that will change - rumor has it Verizon will be trialing IP Broadcasting this summer in Pennsylvania - just a rumor!

Mike: Now - Video on Demand (VOD) does things a little differently - correct?
Yes - VOD delivers IP content to the customer - it is not in RF format:

- Content is requested by user via the IP network (private subnet)
- Content is then streamed from the video pumps to the Video Distribution Routers (VDR) in the VHO (ex. Burlington)
- VDR then sends 10-GigE links to a Video Aggregation Router (VAR)
- The Video Aggregation Router (VAR) then sends it to the Gateway Router (GWR) in the VSO (ex. CO)
- GWR then sends it to the OLT and then to the PON network

Mike: So - Verizon is combining Voice, Video and Data services on the same fiber?
Yes - Here's another nice diagram from the Verizon website:

Cable Companies Moving Fast With DOSCIS 3.0 Products and Services

There's been a lot of DOCSIS 3.0 activity recently as the cable companies move rapidly towards bandwidths of 100 Mbps and greater. In April 2007, CableLabs, the cable modem certification consortium, accelerated their certification plan time-line and we're now seeing certified products at deployable levels. Earlier time-lines did not have product reaching deployable levels until late 2008 or early 2009.

Key to this accelerated certification plan was CableLabs decision to "tier" feature availability for product manufactures with the following qualification levels:

Bronze Qualification: Supports IPv6 and Downstream Channel Bonding

Silver Qualification: Adds Advanced Encryption System (AES) and Upstream Channel Bonding

Full Qualification: All DOCSIS 3.0 Features

This tiered level of certification is expected to be dropped in early 2009, when all cable modems will need to have "Full" qualification.

Today (a little over a year later) we're seeing nice results from the accelerated time-line. Here's a couple of quotes from a recent Cable Digital News interview with Time Warner Cable president and CEO Glenn Britt:

Time Warner Cable conducted some Wideband tests in Austin, Texas, last year, "and it works fine."

While 100 Mbit/s seems to be the early sought-after speed benchmark for DOCSIS 3.0, Britt said he's seen it deliver speeds up to 200 Mbit/s, albeit in a lab setting.

Britt also said Time Warner will begin testing Docsis 3.0 in New York "later this year" and roll out DOCSIS 3.0 more widely in 2009 and 2010, "in response to demand." We'll see if Time Warner accelerates the New York City roll-out in direct competition with Verizon's New York City FiOS roll-out.

Comcast is also moving fast with DOCSIS 3.0, having launched the service in the Minneapolis area and working to have as much as 20 percent of its footprint DOCSIS 3.0 ready by year's end.

Passive Optical Networks (PONs) Podcast

Mike Q and I recorded "Passive Optical Networks (PONs)" last night. Below are the show note questions. You can listen directly by turning up your speakers and clicking here.

If you have iTunes installed you can get this one, listen to others, and subscribe to our podcasts by following this link. If you don't have iTunes and want to listen to other podcasts and read full sets of shownotes using your web browser, follow this link.
*****

Intro: In this podcast we take a look at modern fiber delivery systems.

Podcast Questions:

Mike: Passive Optical Networks use Fiber – could you talk a little but about Fiber to the Premise or Home (FTTP or H)

Mike: So what exactly is a Fiber P2P Network?

Mike: OK, so what’s a PON?

Mike: What are the PON Architectural Choices?

Mike: What is Centralized Splitting?

Mike: What is Distributed/Cascaded Splitting?

Mike: What are some of the Protocols and Standards used with PONs?

Mike: What are the Outside Plant Components?

Mike: What’s an ONT?

Mike: Are Technicians typically terminating fiber in the field?

Component and Technology Pictures:

Verizon PON FiOS Splitter: 1 Fiber In -> 32 Fibers Out!

Verizon PON FiOS Splitter with Cover Removed: Optical Splitting is done by fusing fibers

Verizon PON FiOS 1->32 Splitter Detail

Verizon PON FiOS 1->32 Fiber Detail - Note Fibers Are Numbered

Verizon FiOS CO Hindged Panel Showing WDM Modules

Verizon FiOS Fiber Distribution Hub (FDH)

Verizon FiOS Optical Network Terminal (ONT) - Cover Closed

Verizon FiOS Optical Network Terminal (ONT) - Cover Open

Reference List:

FiOS: Our Future
James Armstrong, Chris Cote, Stan McCoy, James Todd
STCC Verizon NextStep Class of 2008

Passive Optical Network Splitter
Lawrence Graham, Mike Thompson, Jodi Lewandowski, Jeremy Dillensneider, Stephen Booher
STCC Verizon NextStep Class of 2006

FTTH Explained: Delivering efficient customer bandwidth and enhanced services
http://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/fiber_home/
Michael Kunigonis, Product Line Manager: Access Corning Cable Systems

Broadband Divide: People and Businesses Moving for Bandwidth?

Ars Technica has an interesting post titled FiOS tops satisfaction survey; worth moving for? The post discusses a recent issue of Consumer Reports that rated Internet Service Providers (ISPs). In the Consumer Reports article Verizon's fiber optic FiOS service was declared to be best of breed. The Ars Technica post then goes on to highlight a couple of people who's recent moves were, at least in part, due to Verizon FiOS availability. Here's a quote describing Andru Edwards' relocation:

Andru Edwards of Gear Live tells Ars that he's one of those willing to relocate for the promise of fiber optic goodness. "I moved 10 minutes north of Seattle specifically for FiOS service," he tells Ars. "We push a lot of video to the web, and Comcast's 768k upload wasn't cutting it. Gear Live now has a 30 megabit down/15 megabit up connection. While customer service is horrendous (even ignoring possible security flaws that can result in easy identity theft), the FiOS connection is a Godsend for us."

And another quote describing Ars Technica's Editor in Chief' Ken Fisher's move:

"We're in a region where everybody is getting FiOS within six months, so it didn't really influence our exact location," he said. "We've had FiOS for almost four months and there hasn't been a single outage. It's always fast, it's so reliable that when you see performance problems online you can assume it's something other than your connection. In fact, some people will be disappointed when they get it and realize that it can't make Yahoo serve to you any faster."

I'm sure Yahoo (and others) will catch up in serving these high bandwidth areas so I'm not too worried about that. This is also not new news - Realtors have recognized over the past year or so that high bandwidth (like FiOS) availability can be used as a marketing/selling point - much like a 3 car garage or bonus room!

I'm also sure we'll see the cable companies going in with competing DOCSIS 3.0 based services in areas of high bandwidth availability. My concern continues to be the under served areas and, over the past year, my definition of an under served area has expanded to places where ADSL is offered. Sure ADSL is faster than dialup (if that is all you have) but when you compare it to FiOS type bandwidths.... it crawls. And........... don't forget, the "A" in ADSL stands for "Asymmetrical" - I've written in the past about the shift to symmetrical services.

Here's a few questions I've been asking myself:

• Will people start moving out of areas where high bandwidth is not available?
• What will happen to property values in these under served areas?
• Will businesses want to move into areas where high bandwidth is not available for the business and their employees?
• What kinds of academic issues will these communities face?

The Speed Matters blog has a post titled To candidates: How will we get high speed Internet?
Sounds like a pretty good question to me.

Verizon Demonstrates 100 Gbps FiOS TV Connection Between Tampa and Miami

In a press release today Verizon announced they have completed a 100 Gbps optical communications test between Tampa and Miami, FL. The two cities are 312 miles apart. Here's a couple of quotes from the press release:

Verizon has successfully concluded the industry's first field test of 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) optical transmission, on a live, in-service 312-mile (504 kilometer) network route between Tampa, Fla., and Miami.

The test, which utilized a live video feed from Verizon's national FiOS TV network as the "payload," was successfully completed Friday (Nov. 16). The 100 Gbps transmission was conducted on a Verizon Business ultra long-haul optical system carrying other live traffic at 10 Gbps. The test demonstrated that by deploying advanced electronics, an existing network system can easily and quickly be upgraded to 100Gbps.

The test was done using existing fiber that had been installed for 10 Gbps service. Here's a couple more quotes from the press release:

Unlike other trials that used 10 separate 10 Gbps wavelengths to carry 100 Gbps, the Verizon test utilized a 100 Gbps signal on a single wavelength, demonstrating Verizon's drive to promote "true" 100 Gbps in a serial fashion on just one transmission wavelength.

Like the equipment in the company's 40 Gbps trial in June 2004, the 100 Gbps equipment used in the field trial was implemented with a "plug and play" approach. This is a key objective for future commercial implementation, and means the technology was used without any changes to the fiber, amplifiers and other embedded equipment.

Amazing bandwidth obtained using existing fiber - the trial only swapped electronics using, according to the press release, Alcatel-Lucent's 1625 LambdaXtreme Transport system.

Uber-Bandwidth: Verizon Testing 400Mbps Service

Last month I wrote about Verizon's 20 Mbps symmetrical FiOS service - if you haven't had a chance to read that entry follow this link - there is a good description of asymmetrical and symmetrical services along with a quick video at the end demonstrating the differences between the two types of services.

A few days ago Gizmodo posted an interesting piece titled Next Up for Verizon FiOS: Invading Manhattan, Japan-Like Uber-Bandwidth. Gizmodo describes a Pennsylvania trial Verizon is running - in the trial they are seeing peak rates of 400Mbps downstream and sustained rates of 200Mbps upstream. Incredible bandwidth that, according to Gizmodo, is enough to make even the most hardened Tokyo resident jealous with their measly 100Mbps downstream fiber service. Yes - this is incredible bandwidth and we can only imagine the voice, video, data, entertainment and communications possibilities.

Let's back up a bit and take a look at the way Verizon is delivering services using the FiOS Fiber to the Home (FTTH) system. Verizon currently uses the Broadband Passive Optical Network (BPON) standard, which has limits of 622 Mbps downstream and 155 Mbps upstream for each Optical Line Terminal (OLT). OLT's are also referred to as service provider endpoints and one Verizon OLT will connect 32 homes with fiber.

Verizon is also currently using BPON OLTs to service their 20 Mbps symmetrical service which may or may not be a problem. Let's do some math:

Downstream Bandwidth
32 homes at 20 Mbps/home downstream require: (32 homes)*(20 Mbps/home) = 640 Mbps

Upstream Bandwidth
32 homes at 20 Mbps/home upstream require: (32 homes)*(20 Mbps/home) = 640 Mbps

You may think a fully loaded (32 home) BPON OLT running symmetrical 20 Mbps service does not provide enough bandwidth and you may or may not be right. It comes close in the downstream direction (622 Mbps available and 640 Mbps required) but is not even close in the upstream direction (155 Mbps available and 640 Mbps required). It turns out this may or not be that big of a deal - for now. Telephone company traffic engineers have always calculated voice switch connections using units called Erlangs. Erlangs are dimensionless units used as a statistical measure of the volume of telecommunications traffic. Brian Whitton, Verizon's Executive Director of Broadband Access Technologies is quoted in the Gizmodo piece on this topic as follows:

Of course 32 households couldn't run 20/20 full blast all at once but simultaneous peak usage on that scale is such a remote possibility it's not really an issue. Yet.

I always like to describe Erlangs and switch connection calculations using an example - have you ever got a fast busy signal when you tried to make a call? Perhaps on Mother's Day around 11 AM - a time when many of us are calling our Moms! The fast busy means there are no voice switch connections available. Why? Because the voice switch has has been configured more lines coming in to it than available connections. Most times and days of the year this is not a problem because we are not all trying to use the phone at the same time - it's only when call volume goes way up that we typically have problems - days like Mother's Day!

Right now Verizon is calculating that BPON will be ok for 20 Mbps symmetrical service - the chances of all 32 homes on a BPON OLT all purchasing 20 Mbps symmetrical service are slim and it's even more slim that everyone subscribing to a 20 Mbps symmetrical service will all be requiring maximum bandwidth at exactly the same time - today.

So how is Verizon delivering 400 Mbps downstream and 200 Mbps upstream? BPON only supports 622 Mbps downstream and 155 Mbps upstream - there is not enough upstream bandwidth for one customer with BPON and two customers at 400 Mbps is not possible. The answer is Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) technology - an evolution of the BPON standard that supports higher bandwidths. GPON provides a maximum of 2.48 Gbps downstream and 1.244 Gbps upstream - enough, using the statistical methods described above, for Verizon to be seeing peak rates of 400Mbps down and sustained rates of 200Mbps in the Pennsylvania trial.

The Gizmodo piece continues:

"Virtually" every network hub built after January will be GPON-based, says Verizon. It has the network set up for easy upgrading, so to bump current hubs to GPON, technicians just have to swap out the boxes on each end of the fiber cable they've already laid. Not too much of a hassle, in other words. As each current hub hits its bandwidth limit, it too will be updated to super-fast GPON.

For those of us that can get it [ I can't :( ] we are just seeing the beginning of these Uber-Bandwidths!

Verizon Launches 20 Mbps Symmetrical FIOS Service

On Monday of this week Verizon announced 20 Mbps symmetrical FIOs service in parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut for as low as $64.99 a month. There are two things that I find exciting about this offering. First - it's great to see the bandwidths continue to go up. I feel this is just the start and we'll see bandwidths of over 100 Mbps within the next two years in selected areas as the telcos, like Verizon, go head-to-head with the cable companies like Comcast. If you are lucky enough to live in an area where FIOS is available you re in for a real treat regarding bandwidth.

The second exciting thing I see here is a shift to symmetrical services. Broadband products to date, including FIOS, ADSL and cable modem, have always been asymmetrical - the "A" in ADSL is even short for asymmetrical! Asymmetrical services provide more downstream bandwidth than upstream bandwidth. It's been a way for the providers to "cheat" a bit based on traditional Internet usage. Consider the way you traditionally surf the web - you enter a small amount of information in the address bar and hit enter. The address you type ends up going to a DNS (Domain Name Service) server and is looked up. The DNS server sends back the IP address of the site you want and your browser is directed to that site location. The site server then sends your browser the site contents you want to see.

Think about it - in the traditional model - a little information gets sent upstream and lots of information comes back downstream. Recognizing these patterns the providers have designed their networks to provide a little upstream bandwidth and lots of downstream bandwidth. Well...... all this has changed with this new FIOS offering from Verizon. Here's a quote from a Verizon press release:

"Verizon's new symmetric service is a smart response to the changing usage patterns of high-speed Internet subscribers," said Vince Vittore, senior analyst with Yankee Group. "We believe that as user-generated content continues to expand and telecommuting increases in popularity, upstream speed will become just as important as downstream for all users."

User generated content........ upstream speed becoming just as important as downstream for all users...... these are historical times!

Update - 10/31/07 - I found this video product demo on YouTube.

Verizon Commits to All IP Network in Three Years

Light Reading has an interesting post titled At Age 2, Verizon FiOS Evolves. In the piece Terry Denson, Verizon Vice President of FiOS TV Content Strategy and Acquisition, says the carrier's mission isn't to have exclusive content, but a better network. The piece goes on to describe how the FIOS network will be converted to all IP over the next three years.

Today technically there is not much difference in the way the Cable companies and Verizon's FiOS deliver broadcast video to their customers but that will change as the provider networks (both Telco and Cable) migrate to all IP networks. Here's a quote from the Light Reading piece:

Cable companies and services like Verizon's FiOS send broadcast video to customers, but IPTV, in contrast, runs on a request-and-send architecture. The provider does not have to send 50 Mbit/s of bandwidth to a customer's home if his computer and TVs are off. The old cable architecture, however, is constantly feeding the home whether the consumer is there to use it or not.

IPTV works differently - it runs on a request-and-send delivery system. The consumer requests a channel and the provider delivers it. Denson is quoted in the piece as follows:

"IPTV identifies what is that one piece of content that would compel someone to switch or stay."

"If both cable and us (Verizon) have the World Cup, well then that's not going to be it. It could be Indian cricket or education. The scarcity of some content is an opportunity for us. Take the Food Network for example. Everyone knows it, but not many people watch it. But for some, it’s a key selling point."

What's driving this change? Technology and bandwidth economy of course but sometimes us technical people forget about marketing and advertising. Delivering channels using IP allows an almost infinite number of content possibilities.

Let's use an example to expand the marketing concept. I enjoy saltwater fly fishing, especially for striped bass on Cape Cod and also for snook in Florida. I'm also not a big golfer - nothing personal - I've tried and am just not very good at it! So what right? Here's another quote from Light Reading:

IPTV allows providers to know what its customers are watching. That's scary, to be sure. But it does mean that there will be no excuse for not having the most compelling content on offer -- since, after all, they "know" you.

So, based on what I watch, the provider could eventually assume that I'm not a golfer (because I don't watch golf) but I do like saltwater (not freshwater) fly fishing (not spin casting) for striped bass (not bluefish) on Cape Cod (not Long Island) and snook (not redfish) in the Clearwater, Florida (not Miami) area!

IPTV will allow providers to learn and react to what I watch by providing the kind of content I like and also react by - you got it - sending me targeted ads.

Stealing Copper Wire and How Much an Old Penny is Worth

A retired neighbor of my parents collects scrap metal. He does pretty well scavenging the town dumps looking for things people have tossed that have copper in them. He also collects brass and aluminum - he especially loves the heavy aluminum covers of old gas grills. A couple times a year a guy comes out with a truck with a scale on it and he gets paid by the pound. He's learned picking up scrap metal can bring in some good supplemental income.

Occasionally he'll pick up some discarded wire in the dump or a construction site - the last time I was visiting I asked him what he did about wire insulation since he is paid by the pound. The answer is simple - he burns it off.

It looks like thieves have discovered copper also - venturing outside the town dumps and up the telephone poles, cutting wire, burning off the insulation and selling it by the pound to scrap companies. The problem has gotten so bad in the Las Vegas area that Embarq, the 4th largest telecom company in the United States, announced on Wednesday that they are offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of anyone caught stealing copper wire. Here's few Embarq quotes from a piece in The Register:

“Copper theft is going on in any town across the nation. But we thought we’d start here because of the high number of incidents,” commented Charles Fleckenstein, a spokesman with Embarq.

More than 60 people have been arrested for copper theft this year in Las Vegas alone. This type of crime has been on the rise globally in recent years, due to the soaring value of coppers and other metals, which can often be sold as scrap at recycling depots.

"You've got people that are going out there and trying to steal wire cable," said Embarq spokesman Charles Fleckenstein. "It's an area where we have almost 13,000 miles of cable and it just looked like a real good area to get started."

"Copper thieves often drive vans, don hard hats and scale telephone poles, in an attempt to blend in with legitimate telephone workers. But instead of fixing broken lines, they pilfer the wire used to connect ATMs, emergency 911 call centers and phone service".

According to Kitco Metals, scrap copper was selling for approximately 70 cents per lb in August 2002. It closed on Friday at a little over $3.40 per lb.

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I'm going to move off topic for a bit. Copper.... you may be thinking pennies - right? A new US penny has a mass of 2.5 grams but wait - new pennies minted after 1982 are 97.5% zinc core with 2.5% copper plating..... not much copper. However, before 1982, their mass was 3.0 grams and they were 95% copper.

Let's take a look at the value of a pre-1982 penny based on the $3.40 per lb copper scrap cost.

1 lb = 453.59237 grams - we can use this to calculate the value of 1 gram of copper:

Value of 1 gram of Copper = ($3.40/lb)/(453.59237 grams/lb) = $0.00749/gram = .749 cents/gram

Now, a pre-1982 penny weighs 3 grams and is 95% copper - it looks like we may be able to make some money here:

Amount of copper in a pre-1982 penny = (.95)(3 grams) = 2.85 grams

Based on .749 cents per gram for scrap copper:

Value of a pre-1982 penny as scrap = (2.85 grams copper/penny)(.749 cents/gram copper) = 2.135 cents/penny!!

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Is it legal to sell pennies as scrap? I'm not sure - the closest answer I've found is here. Regardless - a pre-1982 penny is worth more than twice its face value as scrap and you know what some (legal or illegal) are doing....... and..... Zinc closed at $1.40/lb on Friday........

Copper thieves are not just stealing wire and old pennies - air conditioner units are also hot items because they contain a lot of copper. Image living in Las Vegas in the middle of the summer and having your phone lines cut out and air conditioner stolen...... Sweltering heat with no way to call the air conditioning company - bring on Fiber to the Home.

And speaking of fiber to the home - last month I blogged here about Verizon cutting out copper lines to homes that are having FIOS fiber to the home service installed. If Verizon is cutting this stuff out and dumping it in a landfill tell me where - I'll quit my job, buy a truck and hit the dumps!