Internode, a competitive telco that’s in the process of being purchased by iiNet, is targeting 20 new real estate developments in Australia with a series of new Fiber to the Home (FTTH) tariffs.

The service provider said the new FTTH offerings will have similar speeds and usage allowance as that offered by NBN Co. on its network.

Jim Kellett, Internode product manager, said the new FTTH plans “are ‘NBN-equivalent’ in terms of speeds, quotas and prices.”

In addition to updating its broadband plans, the service provider introduced a series of what it calls “add-on” products, including “Power Pack” and “Business Pack.” Both of these products offer users static IP addresses and unlimited uploading.

Each of the new tariffs will have an initial price of AUD 49.95 (USD 53.00) per month for a 12 Mbps/1 Mbps downstream/upstream connection with a 30 GB monthly data allowance. Users willing to pay a more premium price of AUD 164.95 (USD 175.00) will be able to get a 1TB data cap and speeds of 100 Mbps/40 Mbps.

While Internode plans to offer fiber-based broadband services in NBN sites throughout Australia, it will offer complementary FTTH services in greenfield real estate developments in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia via partnerships with wholesale providers OptiComm and OPENetworks.

Although existing FTTH customers won’t automatically migrated to the new plans, Internode did confirm that the price of its fiber services at Point Cook and South Brisbane would be higher than the new plans because of the ‘uncompetitive’ wholesale pricing offered by Telstra.

For more:
- see the release

Related articles:
Australia’s iiNet continues acquisition feast with Internode deal
Internode to deliver IPTV service over Australia’s NBN network
Australia’s Internode incorporates IPv6 service into its broadband repertoire
Telstra, Internode see some uptake from FTTH trial
NBN Co. lights up final “First Release” site in Willunga, South Australia

Source:Fierce Telecom

Canada’s telecom regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), will officially implement its new capacity-based wholesale billing measure for the country’s competitive service providers beginning Wednesday, Feb. 1.

All of Canada’s incumbent telcos and cable operators, sans the Bell companies which had to make interim modifications to their plans while the CRTC addresses concerns raised by the Canadian Network Operators Consortium, can move forward with implementing their flat rate billing plans.

“We are moving ahead with the implementation as planned to ensure that independent ISPs will continue to offer competitive and innovative services to Canadians,” said Leonard Katz, the CRTC’s interim chairman, adding that “Some temporary adjustments have been made to ensure a smooth transition to the new billing regime and to ensure consumers are not inconvenienced.”

Under the interim plan, competitive ISPs like TekSavvy that rent copper lines from Bell Canada (NYSE: BCE) will be able to either combine their business and residential Internet traffic, or put them into separate bins.

Last November, the CRTC ruled that incumbent telcos and cable MSOs will be allowed to charge wholesale customers a flat monthly fee.

While the CRTC regulates the wholesale rates ISPs pay, they don’t regulate how ISPs price the broadband data packages for consumers.

For more:
- TeleGeography has this article

Related articles:
CRTC appoints Bell Canada, Rogers veteran Leonard Katz as interim chairman
Canada’s CRTC introduces policy to bolster IP network migration
Canada’s CRTC ruling drives TekSavvy to raise broadband prices
CRTC sets new wholesale ISP billing model based on capacity, not volume

Source:Fierce Telecom

Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) has taken another tack in its New York market to entice more users to sign up for its 50 Mbps DOCSIS 3 speed tier by offering one year of free VoIP service.  

The new promotion is clearly another effort to more effectively compete against Verizon’s (NYSE: VZ) FiOS FTTP service as well as increase its DOCSIS 3 user base.  

After its initial DOCSIS 3 offering failed to garner attention due to its high cost, TWC has been seeing some uptick with its higher speed services, adding 54,000 subscribers in Q4 2011. Part of the increase was attributed to a similar promotion where the cable MSO offered free Slingboxes to new subs.

How effective the VoIP promotion will be is perhaps too early to tell, but as Verizon continues to ramp up its FiOS subscriber base (adding 201,000 FiOS Internet customers and 194,000 FiOS TV subscribers in Q4 2011), cable operators need other weapons to battle telcos that offer fiber-based products.  

For more:
- DSL Reports has this article

Special report: Battling for subscribers: Cable MSOs and telcos square off

Related articles:
Time Warner Cable gets aggressive post-Q4; offers 1 year free phone service to wideband subs
Verizon Q4 2011 wireline results get boost from FiOS video, broadband adds

Source:Fierce Telecom

As the top three U.S. service providers–AT&T (NYSE: T), CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ)–and their large enterprise clients ramp up their respective data center footprints to deliver a suite of managed and cloud-based services, a robust opportunity for Ethernet switch vendors is being created.

This data center drive, according to a new Dell’Oro Group report, will drive $28 billion in Layer 2-3 Ethernet switch sales in 2016, with the majority of the growth driven by sales of Ethernet switches for larger data center deployments.

Leading the revenue charge will be the sales of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) switches. However, Dell’Oro predicts that 40 GigE and 100 GigE will exceed $3 billion in revenues during the period.

“We expect the Ethernet Switch market to experience two significant years of market growth in 2013 and 2014 from the migration of servers towards 10 Gigabit Ethernet,” said Alan Weckel, Senior Director of Dell’Oro Group. “We believe that in 2013, most large enterprises will upgrade to 10 Gigabit Ethernet for server access through a mix of connectivity options ranging from blade servers, SFP+ direct attach and 10G Base-T.”

Weckel added that “in 2014, small and medium businesses will upgrade to 10 Gigabit Ethernet” and  ”towards the second half of the decade, 40 GE and 100 GE switches will be an important growth driver for the Ethernet switch market.”

For more:
- see the release

Related articles:
NTT puts stake in India data center market with Netmagic purchase
Terremark expands Silicon Valley data center to keep up with customer growth
Windstream expands Raleigh data center; enterprise IT spending forecast reaches $2.7T
Savvis to expand data center reach to support more cloud, managed services
Cincinnati Bell sees data center business as foundation for cloud, managed services

Source:Fierce Telecom

BT (NYSE: BT) Openreach has made MDUs, particularly apartment complexes, the latest focus of its ongoing Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) buildout plan. Targeting areas located in the path of its existing fiber footprint, the service provider has asked 1,000 building owners to participate in the trial.

Image source: BT

Provided that it gets the go-ahead from the respective building owners and landlords, BT will then install a fiber connection and related customer premises gear in each apartment.

Initially, end users will be able to get speeds of up to 100 Mbps with the option to scale to 300 Mbps this April.

BT, which is conducting trials to improve its installation times, said the upstream speeds will “be the fastest in the UK.”

“We are keen to extend the benefits of our fastest broadband services to those living in apartments,” said Mike Galvin, Openreach Managing Director for Next Generation Access. “Through our registration scheme customers are clearly showing us they now seek these higher speeds and see the provision of super-fast broadband as a significant benefit.”

The new MDU-based FTTP program complements Openreach’s ongoing FTTP trials and the provider has asked residents and landlords in Canary Wharf if they would be interested in taking part in the trial.

For more:
- see the release

Related articles:
BT paves new 40G, 100G optical networking path
BT Conferencing names Jeff Prestel as new CEO
BT to extend fiber-based broadband to Scotland and Cornwall
BT provides free 100 Mbps broadband to Olympic Village

Source:Fierce Telecom

A. Michael Noll

Congress is proposing to legislate against Internet piracy with the now-on-hold Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), but the Obama administration is concerned that such legislation would reduce “freedom of expression,” undermine the Internet, and “inhibit innovation.” But given all the pirated material advertised and available over the Web, perhaps some chilling of the Internet is warranted.

The Internet, like nearly most new technologies, comes with good–but also with evil. The copying and distribution of copyrighted material over the Internet is most certainly one of these evils–and is known as Internet piracy. The materials could be music, movies, or books. The overwhelming amounts of spam and the risks of identity theft are some other evils.

I know personally about Internet piracy. One of my copyrighted textbooks was copied and made available over the Internet by a German technical university. As a result of this, the book is now available at other websites–and neither my publisher nor I receive royalties and income.

People find out about pirated material from search engines, such as Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Bing. The proposed legislation would hold these search sites responsible for not listing these sites once they have been informed of the pirated material. Not surprisingly, these search sites do not want to assume the role of policing the Internet.

Technology should not be allowed to confuse basic legal principles. Suppose someone brings stolen property to a pawnshop, and the pawnshop takes it not knowing that the property was stolen. Later the pawnshop is informed that the property was stolen. The pawnshop then has a responsibility not to sell the property–and also return it to its rightful owner or to the authorities. Search engines are like pawnshops. Once they have been informed that they are enabling access to stolen material, they have a responsibility to stop doing so.

Google claims to “do no harm” and also frequently reminds us of its innovative and technological prowess. I would claim that therefore the likes of Google should be able to innovatively determine how to implement their responsibilities to avoid enabling access to, and hence the distribution of stolen property. This is not censorship, but the prevention of theft and piracy. It is time for the liberal freedom of the Internet to be constrained to prevent such evils.

A. Michael Noll is professor emeritus of communications at the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California. During the early 1970s he served on the White House Science Advisor’s staff dealing with issues involving computer security and privacy.

Source:Fierce Telecom

AT&T (NYSE: T) has added Fujitsu as one of its optical and transport network vendors on its Domain Supplier, or preferred suppliers, list.

Although financial terms of the agreement are still being negotiated, Fujitsu will be able to compete for new metro and long-haul optical network projects.

Developed in late 2009, AT&T’s Domain Supplier program is centers around driving collaboration between its equipment and software vendors to ensure it can prepare its network to respond to user’s fluctuating and growing needs.

Fujitsu (OTC: FJTSY.PK), which previously held the second Domain Supplier status, joins Ciena (Nasdaq: CIEN), which replaced Nokia Siemens Networks as its first optical domain supplier.

In addition to AT&T, Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) and Juniper (NYSE: JNPR) were named IP-based network domain suppliers in August 2010.

For more:
- see the release

Related articles:
AT&T adds Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco and Juniper to its IP supplier domain
AT&T Q4 2011 wireline growth driven by ongoing video, broadband gains
AT&T invites Ericsson to preferred wireline suppliers club
Ciena secures spot on AT&T’s optical roster

Source:Fierce Telecom