Dirk van der Woude - Amsterdam and FttH: some preconditions to a greener city

Amsterdam and FttH

some preconditions to a greener city

Amsterdam, September 2008Dirk van der WoudeCity of Amsterdam

dirkvanderwoude@gmail.com

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IntroductionOGA: Amsterdam Municipal Development Corporation

– development of large and small scale real estate – Administrator for the municipal held lands: 80% at a market value

65.000.000.000 euro

One of the projects is the overall vision and direction of the city's broadband programs, that aim at increasing the value of the city and its real estate.

As well as reaping the lateral benefits of ubiquitous symmetric broadband.

Nevertheless, I am from the government…

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Government & broadband: incompatible?

“Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.”“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.”Government should stay away from telecom

Milton Friedman

However, government may have some use to reach specific goals – like the roll out of basic infrastructure

And, by the way, talking about the use of government...

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A city and its interventions…

100% government

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4th in Europe – related to 40,000 jobs start: around AD 1250 – 100% muni

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4th in Europe – related to 70,000 jobs start: AD 1920 - 22% muni 78% national

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1st in the world – related to 50,000 jobs start: AD 1997 – 100% not for profit

Source: Henk Steenman, 2007

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Some rethink going on the USA?

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Now that we’re past ideological bickering…

Next generation broadband is important for Green IT as well as IT that helps greening our cities.

However, with what networks?

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Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy (June 11, 2008)

"The Council is very concerned about the quality of Dutch infrastructures [like for energy, telecom, water, etc.] in the long term. The attention devoted by administrators and market players to short-term effects geared towards efficiency, consumer interest and cost, has a detrimental effect on investment in the public interest in the long term."

Report by Ms Prof Mr Leigh Hancher (192 pp)

http://www.wrr.nl/english/content.jsp?objectid=4460

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UPC Broadband and Cisco Drive Broadband Speeds to 120 Mbps and Beyond in Amsterdam

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, September 10, 2007 -Cisco® and UPC Broadband have broken a new broadband over cable speed record of 120 megabits per second (Mbps) in consumer homes on UPC's cable network in Amsterdam. Achieving these fibre-speeds over coax represents Europe's first deployment of EuroDocsis 3.0 (ED 3.0) and M-CMTS technology in an existing cable network.

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To 100% of homes, parallel?

<= promise: “120 Mb/s over coax…”

…real world: shared bandwidth =>(Xiamen, Jan. 2007)

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To what % of homes? FttC/ VDSL2…

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=93103&page_number=4

Houston, TX, The Nov. 2006 ‘DBlam’

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Fiber to the Home, 1 Gb/s or more 40,000 adresses now – later 450,000

Passive infrastructure: GNA CV

33% municipal shares20% municipal euro’s

Wholesale operator sells open access

100% market

Service providers100% market

consumer/SME

Rent

Rent

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Symmetric broadband helps to green IT

Like data processing where the sustainable energy is– Hello Iceland, there’s life beyond fishing

Like cloud computing– Newest barebones use 7 W/h…– However: what speeds & latencies will we need to have seemless

computing experiences? USB 2.0 is already 480 Mb/s…– World Wide Wait 2.0? No thanks!

Like green data centers– Again: what symm speeds are needed to really reap the advantage of

professional centralized & virtualized computing?

Etc: see Bill & Anwar’s presentations

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This is what we want, at home as well…

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Amsterdam20/20 Mb

Madrid20/20 Mb

Seoul20/20 Mb

San Francisco20/20 Mb

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Symmetric broadband helps IT to a greener society

Substitution– Telecommuting & SWC– Teleconferencing– Digitized vs. physical products (incl. localized fabbing?)– Telecomputing (SaaS 2.0: PC as a Service)– Etc.

Ubiquity– A fast fixed network is a precondition of fast wireless ones, in home as

well in the street

However: first one deploys the network, than one reaps the material and immaterial profits…

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So: what preconditions?

Open access– FttH is a natural monopoly. Like an energy distribution network.

Symmetry– Good video demands 4 to 6 Mb both ways– Helps to break through Managers’ fears of being left alone ;-)

Scalability– 100% of homes vs small % of homes– Would you dream of having your bathroom overbooked?

Why then your data connection?

Sustainability– Low energy use

Futurability– Cheap and ensured upgrade path

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‘Predatory’ Network Architecture

PON (or HFC cable) Architecture & Topology– NB: that’s not the same as PON Technique!

Many small POP’s– backhaul Capex, granularity inefficiency

Topology: splitters deep in network– lock in 32 neighbors to 1 operator

Exclusive TV-channel distribution – “You can only get exclusive coffee if you buy milk and bread here as

well”

Cross-connect in POP to technology- With or without splitters

- Per home selectable

- CPE Capex: low!

POP: local switch house

Citynet: more than 13.000 fibers per POP

‘Open’ Home Run (point to point) network

€

Passive infra Technology Services Consumer

Cable/VDSL ‘Predatory’ Architecture

€

Passive infra Technology Services Consumer

Open Citynet: High option value

Citynet: more than 13.000 fibers per POP

Active Ethernet

GPON

Future

1 : 32 optical split in POP

POP: local switch house

Facility based competition “2.0”

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ConclusionsGreen IT sounds like work and it smells of sweat

– First you dig…

Technical decisions are not neutral in their effects– Choose carefully or regret for decades– Primarily distribution or a powerfull change agent

Amsterdam’s position: we want an option rich network– Future proof– Open and universally deployed– Stimulating competition– In other words: an option rich point to point architecture

PPP seems a splendid way to bring the aims together– With government there where we ‘re best at: basic infrastructure– And ensuring open acccess and (real ;-) competition

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