Cable TV networks – like the fast steam trains?.
Cable TV networks – like the fast steam trains?
The debate on the need for fibre networks is still raging in some countries.
The cable TV companies in the Netherlands and the USA in particular are arguing that they have terrific speeds over their networks and so there would be no need to move to fibre networks.
They also maintain that there is no demand for their high-speed services from the majority of their customers.
They are absolutely right about this. But we see an ominous similarity here to the story of the steam train.
The best of these were built right at the end of the steam era and their speeds would, even today, be considered fast (up to 120mph). Yet they didn’t survive, while diesel and electricity trains were unstoppable – not because of the speed factor, but because of overall efficiency, reliability, costs, etc.
The cable companies in the USA and the Netherlands have been able to develop ‘steam trains’ that go as fast as a fibre network. However countries with a more forward-looking vision understand that the development of fibre networks has very little to do with speed. True, that is an added benefit, but it is not what it is all about.
These more enlightened countries don’t see fibre networks as telecoms infrastructure. They are viewed as economic infrastructure that can also be used for healthcare, education and other smart applications.
Once you start looking at fibre from a national economic perspective rather than from a telecoms perspective it will become clear why you need to move on from the ‘steam’ era. Fibre networks provide a far greater level of reliability and security – they are the technology of the future for trans-sector services such as ehealth and smart grids. Copper and HFC networks are old technologies. Sure, they will linger on for a decade or so but eventually they will end up on the scrap heap, or in museums next to the remaining steam engines.
The maintenance costs of a fibre network are also significantly lower than that of the old networks.
These are the reasons for change; not to provide higher speed access for Internet services, as the cable TV luddites would have us believe.
The rollout of these fibre networks takes time. It will take most of the next decade. So there is time for a transition from the old to the new. For all parties involved it is critical to first of all accept the long-term vision, with the new national and social benefits attached (e-health, tele-education, smart grids); to investigate changing the current telco and cable TV models into an infrastructure model; and then to develop a plan to manage the transition.
None of this can be done in isolation. Because of the many off-balance-sheet benefits it is also important for the government to accept its role in this – it will be similar to the role it plays around other infrastructure. Without political leadership the vision cannot be developed into a successful national action plan.
There are now plenty of examples available around the world where such government leadership is being demonstrated. Surely these governments can’t all be wrong.
Paul Budde
See:
- Europe – Travelogue – High level trans-sector discussions in The Netherlands October 2009
- Global – Economic Crisis – Strategic Vision for Comms after the Crisis
- Global – Economic Crisis – Strategic Developments for Comms during the Crisis
- Global – Infrastructure – National Broadband Networks (NBN)
- Global – Infrastructure – Next Generation Telecoms
- Global – Internet – Net Neutrality Analysis
- Global – National Broadband & Trans-sector developments in Australia & New Zealand
- Global – Trans-sector strategies – an empirical approach
- Global Next Generation Telecoms – FttH and Trans-Sector Strategies
- Netherlands – Analysis latest telecoms developments – mid-2009
- USA – Benchmarking broadband in the USA
- USA – Broadband Market – Cable modem & DSL – Analysis, Statistics & Forecasts
