Tuesday, February 26, 2013
New FTTH project happening in France
Donna Donnawitz
Fiber to the home installation has been lacking throughout Western Europe, an issue that was recently bemoaned by the FTTH Council Europe. France is trying to step away from the pack and will soon begin a new FTTH project that could position it ahead of other nations on the continent, RapidTVNews reported.
The Western European FTTHproblem
If you look at the economic and technological climate in Europe some of the reluctance to adopt FTTH may seem understandable. Many national economies in the Western Europe are struggling to enter any kind of position of strength. At the same time, most regions in the western portion of the continent have well-designed, high-performance ADSL networks along with other advanced telecom solutions built on copper cabling. This leaves many consumers in the region thinking that while they may like the performance boost offered by FTTH, it is not enough of a need to warrant making a new deal with their telecom provider.
This combination of struggling economies and established infrastructure leaves many telecoms wondering how they are going to make money by spending heavily on FTTH. As a result, government help is often needed to make FTTH investments viable. With economies struggling in much of Western Europe, many nations are not willing to spend on technology that may offer major long-term gains, but seems unnecessary at the moment. France is bucking this trend with a major FTTH project.
France's FTTH investment
Karin Ahl, president of the FTTH Council Europe, told RapidTVNews that France's project comes just weeks after the European Union decided to cut funding to FTTH projects. This may be a missed opportunity for the European Union as a whole, but it won't be one for France.
"By reducing the Connecting Europe Facility budget, the European governments also took the individual responsibility to ensure a positive investment framework for future-proof fiber broadband in their countries," Ahl told the news source. "With Francois Hollande's announcement on Wednesday, France made a clear statement that it is willing to take this responsibility."
Taking full advantage of FTTH
In nations like France, where major FTTH projects are either underway or will be soon, finding the right technologies to streamline installation is essential. Fiber to Ethernet media converters are one such technology. Media conversion solutions streamline interoperability within FTTH networks, providing the necessary connecting points between optical cabling architectures and the copper cabling used in most homes and businesses.
Perle has an extensive range of Managed and Unmanaged Fiber Media Converters to extended copper-based Ethernet equipment over a fiber optic link, multimode to multimode and multimode to single mode fiber up to 160km.