Amsterdam and FttH
some preconditions
to a greener city
Amsterdam, September 2008
Dirk van der Woude
City of Amsterdam
dirkvanderwoude@gmail.com

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Introduction
OGA: 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…
Houston, TX,
The Nov. 2006 ‘DBlam’
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=93103&page_number=4

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Fiber to the Home, 1 Gb/s or more
40,000 adresses now – later 450,000
consumer/
Service providers SME
100% market
Wholesale operator Rent
sells open access
100% market
Passive infrastructure: Rent
GNA CV
33% municipal shares
20% municipal euro’s

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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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Seoul Madrid San Francisco
20/20 Mb 20/20 Mb 20/20 Mb
Amsterdam
20/20 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”

‘Open’ Home Run (point to point) network
Citynet: more than 13.000
fibers per POP
POP: local switch house
Cross-connect in POP to
technology
- With or without splitters
- Per home selectable
- CPE Capex: low!

Cable/VDSL ‘Predatory’ Architecture
Passive infra Technology Services Consumer
€

Open Citynet: High option value
Passive infra Technology Services Consumer
€

Facility based competition “2.0”
Active
Ethernet Citynet: more than 13.000
fibers per POP
GPON
1 : 32 optical
split in POP
Future
POP: local switch house

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Conclusions
Green 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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