Amsterdam fibre after two years: problems & fails, lessons learned, successes and how all things end well - Dirk van der Woude, City-Net Project, City of Amsterdam at the Manchester CBN/NextGen Euro Conference on 22 June 2009

1. Towards a smarter Amsterdam
Amsterdam fiber two years on:
problems & fails, lessons learned, successes
and how all things end well
Dirk van der Woude

2. Introduction
OGA: Amsterdam Municipal Development Corporation
●
Municipal development of large and small scale real estate
●
Administrator for all municipal held lands: 80% of the territory, market
value of around 65 billion euro
One of the projects is the overall vision and direction of the
city's broadband programs
Which projects aim at increasing the value of the city
and hence of its real estate
So – we ‘re in it for the dough…

3. Our aims in simple terms…
 We want a future proof network
 Seen as a long term, real estate like, investment
 Universally rolled out to all of the city’s 400K addresses
 Empowering open competion ON the infrastructure
 Preferably done by the market
 Necessary investment: around 450 million Euro
– If needed we invest ourselves
– We prefer to cooperate with the market

4. At the start: City government happy!

6. A city and its interventions…
100% government

7. 4th in Europe – related to 40,000 jobs
start: around AD 1250 – 100% muni

8. 4th in Europe – related to 70,000 jobs
start: AD 1920 - 22% muni 78%
national

9. (Courtesy of Teleography: World Map capacity
between countries)

10. 1st in the world – related to 50,000 jobs
start: AD 1997 – 100% not for profit
Source: Henk Steenman, 2007

11. Now that government regained popularity...

12. Japan - …
and in S. Korea, PR China, Singapore, Hongkong etc.
Wireline broadband in Japan, 1999 - 2008
14.000
12.000
Source spreadsheet: http://www.stat.go.jp/data/getujidb/zuhyou/o02.xls
10.000
Cable
8.000 DSL
FttH/B
6.000
4.000
Source: Office of Statistics, Japan
thousands of subscribers
2.000
0
1999.032001.032003.032005.032006.032006.092007.032007.092008.032008.09
2000.032002.032004.032005.122006.062006.122007.062007.122008.062008.12

13. USA
“The Internet is the most open network in history.
We have to keep it that way. I will prevent network
providers from discriminating in ways that limit the
freedom of expression on the Internet. Because
most Americans have a choice of only one or two
broadband carriers, carriers are tempted (…) I will
protect the Internet's traditional openness to
innovation and creativity, and ensure that it remains
a platform for free speech and innovation that will
benefit consumers and our democracy.
Barack Hussein Obama, October 2008

14. USA: “It’s Time to Broadband the Economy”
“An economic stimulus package that focuses
on infrastructure must put America’s broadband
infrastructure at the head of the list. It’s time to
broadband our economy. Doing so will not only
help stabilize and stimulate a recovery but
create the foundation for long-term prosperity
and competitiveness.”
John Chambers, Chairman and CEO, Cisco
January 2009

15. European Commission sees the light...
“Currently broadband is provided by telecommunications
operators to their subscribers via the same copper wires
that have been used for telephony since its invention in
the 19th century.
However, new broadband services (...) require
enhanced network characteristics including higher
bandwidths that cannot be provided over copper
infrastructure. To provide these services it is necessary
to replace the copper infrastructure connecting the end-
users to the local switches (the "local loop") by optical
fibre.”
European Commission, 12 June 2009

16. 25-04-09
On £15 billion and 800 K jobs
(London School of Economics, April 2009)
• “£5 billion on broadband networks (creating or retaining
280,000 jobs) (…) Spurring more and higher speed broadband would
boost business productivity.
• £5 billion on intelligent transport systems (creating or
retaining 188,000 jobs). Improve traffic flows through adaptive traffic
signals and electronic tolls and provide travellers with real-time traffic
information. Extra spending on ITS would deliver environmental
benefits and make the country more productive.
• £5 billion on developing a smart power grid (creating or
retaining 235,000 jobs). Using two-way communication and sensors a
smart grid will deliver power more efficiently and reliably. (…) One US
study suggested this could cut 10 per cent from utility bills. The smart
grid would also allow the deployment of new greener technologies
including plug-in hybrid electric cars.“
http://www.itif.org/files/digitalrecovery.pdf

17. Brazil
“The Broadband Divide is bigger than the Digital
Divide. A new Third World is arising in which people
are under the impression they have access to the
Internet.”
Silvio Lemos Meira, Chief Scientist of C.E.S.A.R.,
PortoDigital, Recife, Brazil

18. However, at the same time in the UK...
"Those who say that a Universal Service Obligation of
2Mbps is a ludicrously low ambition miss the point."
Lord Carter, Baron StephenCarter of Barnes
February 2009

19. 19
Improvement? Docsis 3.0?
<= promise: “120 Mb/s, no even
> 400 Mb/s over coax…”
…real world:
shared bandwidth =>
(Xiamen, Jan. 2007)

20. 20
Improvement? VDSL2?
Houston, TX, The Famous
Nov. 2006 ‘Dblam’
Some more went 'Bang!' http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=93103&page_number=4

21. FttH programs Amsterdam
FttH: Parts of boroughs of Three separate programs:
Osdorp and Zeeburg & Oost
 Fiber to the Home: > 40,000 addresses
● 2007/2008: to 10% of homes, representative sample
● aim: whole city per 2012-’15
 Fiber to the School: 1 symm Gb/s
● July 2009: to 500 schools and non-profits
● upgrading of existing 6/1 asymm Mb/s per
building…
● self organisation, organizing support by city
 Fiber to the Theater: 1 symm Gb/s
● to >15 major theaters
● once-only grant City (< 15%)
● sector innovation very slow
● FabChannel leading, had to close shop as records
industry refuses to innovate

22. 22
Fiber to the Home
Amsterdam 2009: 43,000 adresses connected or passed
consumer/
Service providers SME
100% open market
Wholesale operators Rent
open access
100% open market
Passive infrastructure: Rent
GNA, Inc.
15% municipal shares
5% municipal euro’s

23. 23
Assumptions…
 Independent service providers to
compete and market to consumers
 Winner of tender active layer (and
hence thereon investor) to market to
service providers as well as
consumers
 To operate as lessor

24. 24
Beaten by new realities...
 Between 2005 & 2008 independent
providers failed or were acquired by
infrastructure companies
 BBned owns last non-incumbent ISP’s
 Winner BBned – since 2007 rumoured
to be sale by owner Telecom Italia
Does not help in marketing…
 Landlord GNA has to do marketing as
well, next to substantial poblems in
physically rolling out the network…

25. 25
“Why innovate when Amsterdam
you can litigate?” FttH
-- John C. Malone
who in 1995 was dubbed by Al
Gore as “Darth Vader of Cable”

26. Digging in an old city
 > 95% high rise MDU
●
Vertically stacked homes can be
troublesome
 > 90% city below sea level
●
No problem for cables, POP’s
however…
 Rolling out FttH is an once only
operation...

29. In house architect?

30. Anybody home?

32. Competing for
space…

33. Now dry…

34. Most of Amsterdam is below sea level…
Very dry again:
visit to POP
distributing to
30K subs by Mr.
Costas (Mayor of
Lisbon) & Mr.
Carter (CEO of
MDDA)
September ‘08

35. So – any good, that fiber network?

36. (Exhibit 1) Perhaps (very) untrue:
“There are no apps that need this”
{
32,4 Mb/s
“Open internet TV, beyond anything else”
www.getmiro.com

37. (Exhibit 2) And there’s FttH
loving hardware as well…
• HD Video (720P)
• Data: 60 MegabYte per minute, 32.000 MB
total recording capacity
• Some more upload capacity would be rather
convenient…
• About £ 105 at Amazon.co.uk
• Be quick: this week £ 95 @ Laskys.com

38. Lessons learned...
outside
inside

39. Capex…

40. Another lesson learned…
”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

41. Feb. 4, '09: KPN signs Amsterdam FttH contract
file:///C:/Film-Foto/2009-2-4-Signing/CIMG2697.JPG

42. To speed up… developments 2008 / 9
• 2007/8: KPN/Regge and City of Amsterdam exchange views;
• 2008:
●
Minister understands need for NGN
●
Regulators OPTA and NMa work on longer term regulation
●
Incumbent KPN opens discussions with Reggefiber;
●
Late Summer: the two propose a policy to the regulators;
• December 2008: Regulators decide on open network with
regulated ODF-tariff as well as tri-annual control on profit ceiling.
• In other words: rather large part of vision Amsterdam now
widely shared.
• February 2009: agreement with KPN & Reggefiber on a city wide
roll out, starting with another 100K connections
●
Agreement Competion Authority expected

43. 43
A citywide base for sustainable growth
and trans sectoral innovation
Environmental benefits of
fast as well as symmetric
broadband (i.e. NGaN)
 Fine mazed cheap fiber
grid base for wireless
cloud (any tech)
 Teleworking/-care etc.
 Helps towards SmartGrid
& -Metering
 Facilitates low carb
telecomputing & -storing
(cloud computing)

44. New old kid on the block: Wimax...
Start: June 2008
Coverage: Downtown plus Zuidas
Test of 8 Mb/s product by Personal Computer
Magazine (June 2009)
Postal code / Download Mb / Upload Mb / Ping ms
1011DL / 3.35 / 0.04 / 168
1012KL / 2.77 / 0.04 / 154
1072LH / 2.87 / 0.04 / 173
1017PP / 2.75 / 0.24 / 100

45. Fiber is 'bit' faster...

46. All truth passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)