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2.5Gb/s Internet For French Homes
Erick Lionheart at www.gamersloot.net writes "Presence-pc at reports that France Telecom just announced they are offering 2.5 Gb/s Internet connections to select cities in the Paris region. For ... $85(70 Euros) a month you also get free phone and TV. From the article (in French): 'The historical operator opted for a GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) FTTH architecture (Fiber To The Home). This technology allows up to 2.5 Gbits/s download and 1.2 Gigabits/s upload.'"
Oh the sweet, sweet pr0n! Holy crap, I wish I lived in France!
Wait, did I just say what I think I said...?
For... $85(70 Euros) a month you also get free phone and TV.
Ummm.... if it's $85/month, it isn't really "free," is it?
Soylens viridis homines es
But I notice they are using GPON. I have 1Gb/s GPON in Japan (free, comes with the body corp fees) and 1Gig aint "1Gig". Yeah looks good but I would prefer dedicated 100Meg than 2.5Gig GPON.
And what, in 40 seconds you've hit your monthly cap?
Seriously though, it' s trade-off. We could have this sort of thing in parts of North America, but it would require consumers and gov't to stop moaning and griping about where telecos and cablecos pick to choose their deployments. Cherry-picking, if you will.
Because in case you didn't notice, all these Asian and European plans that seem so fast (and than always get everyone green with envy) always have the disclaimer "in select areas/markets" on them. Which means "deployed to a very few affluent areas that can likely afford it", a concept which seems to go over OK in Asia and Europe, but not so OK in North America.
For some reason, when I read news releases like these, I get all excited about the possibilities of a tremendous amount of bandwidth available to me in the home -- then realize the reality.
You are only going to get the bandwidth that you are being served.
With that said, if I'm downloading a huge ISO or other multimedia file from a site on my 2.5GB connection, and the remote site is sitting on a 256K upstream cable modem, then I'm going to get no more than 256K.
While YOU might have 2.5GB of downstream available to you, most providers these days serving upstream content don't have anything close to that availability.
And furthermore, I seriously doubt that many PCs today even have the ability to CONSUME 2.5GB of bandwidth. Are they making 10GB ethernet cards for the consumer market? Ummm... no.
Lindsay Blanton
RadioReference.com
France Telecom/Orange better improve their current offers. They are eaten alive by other ADSL providers. FT/Orange gives you 18Mb/s ADSL for 40 euros a month (includes TV channels AND NO telephone) when other providers gives you 24Mb/s for 25 to 30 euros which includes TV AND free phone calls to Europe, USA, and other countries. They lose thousands of customers per month.
Let's hope that they'll compete by innovating, but I doubt it.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Finally, a real reason to hate the French.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
And here in America, we STILL fall further and further behind in broadband. Where is this 45+ M/bit sync fiber connection the telcos promised 80%+ of Americans were supposed to have by now?
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
In the spirit of world communication and harmony, we should all adopt this French model.
French models usually aren't tech saavy, but this one is.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Just to make you feel better: here in Indonesia we pay $60 for a 128 kbps cable modem connection.
google: verb - to search for information on the Internet.
What's expensive with FTTH is the termination of the fiber to the homes, not so much the backbone.
French experts agree that getting all the homes connected in France would cost approximately 30bn (with an average cost of 1500 per house).
That may sound like a lot but in fact it's only the price of 500KM of new highway.
I think that this infrastructure should be paid for by the state and allowed access to private companies against a fee for TV, Internet and phone services.
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
So my father invested in France telecom. Bought at 128, the all time high I think. They went down to 70, 40, 30. At one point they were down to 9. At that time, the company released its finacial report detailing how they had taken in I think 23 billion in revenue, and had made a loss of 1 billion.
Upon closer inspection, I discovered that their expendature had been marked as 12 billion in running costs or some such, and the other 12 billion was marked as "captial infrastructural development", or some such. The main telecoms provider in france had just invested 12 billion in its infrastructural development as was down to 9 per share.
I advised him to remortgage his house and put it all on France Telecom.
He did no such thing. I believe he sold what he had at 15. The shares are now worth about 22.
As I tried to explain, that 12 billion infrastructural fund wasn't to repaint buildings. France Telecom were giving the French telecoms system a serious upgrade, and as you can no doubt see, it's already paid off. The French can now get their phone, TV and internet over the same line. The company was never, ever going to go under as anyone who knows anything about French big business will tell you.
That's what a high bandwidth network for 70 million people costs. 12 billion, give or take. And it doesn't require any extortion policies from telecoms on internet businesses. It took a 1 billion loss in one year, and the French now have the best telecoms infrastructure on the continent, if not the world. Say what you may about the French, but when they do big infrastructural projects, they tend to get it right; TGV, Nuclear power, Millau Viaduct, etc.
May the Maths Be with you!
They must have some big trucks, um, tubes that is in France!
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
But...It's a series of tubes.
And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.
Dear Senator Ted Stevens,
The French can figure this shit out, why can't you?
Love, rm
Can all fish swim?
Get over it man. That whole "surrendering" thing is getting old.
I'm not even sure that you know what started it all, nevermind who helped the pilgrims settle in the US and fight for their independence against England.
So do us a favour, pick up a history book and learn something for a change.
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
Citizen, do not believe Oceania's flaccid lies, their so called gigabit web is really just a series of interconnected tubes. They move information over long distances in dump-trucks. War is Peace Citizen. - This state announcement has been sponsored by Fox Networks Inc.
Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
You mean when you don't devote all the country's resources to war, you can actually spend money on developing infrastructure at home and abroad that improves the lives of citizens?!?? AMAAAAAZING!!
Um, no. We actually spent the money to have "hispeed" like 45 MBps to all of the US through tax cuts and deregulation of the Baby Bells during the Clinton/Gore era. Those that have paid for telephone services from I think it was around 1993-current have been basically given their phone companies more profit rather than government taxes and a regulated phone industry. It was a massive bait and switch, they promised something like this French system, and after the Feds gave the Bells their carrot, the Bells gave the Feds a stick and said we can't/won't roll out/upgrade fiber to the door and will instead offer DSL. From what I've since, DSL is ok for those who can get it. The Feds were promised more than 30 times the speed of DSL though both up and down stream to us. This is something that should have been built during our 1997-2000 the internet is the wave of the future time. The Bells have screwed us. I'd actually love for the Feds to fine each one of the billions in back taxes with interest for not providing services to us and then regulating the phone industry to bring it up to spec.
Actually, the Clinton/Gore era gave the American telcos $200 BILLION in tax breaks so that we would have fiber and coax to our homes, at speeds of around 45Mbps. A decade later, we are still stuck on copper, paying insane amounts for abysmal performance. See the new networks site for more.
Microsoft is not the answer. Microsoft is the question. NO (or Linux) is the answer.