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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elmatador who wrote (8115)	8/21/2000 3:09:51 PM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

NTT dropped its plans for FTTH in 1998. (As i wrote before The government was not willing to subsidize FTTH as it did with the long haul fiber network.) NTT slept and did nothing for ADSL. Wireless Internet came. NTT has nothing to show. NOw NTT has to import Covad, Rhythms to teach them how to build ADSL business and networks in Japan. I personally find today's article in the NY Times superficial and is not very informative. I repeat there will be some interesting developments in ADSL in Japan. NTT drops its plan for fiber to the home By Audrey Mandela and Nick Ingelbrecht 29 June 1998 Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. has abandoned its attempt to wire every home and business with fiber by 2010 in a project costing 33 trillion yen ($239.7 billion). Now it is looking at cheaper alternatives such as asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) and broadband wireless access technologies. Takashi Togawa, director of NTT's global business headquarters, said the Japanese national carrier will put in fiber to buildings and homes on a commercial basis in the Tokyo metropolitan area, but subsequent deployments will be based strictly on commercial requirements. Other high-speed access technologies will be examined for linking areas where fiber to the home (FTTH) cannot be justified, added Togawa. An NTT spokeswoman said the company is testing ADSL technology for delivering wideband services over existing copper plant as well as radio access technologies. "Fiber to the home will cost us a lot. If there is a demand, we can install fiber to the home from the feeder and it will take only one week or less. This is almost fiber to the home," she said. "We are doing trials of ADSL, but we have not got the results. Currently we have not decided whether to introduce ADSL or not. It is one possibility for our upgrading of the network from metal to fiber," added the spokeswoman from the Tokyo-based carrier. George Hoffman, Japan director of the Yankee Group communications consultancy, also in Tokyo, said, "There has been a big controversy about who will be paying for that fiber." "NTT is being split up and will become more commercially minded than before. NTT East is going to have to subsidize NTT West for at least three years and NTT West won't have the money to build out FTTH. It won't be commercially viable. But the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications is still pushing for fiber to the home," added Hoffman. NTT originally planned to provide fiber to the home nationwide by 2015, but this plan was subsequently accelerated to 2010, in the wake of government concerns that Japan was getting left behind in the global information infrastructure race. In this latest shift in strategy, the company has modified the plan to a "fiber to the feeder" scheme that would allow it to provide broadband services as required, replacing the original blanket fiber-to-the-home project. The restructuring of NTT, which is to be completed some time next year, has highlighted the debate over who should pay for the national fiber infrastructure, who should own and operate the network, and the terms for competitive access to the network in Japan's increasingly cut-throat environment. Nagaaki Ohyama, a member of the council of experts of the government think-tank, Advanced Information and Telecommunications Society Promotion Headquarters, said that while the government had tried to encourage the development of a national FTTH infrastructure, it was never an "official government slogan." "The MPT mentions that [FTTH strategy], and it sounds very good ... but you have to remember there are many ministries," Ohyama said. NTT's broadband wireless options include the next-generation wideband personal handyphone system platform, wideband CDMA (code division multiple access), or possibly local multipoint distribution service (LMDS). Rival company Japan Telecom Co., one of Japan's "new common carriers" competing with NTT in the domestic long-distance market, is currently rolling out its own LMDS infrastructure to provide broadband access to its customers in major cities, starting later this year.