Free: point optical fibre in France

In short, 60% of the French will have the fiber by 2022 and the remaining 40% will have to be jointly covered in collaboration with local authorities, ARCEP and the set of French operators.

The Convention Free 2012 in the presence of Maxime Lombardini held this weekend, it was question of the development of the fixed and mobile operator as well as the future of new technologies that will be used. Including, a good part of the agreement was the subject of the deployment of fiber optics at the national level.

The recent echoes on the subject seem not really good, and its Director General said while that Free is not only facing this problem of deployment of fiber in France and that other operators are in the same case. However, he qualifies that things are still progressing and that it can announce that almost all of Paris is fiber to the horizontal. For memory, the deployment of the fiber must be two axes. Horizontal, first to connect the heart of operator's network and buildings and vertical then to mount the fibre in each apartment and Pavilion. According Free, there still thousands of fibres to Paris to get a blanket full, but the harder remains to be done by the operator.

All operators abound in the same direction and indicate that they have many difficulties to get fiber in French homes. Mis en cause, the Trustees of building agreements or local communities which slow to give their agreements or who are too hesitant in the light of work by operators. According to figures reported by UniversFreebox, with an investment of€ 600 million by the troublemaker of the French Internet, it hopes that all its subscribers spend the FTTH (Fiber To The Home) at least in the capital by the end of next year. To facilitate the appointment of laying of fibre and making terminal optical (BTEP) in the apartments of Paris and other cities soon, Free will implement an approach simplified directly by the subscriber interface Freebox.

Outside the dense zones, which concentrate much of the French population, investments for fibre deployment will be jointly undertaken much orange at 80% and the rest by Free, and SFR. Thus, Free hopes to achieve the objective of 60% of the population covered by the optical fiber by 2022, dense and moderately dense areas would be affected. For the remaining 40%, Free plans to work with local communities to find a common solution to bring fibre to the pavilions. Because if non-dense areas represent only 40%, the profitability is lower for the operator.

It appears also that local authorities propose to fiber according to their own solutions, which complicates interoperability with operator and plans to ask the ARCEP to justify this practice. But in the end, who will pay the Bill in these non-dense areas? Local and regional authorities under the auspices of imposed regulations? The owners of the lodges wishing to pass the very high speed?

Read More

Holey Optochip: the optical chip from IBM

Data transfer will be by fibre optics, IBM confirmed us!

Optical processors, or simply optical chips, it is neither the first nor the last time that we will hear speak. To summarize, researchers are trying to break out of the transfer of information about copper tracks that travel our maps mothers and other electronic cards to drastically increase the bandwidth. To achieve fiber pathway is preferred because it allows to benefit from the speed of light that physically provides information at speeds of almost unlimited transfer speeds, once used electronics following. On this point, IBM researchers appear to have taken a new step forward.

IBM introduced its Holey Optochip chips with 24 holes for the reception of the signal light and 24 other holes for the issue of information by optical fibre. The transfer rate would be of the order of 1 Tb/s... for a short distance, of course. The consumption of such chip does not exceed 5 Watts, this could be interesting for future major centres of calculations or data centers.

IBM said its show of force that the manufacture of the chip does not use new technologies or methods of complex manufacturing, but components today classics on the market, making it so cheap to produce.

Optical receptors on the two rows of top and bottom transmitters.

For researchers, the problem of bandwidth between the components of a computer is then more a problem with this type of optical chips. For them, the bottleneck is now moved to bandwidth network, even if the optical fiber in data-center is widely used. He would then produce optical chips more efficient to propel the light signals over a greater distance, increasing the speed of transfer between components and units of calculation then mechanically.

We hope now that this type of demonstration are not made only to show the power and the level of research in the laboratories of IBM, but that this could lead to actual use in our future computers. Finally, this is not to immediately...

Read More

It's always trainset for the optical fiber...

The number of subscribers to the fiber progresses slowly in France, slower than ADSL. The very high speed is still not be generalized.

On the third quarter the FTTH (Fiber to the Home) has attracted in France that new 19,000 subscribers, bringing the total of households connected directly by a strand of fiber to the very high speed to 175.000. In one year, are in total only 72.000 new homes that have chosen this way of connection. And yet, despite a very slow start, the deployment continues to be, with now some 1.35 million connected housing (150,000 strands of fibre from until the additional subscriber).

Problem, deployments are in priority in dense areas, most profitable a priori, but these are areas where ADSL coverage is very good and where the flows obtained on the pair of copper are sufficient for many Triple-Play subscribers. Result, Internet users are not the tail to pass to the fiber as soon as it is available in their commune, that the conditions of accessibility often impose the access provider (only 450,000 households are eligible for at least two offers). That means steps that - even simplified - are too tedious for some, even when it comes to surfing at 100Mbit. Skimp embedded yet, suppliers are processing not to communicate the benefits of very high speed.

On the hungry (Fiber to the Building), essentially proposed by Numericable, the observation is as usual a bit better with 24,000 new customers and a total of 425.000 connected homes. And a total 600,000 families, in France, currently benefiting are therefore of very high speed, against 420 a year ago. Could be expected that with the efforts made in this area, the progression is more marked. Because the continuous high speed him to recruit more, with 270,000 new homes connected for a total of 21.8 million lines, which 98% by ADSL.

Read More

Hybrid mice, laser and optical, in Razer

Razer has announced two new versions for the Mamba and the Imperator. The two mice share an interesting innovation: a dual sensor. Proposed for about 10 euros more than current models, mice reach a resolution of 6 400 dpi optical sensor level and a second laser sensor will allow to define precisely the point: the distance between the mouse and the carpet.

Information that is not trivial: players making large gestures must frequently lift the mouse to put it on the carpet, and optical sensors generally continue to work at the time when the mouse is raised. The short time between the "takeoff" and the time where the sensor realizes that it is raised may sometimes involve unexpected movements, which is an embarrassment for the players.

With the laser sensor mouse disables the main sensor (optical) as soon as the mouse leaves the carpet, for greater efficiency.

The Mamba, wireless, is expected in July to €130. Usable with or without wire, she works to 6,400 ppp and supports an acceleration of 50 g. It can operate even during a trip to 5 m/s and it sends the information to the computer to 1 000 Hz. Autonomy (wireless) is 16 hours. The Imperatore, cheaper (€80), is only wireframe, but offers the same benefits.

Passionate players should find the interest, others will turn to medium range, adapted to classical use mice without exploding prices.

Read More

ThunderBolt Sony, it's optical

The Sony Vaio Z is definitely an impressive machine. Not only this notebook is thinner than the MacBook Air from Apple and offers a significantly higher power through its Core i7, but it is also the first machine of the market to have a Light Peak optical port.

Where Apple has chosen a hybrid implementation of Light Peak, with a copper cable and connector owner, Sony took over the original design of Intel: a USB connector and an optical interface. The port connecting the Vaio Z with its external graphic card home station (called Power Media Dock, LDC) can also serve as a classical USB 3.0 port. This implementation seems us much more logical and practical to use: for example, Apple, the ThunderBolt is also used to connect the screen, but it should be at the end of the chain which cannot disconnect a ThunderBolt drive without disconnecting its screen. From the point of view of performance, the two implementations should be identical, providing 10 Gbit/s of bandwidth in each direction.

This divergence between Sony and Apple raises the question of the viability of Light Peak or ThunderBolt in the long term. Wrong to imagine a manufacturer of hard drives develop yet another range of products. Term, if Light Peak is resistant, a single variant survive in the market. And Sony for the benefit of compatibility with the USB. It now expected the reaction of other PC manufacturers to this technology forward.

Read More