FTTH brings data superfast into Amsterdam homes
Triple-play (combining Telephone, TV, Internet) services and Web 2.0 applications are driving the need for more bandwidth in our daily life; in the office or at home. The telecommunications infrastructures play a crucial role in making triple-play and the latest applications possible. The technical solution that guarantees top speeds is glass fiber. Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) brings this superfast data highway right into the business and home. This is already possible for more than 40.000 homes in Amsterdam (CityNet Project), thanks to a partnership between Draka, BAM/vandenBerg and the customer Glasvezelnet Amsterdam (GNA).
Watching digital Television in High Definition quality, making Web conference calls, and working from home on your companies VPN connection; that is what broadband is all about nowadays. However, these so-called triple-play applications require increasingly more bandwidth to be able to download today's enormous quantities of information. FTTH offers an answer to this data gluttony.
Future-proof
For some time, fiber optic cables have been in use for long distance data traffic. Unfortunately, the last mile from the local distribution centre (Central Office or Point-of-Presence) to the home still relies on copper cables; either telephone cable or Cable TV cabling. To enable high speed internet access, this last mile of the network, also called the Access Network, needs to be ‘fiber’ed up, which makes a lot of difference. It allows users to benefit from broadband up- and download speeds of up to 100 Mb/s easily instead of today’s asymmetrical 4 Mb/s download connections. Applying FTTH is future-proof, as there is nothing beats the speed of light.
IT capital Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the European hub for datacenters and internet access points, therefore considered one of the world’s ICT capitals. Draka was approached to to play a role in this high level FttH project; after all, Draka has plenty of expertise in FTTH project management. It also offers suitable software for network design, registration and efficient materials handling. This combination of strengths enabled Draka to win the tender to build the physical infrastructure in 2006. The company entered a joint venture with contractor BAM/vandenBerg, and was given the first, important part in the CityNet project. By 2009 , including phase 1A of the project, more than 47,000 Amsterdam homes and businesses had been equipped with FTTH. Draka is looking forward to getting the remaining homes and businesses in Amsterdam wired for the future.
Are you interested in this project, the products or technologies mentioned in this article? Please contact us. We would be very happy to come to your offices to listen to your requirements and make your project just as successful!