[CAnet - news] Spain Preps $500M Broadband Net

[This is a very exciting development. One of the key organizations (i2CAT)
and individual - Sergi Figuerola - in this project are key collaborators in
the development of CANARIE's, CRC's and i2Cat's  User Controlled Lightpath
(UCLP) software.  Congratulations Sergei!!!.  Some excerpts from the
original LightReading article-- BSA]

Spain Preps $500M Broadband Net
JUNE 22, 2005

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=76145

Details of one of the world's largest municipal broadband networks are
scheduled to be unveiled at a Light Reading Live conference on Carrier-Class
Ethernet in Barcelona, on Thursday, June 30.

The project (not the conference) has a budget of €488 million (US$542
million) and aims to encourage competition among service providers by giving
them equal access to low-cost broadband infrastructure, say those familiar
with what's involved.
	
The project being planned by the Generalitat de Catalunya (the Government of
Catalonia) and Localret (a consortium of 782 municipalities) is a whopper.
It aims to cover multiple cities throughout the entire province of Catalonia
and will be based on multiple fiber optic rings linked by reconfigurable
optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs), together with other networking
equipment.

Plans for the state-of-the-art broadband network will be presented at the
Light Reading Live conference in Barcelona on Thursday, June 30, in a
keynote address by two of the project's masterminds:

    * Josuè Sallent, strategic projects coordinator of the Catalan
Government's Telecommunications and Information Technologies Center
    * Sergi Figuerola, Network Technologies Cluster Coordinator of the i2CAT
Foundation, a not-for-profit agency that promotes technology developments in
Catalonia, and one of the participants in the project. 
The idea is to offer more than just dark fiber or wavelength services, as
some early municipal operators, such as Sweden's Stokab, have done. This
could include Ethernet services over MPLS and SDH infrastructure, TDM
services such as E1 leased lines, and pretty much anything wholesale
customers want.

Once the project team have got input from potential customers, a pilot
network will be installed by early 2006, according to Figuerola. Requests
for proposals for the production network will go out next year. He estimates
that digging trenches and installing fiber will cost about €200 million
($222 million). The goal is to have the whole network operational within
four years.

The Catalan government believes its project can avoid the legal challenges
that some other municipal networks have faced in Europe, by only offering
wholesale services. A ruling from the European Commission in May on plans
for a municipal network in France appears to apply to this project as well
(see EC OKs B'band Funding).


-----------
[email protected]
www.canarie.ca/~bstarn
skype: pocketpro
SkypeIn: +1 614 441-9603


_______________________________________________
news mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.canarie.ca/mailman/listinfo/news