Fibre-optic connections at last in South Tenerife

[Janet]

Telefónica has presented its plans for the laying of fibre optic cable in the tourist areas of South Tenerife. The announcement, which should see the arrival of the most advanced connectivity technology fibre optic cable arriving at over 51,000 homes and business in Adeje and Arona, bringing high definition television, online games with no delays, file sharing, streaming, videoconferencing, speedy internet navigation, was made at a press conference held today in Adeje's FIT (Factory for Tourism Innovation) centre,

Individuals or businesses who want to find out more details, including whether and when they will be able to benefit from the new technology in homes or businesses can do so in Movistar centres, by calling 1004 or online at www.movistar.es/reservafibra. The official launch today was attended by Turismo minister Ricardo Fernández de la Puente, mayor of Adeje José Miguel Rodríguez Fraga, Ashotel's director of innovation Enrique Padrón, and director of Telefónica in the Canarias Juan Flores.

Mayor Fraga said, "The installation of fibre optic cables into a tourist zone such as Adeje is important news and will have positive repercussions for our primary industry". He added that the introduction of fibre optic cable would also contribute to the growth of business and better connectivity between individuals, and the council were happy to support this kind of initiative "which really would benefit residents in South Tenerife". The council, and that of Arona, have pledged collaboration and the granting of any licences or permission needed for installation to ensure there were no delays.

Telefónica España has trained 300 professionals in the latest technological developments for the purposes of this project who will be dedicated exclusively to the development of the network in the Canaries. As part of their commitment to the improvement of the economic activity of the islands Telefónica has promised an investment of 8 million euros to make this part of Tenerife a technological reference point. Further indirect benefits will be in manufacturing of cables and transport of materials. The company has also promised improved client relations in their centres and sales points in both boroughs to guarantee the best assessment regarding the new services and to ensure better client satisfaction during and after the installation. JA

[Perikles]

Does this not require individual communities to have the infrastructure to get these cables to individual apartments? If so, then very few people will be able to benefit from it. Even relatively new communities have insufficient capacity even for ADSL for everybody. Does anybody know?

[Michael]

Does this not require individual communities to have the infrastructure to get these cables to individual apartments? If so, then very few people will be able to benefit from it. Even relatively new communities have insufficient capacity even for ADSL for everybody. Does anybody know?

The fibre optic cable doesn't run to individual premises.

It will run to a 'box' somewhere in the area then you're on an ordinary connection to said box. eg. somewhere like Palm Mar might have 3 or 4 then your speed is governed by the distance to the nearest box.

NAH could probably explain it better.

We've been on fibre optic for a couple of years.

[Delderek]

No, the system they use in Tenerife would be called FTTC in the UK (Fibre to the Cabinet). So the last link to the home is via existing copper cables. This is the main system used in UK. I believe they call it VDSL in Spain. But the speed falls away rapidly if the distance between the cabinet and home is more than about 1000mts. You can upgrade in the UK to FTTH (Fibre to the Home) but it then gets very expensive.

[NAH]

I have Asymmetric (download speed faster than upload) FTTC (Fibre to the cabinet) in the UK, cabinet is about 100 ft along the road and we get the exact speed that is advertised. Due to the location of our cabinet I'm not sure if FTTC does suffer speed drops due to distance (but theoretically it must since the final leg is not fibre)

We have Symmetric (Download speed the same as upload) FTTP (Fibre to the premises) at work, i.e. the fibre enters the building and terminates in an Adva box which is patched directly into the firewall untrusted port via a CAT5e patch cable  The firewall is then patched onto the network via a trusted port. The  firewall being set as the default gateway on the clients and policies controlling the permitted inbound and outbound traffic flow.

[Delderek]

What download speed can I expect from fibre broadband?

The chart below shows the expected speed of BT's FTTC service for different distances from the street cabinet for a clean connection. Broadband users within about 300 m of the street cabinet can expect to achieve about the maximum possible downlink connection speed (currently 80 Mbps). Speeds fall to about 60 Mbps when 500 m away from the street cabinet and, at 1 km, about 28 Mbps connection speed can be achieved. We believe that these figures are quite conservative for a good line where fibre broadband take-up is low so you may be able to achieve higher speeds, although the maximum connection speed is currently capped at 80 Mbps.

[minesadorada]

AFAIK the cable was laid ages ago.  It's the 50cm-wide trench you can see running along the TF1 - paid for in E.U. grant money.

It's just a matter of Telefonica getting off it's collective arse to connect the south and west and I think they have probably left it too late to make money from providing TV services.

[Myrtle Hogan-Lance]

AFAIK the cable was laid ages ago.  It's the 50cm-wide trench you can see running along the TF1 - paid for in E.U. grant money.

It's just a matter of Telefonica getting off it's collective arse to connect the south and west and I think they have probably left it too late to make money from providing TV services.

Been waiting for you to chime in.

Do you plan to do anything proactive or wait until the dingbats get further along?

[minesadorada]

Most of the folk on my estate who wanted high speed have gone with the dedicated Wireless dishes - the rest of us poorer folk bumble along at <1Mbit speeds.

I doubt Telefonica will even ask us whether we want fibre access - with only a hundred or so homes, it's probably not 'economic' for them to lay a few metres of cable to our local cabinet.  I have registered interest (again) on their website of course.

Maybe profit lies still in the larger urbanisations, and bragging rights for Adeje's mayor.  If they had activated fibre when they got the eurocash for laying the cables years ago, there was a begging lucrative market for internet TV.

[Myrtle Hogan-Lance]

No, the system they use in Tenerife would be called FTTC in the UK (Fibre to the Cabinet). So the last link to the home is via existing copper cables. This is the main system used in UK. I believe they call it VDSL in Spain. But the speed falls away rapidly if the distance between the cabinet and home is more than about 1000mts. You can upgrade in the UK to FTTH (Fibre to the Home) but it then gets very expensive.

Rereading this thread I realised I should have commented on this last night.  I am not sure it is called VDSL here as we upgraded from ADSL to VDSL some months back.  We get 30Mb down and 1Mb up, better than ADSL but not up to fibre speeds.  We are fortunately only about 50m from the cabinet.