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My team and I have been working on a proposal for RCN ever since 2007, and we made it officially known during a personal meeting with its CEO, Pete Acquino, and other C-levels two years later, on December 9, 2009 at the UBS Investors Conference in New York City.

We present a new Technology White Paper as yet another piece of evidence of iUHBA’s ability to dominate the future fiber optic networking industry. Please note: this document solely describes the patented fiber optics technology segment of iUHBA’s FiberBroadband Strategy; the wireless segment is not discussed. To receive a copy you have to be a member of the Next Generation Development & Infrastructures Consortium on Linkedin groups.

Below is an introduction to the White Paper.

The war? It’s just another battle!

by Neal Lachman   17 Mar 2006  12:37 PM

Consoles are today stand-alone devices, that are supplemented by software – games.

The war has just begun, this is just another battle in an ongoing war. The question should be what the future of gaming is.

I am convinced that all homes will have fiber optic lines terminated inside, within now and 15 years. It will be as common as copper and coax is today. Accompanied with this new wiring will come a very advanced set-top-box, which will have – among many other things – a superb gaming console function.

The really interesting battle to see fought out will be the one where the exisiting game console revolutionisers see the value of connecting as many homes as possible. This will drive the gaming console further into the market, and not just in the hands of gamers. This, in turn, will create impulse, on-demand, and on-the-spot gaming by – for example- teenagers who come visit their grandparents.

Thus, as Fiber-To-The-Home is soon becoming a reality with 1 Gbps (and greater) speeds, plus the advanced set-top-box in the home, the gamer market will change.

If Microsoft or Sony teams up, it will win the war most likely. But imagine what will happen if Nintendo is the only visionary and teams up instead. The push for FTTH into the United States alone calls for 100 million connections within now and ten years, the rest of the world will be connected parallel to this.

Just imagine how online gaming or multi-player real time gaming on a new kind of console (because it will be the Set-Top-Box, not a console) will change the gaming landscape.

Below is an integral copy of my response to the Financial Time’s question, “Who will win the next round of console wars?”, which I wrote on March 17, 2006. While it has been more than 3 years, I still am of the same opinion.

“When a biased person gets to review your business plan, be prepared to get pissed on! ”

Last week, I took a novel approach in businessplanning. Since there are thousands – nay, hundreds of thousands- calling themselves an expert or even visionary in the field of telecom, I thought it would be nice to select 2 or 4 of them to “peer review” our UHBA NL 130+ page business plan.  I ended selecting 11 independent people, some of them who still have to deliver their piece of work. However, some did a great job of reviewing, and being reservedly enthusiastic about the opportunites ahead, complimenting us with the groundbreaking strategies proposed.

Last week we made an offer to Hollywood actor Rutger Hauer (known from movies like Blade Runner, Nighhawks, Lady Hawk, Sin City and Batman Begins) to become our corporate Anchor Man. He would be the international face of our company for the next 5 years. I don’t see why he wouldn’t agree.

It is a known fact: with the arrival of a new promising technology comes a horde of doomsday prophets that predict the demise of the then prevalent technology. The TV would bring a deathblow to radio, and the Video and DVD player would be the death of cinema.  We all know that the technology industry is not as black and white as some would like us to believe. It is also dawning on us that the internet is a real threat to the newspaper industry, but we thought the entertainment/content industry would not be too much affected. However, the increasing availability of broadband connections is making rich media transfer and downloads a popular timepass. Media execs: times are a’changing.

While the telephone infrastructure was the first widely deployed network and easily available service, and because people came to realize the advantages of telephone communications, it became a must-have rather than a luxury service. The uniqueness of the telephone infrastructure became an immense problem for the industry later on. The same goes for the cable operators, which had one unique proposition: selling TV channel packages. These so-called legacy system operators had no choice but to upgrade their systems.

When cable infrastructures were first built, subscribers could only get one service: TV channels. There were no additional services available through these cable systems and thus the attractiveness of cable was quite limited. That all changed in the late 1990s when the cable operators started upgrading their systems and started providing digital services. The cable industry’s major investment efforts to upgrade their analogue infrastructures to digital resulted in the availability of telephone (especially through Voice over Internet Protocol technology) and Internet access services. This meant that the cable operators started to thread the domain of telecommunication companies. Today’s cable infrastructures are upgraded to Hybrid Fiber Coax systems.

In order to compete, a similar upgrade strategy was chosen by the telecommunication companies. Their legacy systems were analogue, and while they were the first communications infrastructure to be extended all the way to homes and offices, the only service available on it was telephony. After having “digitized” their infrastructures and systems, the Telcos were able to offer Internet access; first through dial-up technology and nowadays through broadband technologies. KPN has joined the race to also deliver TV services over its DSL infrastructure under the brand KPN Interactive TV.

Now that the bundle of services, better known as “triple-play”, are available nationwide through both the Cable operators and Telcos, and because the quality of service is almost similar, the competitive edge will be much sharper. There is nothing “unique” that the Cable operators and the Telcos can offer to each others’ subscribers; thus, “stealing” each other’s customers must be done on price: i.e., lower monthly subscription fees.

Despite the Telcos and Cable Operators’ upgrades of their old systems, they cannot keep up with growing demand for bandwidth, the “need for speed”, and improved services. The upgrade from analogue to digital was a necessary step, and allowed the legacy systems operators to squeeze more revenues from their existing infrastructures thanks to technological advances.

New efforts by the KPN/Reggefiber combination and the likes of Ziggo and UPC will definitely bring fiber closer to the customers, but it is a fact that their technologies are nothing more than temporary solutions.

While the telephone infrastructure was the first widely deployed network with easily available service, and because people came to realize the advantages of telephone communications, it became a must-have rather than a luxury service. The uniqueness of the telephone infrastructure became an immense problem for the industry later on. The same goes for the cable operators, which had one unique proposition: selling TV channel packages. These legacy system operators had no choice but to upgrade their aging one-service systems.

We have finalized our 80-slide presentation wherein we provide specific data, showing where our company plans to rollout in the USA. Since making it available yesterday, more than 140 people have requested and received it. Surprisingly, this presentation has been requested not only by USA-based people, but also by people from China to Columbia.

A few days ago, the Financial Times headed “Nokia Dismisses WiMAX Prospects“. (Thanks for the tip to Vladimir Prodanovic).  It is not nice to say it, but let me do it anyway…. See, I told you so?!

Today, Rob van Esch, Executive Director of NLKabel (the Dutch equivalent of the American National Cable &  Telecom Association), published an elaborate April’s fools joke. It is, however, a mix of copied jokes.

Besides building and operating its own FTTH/O systems, UHBA Netherlands will lease capacity on Reggefiber’s FTTH systems in order to become a Virtual System Operator. KPN, the Dutch incumbent that owns 41% of Reggefiber, also plans to operate on these systems. But since the Dutch regulator has forced Reggefiber to provide “open access” to its systems, everyone can provide services over those systems under the right T&C.

As you read this you can see my picture off to the side of this posting. You might see me as a healthy, white, male American business man. But am I really? Perhaps I am blind and I used an audio interface to create this posting. Or maybe I am a convicted felon trying to start a new life even before my release.

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We will start using our new name and structure from now on. Whenever you read GigaSpeed International read, “iUHBA Networks“, and whenever you read GigaSpeed USA, read “UHBA Networks USA” (obviously, without the i at the beginning). This will be our new company structure, which is briefly described below.

The following three overviews speak volumes. We have listed various transfer activities of consumers, businesses and “others”. The speeds compared are dial-up 56 Kbps, ISDN (128 Kbps), 1 Mbps, 4 Mbps, 9 Mbps, 10 Mbps (symmetric), 100 Mbps (symmetric) and 1 Gbps (symmetric).  

 

I was a hippie. I guess that I still am one, deep down. I am proud to admit it. I had hair down to the middle of my back, listened to some very weird music and sat around talking about ‘the guru’ and ‘peace’ and ‘the war’. Sadly, at least to my teenage mind, the sexual revolution had already been overthrown.

 

I have  a lot of kids in my house. Some are young, some older. So, I can’t watch ‘adult’ content on TV or even my computer without having some little eyes and ears snooping around behind me. We watched a German movie last night called Run, Lola, Run and we watched it in German instead of English knowing that we would have to read the subtitles. But, at least our kids wouldn’t hear the bad language.

 

If you were born after 1978, you are part of the Generation Y, also known as the Millennials. I, unfortunately, am a little older than you. But, I do have a handful of kids that fall in that range, and I love watching how they communicate.

What an interesting idea: “Calling on a Customer”. How about: “My sales territory”. Or: “Our regional reach”.

 

If these sound familiar to you, OK. If they sound right to you then stand up, turn toward the wall and bang your head soundly into the sheetrock until you are crying. Why? Because, if you are still thinking in any way other than globally, you are missing out on your company’s true potential, and you SHOULD be crying.

We all have thought about it when watching one of those weird nature documentaries where one strange plant is completely dependent on some bizarre activity of a specific animal species and the animal needs the plant in order to survive. And you think “How could that happen? How did it get started?” Kind of like the Chicken or the Egg. Which came first?

Let’s face it: we all like to think that we work at innovative companies that are destined to conquer their current industry and eventually rule the world. But, the reality is far different.

If you have never read the breakthrough research on innovation by Dr. Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School, then you need to stop reading this and come back after you have read his works. His book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, explains clearly why huge, highly successful companies who literally OWN their industry fail to continue to be successful.

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The following is taken from our Strategy, Business Development, Marketing & Position Plan, which we plan to release next week. PLEASE NOTE: this section of the document only concerns a  2007  (slightly updated) feasibility analysis and commentary by GigaSpeed on the FTTH & BWA market dynamics and uncertainties on a political level. The rest of the document is not yet released. I uploaded this piece because of the dialogue going on at Om Malik’s GigaOm blog.

Dear readers,

My team and I are finalizing an updated version (and modeled for The Netherlands) of GigaSpeed’s Strategy, Business Development, Marketing & Positioning Paper. While this paper is entirely GigaSpeed based, it gives the reader an excellent insiders perspective on our BWA and FTTH/O plans in general and for the Netherlands in specific.

Introduction

More than 6.5 years ago (May 21, 2002) I sponsored the European Broadband Debate in the Library Theater Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The theater was a full-house with approximately 150 attendees; almost every self-respecting broadband professional was present. My company’s then Vice-CTO, Chris Rouse, and I also made presentations to introduce our company’s plans to connect approximately 2.5 million units in Holland to a new Fiber To The Home network. With that fact, we became the first company to set out such a bold ambition – long before KPN & Reggefiber were considering Fiber To The Home rollouts.

I developed the “law of large projects” while working on my company’s FiberBroadband Strategy, and established it as part of all our plannings and projections. Thus, the law of large projects has been a rule-of-thumb, a philosophy, yes – a law, within our company. In large projects, this law should be applied in order to balance the importance given to “economies of scale” and “benefits of critical mass”.

A member of the Fiber To The Home and Broadband Wireless Access Consortium on Linkedin was curious about the status of Broadband in Gas. 

My response is below.

Dr. Hadi Abdulaziz Hmida, a member of the FTTH & BWA Consortium on Linkedin, wrote the following:

After reading our white paper, FTTH & BWA Consortium group member Tawanda Mutukwa asked what the difference is between my former satellite broadband venture InternetHypergate (1999) and the recently announced O3b Networks’ plans. This blog, by IT specialists Chris Wilson and Jim Jepps, hits the nail quite well on its head.