JULY 6, 2009 -- The Telekom Austria Group (search Lightwave for Telekom Austria) on Friday provided an update on the fiber trials presented on its Capital Market Day in January and also announced its plans to roll out VDSL2 in selected rural areas.
Telekom Austria said it plans to roll out a blend of fiber-to-the curb, fiber-to-the-building, and fiber-to-the-home infrastructure in 2009 and 2010 to gain experience and validate planning assumptions to make "an informed decision" on the further deployment of fiber infrastructure.
The plan is to cover about 150,000 households -- equivalent to 4% of households in the trial footprint -- with speeds of up to 1 Gbps in the city of Klagenfurt and in two districts in Vienna. The carrier described one of the Viennese districts as "an upscale neighborhood with scattered housing." The other district is a residential neighborhood with high building density.
A trial using fiber-to-the-curb infrastructure will be launched in Villach, a medium-sized town in the south of Austria, later this year.
Topography, building density, and the blend of residential and business customer of the areas chosen are representative for urban Austria, Telekom Austria asserts. The carrier hopes to gather data on the deployment cost of fiber infrastructure, customer acceptance of products, and pricing of premium services such as ultra-fast Internet access with initial speeds of up to 100 Mbps and Internet-based and HDTV services including video on demand.
The VDSL2 roll out in selected rural areas, scheduled "towards end of 2009," will use existing fiber backbone infrastructure and the migration to a "next-generation network" voice platform. The goal is to significantly increase available bandwidth at very low incremental investments.
Telekom Austria asserts that previous backbone fiber investments will support delivery of up to 30 Mbps to about 750,000 households by 2012, which is equivalent to coverage of about 15% of households around selected central offices. This initiative will enable Telekom Austria to offer high bandwidth service to more than 300,000 households by the end of 2009.
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