Joint study on ‘fibre to the home’ service

Published on November 02, 2005

The Metropolitan Electricity Authority (MEA) has signed a memorandum of understanding with Internet service provider Free Internet Co, to conduct a joint feasibility study for “fibre

to the home” (FTTH) implementation and service.

The term of the MoU is for one year.

MEA governor Pornthape Thunyapongchai said the study would test the technology that provides high-speed Internet access and multimedia applications – video, voice and data – on selected MEA customers in Bangkok, Nonthaburi and Samut Prakan.

The trial FTTH service will use the MEA’s existing 1,700-kilometre 24-core fibre-optic network.

The MEA and Free Internet will set up a joint working group to draft a plan detailing selected areas and types of application services. The trial will provide service to 5,000 customers in the three areas for one year, with each home being offered free FTTH service for three months.

Under the MoU, the MEA will provide the fibre-optic network, while Free Internet will supply the equipment and investment for fibre-optic connections between MEA branch offices and trial customers.

Kobsak Chinawongwatana, president and CEO of Free Internet, said the company would spend Bt60 million during the trial period to provide a last-mile fibre-optic network and FTTH equipment to the selected 5,000 customers.

He said FTTH would enable people to experience a new style of service called “triple play”, which includes high-speed Internet, Voice over Internet Protocol, and video on demand.

Asina Pornwasin, The Nation

Nice 1, it will be like the autobahn with a 20mph speed limit

spend Bt60 million during the trial period to provide a last-mile fibre-optic network and FTTH equipment to the selected 5,000 customers.

60 million Baht would be better spent on WIMAX for the last mile solution, this would bring ino play a whole host of farangs in the boonies who are screaming for such a service.

VOD is premature in Thailand, they need to roll out reliable internet access first.

Nice 1, it will be like the autobahn with a 20mph speed limit 

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Absolutely right.

Until the CAT gets its act together for the oversaes links any system like this

will be throttled, unless you restrict yourself to Thai sites only.

No you've got it all wrong. They are rolling out extra fiber so that us long-suffering ADSL users can HANG ourselves with it.

No you've got it all wrong. They are rolling out extra fiber so that us long-suffering ADSL users can HANG ourselves with it.

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VOD is premature in Thailand, they need to roll out reliable internet access first.

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Since the worst of the Internet issues are with CAT's bloody diabolical international capacity, and VOD wouldn't use the international lines, then VOD on FTTH might actually be OK.

P.S. I know people in Tokyo with FTTH who get average bittorrent speeds of over 1 MBytes/sec (yes - bytes, not bits), helped by the fact that the up and down speeds are the same. (multiple torrents obviously, - and the actual speed of the line is quite a bit higher still.)

FTTH is seriously nice, but unless the government decides that CAT's nine lives are up, and kills it, letting the ISPs source their own international bandwidth, it's fairly pointless EXCEPT for VOD.