The City of Amsterdam has begun construction of a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network based on an open architecture and Cisco Systems’ Ethernet platforms. The rollout of the network starts in the Zeeburg district of Amsterdam, followed by Oost/Watergraafsmeer and Osdorp. The network aims to connect 450,000 citizens, institutes and companies by 2010. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The CityNet project is conceived as three distinct layers, each of which will be managed by seperate parties.
- For the infrastructure, Glasvezelnet Amsterdam (GNA) is laying the network and will remain the owner of the physical ducting, glass fibre and area supply buildings. ARCADIS is responsible for the preparations as well as the technical consultation and coordination of the network installation, as well as drafting the contracts for the service provision, management and maintenance of the network. The combination of companies BAM/VandenBerg-Draka (BD) are building the network and will be responsible for the maintenance of the network.
- The second layer encompasses activation and utilization of the network. BBNed is leasing the glass fibres from GNA and will act as a wholeseller to other service providers.
- The third layer is the service layer: all the service providers will be able to buy transport capacity on the open network in order to offer new services.
CityNet is based on an MPLS core network with an Ethernet Fiber-to-the-Home (E-FTTH) design using a per-service virtual local area network (VLAN) architecture. Each VLAN is terminated on a different physical port at the customer premises equipment, providing logical separation of services. This allows each end-user to have multiple subscriptions to a range of services, with each subscription invoiced separately by a specialist service provider. The Cisco E-FTTH solution includes Cisco 7600 Series Routers and the Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series Switches.
http://www.cisco.comhttp://www.citynet.nl
- In June 2006, the Dutch Lower Chamber adopted a new Telecommunication Law that allows municipalities to participate in optical fiber projects. Every five years municipalities are obliged to consider whether they will keep their share in a local fiber network.
- GNA BV (GNA Ltd)is owned by private investors ING Real Estate and Reggefiber, five housing corporations and the City of Amsterdam. The municipality does not subsidize but invests euro 6 million on exactly the same terms as the other owners of GNA. The passive network will be let to operator BBned, which will sell capacity to corporations that provide services to end users. The network is open, which means that all service providers can make use of it on equal terms.
- BBned’s largest investor is Telecom Italia.