Thursday, January 15, 2009

Lattelecom--500 Mbps internet by end of 2009

Latvia's Lattelecom hopes to implement 500 megabit per second (Mbps) symmetical internet connections by the end of the year, using fiber-to-the home (FTTH) technology, according to CEO Juris Gulbis. Gulbis said that initially, the FTTH connections would have speeds of 100 Mbps but by end-2009 would jump to 200 and 500 Mbps.
Lattelecom has started a three year project to convert most of its current DSL network to FTTH over the next few years. Around 30 apartment buildings in a Riga suburb were the first to be connected recently with the intention to replace DSL with FTTH in all residential buildings with at least 30 units in Riga and other urban centers.
Gulbis said that HD television, including HD films on demand would be one of the services made possible by the higher connection speeds. Initially, however, FTTH will meet the bandwidth needs of households with several home computers and television sets, including HD TVs.
Lattelecom is also in the early stage of planning a software as a service plaform for home and small businesses that would be available over its high speed, so-called "Future Network".
"Our goal is the have the fastest internet in Europe," Gulbis told this blogger.
Gulbis said that the higher speed services will be offered for the same price as present internet and/or triple-play packets, starting from around LVL 20 per month (tariffs have been boosted by higher VAT from January 1)
At the same time, Lattelecom has started to market Triatel's EV-DO based wireless and mobile internet service to more the 30 000 potential customers who cannot be connected to the company's fixed internet network. The service will initially offer 3.2 Mbps download speeds and will be available in around 70 % of Latvia's territory.

3 comments:

otto said...

it is future network for Lattelecom, in Latvia is already built this kind of network and approved in 2008 in some area in Riga but project for now is stopped and will be back again as open access network where you can access to several ISP or other new services such as IPTV or VOD etc.
http://www.google.lv/search?q=fiber+to+the+home
http://www.mwtv.lv/lv/business/opennet.html

Anonymous said...

it is interesting that Lattelecom is willing provide good Internet connection to some areas, but there are some quick wins Lattelecom could do right now to serve already existing customers who are not in reach of the optic infrastructure - let us all have full speed from our home to the Internet outside of Latvia. My experience is that all traffic inside of Latvia is with the speed you are buying, but connection to anything outside of Latvia is truncated and very slow. Just an idea which would be fast, easy and cheap.

otto said...

that's because how is built internet connections in Latvia not so many of Latvian ISP (internet service providers) have they own international channel so they buying every single international bit/s from BIG ISP but locally in Latvia have interconnect to each other at least 100 or 1000 mbit/s.