GigaOM » Reggefiber

In the Netherlands, 1 Gbps Broadband Will Soon Be Everywhere

Om Malik — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:05:02 +0000

Google last week announced Google Fiber, an experimental fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network that the company plans to build and use to connect between 20,000 and 200,000 homes. And while we wait for that network to take shape, Reggefiber of the Netherlands is moving ahead and is upgrading its network to 1 Gbps. (Related post: So Where Else in the World Can You Get 1 Gbps to the Home?)

My friend David Isenberg, who organizes the wonderful Freedom 2 Connect (F2C) conference, sent me a link to a story this morning. The gist of the news is that ReggeFiber, in partnership with Dutch incumbent KPN, will make 1 Gbps the standard connection speed for all FTTH customers. The company currently has more than 300,000 customers and is on target to grow to a million subscribers. Zeewolde is the first city that will get the service.

How can Reggefiber do this? The company has seen steep declines in the price of equipment — from modems to central office stuff — which has allowed it to offer this service. Reggefiber uses networking equipment from Cisco Systems, Swedish gear maker Packet Front and modems made by a local company called Genexis.

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Google Beefs Up Contacts, Makes it Good-Enough for Now

Kevin C. Tofel — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:09:30 +0000

February’s onslaught of Google service improvements continues with four new additions to the still fairly weak Contacts application in Gmail. Two features focus on cleaning up your contact data, which is key. Now that Google will sync Contacts over-the-air to handsets, we needed to see some effort in basic contact management. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen duplicates. You can now merge contact info by multi-selecting and choosing to merge the data into one record. (You’d be surprised to know how many James Kendricks there really are according to Google Contacts!) Removing people from the “My Contacts” group is finally here as well and should also cut down on unnecessary data syncing between you and Google.

There’s a new “All Contacts” group, which honestly should have been there from the beginning. Lastly, you can search contact records by more than name or e-mail fields: phone numbers, notes and mailing addresses are all searchable as well.

These basic updates combined with the new Google Sync support now have me using Google as my sole book of record for contacts. I’m making more of an effort to embrace the cloud again since we had our fireside chat about email clients vs. email on the web. I am a little concerned about how flimsy the Contacts application is, but it is, in fact, getting better. Adding to my concerns is today’s news that Nokia lost three weeks worth of data from Ovi users.

I add most contacts through Gmail to begin with so the Contacts bit makes sense for me. Just to be safe, I’ve set a weekly reminder in my Google Calendar to export my Contacts to a .csv file.

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Coming Soon, Fiber to All of the Netherlands

Om Malik — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:47:07 +0000

[qi:046] KPN and FTTH operator Reggefiber say theyare planning to roll out a fiber-to-the-home network that could cost as much as 7 billion euros. The network might take up to seven years to build out and is going to cover pretty much every part of the Netherlands. KPN, which is the incumbent in the region, wants to acquire 41 percent of Reggefiber, a decision that is pending approval. James Enck thinks the Dutch fiber movement is taking off because of a “forward-looking and pragmatic incumbent,” the fading of cable, and the presence of people who get its importance.

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Errata: KPN, Reggefiber & AMS-IX

Om Malik — Mon, 26 May 2008 11:00:11 +0000

Earlier this week I posted a short two line piece about Dutch telephone company KPN acquiring 41% stake in Reggefiber, suggesting that as a result KPN had bought into Amsterdam Internet Exchange. KPN bought a piece of the company to get into the FTTH business. Subsequent emails and comments by Rudolf van der Berg, a Dutch management consultant and Job Witteman, CEO of Amsterdam Internet Exchange aka AMS-IX (not AIE as I had written) pointed out that AMS-IX is a member association and my assertion was wrong. The error caused by misunderstanding of the situation is regretted.

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