Ultra-fast Internet in Grandfontaine: Swisscom testing new fibre-optic technology

Swisscom is testing the new Fibre to the Street (FTTS) technology for the first time in the Swiss municipality of Grandfontaine (JU). End Quote

(1888PressRelease) November 22, 2012 - Residents of Grandfontaine will thus benefit from bandwidths of up to 100 Mbps which will allow them to watch HD-TV, use multimedia services and browse the Internet at ultra-high speed.

Swisscom is testing the new FTTS (Fibre to the Street) broadband technology and is bringing the fibre-optic network to its customers living outside major urban centres much sooner. With FTTS Swisscom will be able to offer its customers bandwidth speeds of up to 50 Mbps, with up to 100 Mbps expected to be reached by next year. This will allow Swisscom TV viewers to simultaneously watch and/or record several HD channels as well as transfer data over the Internet at ultra-high speeds.

As part of this pilot project, Swisscom is connecting nearly all households and commercial properties in Grandfontaine to the FTTS network. Swisscom customers will have access to the higher speed connections as early as the first quarter of 2013. To achieve this, fibre-optic cables will be laid from the exchange in Rocourt all the way to a small neighbourhood distribution cabinet situated only around 200 metres from the houses, which is considerably closer to customers than would be the case with a conventional VDSL upgrade. The remaining distance to homes will be covered by the existing copper cables.

Along with Charrat (VS) and Flerden (GR), Grandfontaine is one of the three pilot communities for the FTTS technology where Swisscom will extensively test the new technology and collect information for a wider roll-out. Switzerland-wide expansion is set to begin during the second half of 2013. By the end of 2020, Swisscom is planning to provide around 80% of Swiss households with ultra-fast broadband using a mix of technologies. In Switzerland, one more home or business is connected to the fibre-optic network about every two minutes. By September 2012, Swisscom and its cooperation partners had laid cables to the basements of approximately 465,000 households and businesses. By 2015, the number of homes connected to the network should reach a million. That's one third of all Swiss homes. The proportion of homes currently connected is more than 10%. Swisscom is investing CHF 1.7 billion in expansion of the infrastructure this year alone.

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