Blog: Awaiting arrival of fiber optics?

June 2, 2020

In terms of fast Internet connections, the Netherlands is among the top 10 in the world, this applies to both fixed connections and mobile connections. That good result has a lot to do with the investments made in 4G, fiber optics, coax and vdsl.

After the above story, you would expect that this would also allow everyone to get fast Internet, and that is disappointing. VDSL is only fast if the distance to the neighborhood box is short, coax is almost only available within the municipal boundaries and fiber optics..... Fiberglass is ultimately only installed if enough people join in at the same time or only at high construction costs and an expensive monthly subscription. In addition, there are many parties active which creates a fragmented fiber optic landscape, to me this creates the image that some free guys with an excavator dig trenches and just throw in the fiber optic. I wonder if this benefits quality. The, in my opinion, many damages caused by digging do not help. That mediocre image in turn causes fiber optic collectives to fail. In the end, the end user suffers.

Then I come to the essence of the title of this blog, does it make sense to wait endlessly for consumer fiber? My credo is "If you focus on cost the quality goes down, if you focus on quality the cost goes down. If quality is important, there are better solutions than consumer fiber and the price remains attractive.

Business Internet connections based on 4G are that attractive alternative for companies where the current Internet connection is not adequate. The 4G networks have an almost 100% coverage in the Netherlands, even abroad 4G has good coverage. In speed tests, I regularly see speeds of 160Mbps passing by and with the most modern modems, speeds of 100Mbps are the rule rather than the exception.

Therefore, in my view, waiting for fiber is unnecessary because super-fast and highly reliable 4G connections are immediately available that:

• Be well secured because provided with one or more fixed IP addresses.
• Carefree internet, no bundles or bundles so big they can't be used up.
• Europe widely available throughout the EU28.
• And high Internet speed, now faster than most VDSL connections and soon faster than most fiber connections.

Possibly this sounds like unlikely, but wouldn't it be wonderful if that were possible right now...... Yet that is exactly my goal and most of it is already possible.

Toine Theunissen