2006-09-21

Fiber to the Home in Kuwait - Part 2

In March 2006, I got a little card on my front door saying that the Kuwait Ministry of Communications (MOC) wanted to honor my humble home with their magnanimous presence and offer me the gift of light speed Internet, which I wrote about here. The next day, I waited for them, and they only wanted to do a survey. In my sorrowful state and with tearful eyes I wrote a sad poem.

A few days ago, the friendly people of the MOC came to my house and brought with them a gray Alcatel box that they fixed right next to my telephone junction box. I live in South Surra which has no fixed telephone service. Everyone relies on their mobile for communication to the outside world. Others go as far as using their mobile data service to access the Internet. I have a need for speed so I had a Satelite Internet connection set up before I moved in.

So now the grey Alcatel Box is installed.

Alcatel Box


Truly an object of beauty, more beautiful than a tropical sunset.

Tropical Sunset


WARNING If you are not a geek, stop here, this post goes into uber geek mode.


Opening the mysterious grey box, its secrets are revealed. You can see four RJ32 connections (telephone sockets for the non geeks reading this) and two RJ45 ports (Internet Connections), meaning you can get four standard telephone lines and two ethernet connections.

Open Alcatel


The black wire on the left is the power cable, and the thin little wire on the right is the fiber going into my home :-)

Here is a closer view of the connectors:

2 RJ45 and 4 RJ32 connectors


Now the question is, how much speed can I get? Well doing a little Alcatel research I found this Press Release about the Kuwait fiber rollout project that promises gigabits of data delivered to the home, but the question remains unanswered, how much speed can I get?

I did a little more research and found this topology diagram for a similar configuration to the one being rolled out in Kuwait.

Topology


The central 7342 passive optical network (PON) delivers 2.5Gb/s. This has a capacity to service 64 locations. Because it is a packet switched network, effectively you can receive 2.5GB/s to each home, of course you will be getting a little less because of other users.

Now all I need to do is wait for the MOC to open its doors and process my application and I will be drowning in gigabits of data.

6 comments:

  1. wow... its a good thing u had a disclaimer.... :P

    ReplyDelete
  2. woah...all that just went past my head....zmmmm

    ReplyDelete
  3. krispy, cmon I wasn't too technical, I just wanted to find out how fast this baby would go.

    jewaira: o'balich

    vie: no worries (I sound Australian), just enjoy the pictures.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I heard the news, first time seen it in my eyes. You keep updating us and we will keep coming :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Internet is offered from QNET for south surra. Check it out. I got 250KD for 512k.

    ReplyDelete