NETWORK STRATEGIES

COUNTING THE COPPERS NEXT-GENERATION ACCESS

Telecoms operators embrace pair bonding and vectoring techniques to get the most out of their copper, but that could be bad news for FTTH. By Mary Lennighan

copper access networks. With technical and regulatory hurdles diminishing, the market looks set to take off, but that could be bad news for the nascent fibre- to-the-home (FTTH) market. Telekom Austria last month announced

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that it will be the first in the world to launch a commercial vectored VDSL offer. Meanwhile, BT has agreed a band plan change in the UK that will enable it to boost broadband speeds over copper, and in the US AT&T has been using copper bonding techniques to extend the reach of its U-Verse IPTV service for some time. “There is potential for these acceler-

ated DSL products,” says Rupert Wood, Analysys Mason principal analyst. “These copper technologies will be particularly attractive in Western Europe,” he adds. “[There are] significant coverage gains to be made in some markets.” A recent study conducted by Analysys

Mason showed that France potentially has the most to gain; an additional one third of copper lines in the country could reach speeds of 30 Mbps–the EU’s targeted speed for all households by 2020– through a combination of vector- ing and bonding. However, VDSL has yet to be authorised in France. But there are other countries that could

benefit from vectoring, which eliminates crosstalk on copper cables, and bonding, whereby copper pairs are bonded together, both of which boost speed and reach. The UK is one example. BT’s fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC)

service, with VDSL into the home, is based on a 7 MHz band plan–that is, the frequency band in which it provides the service–enabling speeds of up to 40 Mbps downstream and 10 Mbps upstream. Last year it agreed to extend that band plan to 17 MHz, a move that will enable “a doubling of the ‘up to’ rates,” says George

February 2012 www.totaltele.com

ixed operators are starting to look seriously at techniques that will help them get more out of their

Williamson, director of strategic network design, at BT Openreach. Once fully productised, it will facilitate download speeds of up to 80 Mbps. BT’s band plan change effectively

provides “faster speeds to people who are already on the fastest speeds,” but doesn’t have a big impact in terms of extending coverage, says Wood. However, he predicts that by using other methods BT could significantly extend its broadband reach. 91% of UK households are connected by a sufficiently short sub- loop to get 30 Mbps services already, he says. “BT could expand [that] by eight percentage points with bonding and vectoring,” he says. Openreach is trialing vectoring now.

“It will support us as we move to higher take-up,” of high-speed FTTC/VDSL services, says Williamson. It is also considering pair bonding.

“[Bonding is] less about rates and more about coverage and reach,” Williamson says. BT’s network has on average 1.4 pairs per business and 1.2 per residence. “There are some spare pairs,” he says. Telekom Austria, meanwhile, has

launched the first phase of its vectored VDSL project in the small town of Korneuberg and plans a countrywide deployment in the second half of this year. “The copper network will be able to achieve data transmission speeds of up to 100 Mbps and 50 Mbps at distances of up to 300 metres and 800 metres respec- tively,” the company announced. The equipment will be provided by Alcatel- Lucent, which in September announced it would also supply vectoring technol- ogy to Belgacom. However, the Belgian incumbent does not plan to roll it out until 2014. Swisscom also sees vectored VDSL as a

complement to fibre. The technology still needs to be worked out, “but I think we’re getting there,” says Stéphane Dufour, head of strategy and innovation. But any deployment will not happen soon.

Vectoring is complex to roll out; “it’s not a software upgrade,” he says. KPN is taking a more positive approach.

According to Wood, the Dutch incum- bent is already doing pair bonding, will launch vectoring this year, and plans to commercialise phantom mode–where only one of the four wires in a bonded pair acts as a ground wire, rather than two, freeing up a third signal wire–in 2013. But while the technology is moving forwards, there are still potential regula- tory hurdles. “There is some work to be done in most

countries, but in the end it shouldn’t be insuperable,” says Wood. One issue for pair bonding is the crea-

tion of appropriate wholesale models. And vectoring is incompatible with sub- loop unbundling, since it requires a single point of control for all copper lines in a bundle. Openreach has some customers using

its sub-loop unbundling product in the UK, but the numbers are not massive, Williamson says. In an area where sub- loop unbundling would be likely to happen, “you would think twice about the investment,” in vectoring, he says. Meanwhile Dutch regulator Opta says

it will address the issue of the incompat- ibility of vectoring and VDSL should it arise, although the EU would prefer it to require KPN to create a virtual unbun- dled product. There are already virtual unbundled

local access (VULA) products on the market in the UK and in Austria, says Wood. “Technologies like vectoring will find their way into these VULA prod- ucts,” he predicts. What is certain is that new copper

access technologies will have an impact on fibre-to-the-home plans. “The speed at which [operators]

progress with FTTH depends on how the copper business is going,” says Wood. If it’s going well, “these FTTH deploy- ments are going to be a bit slower.” n

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