FEATURE FTTDP
@fibresystemsmag |
www.fibre-systems.com
Distribution of wealth
Fibre to the distribution point has the potential to bring superfast broadband to the home – as well as profits to operators, argues Robert Roe
I
n April, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is expected to approve a new standard, called G.fast, that should make it possible to bring ‘fibre to the distribution
point’ (FTTdp) – closer to the customer than any previous technology, albeit not quite through the front door as in full fibre to the home. In any FTTH deployment, a substantial part
of the cost-per-subscriber is in those last few metres between the nearest cabinet or node, and the home. FTTdp, on the other hand, can provide super-fast broadband, and allow service providers to see a return on their investment, within a much shorter timescale than full FTTH. If the speeds of FTTdp can keep up with demand while being cheaper and quicker to deploy within existing infrastructure, then both service-providers and end-users can benefit from FTTdp strategies. Stefaan Vanhastel, marketing director for
fixed networks at Alcatel-Lucent, explains the costs of different architectures: ‘We compare everything to ADSL from the central office, which would have a cost of 1; FTTH has a cost of 15; FTTC with VDSL2 vectoring has a cost of five – so about three times cheaper than FTTH, the reason being that you don’t have to dig up every street, you don’t have to bring fibre all the way to the home.’ ‘Cost is one aspect, time to market is another.
Bringing fibre to the street corner – but not into every street – can speed up your deployment significantly. You avoid a lot of the digging, getting permission from the city council to dig up a street. In some cities you have to wait for civil works to be combined – so you can’t dig up
22 FIBRE SYSTEMS Issue 3 • Spring 2014
the street just to deploy fibre, you have to wait until they replace the sewer or until they renew the water mains,’ explained Vanhastel. In a full FTTH strategy, the investment
needed to complete the infrastructure can be a risky undertaking for service providers because it can be years before they make a return on their initial investment. ‘Te all-fibre future belongs to those service providers that can last long enough to realise it,’ said Ronan Kelly, product management EMEA director at Adtran. Kelly explains: ‘Tere are wrecking yards of
telecoms companies all over the world, where they embarked on heavy FTTH investment and they have run out of cash before they ever got to realise the returns. Ten somebody steps in and picks it up for 10c in the dollar.’ He continued: ‘We firmly advocate, within our customer base at Adtran, as much as we would love to sell you our FTTH solutions, we provide you with a tool kit that allows you to invest incrementally and ultimately build a stable business for the long term. Ten when you’re ready to go all the way to FTTH, we have got the solutions there for you.’ According to Vanhastel: ‘One of the
interesting things that we have seen over the last few years is that operators no longer choose a single technology. A couple of years ago you had operators who were going FTTH everywhere and you had operators that were going FTTC.’ Kelly said: ‘If you are doing brownfield
deployments; if you can’t guarantee that you can hit the expenditure targets that you need; then take the safer bet and bring the fibre closer to the customer, meet the bandwidth needs of the market you’re addressing today and for the next
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