SPECIAL REPORT; THE OPTICAL appetite: Incumbents work to add more fiber to local diets.
Telephony, March 20, 2000 pNA
By LaBarba, Liane H.
As businesses' and consumers' hunger for more bandwidth continues to increase, the challenge for service providers is to find more efficient and economical ways to feed that hunger.
For most incumbent telephone companies, the answer is to drive bandwidth deeper and much closer to customers. And given the extensive existing copper infrastructures sprawled across the U.S., DSL has been attracting a lot of attention as a high-speed way to accomplish this. But despite DSL's promise, some say the technology is a relatively short-term fix.
Rather than planning only for the foreseeable future, some opt for what is being billed as the long-term bet: fiber. By bringing fiber closer to customers, the infamous bottleneck in the local loop should theoretically lessen. After all, with fiber's greater capacity and upgradablility, the bandwidth it offers would make any power customer salivate.
But for now, the costs of deploying fiber to homes and businesses may outweigh the benefits, which causes most incumbents to use a more economical hybrid. Herein lies the challenge: feed the demand, but don't go broke doing it.
Patience and foresight
Planning to meet predicted-yet-unconfirmed demand is like trying to convince a smoker to put out a cigarette and add seven minutes to his or her life. It's a tough sell, but incumbents, determined not to finish last in the bandwidth delivery race, are trying to plan ahead as they tackle the complicated last mile.
Most incumbent telcos began experimenting with various ways to bring fiber closer to or straight into the home during the '80s. But like many technologies that never break through laboratory doors, talk of pushing fiber deeper into the loop faded - until recently when the growing thirst for bandwidth resurrected the idea.
In this second breath of life for fiber in the loop (FITL), a few different methods are being used. One method, fiber to the home (FTTH), involves the deployment of fiber into the customer premises. A second, more widely used method, called fiber to the curb (FTTC), involves the use of optical network units (ONUs), which are positioned within a few hundred feet of the home and serve from seven to 16 residences. Yet another popular method for delivering fiber to residential areas is that of fiber to the neighborhood, or node (FTTN). That method places a fiber cable between a central office (CO) and the network node, which reaches up to 500 customers in a maximum 3000 feet range.
BellSouth is a staunch advocate of driving fiber farther into neighborhoods, says David Kettler, the company's vice president of science and technology. "BellSouth has been a strong proponent of pushing and shoving fiber deeper," Kettler says. "One hundred percent of our interoffice is fiber, and our feeders, which go from the central office out, is 60%."
The company began FITL trials in Florida in 1986 and has been deploying FTTC since 1995. So far, BellSouth has deployed FTTC to more than 300,000 homes in new developments. It intends to continue with more FTTC builds this year.
During the past few years, Bell Atlantic also has deployed a few hundred thousand FTTC lines.
"Five years ago, everyone was into terrestrial video distribution, and we were going to do switched digital video, but we pulled back a lot when the direct broadcast satellites came in," says Ray Albers, vice president of network architecture for Bell Atlantic.
And although Albers says that Bell Atlantic has been happy with the performance of the FTTC systems, they are costly to implement and maintain. "We have generally stopped [FTTC] other than a couple of areas in New England and New York where we are continuing to deploy FTTC," he says.
Bringing it home or just to the curb?
Because of the sheer economics involved with delivering fiber into homes, the application is seeing little implementation. Even though BellSouth is moving quickly on the more economical FTTC, its ultimate goal is to bring FTTH, despite the costs and risks.
"There are always a lot of hurdles," Kettler says. "We have been doing fiber to the home for 15 years, and we have learned a lot about hostile environments in distribution."
But others still are skeptical about delivering FTTH.
"BellSouth is nuts if they think they can mount optical devices on the sides of houses and not expect to have problems," says Greg Wortman, vice president of marketing for Fujitsu Network Communications.
BellSouth is plodding ahead with FTTH in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody, where it will deliver fiber to about 400 new homes. In that housing development and others like it, BellSouth will use an ATM-based passive optical networking (PON) interface as the basis for its overlay fiber optic access system (see story on page 78.
Bell Atlantic is following a similar yet more cautious route than BellSouth with its fiber-thrusting plans. Like BellSouth, Bell Atlantic has looked at FTTC and FTTH and has deployed FTTC, but it now intends to skip FTTC and go directly to FTTH, Albers says. "We want to bypass [FTTC] completely," he says.
Although Bell Atlantic has yet to deploy FTTH, it plans to start soon. Bell Atlantic also will utilize the ATM-PON technology with those outlays, the same as BellSouth. "It is really a question of whether to do this as a pure overlay or rehabilitation play," Albers says.
BellSouth is grappling with the same questions, evaluating areas on a case-by-case basis. In new build areas, the company is using FTTC equipment, which in BellSouth's case is based on Marconi Communications' ATM-based DISC*S platform (Figure 1). With areas that fall under a rebuild or rehabilitation scenario, the incumbent must determine whether to mend or replace existing materials. In those areas, BellSouth will consider factors such as operating costs and revenue potential, BellSouth's Kettler says.
"There is also the question of what to sell over fiber," Albers says. Once Bell Atlantic compiles an attractive bundle of video and high-speed data distribution, it will start deploying FTTH.
Kettler seems to have no doubt of what can be offered via the fiber and sees it as the best way to prepare for future needs, whatever they might be. "In our portfolio, or what I call our quiver of many arrows, we are continuing to meet the bandwidth appetite, which is sometimes voracious out there," he says.
Bandwidth with strings attached
As carriers try to estimate future need and determine how to prepare for it, there are apparent inevitable costs and concerns. And though cost is perhaps the greatest hindrance, it is closely followed by power and backup problems.
Despite the high initial costs involved with fiber deployments compared to copper, the costs over the life of the fiber are equal to or perhaps lower than copper, Kettler says. With aging facilities prone to more problems as bandwidth needs escalate, fiber may be the most logical answer; however, the question becomes how much carriers are willing to pay to satisfy that need.
"The cost of deployment is still so high that a lot of providers may choke on it," says Brian McFadden, vice president and general manager of Nortel Networks' OPTera solutions. "It is always expensive to change out technologies." But as thirst for bandwidth continues, it will be worth the expense, McFadden says.
Dustin Becker, vice president of engineering for Marconi, agrees. "Any time you go to a new technology, there is not always going to be a cost advantage over what is [currently in place], but in the long run, it may be the best bet," he says.
In addition to the cost considerations of bringing fiber into the loop, issues, such as power and backup also are of great concern.
"Providing lifeline power, such as battery backups, to optical network units and maintaining them electrically is very costly," Albers says. But that is another area where the PON can help out as it lessens the need for electronics.
"I am not sure the American public is ready to deal with systems that don't work under all conditions," Becker says.
That fear is allayed by using the overlay method.
"As an overlay, we can serve video and high-speed data by leaving copper in place for telephony service," Albers says. "We can take care of emergency and social issues such as if the lights go out, you can still use the phone."
Most agree about the social ramifications of moving away from copper.
"The general public doesn't really realize how amazing it is that they can pick up the phone and use it despite a complete power outage," Becker says. That is an area that needs improvement for fiber to completely replace copper, he says.
Another issue is that more power is needed in smaller spaces, resulting in higher heat loads. The hotter the ONU gets, the lower the lifetime of products. That, in turn, is forcing vendors to develop ways to lessen heat and power loads.
Does integrated equal a well-balanced diet?
Considering that most network infrastructures are an amalgam of various technologies, finding a way to effectively combine those different elements appears to be a wise plan. Most of the incumbents are looking at some type of integrated FITL (IFITL) application, which enables providers to deliver a variety of services, such as entertainment, high-speed data and voice, without needing different delivery channels.
In some areas that BellSouth has deemed "rebuild developments," the company plans to trial IFITL to determine whether to continue with more of those deployments, which the RBOC has delivered to 200,000 homes. IFITL will be used to supplement the asymmetrical DSL and wireless digital video infrastructure BellSouth has in the Atlanta and Miami areas. By doing so, it will bring together copper, fiber and coax cable. This plan will offer an easy migration path for FTTH because the fiber will come within about 500 feet of customers, Kettler says.
Other incumbents, such as SBC Communications and U S West, are taking a more conservative approach to deploying FITL. They are opting for FTTN, which taps a higher number of homes and uses copper from the node to homes.
SBC detailed its $6 billion Project Pronto plan last October. The plan calls for the buildout of fiber to meet the neighborhood nodes, such as digital loop carriers, which then are met by existing copper. SBC will install its nodes closer to consumers and small businesses to reach a greater number of customers with DSL and circumvent some of the distance limitations from COs (Figure 2).
"This lets us deliver services quickly and cost-effectively," says Joe Simone, vice president of data services for SBC. "Fiber to the home and to the curb are worth exploring, and we will not ignore them, but right now, we just don't see [them] as a good investment."
Although Project Pronto's emphasis is mostly on customers, Simone says that just as much attention is being paid to the small to medium-sized business customers with the initiative. To meet those business needs, SBC plans to use the ATM-PON technology, he says.
"Customers generally are not interested in spending more money," says Claude Romans, director of access networks for RHK. And if the revenues can't be derived from the marketplace to support FTTC or FTTH, it is difficult to see why service providers would opt for it, he adds. That, in turn, may make the FTTN deployments more feasible and economical.
Where is the high fiber diet?
The incumbents' implementations and plans are all different. Each one maintains its own opinion of how much money should be spent, where the money should go and how to migrate. But as bandwidth demand snowballs, at least the wheels are turning in most cases. Not long ago, they were motionless.
So as the incumbents plot, plan and implement their strategies, they can only hope they bet on the right technologies. Forcing customers to go hungry will only drive them into the eager appetites of competitors.
------- |
