NBN cutover a "billon dollar problem" - but NEC has a solution

Stuart Corner
Monday, 24 November 2008 08:57

Business IT - Networking

Did the Labor Party factor this in when it costed the National Broadband Network at about $8 billion? According to NEC the costs in labour alone of cutting over telephone lines from the old telephone network to a future fibre to the node network could run to $100 per line.

With some 10 million phone lines in Australia that all adds up to around $1 billion in a worst case scenario.

When a fibre to the node network is rollout out fibre replaces most of the length of the copper pairs that, at present, connect each subscriber to the telephone exchange. However at the node the last few metres of each customers copper line is reconnected to multiservice access devices in the node the deliver both broadband and voice services over that last bit of copper.

As each node is commissioned ever line serviced by that node, typically several hundred, must be physically disconnected from the old copper running to the exchange and connected to the new access device in the node.

According to NEC's general manager, network solutions, Ashley Halford, this process typically requires two technicians - one at the node and one at the exchange - in mobile phone contact verifying that each pair is working as it is cut over in order to minimise any disruption to the end customer's service.

However NEC's Australian research labs has developed a solution that is part hardware and part software which streamlines and partially automates this process and which can, Halford claims, reduce the cost of cutover by as much as 50 percent.

The technology was developed specifically in anticipation of securing a role in the NBN and while it does at present require NEC access devices in the node, Halford said the company was prepared to license it to other vendors and, if the eventual winner of the NBN RFP chose to use multiservice access devices from a vendor other than NEC it would be possible for that vendor to implement the NEC technology and meet the expected timeframe for the NBN rollout.

He said that NEC had discussed the technology with an number of participants in the NBN RFP process, "Operators looking at migrating the tens of thousands of nodes contemplated by the NBN, will welcome the benefits offered by this solution," he predicted.
 
NEC is giving few details of its Enhanced Pillar Migration (EPM), for which it has been granted patents, but claims that a typical node deployment, which would usually take up to seven days to migrate, can often be reduced to three-four days using EPM.

The product was developed in Australia by local NEC R&D team at what NEC says is one of the largest ICT R&D facilities in Australia, which also developed NEC's FTTx technology, making NEC the only supplier whose FTTx platform is designed and developed locally for the global market.

According to Halford, "With a large part of the xDSL network infrastructure in Australia supplied by NEC, we have developed a detailed understanding of local market requirements and network deployment issues"