Future FTTH network should be buried, and shouldn't be PON

Stuart Corner
Monday, 08 June 2009 06:46

IT Industry - Strategy

With the benefit of 40 years in telecoms engineering, management and consulting Ross Kelso brings an informed and independent perspective to the debate around Australia's National Broadband Networks and his submission to the Government's review of the regulatory environment has some interesting ideas.

First, he believes that rollout of the NBN presents a unique opportunity to bury Australia's existing overhead power and communications infrastructure. Secondly he claims that what appears to have been accepted as the option for fibre to the home - passive optical networking - enjoys its popularity thanks in large part to incumbent telcos upgrading their copper networks and "seeking to satisfy their immediate commercial and strategic needs for incremental deployment."

Undergrounding of Australia's overhead power and communication cabling is an idea that has been floated before, and studied in great detail. Following the furore over Telstra and Optus' mad scramble to rollout overlapping HFC infrastructure in the mid nineties, the Government commissioned a study into the feasibility of undergrounding all power and communications cabling in urban and suburban areas.

It submitted its report in 1998, putting the cost just shy of $24 billion, about $5.5k per household. Quantifiable benefits - savings in maintenance costs for telecommunications carriers and electricity distributors, savings in tree pruning costs and reduction in motor vehicle collisions with poles were estimated at 10 percent of the total cost.

According to Kelso, adjusting that figure for inflation brings it close to $43b - the upper limit of the Government's estimate of the NBN, of which an unspecified portion is planned to be installed overhead.

Kelso who was a member of the Putting Cables Underground Working Group, says: "The addition of yet another cable for the NBN will inevitably further degrade the visual environment, reduce the clearance above road and driveway levels and totally kill off any remaining opportunity to retrospectively underground all aerial cables and lines throughout Australia."