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

Stuart Corner
Monday, 08 June 2009 06:46

IT Industry - Strategy

CONTINUED

Given the frequency with which overhead cables can be brought down by adverse weather conditions, Kelso argues "It is simply ludicrous to create a next generation data network whose aerial component will inevitably face reduced service reliability." And he told iTWire that the costs could be much lower than estimated. The PCUG working group identified "a number of innovative ideas which could potentially reduce the cost of putting cables underground by up to 20 percent in a large project in the first year and up to 35 percent over five years." but Kelso said that, with sufficient scale, the costs could be less than half those of a small scale project.

He notes also that, following the enormous opposition to overhead cables created by the Telstra/Optus HFC rollout, these are no longer classified as low impact facilities and so, unless legislation is amended, rollout of the NBN will require development approval from state, territory and/or local governments.

On the subject of network architectures, Kelso says "for a new-start deployment of FTTH as proposed with the government's National Broadband Network, the traditional PON architecture will become increasingly unable to satisfy future customer and service provider demands. It is inconceivable to commit such a huge investment in creating nation-building infrastructure which would then require substantial upgrading in a decade's time."

Furthermore, he says its ability to give multiple content and service providers truly open and competitive access to customers is limited and he advocates instead a home run -a dedicated fibre pair from exchange to each customer, or wavelength division PON - dedicated wavelength to each customer, or active star - a compromise between PON and the other solutions as better solutions.

While these solutions presently do not enjoy the economies of scale of PON, Kelso argues falling costs and increasing demand for bandwidth favour them over PON.