ITWire

However, similar demand forecasts are being made by one company at the forefront of this market, Alcatel-Lucent. In a presentation given in New Zealand recently, Ric Clark VP solutions, strategy and marketing spelt out the company's thinking on demand drivers.

Most of the individual drivers and their bandwidth requirements he presented have been well canvassed. But it's when you contemplate multiple such services running simultaneously in the individual household that demand forecasts go through the  roof. Clark compiled a list of about a dozen suggesting that cumulatively they could push household demand to between 140-230Mbps downstream and 37-56Mbps upstream.

Clark's presentation drew together many strands of available and future technology options and their bandwidth delivery capabilities, demand scenarios and policy options. There was no 'magic bullet' and his conclusion was that much work needed to be done be done to achieve the end game of fibre to the home. In the interim Alcatel-Lucent is promoting the concept of "fibre to the most economic point" for which it has coined the acronym FTT$.

This 'most economic point' will depend on many factors: available technology, likely demand, government subsidies, regulatory regime, etc, etc. How complicated the future broadband access landscape will become can be gauged from the decision this month by one of the Alcatel-Lucent's main rivals, Nokia Siemens Networks, to pretty much give up on current FTTH technology, GPON, and focus its R&D on the next generation in the hope of gaining technology and hence market leadership.

Christopher Caselitz, Nokia Siemens Networks' chief market operations officer, explained the move by saying: "Fibre is progressing closer to the home with the focus today on fibre-to-the-curb or building with last mile connectivity based on proven DSL technology. Our view is that mass market roll out of fibre-to-the-home is unlikely in the short term due to regulatory uncertainty and the operator's business cases. This will be different with the NGOA [next generation optical access] technology, where we will target to take a leading role."
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