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Pulse Broadband says it will construct fiber to the home (FTTH) networks for United Electric Cooperative in Maryville, MO, and Arrowhead Electric Cooperative in Lutsen, MN.

Both networks will use Pulse Broadband’s patented FTTH architecture, which uses a “distributed tap” approach that requires less fiber than typical PONs, the company asserts.

“This is great news for our company” said Pulse Broadband CEO Bill Shreffler “as we nearly triple the number of miles we have under construction today”. The projects in Minnesota and Missouri will span more than 2,000 miles combined with the potential to serve over 8,000 cooperative member households with advanced broadband services delivered by the patented Pulse fiber architecture. The cost of the two projects will total more than $39 million and is part of the recently announced second round of broadband funding through the 2009 stimulus act.

Said Gene Dorrel, general manager of United Electric Cooperative, “Our co-op’s mission is to improve the quality of life for members. I think today’s announcement really shows our commitment to bring the most advanced broadband services to our area. Pulse Broadband is the leader in this technology and our community sees the benefits.”

Joe Buttweiler, mnager of broadband projects for Arrowhead Electric Cooperative said, “This is great news for the residents of Cook County. The Pulse technology will be more advanced than even the networks in urban areas and will bring much needed service to northeastern Minnesota.”
 

How is the FTTH solution offered by Pulse Broadband different than other FTTH architectures on the market?

One of Pulse’s founders, Dave Pangrac, has been widely recognized over the years for his contributions to the development of innovative network architecture, including developing hybrid-fiber-coaxial technology that became the de facto standard in the cable industry. Recognizing the power of fiber optic networks and the need to reduce costs in order to reach more consumers, he and his team have developed a FTTH design utilizing “distributed taps” to reduce the overall cost of constructing the network. Although the design uses less fiber, it does not compromise speed or quality and, in fact, is easier to repair and maintain and in many cases has greater capacity than existing FTTH designs.

The key difference between Pulse’s architecture and conventional “PON” architecture is as follows:

 Conventional FTTH Designs

Notice that the above design requires one fiber for each home passed. This could mean that there could be as many as 400 fibers emanating from a node! This is a costly proposition and creates risk to the extent the fiber is cut (imagine matching and splicing 400 fibers to restore service!).

Pulse’s FTTH Architecture

Note that Pulse’s design relies on only 4-8 fibers from the node. Since bandwidth is not constrained by the fiber (in fact a single fiber can carry massive amounts of data, current constraints are only in the network equipment), this solution is as robust as competing FTTH architectures. Pulse’s solution takes 4-8 fibers to “taps” that then extend single fibers “drops” to each home. This also allows a cooperative to build drops only to those members who subscriber to telecommunications services, thus further saving costs. Using the above architecture we have managed to reduce the total construction cost significantly compared to traditional FTTH architectures.

The number of fiber-to-the-home subscribers in Europe, including Russia, has increased by 22 percent over the past six months. The broadband market in the Eastern part of Europe is booming, according to the latest figures from the FTTH Council Europe, which were announced at the Broadband World Forum in Paris.

In absolute numbers, Europe has reached 3.2 million FTTH/B subscribers (nearly 4.5 million including Russia). Network deployment continues to bring fiber within reach of more homes: Europe now counts 18 million FTTH/B homes passed (more than 26 million including Russia), a growth of more than 6 percent during the first half of 2010.

The FTTH Ranking now includes 17 countries in Europe, where more than 1 percent of households subscribe to broadband over a direct fiber connection. Lithuania is still the leader in the Ranking, just ahead of the more mature FTTH markets of Sweden and Norway. The top five fiber nations now include three New European Member States: Lithuania, Slovenia, and Slovakia.

Romania enters the Ranking in 13th place with more than 120,000 FTTH/B subscribers. Bulgaria shows the fastest progression in the Ranking, moving from 16th to 8th position during first half of 2010. Lithuania, still in first place, showed the second fastest growth rate, boosting subscriber
penetration by 3.3 percentage points.

The majority of FTTH subscribers (74 percent) are concentrated in eight countries, in the following order: Sweden, France, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, The Netherlands, Denmark, and Slovakia.

Major European economies, such as Italy and France, are still at the bottom of the Ranking, and others, such as Britain, Germany, and Spain, are noticeably absent, although co-investment between operators and national plans initiated by governments could soon start to enhance FTTH/B coverage in those nations.

The Full Ranking for 2010 will be presented at the FTTH Conference in Milan, 9-10 February 2011.

The FTTH Global Ranking is based on the definition of FTTH/B agreed by the three FTTH Councils. It includes fibre to the home (FTTH), where the fiber connection reaches the household, and fiber to the building (FTTB), where fiber terminates inside the boundary of a multi-tenant building. The Ranking covers all countries with at least 200,000 households where the penetration of FTTH/B has reached at least 1 percent of the total number of homes.

While it continues to review the more than 200,000 responses it received for its FTTH testbed RFP, Google has announced it will open a smaller testbed in Stanford University’s Residential Subdivision. Deployment within the subdivision is scheduled to begin early in 2011.

The Residential Subdivision comprises approximately 850 homes owned by either Stanford faculty or staff. Google says it chose the location for what it describes as a beta test of optical broadband technology for three reasons:

1. Stanford’s willingness to let Google deploy fiber in its streets
2. The relatively small number of homes and the neighborhood configuration
3. Its close proximity to Google’s engineering facility

The beta trial will examine what Google described as “new fiber-optic technologies” that it has already tested on its campus. As described in the testbed RFP, these technologies will support 1-Gbps Internet connections to each home.

The search engine giant remained mum on what these technologies are. A link in the blog describing the Stanford deployment brings you to a YouTube video Google had released earlier this year of a micro-trenching race.

Google says the trial is “completely separate” from the community selection process for what is being called Google Fiber. Google provided little update on the progress of that effort, other than to reiterate that it plans to connect to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people and that it will announce “our selected community or communities” by year end.

Huawei has introduced its Intelligent Optical Distribution Network (iODN) prototype, offering multiple intelligence functions, enabling operators to automatically locate and operate target optical fibers, and paving the way for massive fiber to the home (FTTH) rollouts.

"FTTx networks are now being deployed on a massive scale all over the globe and ODN is garnering more and more attention from operators worldwide. This new prototype, along with our expertise in end-to-end ODN delivery, including planning and engineering, will pave the way for massive fiber to the home rollouts," says Wang Dexiang, director of Huawei's ODN Service Department.

The deployment of fiber to the x (FTTx) networks is increasing rapidly, with the number of optical fibers being used growing exponentially. When working with optical networks, operators face two major issues: the high error rate when optical fiber connection data is entered manually, and the low efficiency and continuity constraints that occur when optical fibers are manually connected or optical faults are manually identified and located, says a company representative.

Huawei's iODN prototype can address these challenges through intelligent optical fiber management, including setup and management of optical fiber connections. It is designed to automate the identification and the collection of optical fiber connections and splitters, ensure that optical faults are correctly located, improves maintenance efficiency, and simplify and enhance operation and maintenance efficiency.