FTTH News

Net energy consumption in global communication networks can be reduced up to 90% by 2020, even as network traffic continues to rise, according to a new study by GreenTouch.

The report, released on Monday, details how drastic efficiency improvements can be delivered across the industry through the redesigning of communication networks.

The study aims to use modeling to better understand potential network operations in 2020, taking into account the dramatic increases anticipated in communications traffic over the next decade.

The research evaluated energy efficiencies in different types of networks, comparing those in 2010 with those incorporating technologies and architectures the consortium believes could be in use by 2020.

The report shows that mobile networks stand to benefit the most from energy efficiency efforts, given they are currently the most inefficient and yet the fastest-growing networks in terms of data volumes. It predicts that mobile networks could realize potential energy-efficiency improvements of up to 1,043 times.

There are benefits to be had in energy efficiencies in fixed-line and core networks too, but these would be less dramatic given they are already relatively energy efficient. Yet the report predicts that the adoption of best in class technologies and protocols could lead to a 449-fold improvement in efficiency in fixed-access networks and 95-fold improvement in the core networks.

The report has identified some of the new technologies, architectures and protocols – small cells-deployment in dense urban environments, infrastructure-sharing across operators, discontinuous transmissions during periods without traffic, dynamic allocation of resources and the GreenTouch-developed Bit Interleaved Passive Optical Network (Bi-PON) protocol – which can help slash energy consumption.

“We are extremely proud of the progress we’ve made in our first three years, yet there is still much more we can do to improve efficiencies and effectively reinvent technologies in the name of environmental stewardship,” said Thierry Van Landegem, chairman of GreenTouch. “Reducing energy by 90% is conservative as we have many projects underway whose effects were not taken into account in that number.”

GreenTouch is a consortium consisting of 53 telecoms operators, vendors, and research bodies around the world, including China Mobile, Bell Labs, AT&T, France Telecom Orange, KT, Swisscom, Vodafone, Huawei and Samsung.

The study was conducted as part of GreenTouch’s Green Meter analysis to assess progress towards its goal. For the purpose of the report, energy efficiency is defined as the ratio of the useful traffic carried by a network and the total energy required to support that traffic over a year. Findings of the report will be made available to service providers for identifying technologies, architectures and protocols to improve network energy efficiency, the GreenTouch said.

The consortium added it will continue its work on network architectures and technologies to further the consortium’s progress. Reports will be issued through 2015, with the next update expected later this year.

Mayor Hau Lung-bin presided over the groundbreaking ceremony for the City's Fiber to the Home (FTTH) Project on May 8. He noted that offering residents an affordable high-speed Internet connection will help stimulate the growth and competitiveness of Taipei's telecommunications and cloud-related industries.

In the future, all services and queries open to the public will be integrated into the cloud and the Internet. Therefore, the move toward the cloud and the deployment of the fiber optic cable network will significantly change the current lifestyle of residents; these policies form one of the major pillars constructing the basis for future city developments.

As a leading Intelligent City, Taipei was one of the first to set the standard for a public wireless broadband network. The next step for the city is to change the residents' lifestyle through FTTH and cloud industries. Through collaborations with partners from the private sector, the city government hopes to implement its goals of establishing the three pillars of "e-government, e-community, and e-life."

The granting of the construction permit for FTTH by the NCC signaled the beginning of the plan's implementation. It also established the milestone for Taipei's transformation into a city with high-speed, fiber-optic cable network.

The mayor expressed his hope that the districts of Neihu, Nangang, Songshan, and Xinyi could be connected to the network within one year. He also hoped that by the end of 2015, the city can obtain a household penetration rate of 80-percent or more.

To avoid the hassle of closing roads to make way for constructions, the deployment of the cables will be conducted through the installation of "microducts" and similar methods, creating minimal impact upon the surrounding roads and traffic.

While Verizon has long touted operational expenditure (opex) savings as a rationale for its FiOS fiber to the home (FTTH) deployments, smaller carriers also have seen similar benefits, according to a recent study by RVA LLC for the Fiber to the Home Council Americas. Small and medium-sized carriers in North America say they’ve seen an average opex savings of 20.4% annually, the study reports.

The study included input from more than 350 fiber-optic network service providers across North America. The council released the study´’s results as it offered its semi-annual report on FTTH installations in North America.

“This latest survey shows not only the continued build-out of high-bandwidth fiber to the home networks in North America, but also provides one reason why hundreds of small and medium sized telcos have been upgrading to fiber — it saves them real money in the long run,” said Heather Burnett Gold, the FTTH Council’s president.

The opex savings likely is one reason that FTTH infrastructure continues to roll out across the continent. RVA and the council report that, as of the end of March, the number of North American homes with access to services from FTTH networks has grown 17.6%, to 22.7 million, versus the same time last year. Greenfield deployments have picked up by about 20% this year as well, the council and RVA reveal.

Meanwhile, North America’s FTTH subscriber count has grown 20% year-on-year to reach 9.7 million. While Verizon and Canada’s Bell Aliant are the two largest FTTH players, the council says it has identified almost 600 small and medium-sized telephone companies and nearly 100 municipalities that use FTTH to some degree.

Growth in FTTH deployments and subscribers is particularly strong in Canada. Approximately 540,000 Canadians receive services via FTTH, according to the new figures. RVA estimates that 8.8 million homes in the United States are connected to FTTH networks, while about 310,000 customers in Mexico and 30,000 subscribers in the Caribbean receive services from fiber-optic networks.

Take rates also are growing. In the United States, FTTH take rates have reached 44.8%, a record according to RVA.

“While it is clear from our survey that many prospective FTTH providers continue to face funding difficulties and regulatory uncertainty, many are still finding ways to upgrade to all-fiber because doing so reduces their maintenance costs and strengthens their opportunities to expand their subscriber base and offer customers more services,” said Michael Render, president of RVA.

The incumbent ISP for Hull and surrounding areas in East Yorkshire (England), KC, has today named the next batch of locations that will benefit from its new superfast fibre optic (FTTH and FTTC) based Lightstream broadband products.

So far 17,000 homes and businesses in areas including Kingswood, Greatfield estate and Beverley can already receive the new service and a further 13,000 are expected to go live by the end of 2013. In total KC aims to reach 45,000 local premises with its new service by March 2015 and 3,600 customers have already subscribed (up slightly from 3,500 users and 15k passed in March 2013).

The spring / H1 2013 phase of KC’s roll-out plan was announced last month (here) and the new H2 2013 roll-out areas announced today (full details) include streets around Newland Avenue and Beverley Road (from July 2013), the area around Hessle town centre and First Lane in Hessle (from November 2013), and parts of Brough (from December 2013).

Business locations within the next phase of KC’s roll-out include parts of Hull city centre and Anlaby Road, as well as industrial estates and the surrounding areas at Sutton Fields, Leads Road, Marfleet Road, Bontoft Road, Grovehill Road, Cleveland Street and Wincolmlee; and King George, Queen Elizabeth and Alexandra Docks.

Gary Young, KC’s Business and Consumer Director, said:

“This is the latest phase in our multi-million pound project to give our customers the best-connected homes and businesses in the UK.

The service has been extremely popular among both residential customers and businesses. We’re finding many homes are using it to stream online TV, while businesses are making the most of it to exploit services like cloud computing and videoconferencing, which improve efficiency and flexibility.

We’re looking forward to rolling it out more widely throughout this year and next.”

The Lightstream packages themselves offer speeds of up to 350Mbps (Megabits per second) via KC’s top-end Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) solution and up to 80Mbps where their slower FTTC service is available. It should be noted that KC uses its own FTTH/C solutions and these are not related to BT’s separate roll-out of near identical technology.

Orange Spain says it has completed its first fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) deployment project and has launched the fiber-based services for the general public in the La Vaguada district of Madrid.

Customers in areas covered by FTTH will now have access to Internet speeds of up to 100 Mbps, as well as many other services, the operator says. Following this initial stage, in the coming months Orange will be in a position to offer its most advanced technologies and services to people living in other Spanish cities.

In addition to the La Vaguada district, other areas of Madrid, including Retiro, Montecarmelo, Sanchinarro, Chamberí, and Vicálvaro could also benefit from FTTH services. In total, up to 40,000 homes in the Spanish capital could be connected to the fiber-optic network.

A further 58,000 homes in Catalonia and Asturias could also be offered FTTH services from Orange via third-party networks. So by next summer, Orange could be providing FTTH to as many as 100,000 homes and businesses in Spain.

Over the next 12 months, Orange plans to expand its fiber-optic broadband offer to 400,000 homes across the country in partnership with Vodafone Spain, following an agreement signed by the two operators in March

The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) has mandated that new homes should be prewired with optical fiber.

The new Code of Practice for Info-communication Facilities in Buildings (COPIF) code requires that each new home is installed with an optical fiber termination point. Each living room and bedroom should be provided with Category 6 cabling capable of carrying data speeds of more than 1 Gbps.

It also called for the provision of rent-free Mobile Deployment Space (MDS) and new buildings and developments for enhanced mobile coverage in both existing and new developments. The MDS requirements will vary depending on the size of the developments or the mobile coverage area of the developments.

Some flexibility may be accorded to developers and owners of buildings and developments in meeting the MDS requirements. Moreover, developers and owners of buildings and developments will only need to provide the MDS upon request from the mobile operators, as the provision of the space may not be necessary in cases where there is already adequate mobile coverage within the developments.

A key clarification made in COPIF 2013 is the use of space and facilities to serve beyond the boundaries of a development, a scenario provided for in the Telecommunications Act. The space and facilities provided by the developer or owner of a building/development under COPIF 2013 are primarily intended for telecommunication licensees to deploy installation, plant and systems to serve the telecommunication needs of the development itself.

Leong Keng Thai, IDA deputy chief executive and director-general (Telecoms & Post), said that the “Changes in this COPIF are to ensure that homes are built for future infocomm needs brought about by developments such as the nationwide deployment of the Next Gen NBN, the increasing mobile penetration rate, and the increasing pervasiveness of smartphones, and other mobile broadband-enabled devices.”

These new amendments will take effect from 1 May 2013. The COPIF was introduced in 2000 to ensure that developers and owners of buildings and developments provide adequate space and facilities for the deployment and operation of installation, plant and systems which are used for providing info-communication services to the buildings

Fiber-optic broadband access networks showed a strong growth in subscribers served last year, according to the Broadband Forum and market research firm Point Topic. Fiber to the node/cabinet (FTTN/FTTC, which Broadband Forum denotes as FTTx) using VDSL or VDSL2 saw the largest growth in subscribers among the broadband access technologies tracked, with fiber to the home (FTTH) right behind.

Overall, the number of broadband subscribers grew 8.6% in 2012 to reach 643,770,042. FTTx subscriber numbers jumped 27.5% for the year, to 114,440,536. FTTH subscribers reached 19,308,751, a 20.3% increase.

However, both fiber-based access technologies trail legacy DSL and cable modem for the top spots. DSL networks served 366.7 million subscribers (up 3.6%) and cable modem infrastructure served 123.6 million (up 7.2%) worldwide. Combined, however, fiber access now sits at Number 2.

Fixed wireless, including satellite, supported 10,811,152 at year’s end, an increase of 12%.

“Demand for bandwidth can be satisfied by FTTx solutions, particularly in combination with vectoring, bonding, and other incremental VDSL2 improvements so operators will continue to maximize the lifetime of their existing assets,” said Oliver Johnson, CEO of Point Topic.

Looking regionally, China remained the largest consumer of broadband, with subscriber numbers growing 15% year over year. However, Brazil (17.96%), India (14.1%), and Russia (12.81%) saw significant jumps in broadband subscriber numbers.

In the U.S., which is the second largest broadband market behind China, subscriber totals grew 3.89% to 95,196,150.

“These are promising figures as they highlight the ongoing strength of the broadband market,” commented Robin Mersh, CEO of the Broadband Forum. “We are increasingly witnessing a shift in technology, particularly to fiber, as consumer habits evolve and the demand for higher bandwidths increases.”

Sony-backed Japanese ISP So-net has launched what it is billing as the world’s fastest consumer broadband service, offering downlink speeds of a blazing 2Gbps.

The GPON fiber network also offers uplink speeds of 1Gbps, Engadget reported. So-net is around 58% owned by Sony.

The max speed is double the 1Gbps Google is offering with its high-profile Google Fiber trial network in Kansas City, and at a lower cost: So-net is offering the service for 4,980 yen ($51) per month on a two-year contract, compared to the $70 per month for Google’s fiber-only package.

So-net is charging an installation fee of 52,500 yen, but is currently waving this cost for customers applying for the service online.

The service is currently available in Tokyo and six surrounding districts – Chiba, Gunma, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Kanagawa and Saitama.

The service is so fast it exceeds the capacity of most consumer broadband adapters, but will be useful for multiple high-speed connections.

Japan is well known for being among the countries with the fastest average broadband speeds in the world.