Posted 03/2001
Transport Commerce
Can Broadband Service Ever Be Universal?
By Gilad Rozen
Despite incentives for making universal broadband access a reality, the disparity between broadband availability in rural vs. metropolitan areas is dramatic. According to the FCC (www.fcc.gov), as of mid-2000, 96 percent of urban neighborhoods had access to at least one--and often competing--broadband service providers. In contrast, only 40 percent of rural zip codes had access to even one broadband provider. And lack of broadband access isn't limited to just rural areas. Nationwide, many suburban neighborhoods are situated too far away from a CO to allow broadband provisioning.
The good news, however, is that a combination of federal mandates and critical technology advancements will soon extend high-speed broadband access to the final remote mile.
New Transport Technology
Because bypassing copper lines presents so many difficult hurdles, carriers are still eager to leverage the value in the embedded copper infrastructure for delivering bandwidth. Telecommunications suppliers continue to develop new technologies to optimize the copper plant. Although this infrastructure is a ubiquitous asset, until recently broadband-over-copper was deemed a short-range solution that fell far short of passing as a carrier-grade transport medium. However, new developments in digital signal processing are disrupting traditional assumptions about leveraging POTS-quality copper pairs to deliver anywhere from 10 to 100+ mbps of symmetrical bandwidth with bit error rates (BERs) on par with fiber optics.
Radical advancements in signal management processing act to intelligently dispatch signals across multiple copper pairs between a CO and a DSLAM in a multitenant unit (MTU) or a remote terminal (RT) cabinet. Specialized forward error correction and diversity algorithms eliminate noise bursts and dramatically boost signal performance to achieve what was thought to be almost impossible--99.999 percent reliability over copper. Individual lines performing at 10-4 or 10-6 BERs become a fiber-quality transport link with system performance of 10-10 or better with ranges that extend beyond 18,000 feet.
Speed to Market
Installing the solution take less than a day, with no need for line prequalification. The installation requires no line conditioning, assuming there are no load coils to remove. Existing services to customers continue with minimal interruption. The solution enables carriers to answer customer demand for high-bandwidth services and generate immediate revenue with first-day provisioning.
The savings don't stop with time. By leveraging the entrenched infrastructure through a one-step upgrade, carriers can bypass the tremendous costs of building new fiber facilities from the ground up. Just as importantly, accelerating the time required to deploy high-demand services improves customer retention. Moreover, carriers can ensure a guaranteed revenue stream before taking on the huge capital expense of trenching fiber to the curb. If the carrier elects to construct fiber facilities to the RT or MTU, the system can be easily redeployed to take advantage of the copper facilities in another area of the network.
The advantages:
* Carriers see immediate revenue generation on fiber performance services, with relatively low up-front capital costs.
* Patented spatial signal processing and spatial forward error correction processes boost copper reliability to fiber-quality levels, without the time and expense of fiber construction.
* The solution is very quick and easy to deploy using existing lines with no pre-qualification and no line conditioning required. Service to existing customers continues with minimal interruption.
* Carriers can guarantee a revenue stream before incurring the high capital costs of constructing fiber facilities. If the business case justifies trenching fiber at some point, the system can easily be redeployed in a new location to continue generating revenue on high margin services.
* Carriers are able to leverage existing copper technology familiar to most technicians, so there is little retraining required.
From a financial point of view, this method of broadband delivery is compelling as well--good news for suburban or rural subscribers waiting for their LECs to upgrade equipment to provide broadband service. Because it's quick to deploy, the LEC doesn't lose revenue for existing services during deployment. And the new data bandwidth, available immediately, provides quick new revenue from DSL subscriptions. An added bonus for rural LECs is that the new broadband capability qualifies their plant upgrade for RUS funds.
At some point in the future, the entire nation may be connected by fiber optics. That's not going to be the near future, however, given the difficulty in installing fiber. Industry analysts estimate that fiber will reach only 40 percent of U.S. businesses within the next 10 years. By the end of this decade, 10.9 million U.S. businesses out of 18.2 million will not be fiber fed.
Even with abundant fiber supplies, fiber rollouts are not likely to occur soon where sparse populations provide little financial incentive for upgrades. Until fiber becomes ubiquitous, new transport technologies must squeeze the maximum possible bandwidth out of existing copper lines so suburban and rural LECs can fulfill the FCC's mandate of broadband for all.
Gilad Rozen is vice president of R&D for Actelis Networks (www.actelis.com). He can be reached at 510-545-1045.
