The RBOC fiber to the premises triumvirate yesterday issued the actual request for proposal yesterday, after announcing in late May its plans to do so. Mike Wearsch, vice president of sales at Wave7 Optics Inc., tells XCHANGE to RFP is lengthy, including 41 documents.
BellSouth, SBC Communications Inc. and Verizon, which in late May sent vendors letters announcing they had adopted a set of common technical requirements for fiber to the premises technology and would be issuing an RFP seeking proposals from vendors based on those requirements, also have laid out a timeline for the RFP procedure, says Wearsch. A vendor conference is scheduled for later this month. The three RBOCs are looking to have vendor responses by July 21. A short list vendors is expected to be compiled by Aug. 8, when the telcos expect to do vendor site visits. And by mid-September supplier evalulations are supposed to be complete, according to Wearsch, who adds “That’s an aggressive schedule.”
The RFP comes just a week before the FCC is expected to issue its Triennial Review of network interconnection regulations, which should include provisions that more clearly set forth the FCC's policy regarding new network technologies like FTTP, including the extent to which unbundling and pricing regulations such as those imposed on traditional copper technologies will apply on a nationwide basis. General consensus is that the ruling will free the RBOCs from having to unbundle for competitors new fiber access networks.
If that is indeed the outcome, it would make fiber access more attractive to the Bells. Fiber access would give the RBOCs more bandwidth for services like video, enabling the telcos to compete with cable companies that have already rolled out voice services to some extent in addition to their high-speed cable and video services. Fiber is also much less expensive to maintain on the long term than is copper.
Alcatel is the clear favorite to win at least a good portion of the FTTP business from the RBOCs, which are looking for a solution based on broadband passive optical networking (BPON) technology. Alcatel is far larger than the other FTTP PON vendors in the field, so has the ability to scale up manufacturing easily, if demand warrants, and offer the RBOCs other related support services. Alcatel was also the winner of a similar RFP an RBOC consortium issued several years ago related to DSL. In fact, Verizon just extended its DSL contract with Alcatel through the end of 2005. And, if the RBOCs elect to take fiber to the curb rather to the home, some form of DSL would be the likely final link to the user. As if that wasn’t enough, Alcatel is also the equipment supplier for SBC’s greenfield PON deployment in a San Francisco community called Mission Bay.
But companies like Optical Solutions, Terawave Communications and Quantum Bridge have also been at PON for some time now, although they’ve had the most success in business applications and municipal builds. And Wave7 Optics Inc., although it only announced general availability of its products in the third quarter, already has 17 customers.
Look for these smaller vendors to partner with larger suppliers like Cisco Systems Inc., Lucent Technologies Inc. and possibly Nortel Networks, which can offer them the manufacturing scale, integration services and other support required by the RBOCs.
William Engler, vice president and general manager of broadband access internetworking systems at Lucent, says the company is working with a PON vendor partner, which he declined to name. Lucent has been aggressive in marketing the professional services aspect of its business, which would be a key part of its selling point in the PON proposal.
“We know the RBOCs aren’t going to buy direct from us, instead we’’ will be a supplier through a larger channel,” says Frank Lockwood, vice president of marketing at Terawave, whose ATM-based PON solution is today used primarily in business applications.
Quantum Bridge already has a relationship in place with a large vendor. It was announced at SUPERCOMM that Motorola now manufactures, sells and brands the smaller supplier’s ONT, an APON-based residential network interface device that attaches to the side of a home. Jeff Gwynne, senior vice president of marketing, says Motorola, with its experience in set-top boxes, cable modems and cellular phones, is well-versed in the CPE side of equation, which could be important in the case of PON, since the PON CPE is the “most sensitive” piece of the fiber to the premises puzzle in terms of bringing down pricing and mass delivery and distribution. But Quantum Bridge won’t rule out additional relationships with other large vendors, he says, adding the company has been selling its PON equipment for three years to customers including Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable and various municipalities.
Gwynne adds that although this RBOC RFP is now, the RBOCs’ activities in PON are now. The former Bells are among the 22 service providers involved in FSAN, an eight-year-old industry consortium focused on APON and future gigabit PON technology. FSAN makes technical recommendations relating to PON to the ITU.
AFC, the smaller rival to 1000-pound-access-guerilla Alcatel, is also a likely bidder in the new RBOC RTP. In fact, the company recently upgraded its AccessMAX under AFC’s FiberDirect brand to support fiber to the home applications.
And ADTRAN also expects to join the pack at some point. Keith Atwell, director of business development, says his company doesn’t have a PON solution “but this could change.” Atwell says ADTRAN tells its customers “our plans are what your plans are,” adding that ADTRAN wasn’t in on the initial DSL RFP the RBOCs issued a few years ago “but now we’re a big player in the DSL space.”
Of course, whether PON technology will see the kind of success that DSL has experienced in RBOC networks will depend upon the FCC ruling, the prices at which vendors are able to deliver PON equipment and whether the RBOCs decide to push fiber to the curb or home in greenfield-only deployments or also as a significant network upgrade strategy.
Ralph Ballart, vice president of broadband at SBC Technology Resources Inc., would not discuss with XCHANGE the product pricing SBC and its RBOC counterparts are looking for, but says “I’m pretty optimistic we’ll get good numbers.” Various vendors tell XCHANGE end-to-end per subscriber system bids are expected to range anywhere from $350 (according to Terawave) to around $1000 (Lucent) or about $1200 (according to Quantum Bridge).
Ballart adds the RBOC is “studying all possible applications” of FTTP, “but greenfield is high on the list because the trench is open.” He adds:“Moore’s Law doesn’t apply to trenching.”
