Lighting up time

Whilst fibre to the home (ftth) is some way off in Europe, undiminished appetite for broadband access is driving growing interest in fibre to the (street) node (fttn). A recent report (Lighting Up Time from Total Telecom, www.totaltele.com) identifies 20 major projects underway worldwide and European operators feature strongly. Although the ‘killer’ application for ftth is hdtv, continuing demand for xdsl broadband access is driving operator interest in lighting up fibre. The appeal of fibre in terms of delivering gross bandwidth to the local exchange point or street node is obvious – as are the constraints. Operators are finding ways to upgrade their existing infrastructures by reusing and improving copper capacity. But they cannot ignore the fact that, in densely populated regions, the need to deploy ftth networks becomes paramount if they are to meet burgeoning demand for stable, always on tap bandwidth beyond 70Mbit/s – the ‘tipping point’ for mass ftth deployment.