Why PON FTTh/b is so important for players

and what is the end game?

This paper has been developed to provide an understanding the role of fibre optic communication
technology associated with PON network infrastructure in next generation of Ultrafast Broad Band
(UBB) architecture in Australia. Inside are details of technical strategies for many different PON
infrastructures.

David H.

3/13/16

Why PON-FTTh/b is so important for players and what is the end game?
1- Introduction
Passive Optical Network solutions like FTTH, FTTB and FTTN are so important since new services are
coming in communication world.
Progress in technology is not without consequences. Evolutions in one part of technology usually affect
another and no tech developments have had a bigger impact than the growth of online services. As
internet services be changed from simple emails and FTPs to Web browsing engines, to downloading
streaming videos and the number of users increased exponentially, the demand for bandwidth has
driven expansion of internet speed.
The Cloud services are the most significant reason for the latest push. The reason is, well, cloudy. It
cannot be because local storage is expensive. Nowadays, you can buy one terabyte disks for less than
$100 on the other hand we know in the late of 1990 a vendor announced the first network 1TB storage
cluster for less than $1 million! It cant be for security issue either, because centralizing data could make
it easier for hackers, as the data gets handled by many more devices and is always being transmitted
from point to point along outside connections. And our experience with cloud services is they are only
web hosting companies that see a new profit opportunity.
But, for whatever reasons, "cloud computing" is the "next big thing." However it faces a major
challenge. Today's enterprise networks typically operate at 100Mb/s to 1Gb/s, even for wireless. The
Internet backbone operates at 10-100Gb/s. Data centers, real ones that is, not a bunch of PCs in the
back room of a web hosting service, generally use 1-10Gb/s and are upgrading.
What about the Internet connection? Most of what we hear about are NBN greenfield network, and
home broadband, where your connection speed can vary from <1Mb/s to 1Gb/s on broadband and all
over the place on dial-up landlines or cellular wireless. Businesses are hardly any better off, they just
generally pay a lot more. Much of the news associated with Gigabit cities is the relocation of Internet
businesses there to take advantage of the higher bandwidth. Below figure shows obviously that when
transferring large amounts of data, whether its using cloud services or downloading video for
entertainment that the ISP (Internet Service Provider) is the weak link.

Figure-1

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Why PON-FTTh/b is so important for players and what is the end game?
Here where I live in one of suburbs in Sydney, I tested my internet network speed which is belong to one
of famous internet providers, many times, the result is the speed of internet is mostly depend to time of
the test and the quality of telecom infrastructure.
Also the result of ping test is not in reasonable amount and variable like internet speed issue. The worse
one is more than 19 seconds but sometimes I could get 145ms and the best network latency have been
25ms. So, its an indication of an overloaded network.

Figure-2 Internetfrog.com speed test

What about other option for Internet access - cellular? We have that too, with an antenna tower
perched on a mountain overlooking a freeway we can see from our office. On our smartphones, it
usually tests as fast as the other options in the morning and we've used it in emergencies when our
other services were not available, even to do webinars. But for all our uses it is way too expensive based
on the cost structure for high data users.
But what puzzles us is how "cloud services" will be able to operate with such slow Internet connections how people using their own devices will be able to use their corporate cloud services with such disparity
in connection speeds and latency, even at the office but especially on the road or at home. Or how they
will be able to compete with consumers downloading video? What's absolutely certain is that the
Internet does not follow "Moore's Law" for computers!

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Why PON-FTTh/b is so important for players and what is the end game?

Figure-3 Relative costs of broadband connection compared to Moore's Law for computing and the growth in Internet traffic, all
normalized.

Comparing Internet connections to Moore's Law is certainly unfair. To take advantage of Moore's Law,
most of us have been spending $1000 or more every 2-3 years to upgrade our computers but who do
you know who has spent equivalent money on their Internet connection? We just keep paying $4060/month for the same old service. This whole issue seems to be a classic case of "lack of
communications" - which would be humorous if it were not the case that we are in the communication
business! The people promoting cloud services seem to publicly ignore the connectivity issues. Perhaps
their focus on hyping their own business makes them blind to the obstacles it faces, but unless they
have faster - and cheaper -connectivity everywhere, they are facing extreme obstacles. Cloud service
providers, above all others, should be lobbying for faster Internet connections everywhere and more
network capacity for all of us. In Australia NBNCo has a main role to provide faster and cheaper internet
services.

2- FTTx Network Infrastructure

NBNCo is developing Passive Optical Network with following five principal solutions.

2.1- CTTN to FTTN

The bottleneck that limits the capacity to each home of the CTTN network is the backhaul network, not
the Last Mile network. By upgrading the Last Mile network with the latest DSL technologies such as
ADSL2+ and VDSL, downstream speeds from the remote DSLAM to each and every home of 12-24
Mbit/s and 50-100 Mbit/s respectively are possible, depending on the actual transmission distance and
the quality of the twisted pair cables connected to the home.

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Why PON-FTTh/b is so important for players and what is the end game?

Figure-4 Access Network Upgrade from CTTN to FTTN and Dial-up or ADSL to ADSL2+ or VDSL

2.2- HFC CATV Network to FTTN

The bottleneck is old HFC Network area that cannot use new technology RFoG and High-end DOCSIS
CMTS equipment will be face some issues to support future bandwidth growth, to active OSP network to
annual operating and maintenance cost (see figure-7) and also to support new technologies.
Downstream rate 100Mb/s is possible in this solution.

Figure-5 High-Level HFC Network Topology

Figure-6 High Level RFoG Network Topology

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Why PON-FTTh/b is so important for players and what is the end game?

Life-Cycle Cost Analysis

HFC vs FTTH PON
Cost per Mile of Outside Plant

$55,000
$50,000
$45,000

HFC
PON

$40,000
$35,000
$30,000
$25,000
1

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Years in Operation

Figure-7 Life-Cycle Cost Analysis HFC vs FTTH PON

2.3- DSL to FTTB PON Fibre Backhaul Upgrades

As shown in Figure 8, brownfield FTTH network upgrades to an existing FTTN based DSL access network
require both the Cabinet to the Home last mile segment to be upgraded with multiple point-tomultipoint fibre links; and the Cabinet to the CO Backhaul segment to be upgraded with multiple pointto-point fibre links (one per PON). For such network upgrades, the multiple PON splitters are ideally
located inside the remote cabinet, replacing previously installed, power consuming and spaceconsuming DSLAM equipment. Since FTTN networks for DSL and other broadband access technologies
are generally backhauled with just a few fibres, it is important that when these FTTN networks are first
installed, additional fibres per cable and/or duct space be provided for pulling or blowing through
additional fibres to enable future Brownfield upgrades to PON based FTTH architectures.

Figure-8 DSL to PON Fibre Backhaul Upgrade

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Why PON-FTTh/b is so important for players and what is the end game?

Figure-9 NBN Co Copper Access Service - FTTB Network Architecture

2.4- The Satellite Access solution

The Satellite Access solution is currently under development.
NBN Co is building two, multi-spot beam, geostationary, "bent-pipe, Ka-band, telecommunications
satellites for the Satellite Access Solution. Multi-spot beam design on each satellite enabling 70Gbps
forward path and 20Gbps return path system capacity to best support the regional and remote
Australian population and utilise the optimum broadband user experience from the amount of RF
spectrum available.

Figure 10 High level interconnection block diagram of Satellite Access

2.5- Greenfield PON Networks

For Greenfield applications, such as new estates, it is feasible and cost effective to install a PON based
FTTH network from day one. In this case, the remote nodes which contain the 1:32 splitters can be quite
small and optimized for the pure PON application, since they are not encumbered by the power and
space requirements of previous active equipment. The passive splitter nodes can be located above
ground or below ground. Such a Greenfield PON based FTTH network as illustrated in Figure 12 is the
fibre equivalent of the older generation twisted-pair copper networks with a passive pillar in the street.
They meet the carrier and environmental requirements for fully passive access networks with remote
nodes requiring little space and no power, and as outlined in the next section, they better support
Open Access regimes by enabling end-end WDM overlays.
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Why PON-FTTh/b is so important for players and what is the end game?

Figure-10 Greenfield PON based FTTH Network

The advantages of PON / FTTH networks, which are considered the target network or end-game, are
as follows:

For carriers PONs eliminates expensive power consuming cabinets in the street which require
connections to local AC power, expensive replication of battery backup facilities (without the
added benefits of backup generators), regular maintenance and longer down-times than CObased equipment when failures occur.

For environmentalists and the social conscious PONs eliminates large conspicuous cabinets in
the street and enable a larger proportion of the work force to employ remote office access
applications to work from home thus saving previous material resources such as fuel and family
resources such as commute time to/from the office;

For service providers PONs better facilitate the provision of Open Access networks using
simple service separating technologies such as Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM);

For service providers, carriers and end-customers, PONs enable the largest possible capacity and
data throughput from the CO to the customers premises, supporting both residential
broadband applications and business applications for the lifetime of the installed fibre
infrastructure.

3- Next Generation PONs (NG-PONs)

One of the benefits of the pure PON architectures from the CO to the customers premises is that
once installed, they offer enormous capacity for future upgrades using Wavelength Division
Multiplexing. Initial EPON and GPON deployments only use the wavelength bands 1290 - 1330nm
(upstream Ch1) and 1480 - 1500nm (downstream Ch1).
Assuming that good sense prevails, this leaves the following wavelength bands for NG-PONs (with 10nm
guard bands):
1260 - 1280 nm (for NG-PON upstream CWDM capacity eg, NG-PON Ch2)
1340 - 1360 nm (for NG-PON upstream CWDM capacity eg, NG-PON Ch3)
1360 - 1430 nm (when low water-peak PON fibre is installed);
1430 - 1470 nm (for NG-PON upstream CWDM capacity eg, NG-PON Ch4 & Ch5)
1510 - 1530 nm (for NG-PON downstream CWDM capacity eg, NG-PON Ch5)
1530 - 1570 nm (for C-Band DWDM capacity for NG-PON Ch6 - Ch25 using 20 upstream & 20
downstream wavelengths)
1570 - 1620 nm (for NG-PON downstream CWDM capacity eg, NG-PON Ch2, Ch3 & Ch4)
1625 nm (for live OTDR testing)
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Why PON-FTTh/b is so important for players and what is the end game?
4- The Primary Ultrafast Broad Band Architecture
As above all PON solutions explained FTTH/B is still the primary Ultrafast broad band architecture. It
most widely accepted technology and, even more important, has been selected by all types of players, in
terms of subscribers worldwide (62%), leading FTTx+LAN (29%). VDSL and FTTLA remain minor players
(8% and 1% respectively). Asian players largely favor FTTH/B, in particular NTT in Japan and KT in South
Korea, which respectively had 14.7 million and 5 million FTTH/B subscribers by the end of 2010. Even
Chinese operators (China Unicom and China Telecom in particular) are now accelerating their FTTH/B
deployment to the detriment of FTTx+LAN. As a result, geographic distribution for FTTH/B is similar to
that of FTTx. As of June 2011, there were more than 112.6 million FTTx subscribers around the world. It
is expected to grow steadily in the coming years, to pass 198 million subscribers around the globe by the
end of 2016. Naturally, the rate of progress will not be the same across the board, as each national
market will be shaped by the countrys intrinsic features and its players.

5- Conclusion
Australia is currently behind many OECD countries in its rollout of both FTTH/B and FTTN access
networks. Such networks are needed to support Video Entertainment applications such as High
Definition TeleVision (HDTV), Video-on Demand (VoD) and Near Video on Demand (NVoD); plus low
latency for IP Telephony applications and an increasing range of broadband Internet applications such
as: E-Bay, Google Maps, You-Tube, Online Games, E-learnings and Video Chats. In contrast to the late
90s, the network capacity is now demand driven not technology driven. But new technology is required
to meet this demand. Opportunities are available for Australia to leap-frog the traditional FTTN rollout
and instead rollout the latest FTTH technologies to meet both current and future demands for network
capacity. Especially, nowadays, the result of quantum optics researches such as utilize quantum optics
for quantum information and how to manipulate single atoms (a sub-field often called atom optics) have
applied to engineering and technological innovation, enable us to use Self-Phase Modulator and Electrooptic Modulators (40Gbit/s Phase Modulator) for high-speed communications. This new approach will
solve the limitation of bandwidth in Optical Communication therefore, the PON/FTTH is more adaptive
coming evolution in the near future.

6- References:
[1] Ethernet based AONs: Ericsson EFN-324; Cisco ONS-15454 Multi-Service Provisioning Platform;
IEEE 802.3ah-2004 - Ethernet in the First Mile (Single fibre 1310/1550nm option - 100BASE-BX10);
[2] Ethernet / HFC AONs: Harmonic Demos Ethernet Switching Modules for Deep-Fiber Platform
(PWRBlazer) ( http://lw.pennnet.com/articles/article_display.cfm?article_id=86249 - 2001)
[3] Collapsed PON based AONs: Tellabs 1134 Multi Service Access Platform; NEC AM3160 Multi Service
Access Node.
[4] Gerry, Christopher; Knight, Peter (2004). Introduction to Quantum Optics. Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 052152735X.

[5] NBN Network Design Rules July-2014

[6] FTTN/H Network Architectures, Ross Halgren,
[7] NG-PONs: IEEE P802.3av 10GEPON Task Force (2007)

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Why PON-FTTh/b is so important for players and what is the end game?
7- Glossary
CATV

Cable Television

FttC

Fibre to the Curb

FttB

Fibre to the Building

FttH

Fibre to the Home

FttN

Fibre to the Node

FttX

Generic Term for all of the Fibre-to-the-xxx above

PON

Passive Optical Network

FTP

File Transfer Program

VDSL

Very high speed Digital Subscriber Line

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