Introduction
Competition is heating up for Telco's and MSO's as consumers are becoming more and more aware of the advantages gained through the access of information via ever-increasing speeds. Delivery of entertainment, communication and information services are in greater demand.
Competition and improvements in technology are continuing to lead to lower prices for consumers. The challenge for PBN and our customers is to continue offering products and services that add real value, performance and functionality.
PBN recognises the need to work with legacy systems and at the same time offer advanced optical network products.
"Beyond broadband" is a term that many operators are now considering seriously. At PBN we have designed products that offer operators advanced networks today, as they contemplate their needs for the next generation - beyond broadband.
We deliver:
• A solution that brings fibre to your door step at an economical cost.
• A solution that unlocks the access bottleneck and provides customers with reliable triple play services at the speed of light.
Data Traffic is Driving Demand for Bandwidth
Until recently, telecommunications networks were built in an environment where voice traffic dominated. However, data traffic has grown dramatically over the last decade, doubling every 6 months. Today, data traffic accounts for more than 50% of the total traffic, and is expected to increase to 90% of total traffic by 2005. By comparison, voice traffic has historically grown at a relatively constant 5%-7% annually.
Figure 1: Growth in Data traffic
Additionally, cable operators have been rapidly upgrading their systems from analog to digital to handle two-way video that enables the distribution of video on demand. These forms of content and network applications will require the transmission of large, bandwidth intensive fibre across networks. As users increasingly demand access to these higher bandwidth applications, they will require cost effective high speed connections that are often unavailable or inadequate over existing network architectures.
Bandwidth is limited by the Access Bottleneck (the "Last Mile Bottleneck")
To accommodate the increase in data traffic in the core of the network, telecom service providers have spent significant capital over recent years in constructing high speed optical networks. Long distance carriers have reaped the rewards of recent advances in fibre optic technologies, such as dense wavelength division multiplexing (“DWDM”). DWDM technologies have dramatically multiplied the sheer bandwidth capacity of long haul fibre optic backbone networks. The network backbone, or core, has been the first beneficiary of this massive build out. Spending is expected to mitigate “downstream” as customers tap available long haul bandwidth.
Figure 2: The Access Bottleneck
However, despite significant improvements in the switching, routing and transport of bandwidth-intensive traffic along the telecommunications backbone, high speed transmission of bandwidth-intensive applications have been limited by the existing local access infrastructure. The bandwidth bottleneck has shifted away from the backbone and metro portion of the network and into the access arena, servicing business and residential customers. This limitation is often referred to as the “last mile”.
Limitations of Existing Broadband Alternatives
There is currently a range of different communications technologies that have been deployed in urban and regional applications. However, because most of these technologies do not utilise fibre optic cable, they do not provide sufficient bandwidth to meet anticipated demand or scale to provide access for multiple users nor do they future proof the network.
Current modem (copper): 56kbits/s symmetrical : Easy connection using telephone line although with poor performance.
ADSL (copper): 1.5Mbits/s - 256kbits/s : Relatively easy to connect this service as it uses the telephone line with a special modem. The time to delivery of this service is very long, and in regional areas where the quality of the copper telephone lines is quite poor there is a degraded quality of service.
Hybrid Fibre/Coax (HFC) : 40Mbits/s (shared: 100+ users): This is the regular cable TV line that is very suitable for TV and other broadcast services although it is limited for high speed Internet and interactive services.
Satellite (wireless) : 45Mbits/s (shared: 100+ users): Easy to install although it is quite expensive for relatively little bandwidth. It does not support next generation high speed services.
3G (wireless) : 2Mbits/s (shared: many users): Suitable for wireless applications although it is not suitable for next generation fixed services that require significantly more bandwidth.
LMDS (wireless) : 155Mbits/s (shared: many users): Suitable for trunk connections of regional locations that do not have a fibre optic connection. This technology is not used for "last mile" access to the subscriber.
VDSL (optical/electrical) : 52Mbits/s - 1Mbit/s: This is used in the TransACT network and although it has significantly more bandwidth than other copper or wireless technologies it is expensive to deploy and maintain.
PON (optical) : 1,250Mbits/s symmetrical (shared: 32 users): Scalable to 100+Mbits/s per user: It provides users with all services including high speed Internet, video on demand, broadcast TV, HDTV, interactive services, POTS / Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), and all other services of the future.
The most common access solutions available are DSL and HFC technologies. These solutions have provided consumers with the ability to enjoy digital services, but both of these technologies have limitations when it comes to offering the advanced services expected within the next five years. Both xDSL and cable modems, while solving the current access demand problem, are nearer term solutions to the growing problem of the access network bottleneck. PBN believes there is a clear migration path for operators to move from either twisted copper or coaxial cable to fibre optics as they attempt to improve their inherent return on invested capital.
To meet this challenge, the backbone sections of the transmission network are generally evolving from electrical transmission to optical transmission systems, with current systems generally being combinations of both. Optical transport has inherent advantages in capacity, quality and cost over electrical transmission. In contrast to electrical transmission over copper wires or wireless transmission using radio waves, optical transmission technology transfers data in the form of pulses of light along optical fibres, which are bundled together in fibre optic cables.
Pacific Broadband Networks' (PBN) Solution
PBN continues to support Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) networks through the ongoing development of its Light Link ® Series 2 and 3 optical transport products. PBN has introduced two new product lines designed to meet individual needs - offering greater bandwidth for Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM).
Our Light Link ® Direct range of products provides operators with the ability to reach their customers via optical fibre cables - the technology is known as fibre-to-the-home (FTTH). Light Link ® Direct provides triple play services over a single fibre network.
PBN offers two distinct system architectures:
(1) Point-to-Point (P2P) Solution
The EPON P2P solution delivers a symmetrical 100 Mbps bandwidth direct to each user. Triple play configuration offers cable television (CATV), telephony and data to each residence via one fibre core only to an optical network termination unit at each home.
(2) Point-to-Multipoint (P2MP) Solution
The EPON P2MP solution allows up to 32 homes to share one fibre core only. All users on the passive optical network (PON) share 1 Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth, together with a triple play CATV overlay for radio and television broadcasting services.
The network topologies are compliant with the leading industry standard for Ethernet first mile (EFM) published as IEEE802.3 ah. This standard includes several EPON FTTx solutions.
Conclusion
With ever increasing competition and rapid changes in technology, PBN believes the ability of operators to deploy services quickly to meet market demands is paramount. Additional bundling of services to one platform is sharing a common management system. PBN's Light Link ® products support multi services platforms with rapid deployment of advanced FTTx and HFC networks that share common hardware and management systems. |
