You are on page 1of 3

ARTICLE REPRINT — TELLABS INSPIRE Q3 2008

Rural Ops Bridge the Digital Divide

some of the most advanced technologies are being deployed in small towns. here’s why.
By M.J. Richter

A few years ago, most Independent Operating Companies (IOCs) IOCs and municipalities were the first to deploy FTTH, in some
realized that long-term success in a technology-driven market would cases three years ahead of the larger RBOCs. Small IOCs, especially
depend at least in part on their ability to deploy broadband-access co-ops, are leading the way in transitioning to FTTH, driven by the
networks. Pulled by customers’ demands for more bandwidth and subscriber/owners’ desire to reverse the digital divide in America.”
pushed by growing competition from cable TV operators, many
IOCs subsequently decided to build networks that could deliver In the Driver’s Seat
the all-important triple play of video, data and voice services,
IOCs across the United States are in the vanguard of domestic FTTH
particularly HDTV, IPTV and VoD.
deployments, with many of them opting for GPON technology to
power those networks. That begs the question, are FTTH deploy-
Having answered that call, IOCs and other triple-play service ments driving IOC selection of GPON technology, or does GPON
providers now look to leverage those initial investments while technology drive IOC decisions to deploy FTTH networks? Savage
planning for future offerings. Their challenge, at its core, is to both said the answer is “a little bit of yin and yang.”
plan ahead for tomorrow’s end-user needs and make the right
underlying technology choices to flexibly meet those demands.
“Service providers see the large majority of networks being deployed
are PON-based and think, ‘If it’s good for those providers, it must
Reversing the Digital Divide be good for us,’” Savage explained. “In many cases, because of
The success of the IOCs’ access-network strategies is already subscriber density, the savings provided by PON systems in optical
apparent in the communications infrastructures of many of the fiber and cable drive the technology choice to PON. And with GPON
United States’ smaller cities, towns and rural areas. Collectively, available today, most service providers go with the latest, rather than
those geographic regions make up one of the fastest growing deploy BPON and know they will be upgrading in a few years to
sectors of the domestic broadband marketplace. GPON anyway.”

Joe Savage, president of the FTTH Council, points out that Tier-3 Service provider demand for more bandwidth appears to be insatiable.
IOCs and telephone cooperatives — with nearly 6 percent of all
their access lines now FTTH connections — are often leaders “If 10-Gbps GPON were available today, I believe that is what the
when it comes to providing customers with broadband access. technology service providers would deploy,” Savage said. “As GPON
volume goes up, service providers recognize there is safety in num-
“Of course, the RBOCs lead in total number of subscribers, with bers, and prices will continue to decline.”
nearly 70 percent of all FTTH subscribers,” Savage said. “[But]

Small Town Living, Big City Technology


Grant Griffiths is a former attorney who office or even the same town to have only criteria for anyone working in a home
lives in Clay Center, a town of about 4,300 someone work for you.” office, “unless you’re a complete techno-
residents in northeast Kansas. In 2005, he geek, which isn’t a bad thing. The bottom
As various service providers offered various
closed his downtown office and shifted his line is, the technology just needs to work,
access technologies, Griffiths signed up
practice to his residence. it needs to be reliable and it has to deliver
for each one, always looking for as much
the bandwidth.”
His legal assistant moved from Clay Center bandwidth and reliability as he could get.
to a new home four hours away. Despite The now-expanding FTTH network in and
“I started out with the cable modem
operating out of different locations, the around Clay Center will, in Griffiths’ opinion,
because that was the only option at the
two remained a team until Griffiths recently have a positive effect on the town’s overall
time. Then we had DSL, and I switched to
decided to close his practice and switch to population and economy. He believes that
that pretty quickly. I got 6 Mbps download
consulting work and a Web-building service rural areas in general, and Clay Center in
service, and I paid extra to get that. Most
for other lawyers. He explained the particular, are catching up with America’s
people weren’t getting half that much
arrangement: “We communicated and urban areas, “especially now that we’re
speed.”
exchanged documents via e-mail. I record- getting fiber optics.
ed dictation files digitally and sent them to As of August 2008, Griffiths has the fastest
“I’ve got friends in large cities who don’t
her in e-mails as digital files. She sent the possible access: an FTTH connection.
have fiber connections. Here, the local tele-
documents back to me, and then I did with Service providers understand that most
phone company that’s been in existence
them what I needed to do.” customers don’t care what underlying
for a number of years is bringing fiber right
access technology they use, as long as it is
With high-speed network access, Griffiths into the house. They just keep expanding
fast and reliable. Griffiths said those are the
said, “you don’t have to be in the same and adopting new technology.”
2 article reprint — rural ops bridge the digital divide

IOCs Search for Long-term Solutions Ready for Prime Time


The fact that increasing numbers of IOCs are opting to build FTTH Leading IOCs realize that purpose-built, ATM-based boxes with an
networks and power them with GPON technology underscores the overlay of IP-based GPON are not a good long-term solution. Yet
fact that GPON is the near- to mid-term winner in FTTH deploy- most IOCs also are wary of some of the newer IP-based GPON
ments. Yet not all GPON implementations are created equal. GPON products, which often seem expensive, do not scale well and are
implementations using a native-IP versus legacy-ATM format offer not yet fully integrated with deployed equipment.
higher efficiency and scalability, and thus ultimately provide greater
revenue over the life of the network. Savvy IOCs look for the maximum return on FTTH/GPON invest-
ments by working with vendors that can offer not only IOC-specific
GPON provides a smooth upgrade path from legacy to next- technology, but also multiple products they can mix and match to
generation services, partly through its support for legacy traffic in its suit their individual needs. These IOCs also want vendors that can
native format — ATM and TDM for example — and native IP traffic. help with myriad deployment-related challenges, from design and
Using GPON Encapsulation Mode (GEM) — a method that maps interoperability support to project management and even ongoing
the service layers (TDM, ATM, IP) onto the PON physical layer — network management.
provides the flexibility to carry several protocol formats and allows
both legacy ATM access platforms and next-generation IP/Ethernet Tellabs understood the challenges confronting the IOCs and devel-
access platforms to support the latest GPON technology. oped a comprehensive set of PON access solutions. PON presents
a very effective and high-bandwidth way to connect customers and
But the choice of underlying technology (IP vs. ATM) has a enables a network that can accommodate growing user demands
significant impact on efficiency, scalability and, ultimately, for high-bandwidth applications. Using its extensive experience with
service delivery. With ATM as the core transport and switching PON, Tellabs first went to market with a suite of BPON products,
technology, the ability to deliver bandwidth and generate followed closely by GPON solutions. Within the past 18 months, as
revenue is greatly diminished. more and more IOCs have begun to implement their broadband-
access strategies, Tellabs — which already offers one of the broad-
ATM was the first transport protocol to reliably carry multi-QoS est fiber-access product portfolios in the industry — accelerated
broadband services over older service technologies, including T1, its GPON efforts.
G.SHDSL and ADSL. Designed specifically to offer granular QoS
over relatively low-speed, low-bandwidth links, ATM was challenged Thinking Big — and Small
by the adoption of high-speed Ethernet technology beginning in Tellabs’ approach leverages its existing customers’ installed base
the mid-1990s. while also providing solutions for greenfield deployments. Many
IOCs, for example, began deploying the Tellabs® 1000 Multiservice
Today, the industry is moving from ATM to high-speed, high-density Access Platform (MSAP) in the mid-1990s. In 2007, Tellabs
technology that uses native IP/Ethernet packets in the physical released a high-bandwidth, cost-effective Gigabit Ethernet uplink
layer. For example, a typical VoIP flow requires approximately interface for the platform’s BPON OLT application. By deploying
100 Kbps of bandwidth at the Ethernet layer. When ATM is used the GigE card and software upgrade, removing older ATM switches
to carry this service, the required bandwidth at the ATM layer is and using less expensive, reliable Ethernet infrastructure, IOCs
approximately 220 Kbps, a more than 200 percent increase in can protect their investments in the Tellabs® 1000 MSAP while
bandwidth needed versus Ethernet. When GPON is deployed on migrating their DSL- and PON-based networks to IP.
an ATM-based platform, once the system hits a certain percent of
chassis capacity, it reaches its maximum serving capacity, and the Tellabs also optimized its IP-based Tellabs® 1150 Multiservice
bandwidth delivered per user begins to decline as new subscribers Access Platform (MSAP) by adding a new line module that offers
are turned up. a GPON FTTH solution, in addition to its existing FTTC and FTTN
applications. Following up on that enhancement, Tellabs developed
Native IP/Ethernet is the transport technology of choice for newer the Tellabs® 1134 Multiservice Access Platform (MSAP) specifically
service tech­nologies including ADSL2+ and VDSL2. Coupled with for the IOCs; it’s a smaller version of the Tellabs® 1150 MSAP
carrier-class QoS, IP becomes superior to ATM for modern high- optimized for lower density, rural environments.
bandwidth, high-density applications, leveraging the scalability and
flexibility of IP and the reliability instilled with QoS mechanisms. With four multiservice slots and about one-fourth the size of the
In contrast, ATM efficiency varies with the length of the Ethernet Tellabs 1150 MSAP, the Tellabs ®1134 MSAP takes less than 6
packet. inches of rack space, making it ideal for relatively small central
offices and small cabinets. Supporting about 500 end users,
As a result, compared with ATM, IP over GPON offers: compared with about 2,000 for the Tellabs 1150 MSAP, the Tellabs
1134 MSAP platform also provides a migration path for existing
J Better bandwidth utilization. Tellabs 1000 MSAP customers. Designed to save time and money,
J High transport efficiency, which means service providers can the Tellabs 1134 MSAP enables IOCs to upgrade existing Tellabs
deliver more bandwidth to subscribers on a given infrastructure. 1000 MSAP cabinets remotely, so they can deliver faster fiber
J Greater scalability. solutions to specific groups of users, where and when their
business plans require.
3 article reprint — rural ops bridge the digital divide

A Growing ONT Portfolio, Too


Tellabs is a leader in providing deep-fiber solutions in North
Recognizing that there is no single ONT solution that fits every IOC
America, with nearly 2 million PON ONTs shipped to date, and
deep-fiber deployment, Tellabs currently offers two options, with
has provided commercially available VDSL2 solutions since
more in the pipeline.
2005. Tellabs fiber access solutions allow service providers to
support both broadband DLC architectures (with efficient migra-
The Tellabs® 1600-702 Single Family Unit GPON ONT delivers a full
tion plans to move to GPON) and the latest in all-fiber GPON
Gigabit of bandwidth to the customer, supporting residential voice,
technology concurrently. Tellabs fiber access solutions support:
high-speed data, IPTV and cable TV services over a single optical
fiber. The newer Tellabs® 1600-703 Single Family Unit GPON ONT, J FTTH/FTTP
with its RF-over-glass (RFoG) design, offers an integrated RF return
path, using the 1590 nm wavelength upstream to the headend J Fiber to the Node (FTTN) with ADSL2+ and VDSL2
equipment. J Fiber to the Curb (FTTC) with ADSL2+ and VDSL2
J Symmetrical data
While the Tellabs 1600-702 ONTs and Tellabs 1600-703 ONTs are J Radio Frequency over Glass (RFoG)
designed for single-family-unit applications, Tellabs currently is opti-
mizing its ONU, typically used in an FTTC deployment, to function J Digital Loop Carrier (DLC) services such as:
also as a GPON-fed ONT that can support “pluggable” services for – Digital Data Services (DDS)
large MDUs and business locations. – Integrated Services Digital Network
– Coin/payphone
An IOC, for example, might receive a request from a customer for
some type of special-service circuit. By plugging in a card at the – 2-wire and 4-wire special services
customer’s premises, the IOC can deliver the requested special – 2-wire and 4-wire transmit only services
service via what is, in effect, an IP-based GPON-fed ONT. In addi-
tion, these special-service circuits can be deployed alongside other
revenue-generating services, such as business Ethernet, DS-1,
VDSL2, ADSL2+ and POTS from the same ONT.

All of those technological and operational capabilities require ven-


dors with proven track records in the PON market and financial sta-
bility in good and not-so-good economic times. By working closely
with vendors such as Tellabs, many IOCs are deploying FTTH/
GPON solutions that fit their unique requirements, scale readily with
their network growth, create additional revenue streams, protect
their existing investments and future-proof their networks. It is these
IOCs and their broadband-access networks that are eliminating the
“rural” stigma from rural American communications.

Acronym HDTV High-Definition TV


ADSL Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line IPTV Internet Protocol TV
ATM Asynchronous Transfer Mode MDU Multiple Dwelling Unit
BPON Broadband Passive Optical Network OLT Optical Line Terminal
DSL Digital Subscriber Line ONU Optical Network Unit
FTTC Fiber to the Curb PON Passive Optical Network
FTTH Fiber to the Home QoS Quality of Service
FTTN Fiber to the Node RBOC Regional Bell Operating Company
GPON Gigabit Passive Optical Network VDSL Very High Rate Digital Subscriber Line
G.SHDSL Global Symmetric High Bit Rate DSL VoD Video on Demand

North America Asia Pacific Europe, Middle East & Latin America & Statements herein may contain projections or other forward-looking statements
regarding future events, products, features, technology and resulting commercial
Africa Caribbean or technological benefits and advantages. These statements are for discussion
Tellabs Tellabs purposes only, are subject to change and are not to be construed as instructions,
One Tellabs Center 3 Anson Road Tellabs Tellabs product specifications, guarantees or warranties. Actual results may differ materially.
1415 West Diehl Road #14–01 Springleaf Tower Abbey Place 1401 N.W. 136th Avenue The following trademarks and service marks are owned by Tellabs Operations,
Naperville, IL 60563 Singapore 079909 24–28 Easton Street Suite 202 Inc., or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries: TELLABS®,
U.S.A. Republic of Singapore High Wycombe, Bucks Sunrise, FL 33323 TELLABS and T symbol®, and T symbol®.

+1 630 798 8800 +65 6215 6411 HP11 1NT U.S.A. Any other company or product names may be trademarks of their respective companies.
Fax: +1 630 798 2000 Fax: +65 6215 6422 United Kingdom +1 954 839 2800 © 2008 Tellabs. All rights reserved.
+44 870 238 4700 Fax: +1 954 839 2828 74.2009E Rev. B 10/2008
Fax: +44 870 238 4851

You might also like