21285 - SCTE Broadband Dec2021 COMPLETE v1

53 Vol. 43 No. 4 - November 2021 Issue Introduction An apt joke says, “There are two types of people: those who think there are two types of people, and those who don’t.” Similarly, there are two types of telecommunications experts: those who think that everyone can be served with fibre to the premises if the government would provide enough incentive funding, and those who believe there will never be enough incentive funding or that the government would be wiser to spend its money on better healthcare, education and transportation. The authors agree with the second type of people. The best way to provide broadband fibre service to the maximum number of people is to not unnecessarily limit what “broadband fibre” is. The notion requiring that optical fibres must reach all the way to every home and business results in excessive costs and delay. Locations where fibre can reach easily at reasonable cost should certainly be served with fibre. Indeed, the deployment of broadband fibre has addressed these locations first. The “low hanging fruit” has already been picked in many countries. Serving the remaining locations with fibre will, in many cases, require greater effort, cost and complexity per location. Many of the remaining, underserved locations could get gigabit- class and even multi-gigabit access more quickly and at a much lower cost if served by Fibre To The Extension Point (FTTep), where fibre reaches close to the customer premises, but the last hundred metres are served with phone wire, coax cables or a combination of fixed wire-wireless. Fibre to the Premises Is fibre to the premises the only solution to deliver Broadband Services? Although fibre to premises is the most prevalent approach, also other technologies can help to deliver on the promises made by ‘fibre to the premises’, as is shown in the following statements: n Fibre all the way to the premises is the only way to deliver true broadband access. FALSE n Actually, Gigabit service is the same whether it is carried by fibre, copper, or radio. n Higher bitrates provide a better customer experience. FALSE n This may be true for up to about 500Mb/s, but at higher rates, latency and jitter become more important. Wire- based technologies can provide sub-millisecond one- way latency with low jitter. n Fibre is the only future-proof access technology. FALSE n Copper and coax wires can deliver 2Gb/s service today, and new standards address rates of 4 to 10Gb/s. Coax wire and CAT6 wire have the capacity for much higher rates than telephone wires. n Fibre provides higher quality service. FALSE n This is certainly not true if you are unable to receive any service at all. Broadband access via copper and coax provides approximately the same quality of service as fibre for virtually all customers. n With enough government incentives, fibre can reach everyone. FALSE n As discussed below, it is impractical or exorbitantly expensive to serve some locations with fibre. Fibre roadblocks In most places, fibre can be economically built from the nearest telecommunications switching centre (Central Office) or remote multiplexer to a point near the customer’s premises. This is often the distribution point or the basement of a multiple dwelling unit, about one-hundred metres from the customer. Up to this point, fibre cost is shared by many customers and the fibre construction takes place within established utility right-of-way land. Fibre construction for the last few hundred metres, near the customer premises, is often the most difficult. Beyond this point, the fibre serves only one or a very few customers, so there is little cost-sharing. The reasons why some homes and businesses may not get fibre all the way to the premises include the following barriers: n Lack of funding for construction of new fibre cables n Lack of construction crews or equipment n Excessive cost per living unit due to low geographic density or low subscription n Unable to gain construction permission from landowner n Unable to gain civil works permission from local government or excessive cost for the permission n Customer declines permission for technician to enter home or to drill holes in walls technical