For a variety of reasons--higher government subsidies; higher consumer demand; higher interest by institutional investors in digital infrastructure assets; evolution of the network elements and a change in financial return assumptions--fiber to the home has an investment profile that is higher than it used to be.
On the network cost front, some sort of subtle changes in network element features also play a role.
Telco outside plant architectures were strict “star” designs in the copper era. Though network designed used multiplexing as much as possible, the basic design was a star.
But there are some changes that can affect fiber to home construction cost. Corning, for example, touts the use of its connectors that do not require splicing. Since labor--not materials--represent the biggest portion of FTTH network construction, total costs should be lower when less labor is required.
Still, materials costs are different when an architecture that is more like a “bus” or “tree” and less like a “star” is possible. For terrestrial networks using cables, the advantage of the bus is less cabling bulk.
Telco FTTH networks can use architectures that are partly bus and partly star. The advantage includes some savings on cable, as is true for bus designs.
In Corning’s case, connectors that eliminate splicing are not just a way to speed construction, they also allow more hybrid architectures that are more like buses in the trunking part of the network (which allows more sharing and multiplexing) while retaining the star for distribution to end points. .
The practical implications for FTTH network construction is that costs should be lower than they have been in the past. That, plus changes in consumer demand (higher) and government subsidies (also higher) plus higher demand on the part of institutional investors for digital infrastructure assets as a form of real estate, are propelling faster investment in FTTH in the U.S. market.
No comments:
Post a Comment