Fiber to the Home the New Empowerment Paul E. Green, Jr May 19, 2006 Ref.: Book of same title, John Wiley and Sons, 2005 1
What does it look like? Passive optical network (PON) PSTN Class 5 Central office All glass 10s of km Premises ONU POTS 10/100BASE-T Set-top box Internet Router OLT 1:32 ONU POTS 10/100BASE-T Set-top box MSO Headend ONU POTS 10/100BASE-T Set-top box Triple-play: POTS, data, video Based on: cells (BPON), packets (EPON = GEPON), or both (GPON) Point-point option future growth 2
Why are we talking about this? Convergence to wireless for coverage, fiber for capacity In FTTH, H = home, business or premises = 1 sub/fiber Does means neither FTTCurb ( 100 copper-fed subs/fiber) nor FTTNode ( 1000s copper-fed subs/fiber) Things are happening Growth of application bandwidth demand exhausts FTTC/FTTP Bottleneck interposed between computer internal BW and longhaul / metro interoffice per-wavelength BW is tight (factor of 100) Insufficiency of traditional landline solutions (especially DSL) Aggressive triple-play competition, from cable in U.S. Regulatory encouragement Seen as part of international competitiveness Providers need service integration, OAM simplification Falling technology costs challenges are cost, not function Optoelectronics Civil engineering 3 Service providers are responding, especially in Far East and US
Bandwidth drivers Some we know are here HDTV (the Biggie) Video on demand Peer Web usage (Napster successors) Business conferencing Remote backup (Zip drive replacement) Some we can see coming Telemedicine Video on demand, books on demand Complex multi-party games And some we can t Scratch it and it will itch Silicon Valley, CA and Redmond, WA will tell us 4
Bitrate capacity vs. distance Downstream Mb/s 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 622 BPON Cable modem VDSL ADSL2+ ADSL2 SHDSL Italy UK USA 80 th percentile loop lengths A single MPEG-2 HDTV channel 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Loop length (km) 5
Components Rapid cost/performance improvements Recent stimuli: 2003 and 2006 RPQs of 3 US ILECs Typical result: triplexer component for subscriber ONU Out from CO: 1550 nm. Analog video, 1490 digital IP and/or video In to CO: 1310 nm. digital Cost: $75 in quantity 1310 nm FPLD source 1550 nm detector + preamp 1490 nm detector + preamp Typical triplexor* * Source: Infineon Thinfilm optics 6
Deployment Similar rapid cost/performance improvements, e.g., Horizontal directional drilling (HDD) Blown fiber Fusion splicing Cable-lashing robots Cost improvement rate approaching Moore s law Large HDD example* Source: Ditchwitch Self-propelled robot 7
Cost summary Average cost/home connected: From $7500 to $1650 in ten years 2002 cost breakdown (materials+labor) Source: OSI CO optoelelectronics $250 Customer premises optoelectronics $400 Fiber, splitters, connectors, closures $375 Engineering costs $75 Construction costs $550 TOTAL $1650 Real savings come in lifetime costs Service integration only 2 businesses, wireless and FTTx Glass outside plant - essentially zero maintenance Replace service calls by CO software actions Part of trend from circuit switch (Class 5, ATM framing, SONET, etc) to IP/Ethernet (routers, IP backbone, etc.) 8
U.S. deployment two waves Thousands Thousands of subscribers of subscribers 4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 9/01 3/02 Small providers 9/02 3/03 9/03 3/04 Date Source: Render Vanderslice LLP Enter Verizon 9/04 3/05 9/05 5/06 Connected Passed Reality check: compare the YE05 nos. : 671K FTTH subscribers vs. 176 million voice grade, 19 million DSL and 24 million cable modem subscribers (Source: Point Topic, Ltd. 3/06) 9
Verizon s FiOS service Available starting 2005 in nine states 4 million homes passed by 5/06, 671K connected Triple-play IP/several POTS lines/analog TV Analog TV: avoidable technology problems, but represents majority of installed base IP video and VoIP under study 100 Mb/s service under study Per-user bitrates < 5 Mb/s downstream, < 2 Mb/s upstream: $35-40/mo. < 15 Mb/s down, < 2 Mb/s up: $45-50/mo. BPON-based (622 Mb/s down, 155 up, ATM cells). Going to GPON (mixed ATM/IP) Community by community, Verizon is adding video (local franchise battles) So far, other ILECs are in field trial mode, or doing greenfield FTTH only or are doing Fiber to the Curb 10
International deployments Korea leads in per capita broadband mostly DSL - little FTTH activity Japan leads in FTTH 4.3 million FTTH subscribers by YE04, more than cable modems POTS and IP. NTT now allowed TV distribution Coming: E-Japan national program, EPON-based (1 G/b/s) Europe with 680K YE05 FTTH subscribers is second, incl. Sweden 200K subscribers Italy 185K subscribers Denmark 85K subscribers Netherlands 50 K subscribers Coming: EEC s i2010 European Info. Society program North America is a close third with 671K YE05 subscribers catching up fast No US national plan, but one aggressive carrier Source: R. Whitman, Corning, 2/06 11
The future Total relief of 100-fold last mile bottleneck between interoffice and access Traffic growth takes off again New applications appear Telecom industry revives DP industry accelerates Observe: The last big innovation (Web) was 12 years ago Interoffice bandwidth starvation resumes The all-optical network rises (partially) from the grave. GMPLS revives. Cheap bandwidth + simplification of usage helps alleviate the digital divide Monopoly power becomes a central issue (again) 12