Demand aggregation for fibre optical networks in the business market: A case study of the Netherlands

Since 2000, many different fibre initiatives for the business market have been set up in the Netherlands. Demand aggregation often played a vast role in these initiatives. In our research we conducted one broad study and twenty in-depth case studies of these initiatives. It shows that the initiatives can be taxonomized in four categories. (1) Local demand aggregation focuses on a broad set of customers in a single city. (2) Regional demand aggregation tries to connect several local initiatives and / or perform a new demand aggregation in a region. (3) Sectoral demand aggregation is targeted at a single well-organized sector (e.g. education, healthcare). Finally, (4) application demand aggregation establishes a fibre optic network for a specific application. When examining demand aggregation, major differences are found between the customer owned and the carrier owned models. The first give end users more control over the networks, but tend to have higher prices and very long contract durations. The challenge for the future is to realize an interconnected set of broadband networks with a national scale and a broad scope.