Techno-economic comparison of current and next generation long reach optical access networks

Fiber To The Home (FTTH) is an infrastructure that provides a giant boost to the progress of technology driven applications, such as triple play, along with the required software and equipment for their implementation. It consists of an investment for the years to come that speeds development in more than one technological area and promotes overall growth. Nevertheless in a context of continuous effort for more cost effective and energy saving solutions, the need to invest in a structure that is free from excessive expenditure and at the same time is future-proof has become imperative. Deriving of this need, new technological solutions have begun to emerge and the tool for their financial evaluation could be proven of important value for optical network operators. This paper presents a techno-economic comparison of two different passive FTTH network technologies/architectures. The cases considered in this study are namely: i) metro ring in combination with gigabit passive optical networks (GPON) technology on the access part and ii) a new converged access-metro wavelength division multiplexing / time division multiplexing (WDM/TDM) passive optical network (PON) called: scalable advanced ring-based passive dense access network architecture (SARDANA). This work includes a quantitative modeling of the outside plant cost as well as of the active equipment cost of the two architectures. It is shown that the green solution of the PONs in combination with the expected energy savings guarantees a cost effective solution. Furthermore it is shown that the more elaborate design of the WDM/TDM PON provides a cost reduction of about 15% for densely populated areas and even greater for scarcely ones along with an ensured flexibility.