Costs of upgrading the residential telecommunications infrastructure to broadband

The paper presents an analysis of the investment costs associated with broadband upgrades in various residential areas in which there is an existing twisted pair infrastructure. Upgrade strategies based on a combination of optical fibre systems and digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies are examined. The analysis highlights the significant differences in investment levels expected in downtown, urban, suburban and rural areas for the ranges of DSL capacities from 2 Mbit/s to 52 Mbit/s. The paper reports work performed in the EURESCOM project P614, "Implementation Strategies for Advanced Access Networks". The methodology and tool initially developed by the RACE 2087/TITAN project and now under further development in the ACTS 226 OPTIMUM project has been applied in the techno-economic analysis.