FTTX -Experiences and Strategies - Filling the pipe of the NGN

Starting in the 80ies and 90ies, fibre optic infrastructure has found its way in the telecom backbones and has been more and more used in the access network to connect large business accounts. Nowadays, many companies and governments in Europe, America and Asia are exploring the potentials of FTTx technologies for the consumer market. The discussions, on what specific decisions should be taken by whom and how high the risks are if a certain way is entered or not, often seem to have an emotional touch.

On the one hand side, no one - neither carrier, service provider nor government - wants to catapult himself into a future inconvenient situation by not recognizing innovative trends and by not taking the right investment decisions. On the other side, not every innovation is needed or has enough potential to fulfil the hopes as rapidly as wished - as proven by some UMTS frequency auctions.

Without existing or predicted killer applications, it is in general difficult to justify high investments into a new technology. It is a common fact that very high bandwidth consuming services do not yet really exist and that only a sum of simultaneously used services will "fill the pipes". Of course, the slowly arising HDTV is seen as a future high bandwidth consuming service. But future compression methods, competitive offers on alternative infrastructures or a lack of user interest might not justify a push towards FTTx.

Further aspects concerning bandwidth consuming video or TV services became evident in user inquiries or trials like the Dutch "Kenniswijk" programme: respecting legal rights of the content providers, price sensitivity of the users and profitability of the service.

A recent InfoCom report on IPTV offers has also shown that many TV services, e.g. within triple play offers by telecom carriers, are already realised via the existing copper infrastructure.

• Asia: Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea
• Europe: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway,Spain, Sweden, Switzerland,The Netherlands, UK
• North America & others:USA and some other best practise candidates

• How is the regulation context concerning FTTx infrastructures and services? How much do subsidy or innovation programmes by national/local authorities or incumbents influence the FTTx deployment?
• Which types of actors invest in FTTx infrastructure? Which are the different business models of the major actors?
• What technologies and infrastructure solutions are preferred in the different countries and which are the reasons?
• What kind of services are offered on FTTx infrastructures? Where are the exclusive or innovative services? What are the differences to the service portfolio based on other fixed broadband infrastructures?
• How much bandwidth do today' s services require? How will the bandwidth demand be in the near future? Which and where are the high bandwidth consuming killer applications?
• Which are alternative infrastructure solutions? Which is their today' s penetration and will they respond to future needs?
• What are the investments and subscriber forecasts? What are the profitability forecasts?

• Incumbents, alternative telcos and CaTV carrier: InfoCom�Ls report can be used as a benchmark tool and reference document for strategic planning such as identifying the opportunities and best practices for the improvement and development of new services; in addition, the report allows the identification of potential threats and the evaluation of possible alternatives to achieve future targets.
• Regulators: Evaluation of the impact on the overall telecom market with the introduction of these new applications & technologies (operator competition, new players arriving, etc.).
• Manufacturers and TV-content provider:Market overview as regards the current user demand and other benchmark aspects with regard to the most successful technologies in operation, the development of promising applications, technical limitations, etc.
• Investors and analysts:To understand the impact of these new technologies within the global market of ICT and what are the potential future scenarios in terms of users, revenues, etc.

Our expertise consists of our ability to deliver an integrated solution to telecommunications, IT & multimedia market knowledge.

Operators:

Belgacom, Botswana Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, KPN, Mobilkom Austria, Polkomtel, Swisscom, TDC, Tele2UTA, Telefonica, Ukranian Telecom, etc.

Regulator & Others:

Anacom, Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Communications Authority of Thailand, Enterprise Ireland, ETRI, European Commission, National Communications Authority of Hungary, The Boston Consulting Group, etc.