NTCA's The New Edge » FTTx

Researchers Set Record for 100 Terabits per Second via Fiber

Jesse Ward — Mon, 02 May 2011 21:04:02 +0000

Two separate research groups have set a world record by sending more than 100 terabits of data per second through a single optical fiber. To give you some perspective, that’s enough to deliver three solid months of HD video or the contents of 250 double-sided Blu-ray discs.

Clearly this is far beyond today’s commercial data needs. Tim Strong of Telegeography Research notes that total capacity between New York and Washington D.C., one of the world’s busiest routes, is currently a few terabits per second; but Strong also points out that traffic has been growing at about 50% a year for the last few years, and with new, bandwidth-hungry video-streaming services, network engineers are searching for ways to expand the capacity of our existing fiber investment.

The New Scientist has the details on these breakthrough innovations:

Today’s fibre optics use several tricks to enhance bandwidth. Like the radio band, the optical spectrum can be sliced into many distinct channels that can simultaneously carry information at different frequencies. The laser light is pulsed on and off rapidly, with each pulse further sliced up into different polarities, amplitudes and phases of light, each of which contains a bit of information. The trick is to pack all these signals together in one fibre so that they hit the receiver as one pulse without interference.

At the Optical Fiber Communications Conference in Los Angeles last month, Dayou Qian, also of NEC, reported a total data-sending rate of 101.7 terabits per second through 165 kilometres of fibre. He did this by squeezing light pulses from 370 separate lasers into the pulse received by the receiver. Each laser emitted its own narrow sliver of the infrared spectrum, and each contained several polarities, phases and amplitudes of light waves to code each packet of information.

At the same conference, Jun Sakaguchi of Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in Tokyo also reported reaching the 100-terabit benchmark, this time using a different method. Instead of using a fibre with only one light-guiding core, as happens now, Sakaguchi’s team developed a fibre with seven. Each core carried 15.6 terabits per second, yielding a total of 109 terabits per second. “We introduced a new dimension, spatial multiplication, to increasing transmission capacity,” Sakaguchi says.

Multi-core fibres are complex to make, as is amplifying signals for long-distance transmission in either technique. For this reason, Wang thinks the first application of 100-terabit transmission will be inside the giant data centres that power Google, Facebook and Amazon.

For more, see this post at the New Scientist.

Frontier Improves Network Performance with Optical Upgrades

Jesse Ward — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 15:11:01 +0000

On the heels of its recent takeover of Verizon’s rural wireline assets in 14 states, Frontier Communications announced last week that it is deploying new packet-optical transport technology.

To date, approximately 345 reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM) systems have been integrated into Frontier’s networks to improve network flexibility and manageability. By mid-year Frontier plans to add more than 6,500 miles of ROADM network. This new technology is based upon Tellabs optical solutions.

ROADM allows optical network operators to remotely switch traffic at the wavelength layer. Frontier reports these overall ROADM benefits:

the ability to turn up bandwidth for multiple services without the need for intensive long-term forecasts or pre-planning of service types;
more intelligence and automated signaling, plus faster circuit provisioning and activation time; and
efficient use of personnel, since technicians are needed only at origin and destination points to install line cards – all other provisioning is automatic.

The flexible optical network capabilities are important as network capacity continues to grow and as demand for Frontier’s higher capacity residential and business services increases. Frontier’s optical network can now deliver more than 30 different types of residential or business services such as Ethernet (fiber to the office or cell site), session Internet protocol (SIP) trunking, multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) and dedicated Internet access services (DIA).

For more, see this release.

5.8 Million North American Homes Now Have Fiber

Jesse Ward — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:00:31 +0000

As of March of this year, North America boasts approximately 18.2 million homes passed with fiber to the home (FTTH) connections, this according to a new study commissioned by the Fiber to the Home Council.

“Homes passed,” is a confusing term, however, that doesn’t always mean that service is available. As a result, the study found that all-fiber networks are now available for 17 million or 16% of homes in North America, with 5.8 million homes actually subscribing to television, high-speed Internet and/or phone service over these networks.

A large portion of the FTTH deployment thus far has been due to Verizon’s $23 billion dollar investment in overbuilding its wireline service in many areas. In fact, Verizon boasted 4.3 million of the 5.8 million homes connected as of March 30, 2010.

But the study identified another 750 other providers of FTTH in North America which represents over 1.4 million total connections, with most of those being small, independent telephone companies that are replacing their copper lines with end-to-end fiber in order to ensure their future competitiveness as broadband providers.

Further, the FTTH Council reports that more than 65% of small, independent telephone companies that have not upgraded to FTTH said they would very likely do so in the future, with another 11% saying they were somewhat likely. More than 85% of those that have already deployed FTTH said they would be adding more direct fiber connections going forward.

“With Verizon approaching the end of its initial FiOS expansion, we are seeing a lot of small local exchange carriers in the U.S. who are ready to pick up the slack, along with some cable TV companies deploying RFoG and some larger Canadian companies going FTTH,” said Joe Savage, President of the FTTH Council, non-profit organization of more than 200 companies and organizations dedicated to expanding the deployment of all-fiber, next-generation networks.

“To continue to meet the rapidly growing bandwidth requirements for emerging applications and services, these companies know that they have to ‘future-proof’ their networks by running fiber all the way to the premises – and that’s why we are seeing all this activity,” he added

Download the April 2010 FTTH Council survey report commissioned by RVA LLC: ”Fiber-to-the-Home: North American Market Update.”

Fiber Deployment on Rise in Rural America

Jesse Ward — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:10:07 +0000

NTCA’s 2009 Broadband/Internet Availability Survey found that 73% of those respondents with a fiber deployment strategy intend to offer fiber to the node to more than 75% of their customers by year-end 2011, while 55% plan to offer fiber to the home to at least half of their customers over the same time frame, up from 26% last year.

Rural areas are seeing significant gains in broadband speeds, primarily due to the increased fiber availability in their communities, according to the survey.

Fifty-three percent of respondents indicated their customers can now receive broadband service of between 3Mbps-6 Mbps (up from 46% last year), and 39% can receive service in excess of 6 Mbps—an increase from just 25% one year ago. Survey respondents indicated an increase in take rates for the higher broadband speed tiers as well.

Other highlights:

75% of respondents now offer a video play, up from 68% last year.
10% of respondents currently offer voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) service, up slightly from 6% last year.

NTCA sent the 2009 survey electronically to all telco members in its e-mail database and 156 companies (31%) responded.

View the report.

5.3 Million North American Fiber Customers

Jesse Ward — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:42:15 +0000

The number of North American fiber to the home (FTTH) subscribers now stands at more than 5.3 million, as deployers of end-to-end fiber networks continue to add more than 1.5 million customers a year, according to a study released last week by the FTTH Council.

Five years after their deployment began in earnest, FTTH networks now are available to 15% of homes in North America. In addition, the study found that the overall take rate — the percentage of those offered FTTH service who decide to subscribe — increased for the seventh straight six-month period, with the vast majority of providers experiencing take rates greater than 50%.

Verizon leads the charge with its FiOS service, serving roughly 3.1 million FiOS Internet and 2.5 million FiOS TV customers. The FTTH industry in North America also includes hundreds of smaller telephone companies and other network providers, municipalities, planned residential communities and cable television companies.

“The march to all-fiber networks is showing no sign of letting up in the United States and Canada,” said Joe Savage, president of the FTTH Council. “Given the growing sophistication and bandwidth requirements of online and video applications, as well as the high satisfaction that current FTTH subscribers are expressing about their fiber service, the growing consumer demand for end-to-end fiber is now a fact of life and something that our members are working hard to satisfy.”

View the release.