Optical Fiber Embedded in Home: A New Strategy for Improving FTTH Deployment Process

2/17/2017, with the progress and development of human society, water, electricity and gas have become indispensable infrastructure for people’s lives. It is difficult to imagine how a house without water, electricity and other supporting facilities will be sold. At present, we are stepping into the digital era from the industrial era. The prosperity and development of digital applications are changing people’s way of life. However, the broadband infrastructure as the carrier of digital life has not kept up with it, and has not become the standard infrastructure supporting housing. The reason is that the laying of optical fibers needs to be re-constructed, which brings additional difficulties to operators and users, increases a large amount of money and time consumption, and ultimately seriously affects the digitization process.

Challenges of Operator FTTH Construction

At present, FTTH has become the mainstream mode for operators to build new broadband networks, but at the same time, operators are also generally facing the situation that traditional business is squeezed by OTT and business profits are declining. One of the common problems facing operators is the large investment in FTTH network construction and the long return cycle. According to industry statistics, the last mile of FTTH cost accounts for 10%-20% of the cost per household. The second problem is that the laying of the last kilometer of optical fiber is often confronted with property obstruction and user incompatibility, such as property deliberately delaying approval time, asking for price for self-interest or unreasonable requirements, or even wilfully destroying broadband facilities; users are unwilling to cooperate because wiring and punching will destroy decoration. The third problem comes from the technology. Thousands of buildings have different scenes, which makes it difficult and time-consuming to lay optical fibers. Some buildings are difficult to complete the laying and renovation of optical fibers due to historical reasons.

Solving the Problem of Optical Fiber Housekeeping with Two-pronged Approach

Real estate developers have long been accustomed to pipes and cables that provide services such as electricity, telephone and cable television for new buildings. The most typical model is the cooperation between developers and business providers. When building construction and renovation, developers provide pipelines to connect the building/building to existing public facilities outside the building red line. Generally speaking, there are two telephone pipelines, one cable TV pipeline and four power pipelines. On this basis, the cost of adding two more fibre optic pipes in the same channel is very small, and it can avoid the permission application, design, coordination and construction work for several weeks caused by re-laying the pipes.

At the same time, the government should set standards and require developers to provide optical fiber pipes or direct optical fiber pipes when building new and renovated houses. Indoor optical fiber pipes can also follow the wiring and location of electric power, telephone and cable TV pipes at the same time, greatly improving the speed of optical fiber placement and reducing optical fiber placement. Cost. Fiber optic household piping should follow the industry standard (TIA/ANSI), its bending radius, length, clearance and terminal location should match the technical needs, and be equipped with appropriate telecommunication cabinets according to the number of households.

Optical Fiber Embedded Household Policy has gradually become an industry standard

In recent years, more and more regions and countries have begun to implement the policy of optical fiber household access. In 2012, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China jointly promulgated the Code for Construction and Acceptance of Optical Fiber-to-Home Communication Facilities in Residential Areas and Residential Buildings, requiring residential construction units to synchronously construct communication pipelines in residential areas, communication covert pipes and covert wires in residential buildings, and to lay in-house optical fibers and reserve them in advance. A spare room. This has greatly accelerated the progress of China’s optical fiber deployment. In 2014 alone, China completed the FTTH construction of 50 million lines, which is expected to reach 80 million lines in 2015.

Many cities in the United States have also implemented optical fiber to the home, such as Loma Linda of California, which earlier implemented this requirement in its “Connected Communities Program” (LLCCP). Its City Council requires that “all new commercial and residential buildings (or old buildings renovated and renovated more than 50% of the total) in the city must be equipped with new network infrastructure to meet people’s communication needs”. Specific requirements include the placement of optical fiber pipelines in the process of real estate development, the establishment of community light distribution frame, in the main. The bedroom is equipped with data cabinet, optical fiber is connected to data cabinet and wiring rack, two Cat6 interfaces and a coaxial interface are installed in each room, and the design and materials of optical fiber network are managed by the unified standard of the city.

In May 2014, the European Union passed the DIRECTIVE 2014/61/EU Act, requiring the full implementation of the fiber-optic home-to-home policy in 2017: all applications for building permits submitted after December 31, 2016, whether new or renovated, must be equipped with high-speed broadband network infrastructure. Broadband-ready label is issued after completion and acceptance, and its network must be open to broadband service providers fairly and indiscriminately.

In addition, there are South Korea, Morocco, Indonesia, which has implemented the policy very early, Morocco, and Indonesia, which are actively promoting the policy. Many countries around the world are actively pursuing the home-to-home policy.

Despite the new requirements for developers, the co-construction with other pipelines has little incremental burden on developers. However, the role of embedded optical fiber in FTTH construction and regional digitization is very significant, especially in the areas where a large number of new buildings and renovations exist. In order to promote the process of FTTH deployment, accelerate the transformation of digitalization, and further promote macroeconomic development, we believe that optical fiber embedded households should become a new supporting facility for housing infrastructure in the digital era, and be promoted and implemented as a strategic requirement.