Planning construction works, obtaining planning permissions and keeping the costs in focus – just one detail of the network carrier’s management load during a rollout. Ronny Priemer, Product Manager at albis-elcon, is convinced that there is another way: The PSD 0800 way, the most recent development in the remote feeding product family.
The federal government is planning to provide data transmission speeds of at least 50 Mbit/s to all households by 2018. In fact, many telco operators rely increasingly on fibre optic technology for expansion. Is this the right approach?
A fast Internet access is the most important prerequisite for participation in social life and also for future viability of the German industry. However, the technology develops faster than calculated by the federal government. That is the reason why the customers need a fast broadband access today and not in 2018.
From an economic perspective it is much more difficult to realize the fibre optic rollout in rural areas than in urban areas: The laying of the fibre cables over long distances is much more expansive, as well as bringing power to active components, maintaining backup batteries – and all of that with a lower customer density. This situation endangers the success of many rollout projects.
How can the PSD 0800 help in this situation?
With our remote powering system we already offer a solution, which significantly reduces the costs and the effort of fibre optic rollouts by supplying power via existing copper cables from a central distribution point to an active site. The laying of cables and the operation of a power point on site can be dropped; The same applies for the costs of backup batteries and their maintenance.
The PSD 0800 goes even further: The copper pairs used for the remote power feeding of active network components can now simultaneously transmit data. By this means all copper wires are available for data transfer. Particularly efficient is the connection of DSLAMs that can be linked to a central network node (backhaul) via xDSL methods. In these cases the high bandwidth can be provided without the laying of fibre optic cables. The result is an additional cost optimization.
The network operators utilise an existing infrastructure, speeding up the rollout considerably and keeping their efforts manageable.
How does the device perform in practice?
The PSD 0800 is designed for asynchronous DSL methods such as ADSL2 or VDSL2. Each device connects up to eight copper pairs. Combined with the RPS1600 system it provides a remote feeding output of about 120 Watts via xDSL cables. Two PSD 0800 devices employing VDSL2 methods can deliver up to 1 Gbit/s. The combination can be extended due to a flexible design.
Which application scenarios are most profitable for the network operators?
We enable network operators to expand their xDSL DSLAMs cost-effectively and quickly to new customer clusters, without any excavation works – the network coverage is expanded, the customer base grows. Furthermore, the distance between existing customers and the distribution point is reduced which leads to higher xDSL bandwidths. The PSD 0800 approach gives the network operators a unique opportunity to expand to rural areas at a minimum cost and yet offer new products to existing customers.
The advantages are very obvious: no construction works for the laying of cables, no additional contracts with local electricity suppliers, no maintenance of batteries and yet more bandwidth on existing copper infrastructure and additional customers.