Challenges of future converged access and metro networks

Abstract

Steadily increasing customer demand for more and more bandwidth in excess of 100 Mbit/s per subscriber, new technical options and a strong competitive environment drive the evolution of today's telecommunication networks, particularly in the access network. The physical properties of fibers such as very low loss and almost unlimited bandwidth allow for high bit rate long distance transmission in future access networks compared to the conventional copper based access networks in place today. In future this is expected to lead to much larger areas which are served from one central office and to a significant reduction of central offices of today's infrastructure facilitating a converged metro-access architecture. One driver for this network consolidation is the need for significant operational expenditure (OpEx) savings which are expected due to reduction of active equipment and footprint. But also the changes from today's service oriented network design, where each is almost realized on a new platform, towards an open standardized multi-layer Next Generation Network where all services will be delivered over a common infrastructure will lead to significant challenges in the network infrastructure.