Introduced in 2023, the Open Access Committee has several objectives, including promoting the idea of Open Access and the wholesale fibre business model, stimulating and encouraging wholesale-oriented regulation and discussing and exchanging experience and best practices. To deliver on its mission and based on the know-how of its member companies, the Committee touches upon several fields, including the regulatory framework for wholesale operators, the technical aspects of Open Access, IT solutions for network operators, promotion and education, and sales and marketing of Open Access-based fibre services.

You can expect a variety of new contents and resources generating from these discussions, that will soon become beneficial to the fibre community at large.

For those who are not familiar with the concept of Open Access, here are five main advantages of adopting this business model while deploying FTTH networks, as identified by the working group:

  1. Open Access is a model that allows for the deployment and operation of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) networks in a cost-efficient way.  Building one infrastructure that is accessible to all service providers is in fact very cost-efficient, and has a significant impact on national coverage and market value. This cost-efficiency results from the fact that the same infrastructure is shared by all service providers, reducing the need for multiple infrastructures and saving on deployment and maintenance costs.
  2. The wholesale model can be very agile in administration, as there is no customer care. This means that service providers can focus on delivering services, while wholesale operators handle infrastructure maintenance and management.
  3. Service providers benefit from extensive coverage of the open access network without upfront investment, which makes it easier for them to provide services to customers without having to invest in expensive infrastructure.
  4. End-users benefit from a variety of services provided by diverse operators over the open access network. This means that customers have access to more choices in terms of services, pricing, and quality.
  5. Open Access drives competition of services in a very simple and transparent way. The wholesale operator does not compete with service providers, and service providers have equal terms and conditions of access. This creates equal opportunities for all service providers, promoting a more competitive and dynamic market.

Green Home Solution for Sustainability Targets

Member company: Huawei
Country or geographical scope: Global
Company type: Vendor/Reseller
Product/service category involved: ONT for FTTX

Abstract

Copper Migration to FTTx is already the consensus of telecom industry, now as the latest solution, FTTR (Fiber To The Room) extends the fiber to each room and allows users to enjoy stable gigabit connections and seamless roaming throughout the house, furthermore, it can also bring significant power saving and emission reduction value to the end users, indirectly to the operator, we call it green home solution. Based on Huawei practice, we found out each FTTR ONT uses only 0.37 kWh per day and saves 38.5 kWh every year comparing to traditional ONT plus repeaters, that is, the green and environment-friendly design enables users to enjoy better network experience with 20% less power consumption. In 2020, Huawei FTTR ONTs (OptiXstar series) are in service in more than 40 million households worldwide, saving over 1.5 billion kWh of electricity and reducing CO2 emissions by more than 730,000 tons, equivalent to planting more than 30 million trees.


Context

High-speed broadband service applications continue to emerge, and innovative services such as ultra-high-definition online video, online education, and telecommuting place higher and higher requirements on network bandwidth, latency, and jitter, driving users' demand for broadband packages to move upward,and further lead to the accelerated development of fiber-optic broadband networks. However, a large-scale survey found that limited by the network defects of the home information network, the high-bandwidth package service capabilities provided by the operators have not been fully utilized, and there is a situation of "1000MB home access is easy, but 100MB room access is difficult".

Solutions

In order to solve the problem of home network, the industry has proposed a new generation of home networking technology based on optical fiber - FTTR (Fiber to the Room). The FTTR all-optical Wi-Fi solution directly extends the optical fiber to each room, which can achieve more than gigabit coverage in the whole house. It is the key to building a high-quality home information infrastructure and indicates the development direction of gigabit home networking.

Results

Compared to conventional fixed broadband access technologies, full-fiber-based FTTR internet access is based on the innovative technologies that enable consume less energy and reduce the dependence on non-renewable resources like copper to achieve the reduction of carbon footprint target. Based on the passive nature of PON network architecture, fiber-based network enables to save energy consumption up to 30% than the traditional copper-based network cable. In addition, because of physical features of fiber cable, such as more durable and less susceptible to harsh environmental conditions as well as lightweight and compact in size (the size of fiber cable is only 15% of traditional copper cable), there is no need to replace the existing indoor optical fiber cable when upgrading the network. A full-fiber network can save mineral resource use and waste, reducing climate and environmental risks.

Last but not least, with FTTR, the master optical modem of each line integrates the functions of optical modem and WIFI router to reduce the number of electronic devices in use whilst saving energy consumption by 50%. The annual energy consumption saving of a typical master optical modem can reach 105 KWh per year. In addition, the power consumption of panel type slave modem is also ultra-low, barely 1 KWh of electricity for 5 days. Each slave modem can save 38 KWh per year, reducing 30% of power consumption than traditional modem.

Conclusions

Copper Migration to FTTx is already the consensus of telecom industry, now as the latest solution, FTTR (Fiber To The Room) extends the fiber to each room and allows users to enjoy stable gigabit connections and seamless roaming throughout the house, furthermore, it can also bring significant power saving and emission reduction value to the end users, indirectly to the operator, we call it green home solution. Based on Huawei practice, we found out each FTTR ONT uses only 0.37 kWh per day and saves 38.5 kWh every year comparing to traditional ONT plus repeaters, that is, the green and environment-friendly design enables users to enjoy better network experience with 20% less power consumption. In 2020, Huawei FTTR ONTs (OptiXstar series) are in service in more than 40 million households worldwide, saving over 1.5 billion kWh of electricity and reducing CO2 emissions by more than 730,000 tons, equivalent to planting more than 30 million trees.

Further reading 

Huawei OptiXstar ONT and FTTR Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FVc9RvwtMk

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