INDUSTRY FOCUS
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fibre to the home
Today, broadband connectivity is one of the
top requirements in any home. From making a
phone call, browsing social media or watching
the latest television series in the comfort of your
home, we all need to be connected in some or
other way. Smartphones are an important part
of our lives and smart televisions are becoming a
reality, whilst tablets are used for work, play and
even home schooling. All of these devices need
bandwidth to function properly but unfortunately,
connecting all of these on separate networks can
become extremely expensive.
Fibre to the home offers a one package solution
to this conundrum. Having one strand of fibre
providing bandwidth speeds of up to 1Gbps for
home user’s allows one to turn their home into
a smart home with all connectivity to phones,
televisions,
computers
and
security
systems
running of a single network. Fibre to the home
provides essential connection to the outside
world. There are various aspects to consider
before rolling out broadband fibre deployment.
Some of the most important are outlined below:
developers or even the Homeowners Association.
Investing in such a deployment is a very costly
exercise and therefore the scale and geographical
concentration will play a major role in the initiative.
Mapping out the relationship of these stakeholders
and their roles and responsibilities is critical to a
successful deployment of the network.
Once the investor has been identified it is
important to understand the financial model
in order to make this a long term successful
deployment, which is not only beneficial to
investors but also ensures that the residents or
tenants are satisfied.
Key questions in these financial models are:
1. Who pays for the network deployment?
2. Who owns the deployed infrastructure?
3. Who earns revenues from the deployment and
from which income stream?
Models are fairly simple when there is only a
single party investing, but can become quite
complex if more than one party is involved.
After the commercial terms have been agreed
upon, the next phase will be to finalise the
technical planning. There is a number of solution
modeling ideas to consider.
Who takes the initiative for
building and/or investing in a
broadband access network?
How is fibre deployed?
Various players within the system can take
advantages as well as challenges. As a physical
the initiative including service providers (these
include mobile network providers, internet service
providers and operating companies, which is a
managed services company who overlooks all
connectivity services within the estate/suburb),
The deployment of fibre into a suburb/estate
can occur in various ways and each has its
cable needs to be reticulated to every home
inside a suburb/estate, it can be quite a labour
intensive and costly exercise. However, advances
in fibre technology have streamlined this process
to ensure minimal disruption to the tenants/