Residential Estate Industry Journal | Page 91

INDUSTRY FOCUS PAGE 91 owners of the homes inside the suburb/estate. OLT (Optical Line Terminal), that will be needed Services generally offered by a fibre deployment for the fibre deployment and will also form the are high-speed broadband, security, TV content, central point of reticulation and connection to VoD and IP Telephony. The aim is to ensure that service providers. The size of this space will be a rich service portfolio is offered to maximise the determined by the size of the estate/suburb as value to the end-user. These additional services en-connection points and service offerings will may include: affect the space. This space can also be owned • In-buiding and “open” wi-fi services and managed by a network operator, the HOA or • Utility meter console service provider and there is various cost saving • Amenities booking console modules to be implemented via an off-site POP. • Building access management • Management of utilities Inside the estate/suburb you can have two types • Home security of reticulation, either a loop/ring or in a star • LAN services between tenants etc. configuration or a combination of both. This network reticulation, for connecting premises, is There are three key areas in which estate generally divided into three categories. managers could theoretically benefit from these Feeder: The name defines this route. It forms the deployments: main backbone of the network and as such feeds Financial: Customers are willing to pay more the network, and usually consists of a larger in terms of rent or purchase price in order to fibre count cable in comparison to the other two access fibre connected properties. This may also types. This is also seen as the core feed. help sell homes faster because of the increased Distribution: This layer passes each and every demand. home, and as such, distributes the fibre across Customer satisfaction: Tenants and clients are the estate/suburb. You would typically split the happier with their homes and the service provided. fibre between the feeder and the distribution Building layer. Efficiency: Homeowners will see considerable savings on utility bills for common Drop: This is the final layer and consists of a parts small count fibre (usually only a fibre strand) that as well as better security for less degradation and improved monitoring. will connect to every home. Customer satisfaction is not just related to Types of deployment the direct benefits of broadband fibre but also There are three major ways of deploying fibre includes indirect benefits like: within an estate/suburb. •Better security Manual Trenching: This is the most labour •Lower collective service bills due to more intensive method as it involves digging trenches efficient utility management manually acro ss the estate/suburb. Ducts will •Lower individual bills when metering/ then be placed within these trenches. After management is in place. closing and reinstating the top layer, a fibre will be installed via blowing/floating the fibre into Once the above has been finalised, detailed the duct. This method of installation entails planning can then be conducted. The process the creation of an “air bubble” inside the duct of installing a high-speed real-state development and then “floating” the cable in this air bubble. begins with a PoP (Point of Presence) Friction is then eliminated and the cable can This area has many names in the industry but all be pushed through the duct. An advantage of refer to a single room or container central on the manual trenching is that it is a safe method of estate/suburb that is accessible for maintenance, deploying fibre. yet secure against third party tampering. This Micro trenching: Municipal legislature in some space will house the intelligent devices and the provinces prohibits the use of micro trenching