Deploying FttH in vast countries like the USA and Australia poses its own challenges compared with dense urban countries like the Netherlands.  Often citied issues are the lower densities of housing cited as the main reason why a shared fiber architecture is unavoidable, and  very low density rural areas which are deemed unaffordable.

The recently published architecture of the Australian FttH network suggests otherwise. More detailed data of real geographic distribution in the US states of Vermont and Minnesota (courtesy Tim Nulty) supports these doubts.

In Australia and in the USA  the vast majority of the population is concentrated in urban areas.

In Australia 67 % of the population lives in the top 50 urban areas, if you include the major rural areas you can reach 85 % of the addresses in 1,5 % of the land.

A different dataset as provided by the FCC (distance between addresses) shows the same pattern for the USA: 90 % of the population lives close to each other in separate geographical area's.

US census data of 2009 show that the top 350 "Metropolitan Statistical Areas" encompass almost 85 % of the population, quite similar to the Australian distribution.

Well, this data certainly does not point to any real problems with distances and length of fiber in FttH topologies, at least for the majority of the population.

But what about the other 15 %?

Tim Nulty has often pointed to the fact that homes in rural areas are also concentrated. Only a very few homes are really, really isolated. The concentration takes two forms.

First: a town centre, homes grouped together.

Secondly: homes strung along a road or a river bank.

As Tim says:

Vermont is the most "rural" state in the USA as measured by the % of the population that does NOT live in a "standard metropolitan statistical area".  SMSA's are defined by the Census Bureau and are 50,000 pop or over.  75% of Vermont's population of 620,000 does not live in any SMSA.    (Indeed, Vermont has only 1 SMSA--the metropolitan area of Burlington. There is one other "urban" area of 17,000 and two of 11,000.  Everything else is smaller).  This is the definition of "rural" used by the US Dept of Agricultures "Rural Development Administration".  

There are 240,000 households.  75% of that = 160,000.  There are approximately 12,500 miles of inhabited roads outside the SMSA.  That gives a household density of 12.8 per linear mile of inhabited road.  If one counts all premises (businesss, schools, institutions etc) this density would be close around 13.8.    

Apparently these numbers are typical of the rural areas of the entire eastern part of the USA--i.e. east of the Mississippi and .  Of course, in the larger, more urban states, a smaller % of the total population would live outside SMSA's those parts of Washington and Oregon States that are rural and lie west of the Coastal range.  But the non-SMSA areas, themselves, would have similar but slightly higher density characteristics to Vermont  (i.e. 14 - 17 HH/mi rather than 12 - 14).  A little over a 100 yards between homes......

The data strongly suggests that the cost of the FttH-local-loop in these semi-rural areas is not prohibitive at all.

The problem for any local initiative will be the backhaul from the local town centre to peering points. There will probably very little competition or only one supplier, giving them ample opportunity to squeeze the locals. Probably the best stimulus for local FttH in "rural" areas is a good affordable backhaul .

So yes, even in the USA it must be affordable to get over 90 % of the population on FttH and support the rest with wireless and satellite, like Australia.

As a proponent of evaluating FttH topologies (shared and point-to-point) on their path dependencies and option values I have been looking forward to see how the Australians would make their choices.

One of the factors that make their case interesting is the utility infrastructure approach. The Australian Government has decided that a country wide open FttH infrastructure is required and will be deployed.  Deploying FttH in vast countries like the USA and Australia poses its own challenges compared with dense urban countries like the Netherlands.  Often citied issues are the lower densities of housing so a shared fiber architecture must be unavoidable, and  very low density rural areas which are deemed unaffordable.

The recently published architecture of the Australian FttH network show an intelligent and interesting approach (courtesy Peter Ferris for explaining some details) . The first observation is that even in a vast country like Australia people live closely huddled on a small part of the land. 

67 % Of the population lives in the top 50 urban areas, if you include the major rural areas you can reach 85 % of the addresses in 1,5 % of the land. So it makes sense to provide 93 % of the addresses with FttH and the remaining with radio (5%) and satellite (2%).

For the 93% which will get FttH they have chosen for a surprising combination of options in their architecture. The next-best-thing to full point-to-point in my opinion, full with potential to support different kinds of technologies and future upgrades if and when needed.  

Let me focus on the interesting choices: overprovisioning in a point-to-point topology in the deepest part of the last mile, underprovisioning in the concentrated parts of the outside plant.

The basic building block of their architecture is a group of up to 200 addresses. A fiber local loop is deployed with 3 (!) fibers per address. In an aerial deployment 12 local drop fibre connectors (preterminated drop line, no splice needed) are made available on the poles per 4 addresses and used when and how required. The same approach is used for underground cabling. This setup will allow for layer 1 unbundling future expansion, support of point-to-point Ethernet to businesses, multiple ISP's to same address, support for 3G/wifi mobile broadband and so on.

All fibers for these 200 addresses concentrate in a Fiber Distribution Hub (FDH), a cabinet in the street or cleverly combined with other uses like a seat in the parc. In the FDH the connections are made to either a splitter (for PON) or a single fiber (point-to-point) in ducts leading toward higher layers of the network.  It is even foreseen to change the splitters for filters if WDM becomes financially viable.

Up to 16 FDH's are concentrated into a Fiber Serving Area Module (FSAM, max 3200 addresses).  The capacity in the concentration cabling initially deployed is enough to support PON as a technology to each home, plus some extra for businesses and other uses.  Some sort of redundancy is built in by an interesting "dual-loop" structure by geographical separate paths in the connection of FDH's to FSAM location. If needed the capacity to one or more FDH's can be increased by deploying more cables in that path.

The FSAM is a planning construct initially but it allows also for future expansion. The number of addresses is ideally suited to be served by a prefab active equipment cabinet (know as Controlled Environment Vaults, or APOP's in the Netherlands), if needed. 

(Controlled Environment Vault)

These CEV's bear a lot of resemblance to the prefab APOP's Reggefiber deploys outside city centres. They can be truckrolled to a given location, placed within a day.

(Reggefiber prefab APOP)

At the start FSAM's are just a passive concentration point for cabling to the Fibre Acces Node (FAN).  Again some redundancy is introduced by geographical different routes for the cabling to the FAN exchange / central office, maximum size 76,800 locations/adresses.

It makes a lot of sense for the geography with lots of suburbanity. The key is having space in the street for these FDH cabinets. Just install a lot of point-to-point fiber in the part where a lot of labor is required (you don't want to redo that ever) and allow for all kinds of upgrades , options for expansion, unbundling locations, active equipment deeper into the network, as you see fit in the future.

Smart guys, down under.

( This lenghty post is more or less the presentation I was planning to give at Fiberfete before the ashcloud ruined my intinerary. Instead of sheets I have created an essay on the subject. Please read on after the break, the good stuff is over there).

In my view 2010 will be designated as the year where we  passed from Megabit per second (Mbps) into the Gigabit per second (Gbps) society.  In every major market Gbps access for consumers is tested or delivered to the public. The prices are dropping fast because the hardware for FttH networks has made major jumps in price-performance.  For Ethernet ports a 1 Gbps port and a 100 Mbps port nowadays have the same cost.

For some people a Gigabit is unimaginable: what on earth could you possibly want to do with this abundance?

Their problem is that scarcity blocks your imagination, like a nomad in the desert searching for water. For someone living in the desert water is life. You nourish your camel or horse and hope your water supply will last until the next oasis. No other use of water comes to mind, of course not. 

For someone living near the Niagara Falls all kinds of new applications of water suddenly become possible:
- energy generation

- cooling

- entertainment (waterskiing, scuba diving, boating, sailing, swimming, waterglides,
fountains, rowing, beach life, surfing etc.)
- irrigation
- transport of goods

Abundance nourishes imagination. Like the dry seed waiting for water, imagination is the seed lying dormant within all of us, waiting for the opportunity to bloom. 

It is the same with broadband as with water.

Fortunately more and more people see the potential of abundance in communication to create an improved society, the Gigabit Society.