By Brian Soloducha, P.Eng, Rogers Communications Inc
Cable Operators know how to build and operate high-quality Hybrid Fiber-Coax (HFC) networks for Residential and Business customers. Recent developments in the last few years have focused energies on new Passive Optical Networks (PON) for serving new customers in Greenfield builds with Fiber-to-the-Premise (FTTP) architectures and technologies. With network expansion initiatives in both the United States and Canada, Cable Operators need to be flexible with strategies for growing their networks and increasing revenues from new Commercial and Residential customers. This Technical Paper discusses a physical architecture for FTTP that will look familiar to those Cable Operators that have already adopted Distributed Access Architecture (DAA) for their HFC deployments. Starting with a reminder of legacy HFC architecture and critical Hubsite components, the paper then discusses legacy PON architecture and Hubsite components, focusing on key limitations that have previously prevented widespread FTTP deployments at Cable Operators. Topics under discussion will progress to recent developments that overcome these limitations. The paper will conclude by looking into the future at problems that are already foreseeable and that will need to be addressed in due time. This Technical Paper is targeted for an audience curious about starting (or restarting) an FTTP program, and for Cable Operators who have deployed DAA for HFC and are looking to leverage their investment towards PON architectures in Greenfield builds. For those Operators who have already deployed Remote OLTs, the later sections that are forward-looking may be of interest.