Best Practices and Strategies for Broadband Deployment: Lessons learned from around the World

Background

This section presents the current status and trends concerning the development of broadband networks. According to Berkman Center for Internet and Society (2009) these networks offer the highest available speed, by using fixed line, fixed wireless, or mobile infrastructure. These networks are deployed in households and business places. Therefore they are mainly deployed at high population areas and business centres.

The emphasis concerning the development of these networks is on fixed Fibre To The Home (FTTH) solutions.

However, there are still operators adopting VDSL or VHDSL (Very High speed DSL) technology (ITU-T, 2004). Examples are Tele2 in Netherlands (Telecompaper, 2009) and Vodafone in Heilbronn, Germany (Telegeography, 2009). VDSL is a DSL technology providing faster data transmission over a single flat untwisted or twisted pair of copper wires. Therefore VDSL is capable of supporting high bandwidth applications such as High Definition Television (HDTV), as well as telephone services (such as Voice over IP) and general Internet access, over a single connection. VDSL is deployed over existing wiring used for POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) and lower-speed DSL connections. This standard was approved by ITU in November 2001. The second-generation of VDSL, namely VDSL2 (ITU-T G.993.2 approved in February 2006), supports bandwidth of up to 30 MHz and provides data rates exceeding 100 Mbit/s simultaneously in both the upstream and downstream directions. The maximum available bit rate is achieved at a range of about 300 meters. However, performance degrades as the loop attenuation increases. VDSL2 is relatively inexpensive solution, in case that the operator has already a fibre backhaul and ADSL2+ network. Table 1 compares ADSL, ADSL2+, VDSL1 and VDSL2.