Sweden's Tele2 creates new deployment model for remote PHY

CABLE NEXT-GEN EUROPE DIGITAL SYMPOSIUM – Enhancing network capacity factors into most decisions driving remote PHY deployments, but Sweden's Tele2 has built a model that accounts for a much broader range of data and analytics to help justify when and where to perform those upgrades.

Tele2, Sweden's largest operator with a footprint spanning about 1.7 million homes, initially focused on deployments of remote PHY and a new distributed access architecture (DAA), based on current capacity demands and what would be needed to handle future, organic growth.

But the decision point and the business case determining where and when to go with remote PHY and DAA is a bit more complicated than that for Tele2. That's due in part to Sweden's large makeup of multiple dwelling units (MDUs) and a scenario that makes the MDU landlords, rather than the individual consumers, the primary customers and the source of network contracts, Rasmus Aveskog, chief architect and head of innovation at Tele2 Sverige AB, said here Tuesday during a keynote presentation at the Light Reading-hosted all-digital event.

Focusing solely on current and future network capacity demand "is not the whole picture," he said.

To justify and determine the speed and location of remote PHY rollouts, Tele2 also sought to factor in other drivers, such as the profitability of landlords, the effect on customer satisfaction, the state of competition in certain areas, and the potential to expand and grow Tele2's business services segment.

Those are among the key drivers that the company needs to determine how to best use and deploy its resources, Aveskog explained, noting that the goal was to roll all of that information up into a giant equation.

Tele2 took a data-driven approach centered on value, risk and opportunity, and a focus on the 22,000 or so landlord customers in Sweden. Some of the data applied to the overarching model is being derived from the company's relatively new network topology and network segmentation mapping system, which helps Tele2 get a firm grip on the performance and activity of network devices and individual service groups.

But it didn't stop there. The model also accounts for elements such as contract lengths with landlords, gross revenues, the number of homes covered that are getting broadband or a mix of broadband and pay-TV, and the aforementioned potential to serve area businesses. Tele2 also sought to assess the operational expense baselines that tie in transmission costs, the cost to maintain the network, and customer support costs. Risk components – such as potential calls to customer service and churn – are also woven in.

With everything rolled up, it establishes an equation and model that delivers the commercial value of the landlord customer and the underlying profitability, Aveskog said.

And when all of the data is crunched an analyzed, it gives the operator a sense of recommended moves by customer and by area – for example, to upgrade to remote PHY, go with a fiber-to-the-premises deployment, or stick with the status quo – and make predictions of the effect of each action.

Aveskog estimates that this analysis gives Tele2 a six to nine month horizon to adjust its strategy.

Looking ahead, Tele2 is moving ahead with a plan aimed at sourcing and processing data that can improve and enhance its modeling. Because some of the business data still needs to be accessed and implemented manually (and then attached and integrated with the network topology information), automating that process is the next step, Aveskog said.

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— Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor, Light Reading