4G Kills the Copper Plant

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paolo.franzoi 12/5/2012 | 5:17:38 PM

re: 4G Kills the Copper Plant

e2mbcorp,

 

This whole thread is about POTS not video or broadband.  But there are many ethernet and HDLC based DSL variants that do not use ATM.  You completely miss the challenge of copying a cable architecture.  The copper plant can not have the bandwidth of a cable plant, especially in these circumstances.  The SNR is not good enough.

seven

 

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paolo.franzoi 12/5/2012 | 5:17:36 PM

re: 4G Kills the Copper Plant

e2mbcorp,

First off, you are wrong about a whole bunch of the lines which are connected to street cabinets with DLCs and remote DSLAMs.

The US architecture basically has 12Kft loops for POTS and you can go put whatever you want for electronics on them, those loops are still limited by the frequency and power carrying capability of the wires.  There is a limit for power transmitted by the FCC to not interfere with other services.  If you look at a rate versus reach curve, you will see a dramatic drop off at the longer distances.  That is because the copper plant acts like a low pass filter that starts dramatically attenuating the high end of the frequency spectrum.  DSL chipsets pack about as many bits per system using OFDM (which the modern VDSL and ADSL variants use) as can be managed.

One of the big misunderstandings of the US copper plant is its oversubscription.  For example, you likely have 4 pairs terminating at the NID on the side of your house.  These do not go all the way back to the CO (if you are CO fed).  What happens is there are 2 OutSide Plant crossconnects and there are more like 1.2 pairs per dwelling in the aggregate.  This allows phone companies to give extra lines to those who pay for them, but not overbuild (and a 20% take rate of second lines is a traditional metric - probably down now from that).

Let's use Telco TV using IP video as an example of what you are talking about.  U-verse and even older IP video topologies use Switched Digital Video with IGMP (differnent systems use different IGMP variants) to control channel changes.  This allows these systems to select what channels go down what wires, because they are limited.  What has happened with U-verse is that they are now locating the DSL lines around 2.5Kft from the home to get more bandwidth out of the copper pairs (again take a look at a rate versus reach chart for VDSL2).  Older services used longer reach so had considerably less bandwidth per pair.

I have seen many recommendations to take over the entire copper plant which has a massive amount of regulatory issues.  You can not decide as a phone company to NOT offer tariffed services.  Because of that, there are actual new installs of horrible things like 4 wire leased line services as well as really old stuff like dry pairs.  So, any service you create has to live within the deployment restrictions of the copper plant as it is today.  Which DSL is the best at dragging every bit per second out of the pairs as can be done.  Many of the things that people talk about (the Assia folks and Vectoring) do not double the bandwidth per pair.  They talk about optimizing to get very close to the Nyquist limit.

 

seven

 

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e2mbcorp 12/5/2012 | 5:17:36 PM

re: 4G Kills the Copper Plant

Hey Seven,

Thanks for input...extremely valuable.

 

JG

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joset01 12/5/2012 | 5:17:30 PM

re: 4G Kills the Copper Plant

So what requirements for copper-replacement 4G or fiber broadband service levels, if any, would you want to see from FCC?

Or should it be left entirely to AT&T and Verizon?

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paolo.franzoi 12/5/2012 | 5:17:29 PM

re: 4G Kills the Copper Plant

"So what requirements for copper-replacement 4G or fiber broadband service levels, if any, would you want to see from FCC?

Or should it be left entirely to AT&T and Verizon?"

The requirement for everyone to receive phone service for the rate cap should not be removed.  How it is delivered should be up to the carrier.  The requirements should not change, just the way it is done.

In terms of broadband, I think this should be a COLR/USF service.  My opinion is that this should be delivered any way desired with an escalating minimum bandwidth over time.  I think the only question is whether a OTT video solution should be universal.  Again, I don't really care how as long it is done.

seven

 

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joset01 12/5/2012 | 5:16:40 PM

re: 4G Kills the Copper Plant

Hal Singer, managing director and principal of Navigant Economics, is among those calling for widespread deregulation of COLR rules for operators.See this CIO magazine article for more.

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