In the open access network model, the roles of the service provider and the network owner are separated, and the service providers get access to network and the end customers on fair and non-discriminatory conditions. This should be compared to the traditional vertically integrated business model where the service provider and the network operator are the same. A large number of open access networks have been deployed in Sweden over the last 10 years. In this paper we give an overview of such networks, draw conclusions from the Swedish experiences with open access, and outline the perspectives for future deployments both within and outside of Sweden.

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SUMMARYFiber access network architectures such as active optical networks (AONs) and passive optical networks (PONs) have been developed to support the growing bandwidth demand. Whereas particularly Swedish operators prefer AON, this may not be the case for operators in other countries. The choice depends on a combination of technical requirements, practical constraints, business models, and cost. Due to the increasing importance of reliable access to the network services, connection availability is becoming one of the most crucial issues for access networks, which should be reflected in the network owner's architecture decision. In many cases protection against failures is realized by adding backup resources. However, there is a trade off between the cost of protection and the level of service reliability since improving reliability performance by duplication of network resources (and capital expenditures CAPEX) may be too expensive. In this paper we present the evolution of fiber access networks and compare reliability performance in relation to investment and management cost for some representative cases. We consider both standard and novel architectures for deployment in both sparsely and densely populated areas. While some recent works focused on PON protection schemes with reduced CAPEX the current and future effort should be put on minimizing the operational expenditures (OPEX) during the access network lifetime. key words: optical fiber LAN, protection, reliability, capital expenditures (CAPEX), operational expenditures (OPEX), fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), passive optical network (PON), active optical network (AON)

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