Evaluation of the Techno-Economic Viability of Point-to-Point Dark Fiber Access Infrastructure in Europe

Abstract

Abstract-Upgrading telecommunications access networks requires large investments in deploying new optical infrastructure, especially in terms of construction works and costs to reach the end-user, which seem only affordable in densely populated areas. By evaluating a cost-benefit analysis for the deployment of a Point-to-Point dark fiber infrastructure, this paper investigates how the economic risk of dark fiber deployment can be estimated and/or reduced in different settings. By applying the model on specific scenarios, which differ in area type, demand uptake and revenue scheme, it is concluded that the business case is only viable in a dense urban area with an aggressive takeup. In the other scenarios, the paper investigates possibilities and opportunities to improve the business case and hence decrease the investment risk. Examples of this improvement include prolonging the planning horizon, ensuring revenue from the start of the project by performing demand aggregation or examining where public funds might help.

Next-Generation Optical Access Seamless Evolution: Concluding Results of the European FP7 Project OASE

“…The case can be improved, however, by a number of factors, which may help explain the fact that several deployments have been made in an economically sustainable way [4,19]: 1) demand aggregation [29], i.e., presubscription of interested customers to the FTTH offer, leading to an assured substantial revenue stream for the PIP from the start of the project, therefore heavily reducing the investment risk; 2) duct reuse, drastically reducing costs; 3) fiber lease outside the broadband access, e.g., mobile backhauling, point-to-point connections for large businesses, banks and public institutions, and transport for operators, leading to additional revenues (which can be significant, as Stokab reported it can add up to 50% of its total revenue [30]); and 4) longer payback term [31], as also considered for other network infrastructures such as electricity or water, roads or railways. For example, in [32], it is calculated that for the considered reference scenario, the business case of the PIP in an urban area only becomes feasible if the payback term is increased from 20 to 40 years.…”

Techno-economic analysis of NGNs implementation in rural areas based on the geographic and socio-demographic characteristics of Serbia

“…4 presents the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the whole infrastructure (modeled as the summation of both CAPEX and OPEX and SP costs [11,12]). As expected infrastructure cost i.e.…”

“…Namely, the revenues needed per subscriber/per month can be calculated based on the known TCO as [11,12]:…”

Techno-Economic Analysis of Active Optical Network Migration Toward Next-Generation Optical Access

“…Fig. 3 shows an example of the penetration curves [17] [18]. In order to concentrate on the network migration study, we assume that the entire PIP infrastructure of AON PtP or AS is already available from the Year 0, taking into …”