FTTX Optical Fiber Network Construction Solution
Meta disctription: Optical fiber network has large investment and high cost. This article describes how to realize low-cost FTTx network construction.
In order to build a low-cost FTTX network, end-to-end low-cost delivery must be achieved. The cost reduction of a single node is of little significance to the whole.
Analyze the business flow of FTTx network construction, starting from business project establishment, scheme planning, HLD outline design, site survey, detailed design LLD, implementation delivery, acceptance test, and final customer handover, a total of eight steps, analyze possible cost reduction solutions one by one .
Cost reduction for commercial projects
In the traditional way, FTTx network construction takes the administrative area as the network construction granularity, and the scope is large.
Whether it is urban or rural, commercial area, residential area or industrial area, regardless of the existing network coverage in the region and the competition in the broadband market, the construction is carried out on an indiscriminate scale. This extensive method brings risks to the development of users after the network is delivered. Very large, new users can develop quickly in some regions, while the return on investment in some regions may not be expected.
Through refined business planning, the granularity of network construction is refined to communities or communities, and analysis is carried out one by one to identify high-value areas for priority construction, generate returns as soon as possible, roll out investment, and gradually drive network construction in low- and medium-value areas.
According to the progress of regional economic development, the FTTx network will be built in a planned and phased manner. Which areas are high value?
In principle, the density and number of potential users, the number of existing network pipeline and pole resources that can be used, and the scores of all regions based on these two dimensions, the top ranked users have more access users, and the region can benefit more old resources, ensuring that The average single-line cost of network construction is low.
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Program planning to reduce costs
According to different geographical and geological conditions, different levels of safety and reliability, etc., many technical solutions for network construction have been developed, but the implementation costs are very different. By balancing network construction requirements, construction specifications and costs, cost reduction is achieved.
Under normal circumstances, multiple light splitting can reduce the amount of trunk optical cables; fully utilize the old and reduce civil construction;
For new construction, overhead is preferred to reduce pipeline schemes; for pipeline construction, micro-grooved and micro-pipes are preferred to reduce large-scale excavation for traditional pipeline construction;
Overhead construction reduces traditional hanging wire solutions, giving priority to self-supporting optical cables such as figure 8 and ADSS; for laying cables in pipes, air blowing is preferred to reduce manual cable laying; construction technology reduces complex fiber extraction operations; Reduce traditional installation and complex fiber fusion operations. In the project, implementing these successful practices according to local conditions will help reduce the overall network cost.
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Network design to reduce costs
Optical fiber network design includes routing design, optical device capacity design, optical fiber core and device port allocation; design methods include manual CAD drawings and GIS automatic planning tools.
Due to CAD drawings, in addition to manual drawing, which is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and experienced, there is still no ideal spatial data analysis solution, which brings great difficulties to subsequent data docking and reuse. Therefore, GIS automatic planning tools are used as much as possible. High accuracy, good cost control, and fast design output.
There are many mature automatic design tools in the industry to realize the shortest path planning of optical fiber routing, improve the port utilization of optical components, and reduce redundant material configuration. In the process of network design, it is necessary to reasonably plan the length distribution of the fiber optic cable and the entry section of the feeder and distribution section, and the feeder and distribution section should be short.
Although it can reduce the initial investment of the project, it will bring great difficulties to the later development of users; the optical cables of each user’s home segment are scattered and independently laid, which is time-consuming, chaotic, and difficult to maintain, resulting in a high overall cost.
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On-site survey to reduce costs
The site survey includes the geographic/traffic environment of the target construction area, the existing pipelines, whether the pole resources are available, whether there is enough space for the pipe holes, and the load-bearing status of the poles;
For new sites, etc., survey engineers can provide paperless feedback of survey data, photos and videos through the APP, avoiding the traditional manual sorting of massive information and outputting survey reports;
In addition, non-technical factors have a greater impact on the acquisition of the right of way, so try to be responsible for the customer or subcontract to a local professional team to control the overall cost.
Implement delivery to reduce costs
In the current network construction and implementation process, there are generally the following pain points:
1) The problem/change management process is long and inefficient. Communication is done by paper letter or Email, writing, translation, and stamping, which requires a lot of investment and low communication efficiency;
2) Conflict between shift schedule and attendance, engineers are on the station early, it is difficult to punch in, the attendance record is missing, and personnel management is difficult;
3) Multi-scenario acceptance is complex, concealed projects, a lot of process data, large on-site workload, distributed in multiple areas, difficult EHS and quality control management, and high risk;
4) Manually organize massive data in multiple scenarios and multiple reports, which is difficult to collect and slow to report output;
According to the successful practice of advanced operators, these management problems can be well solved by building an information-based integrated delivery management platform + mobile APP:
1) Real-time feedback of problems/changes, discussions, closures,
Changed the habit of customers, supervisors, integrators and subcontractors to use and manage paper letters and emails to deal with problems, saving letter sending by 30%, shortening processing time, and improving communication quality and efficiency
2) Taking the construction area as a unit, GPS accurate positioning, automatic punching in and out of the site, accurate configuration of personnel and construction area, visual location, convenient personnel management and scheduling, and improved personnel efficiency
3) Engineers use APP to receive work tasks every day, feedback construction progress, upload video and photo evidence, and key node construction quality evidence, through subcontractors, integrators, supervisors and customers 4-level approval, remote quality monitoring, control construction quality, Reduce the repeated management of the station, shorten the acceptance cycle. The acceptance report is automatically collected and generated, reducing the time and investment in document production.
4) Custom report application, one-click generation, regular generation and push project daily report, weekly report, monthly report, etc., reduce manual data collection, statistical analysis and report production time, save administrative staff investment, and provide timely data support for the management team.
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Acceptance testing reduces costs
Acceptance tests include end-to-end tests from ODF to FAT, as well as segmented tests; the test contents include connectivity test, OTDR test and optical power test, and the coverage ranges from 10~20% random test to 100% full port coverage. Operator network specifications, under normal circumstances, it is recommended to start the 100% port connectivity test immediately after the segmented construction is completed; in the final acceptance test, only about 10% of the port OTDR sampling test is performed, and the auxiliary 100% port test optical power is sufficient.
In addition, there are single-channel portable and multi-port integrated deployment types in the OTDR industry. If operators need 100% port coverage for OTDR testing, the deployment of multi-port integrated test equipment is a priority.
Seven, customer handover to reduce costs
The customer handover stage includes the sorting of new network resources and the entry of customer asset management. Through planning and design, it directly communicates with customer asset management, and realizes data connection through online interfaces or offline files, avoiding a large number of purely manual input and repeated verification and confirmation.
concluding remarks
This paper expounds the idea of FTTx low-cost network construction from a macro level. The actual project implementation must be based on the project itself, comprehensively consider the needs of customers and maintenance habits, and implement according to local conditions, in order to achieve good results.
