What are Telcos to do with their copper plant?

 
Recently we have seen major players in the local telecoms market advertising Fiber to the home (FTTH) or Fiber to the Node (FTTN). Engineers will tell you that FTTX is ultimately the best fixed access technology available today supporting GPON, EPON etc and as such is "future proof". But what are operators to do with their legacy copper plant? The answer is simple. Sweat that asset as long as possible, even against a backdrop of impending Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) regulations.

 On the Cable end they have DOCSIS 3.1 which allows 10 Gbps per network node downstream and 1 Gbps upstream which, despite the shared-bandwidth nature of their networks will enable cable operators to remain extremely competitive. On the Telco side, you have VDSL2, which allow telcos to deliver 100 Mbps services over copper assuming copper infrastructure was previously redesigned to have shorter loop lengths as shown below.


New technology being tested/implemented in Telcos is G. Fast which was tested recently by Cable and Wireless Panama. Download speeds were as high as 500 Mbps existing copper fixed lines. With this technology operators with significant copper plant can "sweat those assets" all things being equal. Obviously, operators have to take this on a case by case basis as in some instances (competitive pressure, quality of existing copper plant, etc.) it may just make good business sense to go the FTTH route. However, note that it doesn't stop here as on the horizon is 5 Gigabit broadband (See bandwidth comparison below). So think carefully as you may not want to wreck that copper plant just yet.

Adapted from Huawei