Impact of emerging switching-transmission cost tradeoffs on future telecommunications network architectures

A study conducted to better understand the impact of declining transmission costs on the design of future fiber-based telecommunications network architectures is described. The study consists of quantifying the costs of switches, trunk and loop plant, building, and outside plant enclosures in order to determine the most economical number of switching nodes in the study areas based on the current equipment and land/building prices as well as the expected prices in the 1995 time frame. The results of this study show that the network architectures with fewer but larger switching nodes accompanied by back hauling of traffic via fiber optics and large multiplexers/concentrators offer significant savings potential in rural/suburban areas and low-to-moderate savings in urban areas as compared to architectures with many smaller switching nodes. In a broadband network environment, the results are shown to be valid for small penetrations of broadband services (less than 10%) and small broadband call bandwidths (equal to or less than 45 Mb/s)