Modelling accurate planning of PON networks to reduce initial investment in rural areas

Deploying FTTH in rural areas is not trivial due to high initial capital expenditures, which are caused by low density of end-users and lack of telecommunication infrastructure in rural areas. In this paper, we propose a specialized model devoted to rural FTTH planning, and we minimize initial investment cost by performing an accurate fibre network planning, which allows to obtain very realistic PON deployment. Therefore, we are able to achieve nearly least cost solution taking into account actual equipment pricing and real geographical coordinates. One of the main features of our model is that it considers multi-fibre blown cables, low-count optical splitters, and street-maps. We carried out tests considering various rural areas in Ireland, and with a single test scenario corresponding to an area covered by a cabinet. This indicates a common case when intermediate step consisting in migration from FTTC to FTTH occurs. Quantifying the cost of PON network deployment, we show that reductions above 25% can be achieved when low-count splitters (1×4, 1×8) are used compared to a centralized splitting using 1×16 splitters.