A joint European demonstration of fibre in the loop: RACE projects R1030 ACCESS and R2014 FIRST

The RACE project ACCESS had the main goal of defining a fibre based Customer Access Connection (CAC) for residential and small business users which can be deployed cost effectively from the mid´nineties. The project started in 1988 with the assumption that users initially would require 622 Mbit/s of bandwidth provided by one fibre between the exchange and each user. It was redirected towards a double star passive optical network concept with the assumption that initial service requirement is TV distribution and teleservices up to 2 Mbit/s. It concluded in 1992 by giving recommendations for CAC implementations and many of these are now adopted in large scale implementations. The FIRST project is using recommendations and technologies developed in ACCESS and elsewhere and applying them in a field trial. The practical system application will give important information about technologies and system requirements vital for the economical deployment of optical CACs. Issues include standardised 2Mbit/s interface to the exchange, management system requirements, reliability, operation and maintenance, digital and analogue TV transmission and life cycle cost