A new era of connectivity: Improving Europe’s next FTTH deployments

Europe has been at the forefront of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) deployment for more than 15 years, and the accelerated advance of fibre-based broadband has created new opportunities for citizens from Portugal to Poland. FTTH networks have become a driver for the digital economy and a gateway to advanced services that span employment, education, entertainment and everything in between. But the race to deploy FTTH throughout Europe has not only created opportunities; it has also caused a series of challenges that have the potential to impede Europe’s next wave of fibre deployment, while threatening network reliability and longevity.

The greatest of these challenges can be traced to a series of early decisions service providers made as they hurried to roll out their early fibre networks. These decisions range from a heavy reliance on manual splicing to the use of low-quality connectivity products, and they span several infrastructure types and deployment environments. But the good news for service providers in Europe is that these issues can be corrected as they enter a new era of FTTH deployment.

Reducing manual fibre splicing

As service providers in Europe raced to deploy fibre, they often chose closures and terminals that relied on skilled technicians to perform manual splicing when connecting new subscribers. This common practice within aerial, underground and façade infrastructure not only adds time and cost to deployment; it also requires technicians to open fibre terminals to perform their work, which itself creates problems as it has resulted in many fibre closures throughout Europe that contain nests of fibre cabling that also add time and cost to network maintenance and service activation. The practice has also made it commonplace to find terminal boxes that have been left open and exposed to weather, damage and other risks.

Europe’s new era of fibre connectivity requires a connectivity approach that minimises the amount of manual fibre splicing it takes to activate new subscribers. Such an approach allows technicians to save valuable time during installation and maintenance, while protecting critical connections and improving the reliability of broadband services for subscribers.

Overcoming permitting challenges

Many countries in Europe have stringent regulations and requirements that can impact fibre deployment, particularly for underground infrastructure. To meet these requirements while streamlining their early FTTH rollouts, service providers either shared ducts and microducts with other utility providers or located fibre splice points far from the subscribers they were trying to reach. This has created several challenges, including cable damage, fibre runs that are longer than necessary, inflated serving group sizes and a shortage of test points deep in the network.

But there is a better approach to connectivity for underground infrastructure that significantly reduces the length of fibre runs, decreasing the likelihood of cable damage while making new activations fast and inexpensive. It also provides a series of deep access points that can be used to certify the FTTH network.

Cleaning up façade deployments

Façade deployments posed a unique challenge in the early days of FTTH deployment. In their rush to deploy fibre quickly, operators often chose oversized terminal boxes, which were affixed to buildings and often remained open. This not only impacts aesthetics; it also impedes maintenance and reduces network reliability.

For façade deployments, the right closure and fibre cabling solutions can preserve a building’s aesthetic while simplifying maintenance and improving resiliency.

Streamlining the central office

Europe’s central office facilities have evolved quickly with the rapid deployment of FTTH. This has created a unique set of challenges within these critical facilities, including “fibre spaghetti”, dangling connectors and orphaned cables. These issues can often be traced to a common root cause: the use of inadequate patch panels that are not designed to make configuration changes clear and simple for technicians.

For service providers that want to maximize labour efficiency, flexibility and uptime, there is a flexible approach to patch panel connectivity that keeps critical connections out of reach during day-to-day operations, while reducing the likelihood of cable-related errors and making routine configuration changes fast and easy.

Improving fibre’s future in Europe

As operators in Europe extend their fibre networks and grow their FTTH subscriber bases, they must carefully consider the connectivity solutions they choose and the practices they adopt. From the aerial, underground and façade infrastructure of the outside plant to the critical connectivity points in the central office, the choices operators make can impact network deployment time and costs, serviceability, reliability and longevity.

CommScope has recently completed a study of the connectivity challenges that have become common as Europe’s rapid deployment of FTTH continues. In it, operators will find several recommendations for infrastructure solutions and deployment practices that can improve their fibre network rollouts and usher in a new era of connectivity in Europe.

You can download the whitepaper here.