Mar/Apr 19 - ChannelVision Magazine

coax and copper networks in favor of fiber if they sense the need for it.” And for once in this survey, there were no real regional differences here. “In all areas of the world, significantly more respondents said their companies are replacing or overbuilding legacy networks in ‘brownfield’ situ- ations than said they are deploying fiber networks in new-builds in ‘green- field’ situations,” con- tinued Breznick. Much the same could be said about the desire to reduce reli- ance on amplifiers in the network. In ad- dition to the quarter of respondents that said their company aims to go all the way to a full FTTH network eventually, about 40 percent cited plans to extend fiber lines to either an N+0 (fiber- optic node plus zero amplifier) or N+1 architecture, down from the N+4 and N+5 architectures that are typically still found among cable operators today, showed the study. Network operators also are seeking to au- tomate their systems and processes as they install more fiber and start virtualizing their networks, said Breznick. Plans to automate either service fulfillment, selected system diagnostics, device discovery or self-healing were each cited by about half of respondents. “The goals seem to be to improve early de- tection and correction of network problems and improve the delivery of both new and existing services,” stated Breznick. Fiber Impacts Of course, a number of challenges will have to be addressed before network opera- tors can fully capitalize on the services deliv- ered across their new fiber systems, showed the Incognito study, which queried respon- dents about challenges across deployment, migration, scaling up and activation and management. Chief among the concerns is the impact new fiber-delivered services will have on existing OSS systems. A full half of respondents view the lega- cy OSS stack as a major obstacle to rolling out new fiber-based services. Another third (34 percent) characterized their existing Zettabytes Biggest Challenges in Delivering Business Services over New Fiber Systems Upgrading network platforms (DHCP, DNS, IPAM, etc.) to support new network 34% Meeting ROI expectations 19% Integrating fiber customers onto legacy OSS 17% Delivering superior customer experience 15% Maintaining service to non-fiber-based customers 14% Other 1% Source: Incognito; Heavy Reading Fiber Deployment Approaches Replacing or overbuilding legacy networks in brownfield situations 48% Deploying fiber networks for greenfield situations 23% Capping legacy networks for existing subscribers and using fiber for new subscribers 17% Capping legacy networks for existing services and using fiber to deliver new services 10% Other 2% Source: Incognito; Heavy Reading 44 Channel Vision | March - April, 2019