Telekom Malaysia - Huawei

Winners
The dual optical and cable platform led to a
significant decrease in Swisscom’s TCO, while helping
the operator maintain its competitiveness.
Such topology, while reducing investment in fiber
infrastructure, makes it difficult to provide open
access such as local loop unbundling (LLU) in a
fiber network.
Swisscom eventually chose P2P as the primary
mode for pure fiber access and aimed to provide
subscribers with 100Mbps ultra-broadband
services. In this way, it could provide home users
with both HDTV and ultra-broadband access,
thereby attracting users through diverse ultrabroadband
services. For enterprise users, P2P would
ensure reliability, bandwidth, and differentiated
quality of service (QoS).
Outside the 20 largest cities, Swisscom
would utilize existing copper to employ xDSL
technologies in order to provide subscribers with
digital TV and high-speed Internet. Following a
thorough evaluation, Swisscom picked VDSL2
technology over ADSL2+, as VDSL2 is a more
future-proof technology that provides higher
bandwidth to deliver triple-play services. For users
who want to stay on their ADSL and ADSL2+
packages, they don’t need to change CPEs. If users
want to increase bandwidth and switch to VDSL2,
they can simply replace the ADSL-CPE with
VDSL2-CPE. As a result, ARPU increases while
customers’ diversified needs are satisfied. In short,
Swisscom decided to deploy VDSL2 technology
to deliver wide broadband access coverage, thereby
providing nationwide subscribers with universal
broadband services.
Tackling technical challenges
Swisscom encountered a series of challenges
while deploying the VDSL2 network.
In order to realize the full benefits of VDSL2
technology, the distance between the VDSL2-
DSLAM and the user had to be shortened.
Consequently, Swisscom deployed VDSL2 from
existing central offices and from new remote
locations (FTTC). The target length for copper
was limited to a few hundred meters to ensure
high bandwidth for end users. The FTTC solution
required that outdoor cabinets meet various
outdoor conditions, and be easy to deploy, install
and power. Moreover, the cabinets had to allow
engineers to perform daily maintenance and
management remotely instead of on site.
Moreover, since outdoor cabinets could only
cover users within a few hundred meters, only
medium-capacity DSLAM equipment was needed.
To save O&M costs, large-capacity DSLAM
equipment at central offices and medium-capacity
DSLAM equipment would share one hardware
platform and version of software. This would bring
great advantages in testing software, managing
spare parts and keeping a consistent service level.
Another challenge came from the boards
involved. Two different VDSL2 boards – the
VDSL2-over-POTS board and the VDSL2-over-
ISDN board – were needed since numerous ISDN
and POTS services coexisted in Switzerland. This
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DEC 2011