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• There is a 1-to-32 split ratio for fiber.
• One distribution box is used per 24 homes passed.
• A delivery truck covers an average distance of 621 miles
and carries 89.5 miles of cable.
• Construction excavations are 3.2 feet wide and of variable
depth and length; 20 gallons of diesel fuel are needed to
excavate 10,000 cubic feet. Eighty-five percent of holes
are made in grass, the other 15 percent in concrete (street
and sidewalks).
• Cable ducts are HDPE with an external diameter of 2.5
inches and internal diameter of 2 inches.
• Wooden poles are used for aerial fiber, with 10 new poles
required per mile.
• For plowed direct buried deployment, the width of the
trench is assumed to be 2 feet (60 cm). The cable plowing
machine has a 225-horsepower diesel engine.
• The multifiber services terminal handhole enclosures are
made of of PVC and weigh about 17.7 kg (40 pounds)
each. Average distance between two manholes is 1 km
(0.6 mile).
• For horizontal drilling deployments, the drilling machine
is powered by a 261-horsepower diesel engine.
• ONTs are used for 10 hours per day and draw 12 watts.
They spend 14 hours in standby “sleeping” mode at 2
watts.
• OLTs draw 0.6 watt per user, 24 hours a day.
• At the end of life, 50 percent of the cable’s HDPE is incinerated
and 50 percent landfilled. All of the glass fiber
is incinerated.
• Initial take rates are 30 percent. Two different scenarios
assume, respectively, zero growth and 25 percent annual
growth in the number of subscribers in the first several
years after buildout of the network. (The latter assumption
is more realistic, and probably underestimates actual
growth rates.)
• Ten percent of workers in fiber-to-the-home communities
telecommute an average of three more days per week.
(Note: this amount is assumed to be constant over time,
though evidence exists that telecommuting increases the
longer one is a fiber subscriber.)
• Commuters’ vehicles get an average of 24.5 miles a gallon
(the data comes from the US Department of Transportation’s
“Summary of Fuel Economy Performance,”
March 2004).
• Ninety-seven percent of US cars are gasoline-powered, 3
percent are diesel, and a negligible number use alternative
fuels (data from R.L. Polk & Co.).
• Temperature control in the telecommuter’s home, during
telecommuting hours, requires 532.3 kilowatt-hours
per square meter of floor space per year.
The complete report is at www.FTTHCouncil.org.
solidation.” Google, one of the largest
cloud computing providers, says its data
centers use about half as much electricity
as a typical data center does.
Finally, cloud computing allows data
centers to be located in places where sustainable
energy is available and inexpensive.
Microsoft, Yahoo, Ask.com, Intuit
Inc. and Sabey Corp. have all recently
bought land in central Washington state
to build large data centers where they
can access hydropower from dams. And
it’s been reported that several companies,
including Morgan Stanley and Google,
are planning to build new floating data
centers powered by tidal energy.
and communications technology into
the generation, delivery and consumption
of electricity – could reduce US
energy consumption by between 56
and 203 billion kWh in 2030, yielding
a reduction of between 1.2 percent and
4.3 percent in projected retail electricity
sales. EPRI also says a smart grid
can make it easier to integrate renewable
resources such as solar and wind power
into the system and to deploy plug-in
hybrid electric vehicles.
The key to a smart grid is a broadband
network enabling two-way communica-
Conserving Electricity
As Michael Render notes, tying energysaving
devices via fiber to the electrical
grid represent another environmentally
positive opportunity for FTTH. “Smart
metering, with a way to tie back information
to the consumer, has a demonstrated
conservation effect and also saves
money for consumers,” he says.
The Electric Power Research Institute
(EPRI) estimates that a “smart
grid” – which incorporates information
Electric Power Research Institute’s concept of how a home might participate in a smart grid to allow
dynamic energy management.
34 | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | www.broadbandproperties.com | January/February 2009