Triple-Play Service Deployment

Chapter 4: Troubleshooting the Copper Plant for IP Services
As IPTV deployments increase, operators are focusing on the
bandwidth that will be needed for triple-play IP television (IPTV),
both HDTV and standard definition television (SDTV). Major
European and North American service providers believe that
VDSL2 coupled with newer video compression technologies, such
as MPEG-4 AVC, will provide the necessary bandwidth to offer
triple-play services as well as Internet access and VoIP. For example,
a major European telco has committed €3 billion to a fiber to the
neighborhood deployment in fifty of the largest cities in Germany,
involving shortening loops by deploying remote DSLAMs closer to
end users. VDSL2 will be used to deliver triple-play services in the
last mile.The largest US service provider is also deploying a similar
VDSL-based FTTx triple-play network. Investments such as these
indicate that the future of the copper plant is still bright and that
the challenges of dealing with the installed copper plant will be
with us for decades to come.
But, these new DSL technologies are placing new demands on
copper pairs which were never specifically designed to deliver
triple-play services. Copper’s limitations, such as the potential for
attenuation and crosstalk problems, increase the challenge of
triple-play service delivery. As a result, providers delivering these
new bandwidth intensive services over copper face new and
difficult turn-up and troubleshooting challenges.
The Physical Challenges of Triple Play over Copper
The high data rates, and associated higher signal bandwidth used
to deliver broadband services such as IPTV, place far more
demands on the existing copper plant than plain old telephone
service (POTS). Use of a much wider frequency spectrum breaks
new ground unfamiliar to providers. Isolating the cause for packet
loss is often the most difficult part of the troubleshooting
challenge. Correlating physical impairments to issues seen at the
data layers—such as packet loss which in turn causes visual
impairments for video programs—requires multilayer analysis.
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