FTTH Council Europe, February 2016

FTTH deployment in Ireland: Eir’s

experiences

David Renehan

Dave Bolsdon

Jonas Verstuyft

Speakers

2

Dave Bolsdon

GE

Jonas Verstuyft

FiberPlanIT

David Renehan

Eir

Introduction to Ireland and Eir

David Renehan

3

Ireland

4

Some facts about Ireland

70,273 km2

Atlantic Ocean

Predominant first language: English

Population - 4.6 M

3.3 M sheep

Sports

Most popular sport - GAA

FIFA ranking: 31st

Rugby world ranking: 4th

5

Who is Eir?

Formerly known as Eircom – rebranded in 2015

Incumbent telecoms operator in Ireland

Mobile operator with a 20% penetration in the Irish market

Both wholesaler and retailer of copper and fibre based broadband

6

Market situation in Ireland

Ireland is a relatively open market

Competition

Virgin Media: HFC

Formally UPC but rebranded in late 2015

Siro: FTTH

Recently launched - joint Venture between Vodafone & ESB (Electricity Supply Board)

BT: fibre

Predominantly enterprise customers

Enet: fibre

MANs fibre in 90 urban areas nationally

7

Where is the competition

Large cities – 5 large cities (~ 1million premises)

Virgin Media – HFC

Siro – FTTH planned for 4 large cities (no plans for Dublin yet)

Middle Ireland – roughly 800 towns and villages (~ 600K premises)

Virgin Media – HFC in 20 large towns

Siro – FTTH launched in 3 towns and 47 more planned in the next two years – objective

to pass 400K premises

Rural Ireland - (~ 760K premises) No competition

Government launching National Broadband Plan (NBP) to provide 30Mbps+ to all rural

premises

8

Irish National Broadband Plan

Objectives

First 50% of population: 70-100+ Mbps

Next 20-35% of population: >40 Mbps

100% of population: >30 Mbps

Public funds: 175M EUR (~50% subvention)

Rural Coverage

610,000 households

150,000 business

9

NGA

NBP

NGA program Eir

FTTC: 1.3M premises passed by Q2 2016

NGA plans

FTTx: 300k urban premises outside existing FTTC program

FTTH: 300k commercially viable rural premises

FTTH: 66 Middle Ireland towns (12 towns completed to date)

10

5 Large cities Middle Ireland towns Rural Ireland

1.6 million premises 760k premises

VDSL

vectored

GPON

FTTH

1.3 million H/Ps by Q2 2016

600K+ FTTH+FTTx planned – rollout starts Q1/Q2 2016

Best practice: Evaluating architectures &

technologies

Jonas Verstuyft

11

FTTH, FTTB, FTTdp,…

Need?

Available?

Influencers?

Budget?

12

Impacting FTTH architecture

Case by case

Ribbon development

MDUs vs SDUs

Population density

…

13

Split decision

Types

Cascaded

Centralized

OLT port fill ratio

Activation percentage?

OPEX!

14

Not a split second decision

Use-case

Ireland

1660 homes

FTTH Design Rules

Urban

Rural

15

Impact on cost of different architecture types

16

Mix RulesAll Urban

3,070,432.57 EUR4,669,703.55 EUR

Example unit costs used

Deployment methods at Eir

Jonas Verstuyft

17

SDUs

95% Single Dwelling Units (SDUs)

75% of Ireland’s SDU have easy cable access.

aerial or duct

18

Advantage existing duct infrastructure

Extensive underground ducting

in urban settlements

Lower Civil costs

Lower FTTH homes passed

costs than the European

average

19

Sample town

Cavan

14,100 Buildings

~82KM roads

~94KM ducting

Mixed deployment

Aerial – Underground – Existing

Lower costs

Increase complexity

Design

Deployment

Aerial leads31%

Ducted leads44%

Buried leads25%

20

Using GIS based planning and design system

Improve accuracy

Vs pen & paper, Excel, Google Satellite, CAD tools,…

GIS

Homes (FTTH)

Routes

Existing vs new

Underground vs aerial

21

New trenching

High cost

Rural vs Urban

Different technologies

Local factors

Surface types

Legislation

22

Crossings

23

1 line on the map

Existing infrastructure

Poles

Own poles?

Lease?

New poles?

Existing Ducts

Existing Manholes

Blockages?

Spare capacity?

24

Best practice: Importance of input data

James Wheatley

25

Importance of data quality

Result of analysis dependent upon quality

of input data used

If re-using existing infrastructure then need

to utilise existing network data Is that data complete and accurate?

Data quality becomes critical during low

level design

Low data quality will result in poor designs and

increased construction costs

26

Investment in good quality data saves on overall project costs

Network inventory as the data source

GIS-based network inventory solutions

provide natural repository for data

Particularly for expansion or over-build of

existing networks where re-using existing

infrastructure

In greenfield deployments using network

inventory as data repository from the outset

provides benefits when network build is

complete

Support for other process such as service

assurance and service fulfilment

27

How to improve data quality

Desktop survey

Use satellite imagery, street level imagery & LiDAR to

improve input data for first pass low level design

Field survey

Take initial low level design out into field to verify and modify

Eliminate risk of changes to design occurring during

construction – often invalidates optimisation resulting in cost

overruns

Eliminate paper from data round trip to streamline process

Manage process with work management solution

28

Why publically available data might not be enough?

29

What Google shows What’s there now

Other data field surveys can collect

Address verification

Sub-divided land parcels

Verify deployment methods

Aerial, underground or on-building

Pole availability\quality

Accessibility of manholes and poles

Duct quality and availability

Identify and record potential health &

safety issues

30

Ultimately only field survey can identify all design risks

Best practice: Area classification

Jonas Verstuyft

31

Project success influencing factors

Revenue

Take rate

Competition

Demographics

Marketing

ARPU

Costs

Architecture

Local restrictions?

Deployment methods

Local restrictions?

Unit costs

Population density

32

Identify commercially viable areas

Cost of roll-out

GIS data

Automation tools

Mistakes allowed?

ROI classification

Input data!

Unit cost information

Trial?

Marketing data

33

Case study: Balance between Cost and Revenue

34

Scenario 1: Maximal Coverage“Deploy in cheapest areas (high density) until

reaching 8M EUR deploy cost”

#HP = 17.150 (= 48,8%)

Cost per HP = 465 EUR

#HC (Y10) = 5.840 (= 34% of HP)

Total Revenu = 8,9M EUR

Scenario 2: Maximal ROI

“Deploy in areas with highest ROI until

reaching 8M EUR deploy cost”

#HP = 14.400 (= 41,0%)

Cost per HP = 553 EUR

#HC (Y10) = 6.560 (= 45% of HP)

Total Revenu = 10,2M EUR

Same investment

More Coverage Less Coverage

Less Customers More Customers

Less Revenue +13,5% More Revenue

Areas with competition

Go for FTTH

Better offer

Impact on adoption rates

Still attractive

Overbuild

Time to market!

Design automation

Advantage existing conduits/poles

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Rural and Urban deployment at Eir

David Renehan

36

Rural broadband in Eir

Two years ago eir carried out detailed analysis on it’s rural network (mostly aerial cable) to determine what

was the most cost effective and scalable technology to deliver rural broadband nationally across a rural

landscape that was made up predominantly of ribbon development housing (houses built alone the roads

and not in hamlets).

FTTH/GPON was the technology of choice ahead of FTTC/FTTN/FTTB/FTT-dp or LTE.

After careful analysis eir have chosen a cascaded two stage splitter architecture for rural FTTH (1st stage

splitter = 1:8 2nd stage splitter = 1:4).

eir set up a team to evaluate existing overhead fibre work practices to reduce costs per KM.

eir chose a All-Dielectric Self-Supporting (ADSS) fibre cable as the best choice for aerial cascaded splitter

FTTH delivery and also the ADSS cable had the added advantage of reducing the number of OH/UG transitions

at electrical crossings.

Primary

Splitter

1:8

new fibre

OLTOptical

Line

Terminal

ODFOptical

Distribution

Frame

exchange

Secondary

Splitter/FDP

1:4Home Home

37

Rural broadband in Eir: Trial

In 2014 eir built its first trial rural FTTH network passing over 150

homes as a proof of concept to determine:

The new access fibre work practices worked in the live network

ADSS fibre cable was suitable for eir’s splitters/splicing & DP closures.

Planning and GEO tools could record and manage the new rural FTTH

architecture.

This was a huge success and proved useful to both eir and the rural

communities as to how FTTH could change their lives

In mid 2015 eir built a second trial rural FTTH network passing over

120 homes to fine tune the outcomes from the first rural trial:

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How Eir accurately costs urban FTTH/GPON

Eir first trialed FTTH in two urban exchanges in 2008:

These two urban FTTH trials used a distributed 1:32 splitter architecture.

The trial had a total of 1500 active FTTH customers and passes 10K homes.

Lessons learned from NGA rollout to date:

Eir rolled out fibre to almost all its urban copper cabinets over a 3-4 year period.

This large scale fibre rollout drove huge changes in underground fibre installation work practices and the

introduction of wide scale sub-ducting in the urban NGA network. We now have a proven cost model for:

Cost of installation of sub-ducting per metre, clearing blockages etc.

Cost of splicing per closure (different size cables etc.).

39

OLTOptical

Line

Terminal

ODFOptical

Distribution

Frame

Splitter1:32

Aggregation

joint 1 x 96F to

6 or 12F

FDPFibre

Distribution

Point

exchange

distribution network drop

Home

feeder network

existing

existing NGA fibre

New fibre

How Eir accurately costs urban FTTH/GPON

Using planning tools to accurately cost future FTTH projects .

Using eir’s FTTH planning tool and GEO analysis tools it is now possible to take the

learned costs and accurately produce a details BOM per new FTTH planned area.

These tools can run various scenarios to evaluate what are the best FTTH rules to

apply to design the most efficient splitter/homes passed model and reduce

infrastructure costs.

40

Identifying commercially viable FTTH rural areas

Eir has spent the past few years analysing both urban and rural

access infrastructure.

Using GEO tools, Eir have mapped every premises in Ireland and

identified whether they are urban or rural and what exchange they

are served from:

Is the premises served from an NGA enabled exchange?

Is the exchange fibre enabled?

Distance from exchange?

Exchange density?

Total length and type of existing cable infrastructure?41

Identifying commercially viable FTTH rural areas

Using automated FTTH design simulators, GEO tools and an in

house algorithm it was possible to derive the cost H/P per dwelling

using various rules e.g. Cost per exchange area?

Identify most cost effective routes per exchange?

Identify most cost effective routes nationally?

Launch from fibre enabled exchanges only?

Etc.

From the above information it is now possible to calculate a detailed

BOM for any rural FTTH route and classify it as commercially viable

or not?

42

Something to remember?

Learn from trials and earlier roll-outs

Get accurate view on difficulties and costs

Involvement of government in rural broadband

Use tools for accurate cost estimations

Save costs by reusing infrastructure

Importance of data quality

43

FTTH Council Europe, February 2016

Thank you for your attention!

Any questions?