Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

Thu Feb 7 19:21:07 UTC 2013

In a greenfield build, cost difference for plant between PON and active
will be negligible for field-based splitters, non-existent for CO-based
splitters.

If the company already has some fiber in the ground, then depending on
where it is might drastically reduce build costs to use field-based
splitters and PON.

On the CO-side electronics, however... I think it's safe to say that you
can do GPON under $100/port. AE is probably going to run close to
$300/port. That's a pretty big cost difference, and if it were me I'd be
looking pretty hard at a PON deployment for the majority of the customers
along with a certain amount of fiber left over for those who need special
services.

On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 12:39 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Masataka Ohta" <mohta at necom830.hpcl.titech.ac.jp>
>
> > Scott Helms wrote:
> > > Now, in general for greenfield builds I'd agree except for
> > > PON, which is in many cases cheaper than an Ethernet build.
> >
> > As PON require considerably longer drop cable from a splitters
> > to 4 or 8 subscribers, it can not be cheaper than Ethernet,
> > unless subscriber density is very high.
>
> Oh, ghod; we're not gonna go here, again, are we?
>
> Yes, a PON physical build can be somewhat cheaper, because it multiplexes
> your trunk cabling from 1pr per circuit to as many as 16-32pr per circuit
> on the trunk, allowing you to spec smaller cables.
>
> It does, however, limit you to being able to run PON capable L1 protocols
> over it, which may have *system*-cost implications over the life of the
> plant.  But yes, the initial install *may* be a bit cheaper (depending
> on the tradeoff cost of the splitters vs the larger count fiber and
> the reduced size of patching facilities, and the relative cost of the
> access multiplexers, and...
>
> Hey, wait!  How did I end up on Scott's side?  :-)
>
> Cheers,
> -- jra
> --
> Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink
> jra at baylink.com
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>