TECHNOLOGY 16 | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | www.broadbandproperties.com | AUGUST 2006 T he battle for the residential cus- tomer has started to heat up as the economy cools. ere are and will be a number of dif- ferent technologies trying to secure a growing customer base in this economic environment. Optical networks, hybrid-fiber- coax (HFC) and digital subscriber line (DSL) are the three major technologies being deployed to deliver the triple play …voice, video and high-speed data. But which of these technologies is best po- sitioned to deliver these services today and into even the near-term future? is paper analyzes the technical ability of different broadband access solutions to deliver voice, video and data services; it addresses the following: 1. Residential bandwidth growth (traffic modeling) 2. ree key access technologies versus residential bandwidth demand • HFC • DSL • PON In this paper, I do not discuss point-to- point (active) fiber networks specifically. But bandwidth supplied is similar to that of the PON (passive optical net- works) I describe. Residential Bandwidth Growth For this analysis, we created a traffic model to predict the bandwidth needs of the residential subscriber out to 2012. e method used to calculate the resi- dential bandwidth needs was based on two factors: 1. Bandwidth per application 2. Number of digital streams Bandwidth per application – changes in the type and number of applica- tions people will use over the Internet – is clearly an important factor that will drive residential bandwidth require- ments. Applications such as Web pages, video, music, software downloads and pictures will drive the need for greater bandwidth. Digital photos, for exam- ple, had an average file size of 44 Kb in 2003. With the widespread use of 5+ megapixel digital cameras, this type of file size alone has gone up to 1 to 5 MB per picture. Many consumers would send 10 MB image files if they had the bandwidth to do so. Video will be an important applica- tion for the residential subscriber. Stan- dard television (SDTV) and high-defi- nition television (HDTV) all require video compression to reduce the size of the data stream so they can be deployed over an access infrastructure. Some of the standards used to deliver digital tele- vision are: • MPEG2 • MPEG4 • ITU-T rec. H.263 • ITU-T rec. H.264/AVC • Window Media 9 Series Video Codec Motion Pictures Expert Group (MPEG) and the ITU-T’s recommendation H.263 are the standards used for deliv- ery of digital video. Windows Media 9 is a compression method used by Mi- crosoft. All these methods use different compression techniques to reduce the size of the video stream. Compression technologies enable standard digital TV (SDTV) to be compressed to 4 Mbps, and with improvements in technology (MPEG4) this could possibly get re- duced to 2 Mbps. HDTV can be deliv- ered at 10-16 Mbps today. With MPEG4 technology improvements, this may be reduced to 6-8 Mbps in the future. Digital pictures and video are just two of the many applications that are driving the need for more residential bandwidth. Also, as these applications get bigger, bandwidth needs for the residential user will need to increase to Fiber, Coax or DSL? Meeting Customer Demand for Bandwidth Only fiber will deliver the kinds of content customers will crave in a few years By David R. Kozischek ■ Corning Cable Systems Digital video recorders, or DVRs, create an interesting challenge to adding up the digital streams per household. For example, someone can be watching one channel and recording another one at the same time. In this case, two digital streams of video are being sent to the subscriber at the same time.
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technology
16 | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | www.broadbandproperties.com | AUGUST 2006
The battle for the residential cus-tomer has started to heat up as the economy cools. There are and will be a number of dif-
ferent technologies trying to secure a growing customer base in this economic environment.
Optical networks, hybrid-fiber-coax (HFC) and digital subscriber line (DSL) are the three major technologies being deployed to deliver the triple play …voice, video and high-speed data. But which of these technologies is best po-sitioned to deliver these services today and into even the near-term future? This paper analyzes the technical ability of different broadband access solutions to deliver voice, video and data services; it addresses the following: 1. Residential bandwidth growth (traffic modeling)2. Three key access technologies versus residential bandwidth demand• HFC• DSL• PON
In this paper, I do not discuss point-to-point (active) fiber networks specifically. But bandwidth supplied is similar to that of the PON (passive optical net-works) I describe.
Residential Bandwidth GrowthFor this analysis, we created a traffic model to predict the bandwidth needs of the residential subscriber out to 2012. The method used to calculate the resi-dential bandwidth needs was based on two factors:
1. Bandwidth per application2. Number of digital streams
Bandwidth per application – changes in the type and number of applica-tions people will use over the Internet – is clearly an important factor that will drive residential bandwidth require-ments. Applications such as Web pages, video, music, software downloads and pictures will drive the need for greater bandwidth. Digital photos, for exam-ple, had an average file size of 44 Kb in 2003. With the widespread use of 5+ megapixel digital cameras, this type of file size alone has gone up to 1 to 5 MB per picture. Many consumers would send 10 MB image files if they had the bandwidth to do so.
Video will be an important applica-tion for the residential subscriber. Stan-dard television (SDTV) and high-defi-nition television (HDTV) all require video compression to reduce the size of the data stream so they can be deployed over an access infrastructure. Some of the standards used to deliver digital tele-vision are:
• MPEG2 • MPEG4 • ITU-T rec. H.263 • ITU-T rec. H.264/AVC • Window Media 9 Series Video Codec
Motion Pictures Expert Group (MPEG) and the ITU-T’s recommendation H.263 are the standards used for deliv-ery of digital video. Windows Media 9 is a compression method used by Mi-crosoft. All these methods use different compression techniques to reduce the size of the video stream. Compression technologies enable standard digital TV (SDTV) to be compressed to 4 Mbps, and with improvements in technology (MPEG4) this could possibly get re-duced to 2 Mbps. HDTV can be deliv-ered at 10-16 Mbps today. With MPEG4 technology improvements, this may be reduced to 6-8 Mbps in the future.
Digital pictures and video are just two of the many applications that are driving the need for more residential bandwidth. Also, as these applications get bigger, bandwidth needs for the residential user will need to increase to
Fiber, Coax or DSL? Meeting Customer Demand for BandwidthOnly fiber will deliver the kinds of content customers will crave in a few yearsBy David R. Kozischek ■ Corning Cable Systems
Digital video recorders, or DVRs, create an interesting challenge to adding up the digital streams per household. For example, someone can be watching one channel and recording another one at the same time. In this case, two digital streams of video are being sent to the subscriber at the same time.
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18 | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | www.broadbandproperties.com | AUGUST 2006
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Number of Digital StreamsThe number of digital streams delivered to the subscriber is also increasing. In the most basic sense, the first three streams that come to mind are data, voice and video. But other factors can increase the amount of streams past these three. Some of the factors include:
• Number of available TVs• Number of TVs with “picture-in-
picture” capabilities• Number of phones• Number of computers with
broadband Internet connection• Number of digital video recorders
To take an example, digital video re-corders, or DVRs, create an interest-
ing challenge to adding up the digital streams per household. For example, someone can be watching one channel and recording another one at the same time. In this case, two digital streams of video are being sent to the subscriber at the same time. The table in Figure 1 shows the bandwidth requirements for different applications and the predicted number of simultaneous streams resi-dential subscribers may want.
For example, in Figure 1 for 2005 the data was calculated as follows:
• 1 high-speed data stream at 4 Mbps• 3 voice streams at 0.064 Mbps• 1 video on demand at 4 Mbps• 1 standard TV at 4 Mbps• 1 HDTV at 13 Mbps• A DVR factor of less than 1 extra
stream at 4 Mbps
Anyone familiar with these applications can readily see that I’m being conserva-tive and including expected compression technologies in my estimates.
Multiplying and adding, you can see that in 2005, the maximum amount of bandwidth required for a residential subscriber is almost 26 Mbps. Using this type of calculation, two different types of users were plotted, the “power user” and the “average user.” This is plotted on the left side of Figure 2. Improvements in compression were taken into account, but the analysis shows that by 2012 the “power user” will require close to 100 Mbps of bandwidth and the “average user” will require over 40 Mbps of band-width even with compression!
If the video is delivered by other means such as RF, then the bandwidth curves for the “power user” and the “average user” will be lower, but not as
Figure 1: Bandwidth per application and the number of digital streams that were used to calculate the maximum amount of digital data required per household.
Estimated Residential Bandwidfth requirements,Max versus Average (with IP Video)
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Estimated Residential Bandwidfth requirements,Max versus Average (with RF Video)
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Figure 2: IP Video bandwidth is on the left, RF on the right. Note that Hybrid Fiber-Coax and PON share data bandwidth but have a separate window for RF video. DSL is a dedicated path, but shares the bandwidth among voice, data and video.
Estimated Residential Bandwidth requirementsMax versus Average (with IP Video)
Estimated Residential Bandwidth requirementsMax versus Average (with RF Video)
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20 | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | www.broadbandproperties.com | AUGUST 2006
low as many people seem to think. By subtracting out the video portion of the table in Figure 1, the adjusted data in Figure 1 is plotted on the right side of Figure 2. Figure 2 illustrates that if vid-eo is RF, then by 2012 the “power user” will require about 50 Mbps of band-width and the “average user” will need close to 10 Mbps of bandwidth.
Access Technologies vs. Residential Bandwidth Demand The next section will analyze the capa-bilities of different access technologies to see how they can deliver the estimat-ed bandwidth requirements shown in Figure 2. The access technologies evalu-ated are:
• Hybrid fiber-coax (HFC)• Digital subscriber line (DSL)• Passive optical networks (PON)
It should be noted that all “shared” bandwidth calculations (HFC and PON are shared bandwidth, DSL is dedicated bandwidth) were based on a statistical model and were calculated by using the
following formula:
Number of households X penetration rate X number of users on line X per-centage of users downloading at the same time
Hybrid Fiber-CoaxThe cable video HFC network is a tree-
and-branch architecture that uses opti-cal fiber to feed nodes and then coax to feed the subscribers. In this architecture, the bandwidth is shared among all sub-scribers on a node.
Video for the HFC network is de-livered as RF-QAM, so the estimated residential bandwidth shown in Figure 2 (right side) needs to be compared to
Estimated Residential Bandwidfth requirements,Max and Average, RF Video versus HF Coax
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DOCSIS 3.0 @ 100 HHP per node
DOCSIS 1.0/2.0 @ 50 HHP per node
DOCSIS 1.0/2.0 @ 500 HHP per node
Figure 3 shows that DOCSIS 2.0 can support the “power user” out to 2010 and the “average user” beyond 2010 at 50 households passed (HHP) per node. Fig-ure 3 also shows that DOCSIS 3.0 can support the “power user” and “average user” out to 2012 at 100 households passed per node.
Estimated Residential Bandwidth requirements,Max and Average, RF Video versus HF Coax
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AUGUST 2006 | www.broadbandproperties.com | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | 21
the bandwidth capabilities of the cable video network to deliver IP data. IP data in the cable video network is handled by the Data Over Cable System Interface Specification (DOCSIS). This is shown in Figure 3.
DSL – Digital Subscriber LineThe DSL network uses twisted-pair cop-per to feed subscribers from a central of-fice or a remote “local point of presence” terminal. In this architecture, the band-width is dedicated to a single user, but shared among the three services (voice, data and video).
Many different types of digital
subscriber line (DSL) exist, with asym-metrical digital subscriber line (ADSL) being the most commonly deployed. The length of the copper loop affects the data rates that can be delivered to the individual subscriber. This is shown in Figure 4.
The DSL network is different in the way it handles video. Video for the DSL network is IP (Internet protocol) so the estimated residential bandwidth shown in the table (Figure 1) and the chart (Figure 2, left side) is a good estimate of the bandwidth requirements for the residential subscriber. Plotting the resi-dential bandwidth requirements of Fig-
ures 1 and 2 versus the different flavors of DSL generates the graph shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5 shows that VDSL at 3000 feet will be technically challenged to support the “power user” today, and by 2007 the “average user” will not be able to be supported. (It should be noted that copper bonding can increase bandwidth, but that is not covered in this article.)
Migration of the network to VDSL at 1000 feet – that is, bringing fiber closer to the end-users – will enable the carrier to deliver the bandwidth require-ments to the “average user,” but by 2009 the “power users” will not be supported. In the future, other versions of DSL show promise to deliver the bandwidth required to the “power user.” However, to deliver this type of high bandwidth, the copper loop length needs to be re-duced to 500 feet or less. That may work in the interim for in-building “fiber to the basement” deployments.
Passive Optical NetworksThe PON network has a point-to-mul-tipoint architecture that uses optical fi-ber, through an optical splitter, to feed subscribers from a central office or head-end.
The PON architecture consists of an optical line terminal (OLT) that is located in the central office/headend that connects to optical network ter-minals (ONTs) that are located at the subscriber premises. In this architec-ture, the bandwidth to the subscriber is shared across all the users on the PON, but due to the nature of the PON pro-tocol, service level agreements (SLAs) can be provisioned. Most PONs are designed to support a maximum of 32 users from each splitter. The data rates
Migration of the network to VDSL at 1000 feet – that is, bringing fiber closer to the end-users – will enable the carrier to deliver the bandwidth requirements to the “average user,” but by 2009 the “power users” will not be supported.
Figure 4. Available bandwidth for DSL copper twisted-pair loops depends strongly on the loop length. 100 Mbps down-loads are possible with a loop length of 500 feet or less, for instance. This might be typical of an apartment building “fiber to the basement” approach. At loop lengths of 3,000 feet (more typical of an FTTN – fiber to the node – buildout), 25 Mbps would be more the norm.
Estimated Residential Bandwidfth requirements,Max and Average, IP Video vs. DSL
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VDSL @ 500 Ft
VDSL @ 1000 Ft
VDSL @ 3000 Ft
Figure 5. VDSL with a loop length of 3000 feet – typical of FTTN deployments by some telcos now – barely supports the “power user” today, and will not be able to support the average user with HDTV by 2007 without bonding several loops together to provide the service.
Estimated Residential Bandwidth requirements,Max and Average, IP Video vs. DSL
technology
22 | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | www.broadbandproperties.com | AUGUST 2006
that are available on a PON network are shown in Figure 6.
For this analysis, I selected the Broadband PON (BPON) and Gigabit PON (GPON) variants. These PON variants can deploy RF video on a sepa-rate wavelength or IP video. For an IP video overlay, the graph shown in Fig-ure 2 (left side) is compared to the band-width capabilities of the PON. This is shown in Figure 7.
Figure 6. Upstream and downstream bandwidths supplied to the splitter by various versions of BPON and GPON, without wave division multiplexing.
Estimated Residential Bandwidfth requirements,Max and Average, IP Video with PON
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GPON 1x32 split 2.4 G
GPON 1x32 split 1.244 G
BPON 1x32 split
Figure 7. BPON with IP video overlay can support “power users” and “average users” out to 2007. GPON can support “power users” and “average users” beyond 2012. Multiplexing (by changing the relatively inexpensive electronics) can increase these bandwidths by a factor of 8 or more.
Figure 7 shows that a BPON with IP video overlay can support “power us-ers” and “average users” out to 2007. It also shows that the GPON can support “power users” and “average users” be-yond 2012.
Which Technology Wins?The three major access technologies – HFC, DSL and PON – can support the bandwidth requirements of the residen-tial subscriber today and into the future. Organizations deploying HFC and DSL need to constantly upgrade the infra-structure, however.
PON does not require constant upgrade, but in the end, the one with the best platform to compete will be the winner. The major competition will come from the cable TV MSOs, the municipalities, and the telcos.
In the end they will all have voice and video. What will separate the com-petition is HDTV and high-speed data offerings. These will be used as a com-petitive “weapon” to keep and gain new customers.
The user experience will be exploit-ed and whoever can improve this experi-ence will be the winner in the end.
How will the user experience be exploited? Figure 8 shows the time it will take to download 60 MB of digi-tal photos based on different high-speed data offerings. The 60 MB represents a dozen high quality JPEGs from today’s 6 MP cameras. Which broadband ser-vice would you want? BBP
About the AuthorDavid R. Kozischek is Manager, Stra-tegic Planning Business Development, for Corning Cable Systems. He can be reached for questions or comments at [email protected].
Figure 8. At the 0.5 Mbps download speed typical of today’s DSL and DOCSIS offerings, it takes more than 20 minutes to download 60 MB.
Figure 8 shows the time it will take to download 60 MB of digital photos based on different high-speed data offerings. The 60 MB represents a dozen high quality JPEGs from today’s 6 MP cameras. Which broadband service would you want?
Estimated Residential Bandwidth requirements,Max and Average, IP Video with PON
in M/bps Upstream Downstream
BPON Symmetrical 155 155
BPON Asymmetrical 155 622
Upstream Downstream
GPON 155 1244 to 2488
622 1244 to 2488
1244 1244 to 2488
2488 1244 to 2488
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