Swisscom, one of the most advanced broadband operators in the world, takes on the multi technology approach to deployment.
Klaus Liechti, Swisscom executive, is also one of the main people responsible for the company’s highly praised broadband rollout. He has been in and out of NBN Co sharing trade secrets of Swisscom’s success. The company is expected to be one of the first key operators internationally to commercially launch G.Fast ultra fast copper acceleration technology in 2016.
Switzerland came out as the leading country in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) in terms of average connection speeds and broadband services take up – this according to Akamai’s third quarter, 2014 State of the Internet report.
After having deployed full FTTP (fibre to the premises) to some one million homes with top speed offerings of 1Gbps, the company found the FTTP deployment cost to be too high (amounting to several thousand dollars total cost per premise) to push through with a full national rollout.
Mr. Liechti also stated that a full FTTP rollout would have taken too long to build, with the company having to triple its manpower to complete the construction of the network, and still it would not have been possible to complete until around the year 2030.
These are the reasons behind Swisscom’s decision to change its approach a couple of years ago to multi-mix technology, now aiming to deliver 100Mbps to some 90% of homes by the year 2020 through a combination of FTTP (fibre to the premise), FTTB (fibre to the building), FTTN (fibre to the node), and FTTdP (fibre to the distribution point). Half of the homes are intended to get speeds of up to 500Mbps and up.
In a media roundtable held in Melbourne last March 2, Mr. Liechti said one of the basic advantages of switching to a multi-technology model was Swisscom’s ability to provide enhanced broadband to majority of Swiss homes in a (relatively) short amount of time.
He said that, despite being proud of its FTTP services, had Swisscom followed solely an FTTP pathway, only few would benefit from the service at the expense of the others who would not have had access to it for a considerable amount of time.
Despite Australia falling down the rankings in Akamai’s Q3-2014 report, there is hope to move up the ladder through the NBN, just as Swisscom did with its multi-technology model for Switzerland. NBN Co’s utilisation of new and existing technologies, together with the introduction of a range of other technologies, the delivery of a universal broadband network in the country has been sped up and has become less disruptive to Australians.
The company’s recently signed deals with Optus and Telstra gives it the foundation it needs to roll out earlier and much faster, with NBN broadband providers already informing customers of the availability of the service in some areas.