Arcep, France's telecom regulator, is relying on a new working group to address the emerging fiber to the distribution point (FTTdp) concept, which allows for 200 Mbps speeds and above over existing copper by driving fiber very close to a subscriber's home or premises.
To address how the FTTdp architecture can fit into France's broadband network infrastructure, the regulator said its working group will include representatives from service providers, local community leaders and government departments.
The working group met three times in June with major network vendors and then later in September and January to talk about potential interest in FTTdp and possible deployment scenarios.
Arcep did not specify any conclusions about what value the FTTdp architecture would have in France's telecom market, but it did say it would like to see service provider experiments of the technology. It sees that the value of FTTdp could be a "means to accelerate the migration of network users to copper networks in high speed optical fiber."
One provider where Arcep could look to for real-world experience is Orange.
Besides deploying fiber to the home in France, the telco's Orange Polska subsidiary is conducting a field trial of Aethra's Telecommunications FTTdp technology with customers in Warsaw, Poland. Orange Polska said it expects it would be able to offer customers a triple-play bundle that includes 200 Mbps download speeds, voice and IPTV.
In tandem with FTTdp, the ITU is developing ITU G.fast, a standard that delivers superfast downloads of up to 1 Gbps up to a distance of 250 meters.
For more:
- see the release (translated from French)
- and the Orange Polska release
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