Risk evaluation in broadband telecommunications planning under services´ imprecise penetration - a fuzzy approach

Telecommunications operating companies are asked to provide new services for the short- and medium-term. Therefore, their systems and infrastructure must evolve in order to support these services. Several technological options are already available and to choose the best among them is a big challenge for network planners. This work proposes a mixed-integer linear programming model devoted to help the planning of the so-called access network, which links the clients to the core of the telecommunications systems. The model is driven by max-revenue criterion and focuses on the network evolution under the assumption of imprecise estimates concerning services´ penetration rates. In order to perform some techno-economical risk analyses, fuzzy sets concepts are adopted. An application that uses actual data is reported.