Operations and maintenance experience of the Bishop´s Stortford fibre trail

British Telecom is deploying a major local loop fibre trial in Bishop´s Stortford, UK. The paper describes the management and maintenance experience to date in installing and operating the trial. The trial will provide fibre to the home, and fibre to the curb, for residential and business customers, carrying telephony and TV services. The project is being carried out in collaboration with GPT, BICC and Fulcrum. The main objectives of the trial are to gain operational and maintenance experience in order to assess whole-life costs of such networks. Two systems are being tested, Broadband Integrated Distributed Star (BIDS) and Telephony on a Passive Optical Network (TPON). Both include fibre to the home and TPON includes a variant with fibre to the curb