The cost effectiveness of expert systems for roadside electronics

Roadside electronics are becoming widely used for providing economic distribution of broadband communication services. These usually consist of a cabinet at the side of a road taking in a trunk source and distributing services to a number of customers. Roadside electronics are used as one way of reducing per-customer cost by moving the launch point for services closer to their premises. They are also convenient for maintenance, giving easy access to equipment. When systems try to remove roadside electronics, they usually aim to move equipment into a central location but this often increases the complexity of the equipment in the customers premises. This creates an increased requirement to gain access to customers premises for maintenance. This increases customer annoyance and the response time to faults. Using roadside electronics focuses maintenance costs on the cabinet. In a switched star network there can be hundreds of cabinet locations within a metropolitan area network. The individual cards within a cabinet are usually closely coupled into the system making fault finding difficult. An early network used in the city of Westminster has provided valuable information for the design of the latest systems