Upper bound performance estimation for copper based broadband access

Around 70% of all broadband connections in the European Union are carried over copper, and the scenario is unlikely to change in the next few years as carriers still believe in the profitability of their copper infrastructure. In this paper we show how to estimate the performance upper bound of copper based access connections at a household level by using Geographical Information System data. This can be combined with different configurations of DSLAMs distributions, in order to calculate the required number of active equipment points to guarantee certain QoS levels. This method can be used to define the limitations of copper based broadband access. A case study in a municipality in Denmark shows how the estimated network dimension to be able to provide video conference services to the majority of the population might be too high to be implemented in reality.