Evaluation of the life cycle cost for universal fiber access

A technology and architecture perspective of the full life cycle costs of converting today´s copper access network, optimized for POTS (plain old telephone service), to a fiber access network providing both narrowband and broadband services is presented. Architectures are assessed using application studies based on preliminary life cycle cost models for actual routes in North America. Previous first cost studies have shown that the double star, the active pedestal, and the star-bus architectures would be close to copper in cost when providing POTS service in 1992. A life cycle study, including an evaluation of the comparative ease of upgrading from POTS to broadband, showed that the favored architecture is the double star in which the active pedestal is retained as a deployment option