NEWS

January 2006

Plastic Optical Fiber targets FTTH

A consortium of nine European companies and research institutions has been granted financial support within EU’s 6th Framework Programme to develop a POF-based high-speed “optical modem”

Ask anybody in Europe what “broadband access” means, the answer will most likely be “ADSL” or “cable”. xDSL technologies actually dominate the broadband offer because of legacy telcos’ existing copper-based infrastructures, and cable modem technologies likewise in countries with a high CATV cabling density.

The telecom bubble at the end of last century made clear how hazardous it can be to invest in a new and innovative (e.g. optical) infrastructure. Even the few local operators that survived those days’ huge CAPEX are now recovering under the umbrella of copper legacy infrastructure.

Still, the explosion of peer-to-peer (P2P) services is rapidly heading for a bandwidth bottleneck. At the end of 2004, 60% of all internet traffic was P2P-based; due to its symmetrical nature, on average 80% of upstream capacity is consumed by P2P daily (source: CacheLogic “Peer-to-peer in 2005”).

Moreover, internet surfers are increasingly using bandwidth-demanding services such as iTunes. In 2005 Apple introduced the possibility to download TV shows and series’ episodes; most people will soon look forward to downloading high-resolution movies, or sending an HD digital video of their newborn to grandma.

How will telecom companies handle the increasing traffic and offer broadband access to everybody, without a cost-effective and future-proof technology for the so called “edge network” – i.e. the last 1,000ft from the curb or the basement of a building to the apartment? Due to its capillarity, this is the most expensive part of the network - and the one telecom operators fear most.

On January 1st, 2006 a new project was started, involving four European companies and five renowned research institutes, with the goal to develop an enabling technology for broadband access and home networks at speeds far superior to those of existing ADSL modems, at costs dramatically lower than optical silica fiber-based solutions.

The project has been dubbed “POF-ALL”, for “Paving the Optical Future with Affordable, Lightning-fast Links” (www.ist-pof-all.org). It is led by Istituto Superiore Mario Boella, an ICT research center based in Turin (Italy); participants include STMicroelectronics, Luceat, Diemount, POFApplicationCenter and Fastweb, the leading FTTH operator in Italy, as well as the Fraunhofer Institut IIS, the University of Duisburg-Essen and the Eindhoven University of Technology.

POF-ALL is a 2.6M€ research project; 1.6M€ will be funded by the European Union within the 6th Framework Programme, priority IST-4-2.4.4 “Broadband For All”. It will last 30 months and end in June 2008; preliminary technical results shall be presented as early as September 2006, during the 15th International Conference on Plastic Optical Fiber that will be held in Seoul, Korea (www.pof-moc2006.com).

A major and ultimate purpose of POF-ALL is to design and manufacture an “optical modem” up to 100 times faster than traditional ADSL modems, which would allow the download of a DVD-quality movie in less than 3 minutes. Another advantage boasted by the new technology would be symmetrical communication speed for download and upload, allowing applications such as peer-to-peer transfer of home-made movies, high-quality videoconferencing and video on demand.

European telcos focused on ADSL as the preferred broadband access solution to small home offices and households for cost reasons only. Optical access is restricted to big companies which can afford the cost of deploying a fiber optic-based infrastructure, or to lucky inhabitants of some European cities covered by FTTH under the umbrella of some governmental funding. Japan has the highest penetration of FTTH today, with more than 7 million homes connected and a growth rate of more than 150 thousand homes per month; Korea and the US are similarly committed. In Europe FTTH is taking off at increasing pace, particularly in Italy, The Netherlands and Sweden, but its reach is still limited to minor percentages of the population. The use of plastic optical fiber (POF) would dramatically lower installation costs of the edge network, allowing telecom companies to deliver “triple play” (voice, video, and data) to all of their customers and letting ordinary Joe have a high-speed optical access to the internet.

The major advantage of POF is that anyone can install it with common tools: a pair of scissors to cut it, a stripping tool to remove the jacket and a crimping tool to connect it. POF cables are extremely thin and flexible and can be laid down in electrical conduits or alongside walls. Moreover, POF uses visible light instead of infrared, avoiding eye-safety related issues and pioneering a revolutionarily simple test procedure: if you see light coming out the fiber’s tip, then the system works.

POF is the ideal compromise between EMI- and bandwidth-limited copper cables and hard-to-install optical fiber not only for edge networks, but for home networks as well. Its main advantages – easy installation without training, eye- and EMI-safety – go along with its affordability: POF has been used in volumes by car manufacturers for years, and the cost of standard transceivers is in the range from 2 to 4€.

Future home networks with multimedia distribution capabilities will require 100Mbps to 1Gbps of bandwidth: those are exactly POF-ALL’s technical goals.

Will POF be the future technology we’ll se in every European household in five to ten years? Maybe. It will depend on industry backing and on the success of joint co-operations between major European companies and universities, such as the POF-ALL project. However, the future looks bright – and the light is visible, for oncE.