Techno-economics for multi-service fixed access networks

The paper presents techno-economic results for fixed access networks which have been achieved within the IST MUSE (Multi Service Access Everywhere; http://www.ist-muse.org) integrated project in the first phase. The article summarises the results from studies of two major use cases, Network Migration Cases and the Native Ethernet approach. The results are based on a common framework. A specific attention is paid to the first mile deployment scenarios including Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTCab) and Point-to-Point optical networks (PtP). It has been observed that the migration from a best effort access network to a Quality of Service (QoS) enabled multi-service architecture based on Ethernet or IP forwarding is favourable in comparison with an ATM-based evolution scenario. Service enabling new network functionalities like Quality of Service (QoS), multicast and Internet (IP) based auto-configurations are moving closer to subscribers. This leads to an increased intelligence in access networks and related potential Capital Expenditures (CAPEX) savings of about 25% in aggregation networks.