Application-optimized fiber solutions for every network level

The rel­e­vance of a well-func­tion­ing broad­band infra­struc­ture has been high­light­ed again this year in par­tic­u­lar. Exten­sive expan­sion mea­sures for coax­i­al and fiber-optic net­works have already been under­tak­en in recent years to opti­mize the sup­ply of ser­vices for increased band­width require­ments for the com­mer­cial, pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors. Nev­er­the­less, the surge in demand for video tele­pho­ny and oth­er OTT ser­vices, com­bined with high band­width require­ments, has pushed the cur­rent infra­struc­ture in Ger­many and parts of Europe to its limits.

Most of the mar­ket agrees that the nec­es­sary expan­sion can be han­dled main­ly with fiber tech­nol­o­gy to pro­vide both fixed and wire­less cov­er­age over 5G. This applies not only to net­work lev­el 3, but in par­tic­u­lar to the for­ward­ing of sig­nals and ser­vices to the end sub­scriber. A depic­tion of the res­i­den­tial build­ing stock in the Euro­pean Union allows con­clu­sions to be drawn about the ICT infra­struc­ture (Fig. 1): since more than 88% of res­i­den­tial build­ings were built before the year 2000, it can be assumed that most of them have twist­ed pair or coax­i­al cabling, which means that there is enor­mous poten­tial for mod­ern­iza­tion. Cor­re­spond­ing mod­ern­iza­tion efforts are cur­rent­ly being strong­ly pro­mot­ed by net­work oper­a­tors and politi­cians due to the Coro­na-relat­ed increased attention.

In order to meet this demand, the BTV Mul­ti­me­dia Group has devel­oped the first group-wide FTTH prod­uct series with the WAVEPACE brand, for whose dis­tri­b­u­tion group mem­bers act as equal part­ners. Cur­rent­ly, the prod­uct range con­sists of an Opti­cal Dis­tri­b­u­tion Frame sys­tem solu­tion includ­ing pan­els with unique mount­ing and swiv­el func­tion for easy and free access, splice split­ter patch out­door dis­tri­b­u­tion box­es, splice patch wall box­es and FTTH wall out­lets. Thus, core prod­ucts of each net­work lev­el are offered. This port­fo­lio is the result of inten­sive analy­ses of the require­ments for the pro­vi­sion of broad­band com­mu­ni­ca­tions and dig­i­ti­za­tion. All prod­ucts meet the require­ments of the sub­si­dized fiber roll-out and are opti­mized for the demands and chal­lenges of the broad­band market.

The com­pa­ny’s goal is to offer cost-opti­mized prod­ucts and sys­tems that not only serve cur­rent mar­ket require­ments, but also think one step ahead. For exam­ple, it is fore­see­able that increased FTTH expan­sion will mean that installers with lit­tle prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence and tech­ni­cians from oth­er sec­tors will also have to be deployed for fiber optic instal­la­tion. The Group’s con­cept accom­mo­dates this by offer­ing many prod­ucts already pre-assem­bled in the stan­dard ver­sions. This makes it pos­si­ble to deploy hard-to-find, well-trained fiber optic installers only for final con­nec­tion work and accep­tance mea­sure­ments, and to car­ry out the rest of the instal­la­tion work with semi-skilled spe­cial­ists. This means that a changeover from coax­i­al tech­nol­o­gy to FTTH can be imple­ment­ed with­in a sim­i­lar bud­get frame­work as a mod­ern­iza­tion of exist­ing sys­tems, and new con­struc­tion mea­sures can also be imple­ment­ed in a bud­get-friend­ly manner.

Anoth­er chal­lenge WAVEPACE address­es is the ubiq­ui­tous lack of space in the broad­band indus­try. Prod­ucts cur­rent­ly avail­able on the mar­ket can usu­al­ly only be deployed “through grit­ted teeth” both at net­work lev­el 3 and in the end cus­tomer’s build­ing. In urban areas in par­tic­u­lar, pro­trud­ing out­door cab­i­nets in pub­lic spaces are frowned upon, and net­work lev­el 4 tech­ni­cal rooms are gen­er­al­ly not par­tic­u­lar­ly large either. How­ev­er, with a depth of only 20 cm, the out­door dis­tri­b­u­tion board can be eas­i­ly and incon­spic­u­ous­ly placed on house facades on the side­walk. BTV Mul­ti­me­dia sees this fea­ture as a major advan­tage of the prod­uct series. With its small dimen­sions of 250 x 170 x 90 mm, the wall box with IP 55 pro­tec­tion rat­ing is also sig­nif­i­cant­ly more space-sav­ing than com­pa­ra­ble solu­tions, can accord­ing­ly be installed in almost any tech­ni­cal room with­out any prob­lems and is addi­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed against van­dal­ism accord­ing to IK08.

 “In par­tic­u­lar, the detach­ment of the prod­ucts from a sin­gle com­pa­ny is an enor­mous advan­tage for the cus­tomer, who can pur­chase prod­ucts from his pre­ferred sup­pli­er with­out hav­ing to fear dis­ad­van­tages with regard to con­di­tions. Instead of one man­u­fac­tur­er, sev­er­al com­pa­nies act as equal dis­trib­u­tors and even com­plex FTTX projects can be imple­ment­ed with only one sup­pli­er at an unbeat­able price-per­for­mance ratio due to the prod­uct cov­er­age of all net­work levels.”

- Lud­wig Mod­ra, Man­ag­ing Director