BELLSOUTH USES MANY MEDIUMS, ONE VENDOR

BellSouth made official last week what many in the industry had been talking about for more than six months. On the question of whether to push fiber all way to the home, or leave it at a neighborhood node and use existing copper for the last few thousand feet, the carrier chose none of the above.

In awarding Tellabs an exclusive contract to provide fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC) systems, BellSouth decided to put fiber within a few hundred feet of residents and use a variety of copper-based technologies to deliver in excess of 50 Mb/s to each home. Additionally, the company filled out its next-generation vendor roster with the announcement that it would use JDS Uniphase's wave division multiplexing systems to transport traffic between Redback's Edge Aggregation Routers and Alcatel's IP DSLAMs in situations where dedicated separate fibers are not available.

Giving Tellabs an exclusive deal, which runs through the end of 2006, was largely an economic and operations decision, said Peter Hill, vice president of technology planning and deployment for BellSouth.

“Sometimes you can create better economics [with exclusivity],” he said. “It's really around working together more in a partnership mode. To some extent we're going to be ‘operationalizing’ a new IP DSLAM and an [FTTC] evolution at the same time, and there's only so many platforms you can [deploy] in parallel.”

The win for Tellabs is the second major RBOC FTTx deal. AFC, acquired last year, holds the primary fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) contract for Verizon. With BellSouth, the company also will be upgrading the carrier's existing 1.1 million lines of FTTC, which were deployed using Marconi's platform; AFC acquired the product last year, said Steve McCarthy, executive vice president of global customer sales and services for Tellabs.

The deal also completes the majority of elements for BellSouth's next-generation network. Still unnamed are the video-specific suppliers who will provide headend equipment and whether the carrier will use residential gateways, set-top boxes or some combination of those. BellSouth did announce in February that it was initiating a technical trial with Microsoft TV. Hill, however, was keeping quiet on that portion of the network, saying the carrier was contemplating all options and architectures.

“Today we do video on FTTC systems using RF video,” he said. “If BellSouth makes the decision to go to IPTV, then it would be service over IP.”

With the decision to deploy FTTC, BellSouth also is keeping open all of the technology alternatives for the last link into consumers' homes. As part of its Tellabs deployment, the carrier will run fiber out of Colorado-based AccessMax, which serves as an optical line terminal and gateway. From there, fiber goes to a termination unit that sits no more than 500 feet — but on average 200 feet — from the home and eight to twelve customers. Initially, BellSouth will use ADSL2+ and ADSL to traverse the last few hundred feet. However, it's also committed to being an early adopter of the new VDSL2 standard, which was just approved last month (see story on page 13). The technology will give the carrier the ability to provide greater than 50 Mb/s per home over copper, but it won't be in product form until at least 2006.

“Because of the nature of our outside-plant network, our plan is to have a common launch point for all three technologies,” Hill said. “VDSL2 is perfect for FTTC. The real advantage of VDSL2 is for distances of 3000 feet or less. We'll proceed to it as fast as we can.”

In areas where it isn't deploying fiber that deep into the network, BellSouth will use Alcatel's 7330 and 7302 Intelligent Services Access Managers. The carrier also is running tests on bonded ADSL2+ technology with prototype modems that provide up to 24 Mb/s, Hill said. “You don't need [bonding] at 500 feet, but at 5000 feet it works well.”