It was around this day in 1971 when Intel released the first commercially available microprocessor. The feat, perhaps, went on to form a perfect storm that gave birth to the Internet. Almost 50 years down the road, the Internet is not only powering world economies, but has become an existential need for societies to thrive and, in some cases, survive.

The last two decades saw Internet advancements becoming indistinguishable from magic. The dial-ups have given way to fibre-optic powered broadband connections that dish out inordinate number of gigabytes per minute. This light-paced, hyper connectivity will cease to reduce in the future given the massive and aggressive consumption and demand of data.

Service providers catching up

Humans are consuming about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day and the number is only going to increase. The videos and apps have changed the time of the day usage patterns and attached devices have edged past PC and smartphone with regards to data usage. This year, the data we create and copy annually is expected to reach 44 zettabytes, or 44 trillion gigabytes. In this age of aggressive data consumption through all corners of technology paradigm, businesses and consumers demand ubiquitous connectivity and superior broadband speeds that support bandwidth-intensive services.

Service providers have stepped up to provide consistent, customised experience with on-demand bandwidth and low latency. They have found solace in Fibre Network Optics (FTTx) connectivity to make legacy networks more competitive for leveraging advanced technologies within new and existing right of ways. FTTx does help CSPs maximise performance and increase reliability for deployments in a broad range of environments, therefore, it has seen tremendous growth numbers in the last few years.

FTTx is the answer, but…

There is no doubt that FTTx seems to tick all the right boxes given the rising demand of ubiquitous connectivity for technologies of today and future. However, it has an expensive provisioning since the network is rolled out in phases spread across several months or, in some cases, several years. According to Delta Partner Analysis, 62% FTTx uptake is required for pay back.

Solution? Make FTTx future ready

For FTTx to not have expensive provisioning, it needs to have a comprehensive network designthatmakesit executionable, hyper scale, and future ready.Here’s how CSPs cando to design and orchestrate a new-age network for FTTx:

Fibre as the physical layer

The future FTTx network needs a physical layer that can handle high data demand and be deployed easily. Fibre products can form the layer and play a source for uninterrupted connection as the demand for FTTx data goes higher.

Virtualization is need of the hour

The demand for FTTx is unpredictable, therefore, the future networks need to be nimble enough to factor the changes in scale and type of demand. An innovative architecture with virtualization at the core is required to make the network agile, faster, more responsive and cost-effective.

Emphasis on Customer Experience

At a time when 5G is not a distant dream and emerging technologies are poised to play a crucial role in powering future generation, a successful CSP will be the one that can marry customer, service and network monetisation processes in the most cost-effective way. These networks will use big data and analytics to provide actionable insights to the providers. Also, these can catalyse their revenue and business operations and drive data-driven decision making.

Looking at the need of re-inventing themselves, service providers have already begun their digital transformation with different goals and priorities. A future-ready FTTx network would prove to be extremely handy for them during this journey. However, an end-to-end approach that can integrate the potential of each element would be needed for the FTTx network to unveil its full potential.