Opting for Optical: FTTO as the Fit Solution for Campuses

This article discusses the benefits of fiber to the office (FTTO) for deployment in sectors like education, healthcare, and hotels. FTTO is a fiber-based local area network (LAN) implementation that consists of fiber cabling, unpowered splitters, optical line terminals (OLTs), and optical network units (ONUs). FTTO is commonly used in campus settings. The article highlights why these particular sectors are a good fit for the deployment of FTTO. It focuses on how FTTO can meet the growing bandwidth requirements of these sectors, while also being well suited to the topology of campus establishments and delivering both capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX) savings versus traditional copper-based LANs.

FTTO for schools

FTTO is an ideal solution for schools due to its high-speed, reliable, and scalable network capabilities. It provides schools with the necessary bandwidth to support modern educational demands, such as streaming multimedia content, online learning platforms, and data-intensive applications. FTTO ensures low latency and minimal interference, enabling seamless communication and resource sharing across campus. Its flexibility allows for easy expansion to accommodate growing student populations and technological advancements. Additionally, FTTO offers enhanced security and reduced maintenance costs, making it a cost-effective and future-proof networking solution for educational institutions.

Enhanced connectivity in the education sector is a growing priority for governments

The importance of good quality and environmentally friendly connectivity in the education system has been highlighted by various government initiatives and targets. Below are a few examples:

• In the US, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sets a bandwidth goal of 1 Mbps per student in schools as part of its E-rate modernization efforts.
• In the European Union, achieving gigabit connectivity for all schools is a key objective within the EU's broader Connectivity 2025 strategy.
• In China, the Notice on Improving University Campus Network Management and Service Quality was released in 2021, which focuses on ensuring better quality and greener networks in universities.
• The Japanese government's Global Innovation Gateway for All (GIGA) program has partly focused on ensuring that schools have high-speed and high-capacity connections.

Stakeholders must therefore consider the benefits that FTTO can bring in order to meet these targets.

FTTO provides the high bandwidths required for high-tech educational experiences

The next generation of teaching will become more reliant on the kinds of interactive experiences that virtual reality (VR) and the metaverse can deliver. The metaverse, for example, could be a useful place for language students to practice in a more memorable way. Geography students can better understand the physical geography of different locations with the use of immersive VR. VR could also be useful for vocational training such as training for medical students. The use of high-capacity FTTO will enable the delivery of the multi-gigabit capacities required for this new style of teaching. Therefore, investment in FTTO will deliver a better output in terms of a higher-quality education.

A related point is that there will be continued evolution in the type of immersive educational tools available and the use of such tools will also grow over time. In this way, FTTO solutions that support easy upgrades to higher bandwidths will come into their own. FTTO capitalizes on the near-limitless capacity of fibers and can be upgraded to support 50G PON simply with changes to the OLT and ONU hardware. This is different from traditional copper-based LANs, where the physical cabling would need to be replaced to support these kinds of capacities, which would be a costly and time-consuming process.

In addition to providing high bandwidths, FTTO provides high-quality, reliable connectivity compared with copper-based LANs. Educational establishments might wish to build redundancy into their networks, for instance, to avoid disrupting teaching time. This can be achieved in multiple ways with FTTO, for instance, by deploying multiple fibers to different splitters or putting in place multiple OLTs.

The topology of educational establishments is well suited to FTTO

Educational establishments such as universities can be large in size and could easily encompass an area of 1 square kilometer and above. This is a key characteristic to bear in mind when selecting a suitable network solution, because copper-based LANs are limited to providing their maximum bandwidths at distances of no greater than 100 meters due to signal degradation. To cover bigger areas, copper LANs will require more equipment, space, and cabling. To put this in perspective, here is a real-world example. The University of Canada in Egypt has built a new library building, which measures 200 meters in width. Two equipment rooms per floor would have been required if a traditional copper-based LAN had been used. By contrast, FTTO offers greater flexibility and one OLT can serve multiple dispersed buildings connected by fiber in a university campus. In addition, the lower space requirements and fewer communications rooms that FTTO requires are important because such space can be repurposed, for instance, for an extra classroom, which again would improve the overall educational experience for students. By deploying FTTO for its new library building, the university has been able to benefit from all these advantages FTTO offers.

FTTO delivers both CAPEX and OPEX benefits for the education sector

FTTO networks can deliver cost benefits versus traditional copper-based LANs throughout their lifecycle. Specifically with regard to the education sector, cost savings are important, firstly because some governments may be budget-conscious. Moreover, any cost savings derived from using FTTO can be invested in further enhancing the overall education experience for students, for instance, by hiring additional teachers.

• CAPEX benefits: In terms of CAPEX, the initial cost and complexity of rollout can be reduced when using FTTO. Such savings are derived from the fact that less cabling is required when using an all-optical network, which reduces both material costs and installation times. For example, an FTTO deployment at the Ocean University of China has led to a 60% reduction in cable footprint. In addition, the huge volume of FTTO rollouts across the world has delivered economies of scale and reduced OLT and ONU costs. Over time, there will be further CAPEX savings compared to copper-based LANs because copper cables will need to be replaced when capacity needs to be upgraded, while fiber can stay in place.
• OPEX benefits: One important OPEX-related benefit of FTTO is its energy efficiency. This is one area where policymakers are placing increasing emphasis. For example, the South Korean Smart Green School initiative has clear expectations for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. FTTO does not require any powered equipment between the OLT and ONU and, when compared to traditional copper-based LANs, there are lower energy requirements for equipment powering as well as air conditioning in communications rooms when using FTTO. Another benefit of FTTO is that it provides centralized management of the entire network from a single location, which delivers efficiencies, for example, when configuring and reconfiguring ports and troubleshooting issues.
• Efficiencies from running multiple services on the same FTTO network: FTTO is also cost-efficient because its high capacity means that it can support the delivery of multiple services across a single fiber network. For example, an FTTO network can support voice and data services in settings such as fiber to university dormitories, classrooms, and Wi-Fi access points. It can also support video from surveillance cameras that are used to keep students safe, as well as from machine-to-machine (M2M) devices such as lighting that detects motion.

FTTO for hospitals

Networks in the healthcare sector need to deal with some specific and demanding requirements. Patient treatment, safety, and comfort should be prioritized at all times. This means that networks will need to deliver future-proof and reliable connectivity so that healthcare staff can focus on giving patients the best care possible. The case below focuses on how FTTO can provide a quality network solution for health sector deployments.

Hospitals have demanding network requirements that FTTO solutions are well suited to meet

The bandwidth requirements for networks in hospitals can be high, and having a future-ready and high-capacity FTTO network matches these needs. For example, medical imaging can produce large amounts of data, which means high-bandwidth networks are a must. With traditional copper-based LAN networks, high network latency means it could take 30 seconds to read 1,000 medical images. However, with FTTO this can be drastically reduced to less than 1 second.

Hospitals also require high-capacity networks since they are large institutions with many employees and patients who, for example, may be using public Wi-Fi networks within the hospital. This is a typical high-concurrency scenario in which more bandwidth will be required. Moreover, there will also be a need for medical devices such as X-ray machines to be directly connected with fiber in order to guarantee more stable and ultra-high bandwidth.

In addition, telemedicine is being used across different types of healthcare environments, for instance, to perform patient consultations remotely. This could involve HD videoconferencing, which requires higher bandwidth. As part of Omdia's IT Enterprise Insights: Healthcare survey, respondents across all kinds of healthcare institutions were asked about their organizations' use of telemedicine in 2023, and the responses indicate that usage is already common (see Figure 1). Furthermore, usage will only grow over time, and in the same survey 61% of respondents said their usage of telemedicine would be at or above 25% of their practice in 2028.

Hospitals require simplified network architectures

Networks in hospitals need to be easy and simple to operate so patient treatment can always be the focus. FTTO can meet this requirement for simplicity because it allows multiple applications to be run over a single optical network. For example, in hospitals, connectivity will be needed for a wide variety of applications such as digital signage, medical device connection, security cameras in public areas of the hospital, and digital ward-calling systems. The FTTO deployment in the Shenzhen Union Hospital supports an Internet of Things network within the hospital. This network provides high-quality information sharing for clinics, wards, CT imaging, and other scenarios. A further important benefit of FTTO in this context is that it supports hard network slicing, a network technique where resources are fully dedicated to a specific network slice, ensuring a high degree of resource isolation and predictable performance. This means different applications can run independently without interfering with each other.

FTTO can also offer simplicity benefits. Traditional copper-based LAN networks require many additional equipment rooms because such networks can only provide their maximum bandwidth at a distance of up to 100 m. This distance limitation for traditional copper-based LAN networks is likely to be particularly problematic in hospitals because the many areas, such as patient wards and waiting areas, that the network needs to connect are likely to be spread out across the whole hospital building. In contrast, fiber optic cables transmit data using light pulses, which experience much less signal loss and can cover much longer distances without the need for repeaters or signal regeneration. Therefore, optical networks offer significantly greater coverage distances and FTTO deployments can avoid this additional challenge.

Figure 1: Respondents' feedback on their organizations' current outlook of telemedicine (remote clinical services) adoption

A further reason why FTTO networks can deliver greater simplicity is that they require less cabling than traditional copper-based networks. As a result, there are fewer points of failure in FTTO networks than in traditional copper-based LAN networks. As mentioned earlier, copper-based LAN networks require more cabling because of their limitations in coverage distance. The greater volume of cabling also makes such architectures much more complex, and it is more challenging to find the location of faults.

FTTO can simultaneously deliver total cost of ownership benefits and minimize disruption to patient care

One important benefit of FTTO is that it is a future-proof solution that can offer longer-term savings in total cost of ownership. Bandwidth requirements today are high, and they may also increase further in the future. FTTO is well placed to cost-effectively meet this increase in bandwidth because such networks can be upgraded to 10G PON and even 50G PON without the need to replace cables. The lifetime of optical fiber is around 30 years. However, traditional copper-based LAN networks need recabling as bandwidths increase, and this could be extremely costly and complex for hospital deployments.

More generally, recabling work is inappropriate for hospital locations because the construction work can produce dust that could be an irritant to patients and employees and potentially could disrupt sensitive medical equipment. This problem is further compounded if copper-based LAN networks are widely deployed in the hospital. More specifically, networks in hospitals will cover more types of facilities, including rooms for treatment, offices, conferences, and wards, so any recabling work is likely to be needed across the hospital as a whole, leading to substantial costs and disruption to patients.

For example, the Wuhan Union Hospital, which has deployed an FTTO network, has a proton therapy center for cancer treatment. Because of the radiation from the treatment, network cables need to be buried within very thick concrete. If a traditional copper-based LAN had been deployed, it would then have been very difficult to replace this cabling to accommodate the new treatment. Proton therapy for cancer treatment remains very new, but over time it is likely to be adopted by more hospitals, and hospital staff need to plan hospital network construction in advance. The future readiness of FTTO deployments makes them well-suited to such scenarios.

A further cost-saving benefit of FTTO is that network operations can be centralized, which reduces operating costs. FTTO networks can be managed from a unified platform and support intelligent O&M and network visualization, making fault detection easier. This helps to ensure that hospital networks are highly reliable, minimizing disruption to patient care. Additionally, in the case of device replacement, new OLTs and ONUs can go online without delay, meaning less disruption to services. Guizhou Provincial People's Hospital has deployed FTTO for their campus and has been able to benefit from the high reliability the optical network provides. The network supports full-link protection, dual-homing redundancy, and rapid switchover within 50 ms. These features translate into more stable network services for better patient care.

FTTO for hotels

Hotels have a fundamental need to keep guests satisfied and provide them with the facilities and services that they value. However, the hotel sector faces challenges from new competitors such as Airbnb. In this context, the FTTO deployment for the hotel sector can bring multiple benefits and allow hotels to both reduce costs and improve revenue, for instance, by improving room occupancy rates.

FTTO can deliver cost-saving benefits for hotels

Hotels must consider the costs of both installing and maintaining their network solutions. FTTO offers important benefits versus traditional copper-based LANs in terms of cost-effective bandwidth upgrades, the ability to deliver multiple services, and lower energy consumption.

• Cost-effective bandwidth upgrades: Bandwidth requirements in hotels are likely to be high as many guests will be accessing the Internet simultaneously, particularly during evening hours when guests are in their hotel rooms, and they will also expect high-speed Internet access. In addition, hotels catering to business guests will need to provide fiber to the desktop for applications such as HD videoconferencing. FTTO is much better placed to meet these bandwidth demands than traditional copper-based LAN solutions. One challenge for traditional copper-based LANs is that physical cabling needs to be upgraded to offer the fastest speeds. This implies considerable spending on new cabling, which may potentially need to be upgraded every seven years or so as hotel guests' bandwidth demands increase over time. In contrast, FTTO deployments can use new PON technologies, which means the hotel can continue to use the same optical fiber cabling for around 30 years, even as bandwidth requirements increase.
• Ability to support multiple services: Both CAPEX and OPEX can be lowered because an FTTO network in a hotel will be capable of delivering multiple services, which eliminates the need to build and maintain multiple networks. The FTTO network can support TV services to guest rooms as well as voice and data services, including Wi-Fi access point backhaul. For example, the Temptation Resort Cancun in Mexico became the first hotel in the city to offer guests all-interactive IPTV services after deploying an FTTO network. Furthermore, the FTTO network can be used for IoT applications such as hotel security cameras. By way of example, the Amber House Hotel Hangzhou in China has deployed an FTTO network that supports more than 10 services.
• Lower energy consumption: Sustainability is also an increasing priority in the hotel sector. Energy consumption in hotels is sizeable and the fact that all guest rooms will need to be provided with connectivity means that energy consumption from traditional copper-based LANs will be high. FTTO requires less power for data transmission and signal amplification, leading to reduced energy usage and lower CO2 emissions. This in turn means that there is substantial scope for energy savings from deploying FTTO. The use of FTTO can deliver significant carbon emission reductions of around 60%. For instance, Hotel Kapok, a Chinese boutique business hotel chain, views sustainability as an important part of its network strategy. Deploying FTTO has helped the hotel well address this concern and meanwhile save on energy expenditures.

Hotels deploying FTTO stand to benefit from increased revenue

FTTO deployment can help hotels generate additional revenue in multiple ways, for instance, by improving room occupancy rates. This additional revenue can help justify the expense of installing a new FTTO network.

• FTTO provides better quality connectivity: The importance of good quality Wi-Fi connectivity in guests' choice of hotel is growing. In order to attract higher-value guests, hotels will need to provide optimal quality Wi-Fi. One indication of this is to include "free Wi-Fi" as one of the seven categories for which users of the website Booking.com can rank their hotel stay. If hotels are able to attract better reviews because they have better quality connectivity, then this will increase occupancy rates and allow the hotel to more reasonably charge higher room rates for the premium services they provide.
• FTTO offers the highest speeds with the least disruption while delivering aesthetic impact for hotel guests: FTTO also comes into its own with its ability to offer the fastest speeds easily and conveniently. FTTO offers the benefits of easy upgrades to 50G PON with up to 50 Gbps of shared capacity. Upgrades to 50G PON can easily be accomplished by changing only the OLT and ONU hardware rather than having to alter the physical cabling, as would be necessary if using a copper-based LAN. The requirement with copper-based LANs to replace cabling in order to upgrade bandwidth is highly problematic in the hotel sector, since it would cause disruption and noise to guests, and also means potential lost revenue when rooms need to be closed to install the new cabling. In addition, FTTO networks are based on a PON point-to-multipoint architecture, whereby one fiber is split to cover multiple end points. Traditional copper-based LANs run a separate cable all the way to each end point and this means that they require considerably more cabling, which makes it more challenging to make the hotel decoration attractive. Ensuring that the hotel is well decorated is again important for attracting guests.
• FTTO provides hotels with more space to offer more facilities for guests: Traditional copper-based LANs can only provide their maximum speeds at distances of up to 100 m, which then drives the need for more communications rooms. FTTO solutions require only around a tenth of the space of traditional copper-based LAN solutions. The lower space requirements for FTTO compared to traditional copper-based LANs are then significant because hotels can create more guest rooms, or even additional facilities such as gyms or conference rooms, with the extra space and thereby generate additional revenue. Furthermore, the greater reach of FTTO means that hotels have more flexibility in terms of their layout compared to using traditional copper-based LANs, and this could help make the hotel more aesthetically appealing and therefore more attractive to potential guests.
• FTTO offers green credentials: FTTO networks are a greener solution than traditional copper-based LANs because they consume less energy. This is important because it could form part of a strategy for a hotel to promote its sustainability credentials. Sustainability is becoming an increasingly important factor in guests' hotel choices, and sustainability rankings are starting to appear on hotel booking websites. For example, Booking.com gives hotels a "Travel Sustainable" score from levels 1 to 3. In another example, in its 2022 research "Travelers' interest in sustainable tourism options increases", Expedia.com indicates that 90% of respondents look for sustainable options when travelling.

Summary

The deployment of FTTO for campus scenarios brings many benefits. FTTO's scalability and flexibility make it ideal for expanding networks, while its durability and low maintenance costs ensure long-term efficiency. Its ability to handle large data volumes securely and efficiently makes it the fit solution for these critical environments. Deploying FTTO will help customers future-proof their campuses for the digital and intelligent application demands of today and tomorrow.