Deployment costs of rural broadband technologies

Abstract

The penetration of broadband services in rural areas is constrained by the cost of network deployment. Deployment costs are higher than in urban areas due to the lower population density. In this paper, we examine the deployment costs of three broadband access technologies; passive optical network (PON), fibre-to-the-node, digital subscriber line (FTTN DSL) and broadband wireless (WiMAX). We show that access technologies with a range of 60 km can reach most rural customers (99% in Victoria). We have demonstrated that long-range PON can provide error free service at this range. Based on a number of assumptions, we have calculated the deployment cost of optimised networks for each technology f..