Paris
Digital ODN, a New Trend of ODN Industry
At the 2020 Broadband World Forum (BBWF), Wu Qisheng, Director of Full-Fiber Infrastructure Network of the Huawei Transmission & Access Product Line, delivered a keynote speech titled "Digital ODN, a New Trend of ODN Industry".
In his speech, he shared in-depth insights and analysis on global all-optical networks and the path for future optical distribution network (ODN) development, elaborating on commercial benefits of ODN digitalization.
According to Mr. Wu, the ODN industry needs to focus on two aspects: how to reduce the network construction cost and how to effectively manage network resources. These are also the major pain points of operators.
Regarding FTTH development in China, as the penetration rate is already high, the home broadband industry is shifting from connection-centric to experience-centric, which requires greater attention on installed-base operations. Moreover, more and more operators outside China are implementing all-optical strategies, accelerating the development of FTTH.
As the FTTH market grows, O&M becomes more labour-intensive and time-consuming, so the industry needs an effective way of managing ODN resources. A major difficulty is that an ODN is passive and has a large number of ports in various states. If the network topology cannot be accurately managed, problems such as unnecessary capacity expansion, low provisioning success rate, and time-consuming fault locating will occur. As a result, huge manpower is required to check the accuracy of resource statistics yearly, which not only increases OPEX, but also affects end-users' home broadband experience.
WU QISHENG, DIRECTOR OF FULL-FIBRE INFRASTUCTURE NETWORK OF THE HUAWEI TRANSMISSION & ACCESS PRODUCT LINE AT BBWF 2020
Don't miss Wu Qisheng's keynote speech "Digital ODN, a New Trend of ODN Industry" at Broadband World Forum 2020.
Nowadays, thanks to all-optical network technologies, people can enjoy smart transportation, education, healthcare, and government services through ubiquitous connections and AI-enabled customized digital platforms. However, ODN resource management still relies on traditional methods. Resource recording and management in the construction, provisioning, and maintenance phases can be time-consuming, labour-intensive, and error-prone. Therefore, ODNs urgently need to be digitized to facilitate resource management.
Wu Qisheng believes that ODN digitization needs to undergo two phases. In the first phase, digital statistics collection and AI identification technologies can be used to implement physical site digitalization. In the network construction phase, resource information can be reported digitally, including the number of devices, number of available ports, and GIS information. The cloud-end system uses AI big data modelling and analysis to restore the ODN link topology on a map and then displays detailed information about each device. In the service provisioning phase, the system automatically collects device statistics, generates the topology for device ports and optical network terminals (ONTs), and accurately displays the port usage of devices, making the physical topology of an entire ODN visible.
The second phase of ODN digitization aims to visualize link loss by leveraging full-scenario AI to accurately locate faults, especially faults in level-1 and level-2 splitting points and in the drop cable section. After optical signals pass through fibre links, key features such as the phase and light intensity change. The full-scenario AI technology can read and identify related feature changes, perform big data modelling and analysis, visualize link loss, and restore the logical topology in real-time without manual intervention. This ensures that services are not affected, keeping the ODN passive.
Following these two phases, the physical topology and link loss of an ODN become visible from end to end, ensuring precise management of resources, as well as enabling fast service provisioning and fault locating.
Wu Qisheng ended by saying that Huawei is looking forward to working with industry partners and operators to jointly promote technological innovation and development of the entire ODN industry, and help global operators realize sustainable commercial success.
HUAWEI AT BROADBAND WORLD FORUM 2020
Join Huawei at this year's Broadband World Forum as Wu Qisheng, Director of Full-Fibre Infrastructure Network of Huawei Transmission & Access Product Line, takes the stage for the keynote session; 'PremiumWi-Fi & eAI Reshapes Home Network Experience' on October 13th at 10:45 am (BST). Accessibility with a delegate pass.