Novel infrastructure network design approach to support resilience in FTTx deployments

If predictions of consumer usage of high-bandwidth "on-net" services and behavioral changes are realized, the network that delivers these services must be significantly more reliable and future-proof than currently achievable to meet customers' expectations. Fiber plant infrastructure constitutes the biggest single cost item in FTTx deployments and represents a major barrier for rolling out resilient fiber access network configurations. This article proposes how, with an incremental cost to typical FTTx infrastructure deployments, a new duct network architecture can be implemented, enabling the deployment of resilient access networks, which dissolves the artificial demarcations of central office boundaries and removes the distinction between the backhaul/metro and access domains. This article describes how the proposed infrastructure architecture would be implemented in practice and preliminary results that demonstrate the low risk for the network operator to realize this proposal, which offers significant benefits.