Comparative study and techno-economic analysis of residential broadband access technologies: GPON and FWA

The focus of this paper is to compare and evaluate suitable access architectures and methods for delivering broadband services.dagger In particular, the paper presents a techno-economic analysis of two key broadband technologies for metropolitan networks: gigabit passive optical network (GPON) and fixed wireless access (FWA). Our studies are based on a modelling methodology for network value analysis that involves CAPEX and OPEX calculations, while the overall technology deployment financial assessment is based on techno-economic evaluation measures such as net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR). The results of a network value analysis can be of significant importance to various market players. For instance, such studies could be useful to equipment vendors to develop costing metrics (cost per customer, cost per megabit/s, cost per kilometre or area), support the business case of their solution or proposal, and prepare RFIs, RFQs and RFPs. Network carriers and service providers could benefit from using such results to assess market demand, compare different technological evolution cases, explore various equipment vendor solutions, forecast deployment costs and compare different roll-out scenarios. The objective is to identify and tailor strategies, such as investment, technology introduction or evolution strategies, for the deployment of broadband infrastructure and services.