Regulations among vital considerations when installing FTTH

Fiber-to-the-home network installation presents a variety of challenges, ranging from interoperability to funding and cable installation. Barriers in any of these areas can stall FTTH projects before they get going, and many government initiatives surrounding FTTH innovation often focus on easing burdens in one or two specific aspects of installation to accelerate deployment. As a result, industry and government regulations can end up having a major impact on FTTH use.

This is particularly clear in Norway, where the government is working to develop better installation regulations to spur FTTH development in the nation, ZDNet reported.

Norway's FTTH plan
Remember as a kid, getting alphabet soup for lunch at school and trying to spell things with the letters in the noodles? Okay, maybe you weren't as much of a nerd as I was, but the process was maddening. There wasn't any kind of uniformity. You may have gotten eight noodles shaped like an "A", a bunch of other vowels and a few weird consonants that were useless. This lack of predictability was maddening when it came to getting anything done.

This is the kind of problem that telecoms in Norway are facing. According to the news source, the Ministry of Transport and Communications has recognized that its current standards fordocumentation provides a muddled picture ofthe legal and operational considerations that telecoms must keep in mind when developing FTTH networks. As a result, it is difficult for service providers to lay new cables because they cannot easily evaluate which laws apply to their situation or understand how the regulations apply to them.

In a sense, telecoms are looking at a regulatory alphabet soup that Norway's government is trying to clarify.

ZDNet explained that the new regulatory guidelines could bolster an FTTH market that is already gaining strength in Norway. To accomplish this, many telecoms are encouraging the government to make microtrenching an option.

Dealing with broad FTTH challenges
Installation is not the only problem facing telecoms trying to build FTTH networks. Compatibility problems can also slow project development and add considerablecosts. One way to overcome this issue is through the use of fiber to Ethernet media converters that bridge interoperability gaps and position telecoms to quickly and easily attach homes to the optical network. Media converters also enable telecoms to more strategically establish the network because they can switch freely between fiber and copper efficiently, leaving room for cost savings in places where fiber is not necessary for performance purposes.

Perle has an extensive range of Managed and Unmanaged Fiber Media Converters to extended copper-based Ethernet equipment over a fiber optic link, multimode to multimode and multimode to single mode fiber up to 160km.