Full Network Design for Reselling subscriber access

In the PON sections of this article we have discussed how building a PON network is making it harder to hand over a fiber to a single customer to a wholesale carrier so they can provide internet services to the subscriber and have complete control over the whole path to the subscriber.

An alternative to this is to provide Layer 2 transport from the wholesale carrier to the subscriber. This is called Layer 2 Bit-stream Access/L2BSA. The fiber provider is operating the access network and a Layer 2 transport network (#1) which transports data between different wholesale carriers (#2) and subscribers (#3).

Now a wholesale carrier can get two diverse ports from the fiber carrier and all subscribers of the fiber carrier can be handed over via Layer 2 to the wholesale carrier. This adds complexity for operating the transport network on the fiber carriers side, and processes need to be streamlined so the wholesale carrier can provide seamless services to their subscribers.

On the positive side, this design means that wholesale carriers do not need to put up active equipment at every active network aggregation site of the fiber carrier to receive connections to local subscribers. Deploying active equipment in many places adds cost and complexity to the wholesale carriers network and is only economical sensible when a certain number of subscribers are reached at this site. If the fiber carrier can hand over all subscribers of their area at two locations, chances are much higher this threshold is reached and the wholesale carrier can start operating at a profit earlier. This is true for existing wholesale carriers, but also for newstarters who want to get into the business and cannot start with a huge invest initially.

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