The Empresa de Telecommunicaciones de Bogota (ETB) is the largest fixed network operator in Bogota, the capital of Columbia. ETB has two million fixed-line subscribers. Among them, 600,000 are broadband subscribers, accounting for 34% of the Bogota broadband market. ETB aims to expand both mobile and fixed businesses. Its strategy on fixed networks is to provide high-speed broadband pipes on which N-Play and other new services can be delivered to boost its revenue.
Based on the high-speed broadband strategy, ETB started to build an FTTH GPON network in the urban area of Bogota in 2012. The project, which involved an optical transformation to ETB’s existing access network, was undertaken by ZTE and ALU, with ZTE taking a 70 per cent share.
ETB operated a GPON network that could provide a variety of services. While the GPON network had helped ETB steadily boost market share and operating revenue in recent years, it faced increasing O&M and service issues. For example, it lacked sufficient PON network monitoring and automatic diagnosis mechanisms, leading to low efficiency in fault location and slow response times to user complaints. To improve user satisfaction, ETB urgently needed a complete, end-to-end FTTH GPON O&M assurance system.
Since it first deployed ZTE’s GPON products at the beginning of 2013, ETB has maintained a stable partnership with ZTE. Focusing on cutting O&M cost and enhancing user satisfaction, ETB and ZTE carried out discussions on the issues involving quickly analyzing and locating broadband access faults, predicating broadband performance deterioration, analyzing and managing QoS of the broadband access network, and optimizing broadband service O&M process.
To address these issues, ZTE came up with an “Easyoptical+optical time-domain reflectometer (OTDR)” solution consisting of seven modules: fault diagnosis, real-time monitoring, alarm processing, performance prediction, statistics and analysis, online evaluation, and online optimization. Through the modules, the solution enables the fast handling of FTTx network faults, enhances O&M efficiency, and optimizes service quality. The solution also provided performance prediction and QoS optimization that could change the original FTTx O&M model. As a result, customer complaint processing is turned from passive into active and user satisfaction is elevated.
ETB commercially deployed the “EasyOptical+OTDR” solution that covered its entire GPON network. This paved the way for ETB to smoothly expand its FTTH business.
The “EasyOptical+OTDR” solution can rapidly establish a well-rounded FTTH GPON O&M assurance system that enables all the active equipment, regardless of its vendors, and the open data node (ODN) platform to be monitored in real time. In the test of interoperability with the third-party optical line termination (OLT) as part of the bidding process, the solution delivered a brilliant performance, deeply impressing ETB with its user friendly interface, proactive fault detection and accurate fault location.
With the “EasyOptical+OTDR” solution, ETB can significantly decrease broadband opex, improve its customer satisfaction index (CSI) and quality of experience (QoE). This will also strengthen ETB’s market position in Columbia and boost its profitability as well.