November 19.2009

Federal Communications, Commission Room TW-C305, Commission Meeting Room, 445 12th Street SW
Washington, DC
Broadband.gov Workshop Website

The goal of the Broadband Workshop on Future Fiber Architectures and Local Deployment Choices is to understand post-100-megabit/s fiber and partial-fiber solutions for the middle mile, public institutions, small to medium enterprises and homes.

It will cover:

* Fiber distribution topology (point-to-point, star)
* Fiber distribution technology (active Ethernet, Passive Optical Network), and
* Hybrid fiber solutions (advanced DSL, fiber-coax, fiber-radio) where fiber to the neighborhood is delivered to the end-user by non-fiber methods.

It will cover not only how network designers weigh economic and policy factors, but also how their choices of network topology and technology facilitate and inhibit future policy options. It will delve into the upgrade paths of the various alternatives along the way to explore where future barriers lie. It will highlight creative and exploratory thinking about upgrading today's technology, e.g., GPON, HFC and radio technology.

The following are some of the preliminary topics that will be covered at this workshop. If you would like to discuss any other topics, please send us your suggestions.

* Current experience with some of the most advanced fiber networks.
* The role of option value in network architecture choices, especially the tradeoff between future proofing and capital expenditures.
* Policy enablers and barriers including new thinking about physical architecture barriers.
* Future anticipated improvements.