The DISCUS workshop will be streamed live here:
http://connectpro10311755.adobeconnect.com/marco/
Workshop title
Ownership, usage and regulation in next generation fibre access network: can we move away from competition at the physical layer?
Workshop introduction:
Unbundling of access networks has, over the past two decades, introduced competition into the phone and broadband market, favouring a global decrease in prices and large increase in Internet usage. This has pushed many businesses towards a new and profitable web-based economy, which has lead to the development of new services and applications, that have progressively required larger and larger network capacity.
As such increases in capacity requirements pushes the old copper access network beyond its physical limits, new fibre-based access networks are being deployed all-over the world.
However the deployment of fibre infrastructure in the access network has created significant concerns for the national regulators, as it was not clear whether the same copper unbundling rules should apply also to fibre. On the one hand operators seek assurance of a stable and favourable regulatory environment to assure adequate revenues from the potentially high-risk investment, of deploying extensive new fibre infrastructure. On the other hand regulators don’t want to create a new monopoly, by allowing large institutions to roll out and unconditionally own their fibre infrastructure. A number of solutions have been proposed to this issue in different world regions, with different outcomes. In Europe, the initial hesitation to move away from copper unbundling regulations, has made it one of the regions with the least fibre access installation in the developed world.
Workshop description:
The aim of the workshop is to discuss established practices, current trends, and novel, potentially disruptive solutions to network ownership, usage and regulations, bringing together opinions from a number of different telecommunications research institutions, including vendors, operators, national regulators and academia.
The workshop will cover topics such as:
– Current state and trend of regulation in Europe and rest of the world on current generation systems (i.e., EPON, GPON)
– Sharing network infrastructure in next-generation single and multi-wavelength systems.
– Ownership and usage in integrated wireless/optical access networks.
The workshop will consist of a number of invited presentations, followed by a panel discussion with the audience.
Proposed agenda:
Date: Thursday April 9th, 1.30 p.m.
Total event duration: 3 hours
Location: Trinity College Dublin, Lloyd Institute, lecture theatre LB01.
The event will be recorded and streamed on line.
13.30 – 14.30: Presentations
– 13.30-13.40: Caoimhe Donnelly, Fergal Mulligan (Comreg) – Policies and initiatives regulating FTTC and FTTH.
– 13.40-13.50: Julio Montalvo (Telefonica Research Spain): Fiber access unbundling: an incumbent operator experience
– 13.50-14:10: Thomas Pfeiffer (Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent Germany): Open access networks and their application to mobile system backhauling
– 14.10-14.20: Linda Doyle (TCD): Networks without borders
– 14.20-14.30: David Payne (TCD): Can we move away from physical layer competition?
Marco Ruffini 
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