ITU-T Study Group 6 Outside Plant and related indoor installation

1. ITU-T Study Group 6Outside Plant and related indoor installation Francesco Montalti

2. Contents • Terms of reference • Highlights of achievements / Projects / FGs • Future work • Supplemental slides

3. Terms of reference Study Group 6 is responsible for studies related to: • Construction of all types of terrestrial cable for public telecommunications, including marinized terrestrial cables and the associated hardware (closures, connectors, cabinets, poles, etc.); • Construction and maintenance of the telecommunication infrastructure. This includes interoffice, access and related building and home cable and hardware installations; • Installation, jointing and termination of cables; • Protection of the environment from the deployment of telecommunication related cable, hardware and equipment in the outside plant; • Protection from corrosion and others forms of damage from environment impact, except electromagnetic processes, of cables for public telecommunications and associated structures.; • Protection against fire of telecommunication buildings and outside plant; • Procedures for the safety of personnel.

4. Highlights of achievements (I) • In this study period SG 6 addressed under a global umbrella (products, planning, deployment and maintenance) the items related to the cost effective introduction of optical fibres in the access network for FTTX technologies with the following Recommendation: • L.65 Optical fibre distribution of access networks • L.66 Optical fibre cable maintenance criteria for in-service fibre testing in access networks • L.67 Small count optical fibre cables for indoor applications • L.72 Databases for optical access network infrastructure • L.77 Installation of cables in sewer ducts • L.79 Optical fibre cable elements for micro-duct blowing-installation application In particular L.66 provides the new standard of the monitoring wavelength  at 1650 nm.     

5. Highlights of achievements (II) • Study Group 6 initiated within ITU-T the studies related to the application of RFID technologies for the surveillance and maintenance of outside plant elements: - L.64 “ID tag requirements for infrastructure and network elements management” - L.69 “Personal digital assistant requirements and relevant data structure for infrastructure and network elements management” - L.80 “Operations support system requirements for infrastructure and network elements management using ID technology” This set of Recommendations provide guidance on: 1. the use of RFID devices to monitor the performances of the installed products, 2. the characteristics of PDA for the collection of the data in the field 3. The required features of the OSS to manage the collected data

6. Highlights of achievements (III) • The existing copper network is an important asset for Telecommunication Operators: the techniques for its improvement and its best use with the emerging XDSL technologies are addressed in: -L.71 “Design, construction, and installation of copper networks for broadband access including copper networks connected to optical fibre networks” -L.75 “Test, acceptance and maintenance methods of copper subscriber pairs” -L.76 “Copper loop requirements for various technologies including indoor and structured cabling”       • The sinergy with IEC SC86B was further enhanced by the revision of L.12 “Optical fibre splices” and L.36 “Single mode fibre optic connectors”in order not to duplicate work and to produce technically aligned standards.

7. Future Work (I) • In the last years Telecom operators have started a massive introduction of optical fibre in the access network, in order to provide FTTX solution. This trend, that will continue in exponential way in the following years, has led fibre manufacturers to investigate production techniques that are able to overcome the installation problems that prevented fibres to be easily installed inside customer premises, improving in particular the mechanical characteristics and the resistance to multiple bending. • In this framework, Study Group 6 will take care (addressing also reliability and security aspects) of the entire set of fibres and cable performance, field deployment and integrity of installations • The activity on the construction of infrastructures will address the investigation and standardization of all the new techniques that allow faster, cost effective and safer cable installation, taking also into account the social issues such as the reduction of excavation, the problem for traffic, and the generation of noise.

8. Future Work (II) • Maintenance and physical infrastructure management will be addressed, taking into account the possibilities given by the use of emerging technologies, such as RFID and ubiquitous sensor networks. Studies will take into account new OTDRs and fibre identification technologies for optical fibre monitoring systems developed for the Passive Optical Networks (PON). • Study Group 6 will also continue to take care of the aspects related to the deployment of new services on existing copper network such as co-existence of different services from different providers in the same cable, including also the need of providing performance requirements of new copper pair cables designed to support higher bandwidth. • This activity is strictly related to the continuation of studies on the Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) with the scope to provide all the correct technical solutions needed to assure the network integrity and interoperability, the easy use of equipment and access security in a context where operators can interact without affecting the Quality of Service defined by regulatory and administrative issues.

9. Future Work (III) • As a result of climate change, the interest on environmental issues is growing in areas including life cycle analysis of products and processes, environmentally friendly materials and waste disposal. • It is foreseen to perform the work in a strong partnership with Study Group 15 and in cooperation with IEC TCs 20, 46, 86 and ISO/IEC JTC1 SC25. • Study Group 6 wishes to continue in this new study period all the activities of support to Developing Countries, with the organization of SG meetings and Workshops in the ITU Regions, in co-operation with the local entities. A further involvement of ITU Regions is envisaged with the cooperation of any Regional Working Groups with the aim to highlight specific needs and to submit contributions to Study Group 6.

10. Supplemental Slides • Management team • Structure • Statistics

11. Management Team

12. Study Group 6 Structure • WP1 Infrastructures and EnvironmentEnvironmental and safety procedures for external plant, infrastructure and installation techniques, infrastructure support systems • WP2 Application of Productsaccess cabling, fibre connection, fibre network maintenance, cable construction, joint closures, termination and distribution frames, outdoor enclosures and passive components

13. Statistics (I) • 0 Rapporteurs meetings held • 54contributions received • 6 SG meetings held • Max/Min/Average SG participants: 48/34/41

14. Statistics (II) • 21New/Revised Recommendations approved • 9 Questions assigned by WTSA-04 • 0 new or revised Questions during study period • 10 Questions proposed for next period

15. Workshops “Fibre and cable infrastructure technologies for the NGN and FTTH deployment”  Wuhan, China 14 April 2008 Aim of the workshop: to review the state of the art of the worldwide deployment of fibre in the access network, present new products and emerging installation techniques and discuss the pro and cons of the different FFTX solutions.

16. Thank you! Dr. Montalti received the Laurea degree with honours in Physics from the Rome University “La Sapienza” in 1976. After some years spent at the ITT Face Standard Laboratory as researcher, in 1985 he joined SIP, now Telecom Italia, working on the Industrialization of New Technologies and as responsible for the specifications of cables and the associate hardware used in the whole Telecom Italia network, participating in the activities of several standardization bodies. At present he is in charge of Outside Plant Engineering in the Telecom Italia Open Access Division.   Francesco has successfully chaired ITU-T Study Group 6 (Outside Plant and related indoor installation) since 2001. Under his leadership Study Group 6 developed Recommendations and Handbooks in its core competency areas giving useful advice and expertise especially to the developing countries.