Not so long ago, each of the
major telecommunications networks (switched telephony, data transmission, cable
television, and wireless networks) was evolving in order to more effectively
support that network’s legacy services. However, growing pressure to provide
multimedia services, the explosive growth of the Internet, and a progressive deregulation
of the telecommunications market have changed the landscape. In order to meet
the increasing demands of their legacy services and to position themselves for
new services, each of these networks has moved to a fiber-optic broadband
backbone network. A bottleneck remains, however, in the subscriber access
portion of the network; the "last mile." Telephone networks provide
ubiquitous, efficient two-connections to homes and businesses, but are limited
by the bandwidth that can be obtained through twisted pair cables. CATV
operators, on the other hand, deliver huge bandwidth in the downstream
direction to our homes but suffer from a limited bandwidth and infrastructure
for supporting an upstream return channel. CATV operators have also
traditionally lacked connectivity to businesses. Wireless service providers
suffer from limited spectrum availability and the various signal propagation
constraints. Data service providers have typically relied on one of the other
networks to provide the last-mile connection.
In recent years, different access technologies
were brought into existence in order to provide the last mile with an increased
bandwidth and a two-way connectivity.
Telecom operators are lobbying for both xDSL
technologies that expand the bandwidth of the existing copper plant up to
several tens of Mbps and FITL solutions that allow for an efficient sharing of
access fibers by residential customers.
CATV operators are not lagging behind and are
installing a return communication channel in a low-frequency part of a coax
bandwidth.
Two other relative newcomers to the multimedia
market -- wireless solutions and digital satellites -- offer important benefits
such as rapid deployment and are thus not to be ignored. It is an easy guess that
they will also serve some part of the multimedia cake.
While the current economic condition in the
telecommunications industry creates pressure to minimize capital spending on
broadband infrastructure on one hand, on the other hand it also creates a
greater urgency to deploy new, revenue-generating services such as high-speed
data interconnectivity.
The Broadband
Access series addresses a full spectrum of issues related to a residential
access - from signal level, through network architectures together with their
life cycle costs up to live trial descriptions. We encourage experts in these
areas to share their knowledge with the readership of the IEEE Communications
Magazine. We are going to publish reviewed submission relevant to broadband
access three times per year (months to be set by the Chief Editor). The papers should be prepared according to the author's guidelines (available at http://www.comsoc.org/~ci/).
Manuscripts must be submitted through the magazine's submissions Web site at: http://commag-ieee.manuscriptcentral.com/. You will need to register and then proceed to the author center. On the manuscript details page, please select Broadband Access Series from the drop-down menu.
Series Editors
|
Steve GORSHE |
Zdzislaw PAPIR |
|
PMC-Sierra, Inc. |
Dept. Telecommunications |
|
Portland, OR U.S.A. |
AGH University of Technology |
|
Cracow, Poland |
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