As communication networks continue to grow at a rapid pace and continue to add more services, substantial network expansion is taking place to expand the bandwidth capacity supplied to residences and commercial enterprises. Fiber to a premise (typically referred to as FTTP) has been very expensive to deploy and does not find wide usage except in new residential and new commercial buildings. The more affordable approach is to deploy fiber to the curb or node (referred to as FTTC or FTTN). Under this approach, fiber from a central office is directed to a cross-connect box (also known as a service area interface) and terminated at one or more Ethernet switch cards in the cross-connect box that convert optical signals to electrical signals. The electrical signals are in turn supplied to legacy twisted pair wires which run to residences or commercial enterprises as xDSL services.
In other instances, some telecommunication carriers are deploying WiMAX services, which is a broadband wireless network technology based on IEEE's 802.16 standard. WiMAX transceivers are generally installed in remote fields, or commercial buildings much like cellular base station installations. WiMAX can provide roaming and fixed communication devices broadband data services. Deployment of this technology can be expensive due to the cost of installing base stations and cabling to central offices.
It is expected that broadband IPTV and Internet services may require bandwidths greater than what the aforementioned communication technologies can offer on their own. Deployment of these technologies in an uncoordinated manner can be expensive and may not be able to address the growing needs of consumers for more bandwidth.
A need therefore arises for a system and method for deploying communication services.