Bulgaria Vivacom Equipment Replacement Project – Project Background

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In 2017, Vivacom Bulgaria was confronted with multiple challenges including fierce competition in the broadband market, bottlenecks in bandwidth capacity upgrade, and aging Fixed Broadband (FBB) network devices. Against this backdrop, the operator launched its FBB network renovation and equipment replacement project.

A fixed broadband network consists of three segments: FBB Access Network, FBB Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) and FBB Backbone Network. Their typical networking architectures are listed as follows:

FBB Access Network: xDSL Modem + MSAN, xDSL Modem + DSLAM, Home Gateway + DSLAM, ONT + OLT
FBB MAN: LAN Switch + BRAS, Access Router + BRAS, Access Router + Service Router
FBB Backbone Network: Aggregation Router + Core Router

The broadband network renovation and equipment replacement work of Vivacom Bulgaria only covers its FBB Access Network and FBB MAN; the upgrade of its FBB Backbone Network is managed as a separate project.

Vivacom Bulgaria’s FBB MAN adopts a LAN Switch + BRAS networking architecture. This renovation project involves no adjustment to network topology or service changes, and merely replaces legacy equipment with new high-performance, high-bandwidth hardware.

Vivacom Bulgaria’s FBB Access Network is built with the xDSL Modem + MSAN architecture. Two types of services run on the MSAN: broadband service and voice service. For broadband services, the uplink adopts GE interfaces while the downlink uses ADSL/ADSL2+. Both uplink and downlink bandwidth are constrained and fail to meet subscribers’ demands for bandwidth upgrades. The voice service refers to standard residential fixed-line telephony.

Among FBB access technologies, VDSL2 and VDSL Vectoring deliver higher bandwidth than ADSL2+. Vivacom selected VDSL Vectoring technology for this fixed broadband network renovation and equipment replacement project. However, VDSL2 and VDSL Vectoring support much shorter transmission distances compared with ADSL/ADSL2+. Accordingly, VDSL2 and VDSL Vectoring equipment must be deployed closer to end subscribers, which requires the construction of new remote drop sites. Since voice services remain unchanged, the replacement hardware for original MSAN sites must retain voice access capability. Based on the above requirements, the optimized network scheme for Vivacom’s renovated FBB Access Network is defined as follows:

optimized-network-scheme-for-vivacoms-renovated-fbb-access-network.jpg

After the above renovation and replacement scheme was finalized through communication with Vivacom, the next steps include site selection and on-site survey for remote drop sites. In addition, the subscriber service data carried by each legacy MSAN device needs to be collected and sorted out, to facilitate the design of service board quantities, equipment models and cabinet types for each remote drop site.

By Lanbras

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