High Definition (HD) is a central feature of television services that more telecom operators are introducing to compete against cable and satellite providers, which is helping to drive deep-fiber deployments worldwide.

Sales of HDTV sets are growing steadily and to meet the demand for a higher quality television experience, a greater number of telecoms will deploy deep-fiber networks to deliver HD transmission as a central feature of Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) services and content.

Roger Björk, Sales Development Director for Ericsson’s Business Unit Networks, says: “With all the competition today, an operator needs a new niche. It needs to become a new type of company – a services provider with unique content.”

Deep fiber enables an operator to offer enhanced IPTV services in high definition at the top of a powerful triple-play package with relatively low operating expenses (opex), Björk says.

Olle Tidblad, Strategic Product Manager, IPTV Networks, says that deep fiber also enhances IPTV with multi-streaming, in which separate content can be transmitted to each screen in a household.

“You could have five people in one household watching five different programs on separate screens,” he says. It also makes time-shifting on any channel in the subscriber’s package possible. “You can go back in time with any linear broadcast and you can seamlessly move from a linear channel to on-demand programming,” he says.

That proposition – in addition to high-speed data-service-fiber offers – appeals to telecoms in many markets. In the US, AT&T and Verizon Wireless are pushing forward with fiber build-outs that will cover 20 percent of the American market by 2012. In Saudi Arabia, the developer of the King Abdullah Economic City “smart city” development has contracted Ericsson to lay fiber to the home for the first wave of its expected two million residents. Ericsson is also connecting multi-residential units in Sweden to TeliaSonera’s deep-fiber network.

Björk says that in five years, operators will consider deep fiber “absolutely necessary” for a fixed offering because of the need to reduce opex and to offer unique TV content in high definition.

Ericsson offers end-to-end services and solutions for operators to make this transition, Björk says. As a leader in technology and services, Ericsson is uniquely equipped to understand an operator’s infrastructural needs and advise it in developing a business model, within the regulatory framework of its market. “We have a holistic approach, and we are a partner that is willing to share risk,” he says.

Tidblad says that up to 70 percent of the cost of deployment is in construction work, and that costs can also be managed through new methods of excavating ground and laying fiber. Network-service costs are lower with a pure fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) deployment, but because that is not feasible for all end-users, Ericsson offers a fiber-to-the-curb solution that extends household connections to the fiber network through “very high speed DSL” (VDSL2) lines.

These cost-effective extensions are made possible by DSL access multiplexer (DSLAM) units housed in outside plants, such as Ericsson’s award-winning EDA 1200 solution, which has been deployed on 10 million lines worldwide.