It’s been said that the hardest part of a broadband network is The Last Mile to the customer premises. Telecommunications providers are long accustomed to building pipes to consumer and commercial premises and delivering broadband services, including voice, video, and high-speed data over those pipes.

Once inside those buildings, though, all bets are usually off when it comes to the service provider. There is no consistency in the home, although there might be a network. Moreover, service providers don’t have much experience building home networks. Never an ideal way of doing things, this model completely devolved with the advent of competitive Triple Play broadband services as subscribers started to demand that the carrier provide a reliable home network, and it became incumbent for service providers to offer this feature as a product differentiator. The home network, those last few feet traveling around the premises, had taken on a new level of importance.

That was the case in 2005 when Bell Aliant moved into the video entertainment space as Aliant TV, providing a Triple Play bundle of voice, video, and high-speed data services over an advanced telecom network.

Aliant TV was committed to providing a better-than-cable experience for customers already accustomed to the five-nines reliability of a telephone company. That meant delivering a reliable, quality service to the home over a telephone network; it also meant getting that same level of quality and reliability inside the home for consumers who had become accustomed to having telephones, TVs, and even computers in multiple rooms.

The assumed home networking solution was to run new Category 5 (CAT5) Ethernet cable throughout the residence, connecting multiple devices via a complex IP network that required more devices to again translate the signals before delivering them to computers, phones or TVs. CAT5 is fine for home networking. Installing new CAT5, on the other hand, is an exceptional pain for installers who need to spend the minimum amount of energy at each location so they can proceed to the next. Aliant TV found itself struggling with the double-headed T&M (time and money) monster as installers took five hours and sometimes longer to snake cable through walls and floors and ceilings.

Like every telco, Bell Aliant looked to lower the cost of installations by decreasing the time installers spend on the installation. Then there’s the intangible of overstaying a welcome in a home and the hit a service provider takes when a consumer’s patience is tried.

The third part of the financial equation doesn’t necessarily show up in the ledgers but it’s there: long, complex installs take a physical and mental toll on technicians who are stressed to move onto the next job and just as stressed to do the current job right.

Dana Lohnes, Aliant TV-Operations Prime, confronted problems on two levels: the complex installations were causing installers to take way too much time to complete the tasks, and Aliant TV was forced to push out installations, potentially jeopardizing new customers by delaying service launches. The technicians, meantime, were getting frustrated - helped no doubt by just as frustrated homeowners - because they were spending too much time on every site.

Because of its close relationship with Bell Canada, Bell Aliant was able to visit the carrier’s testing labs where the carrier was exploring the Corinex AV128 CableLAN to re-use existing in-building coax. The CableLAN used HomePNA, also known as HPNA, which is the marketing name for the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) standard G.9954 that enables home networking over coaxial cable and phone lines. HomePNA is now used in 1.5 million homes by more than 40 service providers worldwide, including, of course, Bell Aliant. But in 2005, it was a new notion to deal with a newly emerging problem of building a home network.

HomePNA networks can deliver 200 megabits per second (Mbps) of continuous throughput while maintaining parameterized and prioritized quality of service (QoS) within a residential network. Additionally, they support the Broadband Forum’s TR-069 technical standards for consumer premises equipment (CPE) interoperability so that service providers can connect a bevy of devices to the network with minimal trouble.

Since Lohnes estimates about 95 percent of the homes within the Bell Aliant footprint are already wired with coaxial cable, HomePNA proved to be the right technology at the right time. Besides improving the experience for homeowners, HomePNA gave Bell Aliant techs a breather. The technology, Lohnes would later say, was popular with techs “right away; it caught on like wildfire” when it was introduced into the field in 2007.

As technicians grew accustomed to using HomePNA, installation times plummeted. Installers could do more work in less time which, in turn, proved economical for the service provider and convenient for the homeowners. The carrier noticed a month-over-month decrease in installation time to the point where Lohnes estimates that techs spent 50 percent less time installing networks than they did when the work first started in 2006.

While the HPNA technology is certainly the largest direct reason for fast-falling installation times, it was aided by the fact that installers could now more quickly assess a home network situation and begin the work because they were comfortable using the coaxial cable.

Installation times dropped even further when Bell Aliant took its next technology step and transitioned from using the Corinex unit as a termination point at every set-top box to using Motorola set-tops with built-in HomePNA silicon. With the new set tops, installers could plug the line directly from the wall to the box without having to install a separate device connected by CAT5 Ethernet cable. Again, the cost savings in equipment and time were evident.

The Next Part of the Evolution
HomePNA and re-use of coaxial cable, though, was only the first part of the equation. The second part was quickly ensuring that the installation was correct and that no stone was left unturned when it came to the quality of the home network. While the HomePNA specification uses existing coax as a signaling conduit, installers were unfamiliar with coax networks and didn't have many tools to diagnose the quality of the network. Some were installed decades ago by cable companies; many others were installed by consumers using store-bought devices that don't necessarily meet 21st Century - or even 20th Century - specifications for transporting data. Still others have, over time, been prey to loose or worn out connections.

This added yet another level of frustration for the installer. The equipment would be connected to the network and all would appear to be right; then the network wouldn't deliver the quality that Bell Aliant expected and promised. Even worse, an installation could appear correct only to deteriorate and require a costly return visit. In either case, the installer would be forced to walk step by step through the network to root out the problem's cause and correct it.

CopperGate, a HomePNA stalwart, stepped into the fray with home network testing equipment that would serve as a final component to the installation process. Installers use the testing equipment to run data packets through the HomePNA network and determine where these packets run into problems - if at all. Once located, the techs can easily replace or repair a loose connection or bad piece of wire, and bring out the best in the home network.

Even more important, the ability to test a home network helps technicians who are recalled to a residence for assistance. An earlier, non-tested installation may have missed something that's impacting a network's quality. A repeat visit and new test can determine what might have been missed and repair it within minutes. The end result saves time for the homeowner, and repairs both the network and the technician's psyche.

Testing equipment, like the HomePNA itself, is in an evolving situation. Today's CopperGate gear uses laptop units to test the stability and connectivity of the home networks but tomorrow's technology, which Bell Aliant is testing, uses smaller hand-held testers that make it even easier to detect problems and encourages installers to routinely equip themselves with the tool at every installation. Again, in the time-is-money space, installers now often leave the laptop in the truck and have to return to get it if the network needs testing or correction.

There is no doubt that the home network is a major incentive in the war being waged to acquire and attain Triple Play broadband subscriber. The ability of a carrier such as Bell Aliant to quickly get into a consumer home, use existing coaxial networks to carry new services and test and verify the reliability of those networks is an important part of today's competitive telecommunications space.

About the Author
Michael Weissman, Vice President, North American Marketing, CopperGate Communications, brings more than 20 years of high technology management experience. For more information, please visit www.copper-gate.com. Bell Aliant is one of North America’s largest regional communications providers. Through its operating entities it serves customers in 6 Canadian provinces. For more information, visit http://bell.aliant.ca.

What’s your take on this subject? Leave a comment and get the conversation going.