FTTC/xDSL network planning under uncertain demand

Abstract

Dramatic growth in broadband demand makes it inevitable for network operators to upgrade their access network, FTTC/xDSL is one of the most attractive technologies the telephone companies can take, since it utilizes the existing twisted copper pairs while providing enough bandwidth for the time being. Studies have been performed on the access network expansion expansion planning problems, but they overlooked one of the most important factors, the demand uncertainty. Though considering uncertainty makes the problem more difficult, we cannot let it unchallenged when we think of the enormous amount of the investment to be made on the access networks. In this paper, we devise an algorithm to solve the problem of FTTC/xDSL planning under uncertain demand optimally, using the column generation technique and applying DP, and finally compare the results of this algorithm and the traditional sequential approach.