High deployment cost with respect to expected revenue is the main barrier to fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) roll-out in rural areas. This problem, as shown in this paper, is exacerbated by the uncertainty associated with the end-user take-up rate. The randomness associated with subscribers’ service take-up yields considerable fluctuation and escalation in the total cost of deployment. This adverse and varying environment makes it difficult to produce firm business cases and can increase the reluctance of potential investors and incumbent operators to deploy FTTH access networks. In this paper, we develop a holistic framework for examining real-world FTTH deployment scenarios, taking as a case study one of the most rural counties in Ireland. Further, we carry out an in-depth techno-economic analysis identifying the methods more applicable in the rural scenario. We analyze the cost effectiveness of FTTH deployment, also proposing solutions that provide different levels of upfront investment risk, relating it to uncertainty in customers’ take-up rates. For example, we show how a lower take-up rate can be made profitable by adopting a strategy that favors lower upfront costs at the expense of higher connectivity costs.

中文翻译：

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使用长距离无源光网络进行农村推广的成本分析：在用户使用率不确定的情况下权衡前期成本

相对于预期收入而言，高昂的部署成本是农村地区推出光纤到户（FTTH）的主要障碍。如本文所示，与最终用户使用率相关的不确定性加剧了这个问题。与订户的服务使用相关的随机性导致部署总成本的大幅波动和升级。这种不利且变化多端的环境使得很难确定公司的业务案例，并且可能增加潜在投资者和现有运营商不愿部署FTTH接入网络的意愿。在本文中，我们以爱尔兰最农村的县之一为案例，开发了一个整体框架来检查实际的FTTH部署方案。进一步，我们进行了深入的技术经济分析，确定了更适合农村情况的方法。我们分析了FTTH部署的成本效益，并提出了可提供不同级别的前期投资风险的解决方案，并将其与客户使用率的不确定性相关联。例如，我们展示了如何通过采用有利于降低前期成本，以增加连接成本为代价的策略来使较低的使用率变得有利可图。