stc announced that in collaboration with Huawei it has successfully deployed a Fiber-to-the-Room (FTTR) solution. Providing true gigabit, ultra-broadband services to residential and SME users. It is the first such pilot project of its kind in the Middle East.
It is often challenging to provide Wi-Fi coverage in multi-story villas and large apartment blocks. Wi-Fi performance deteriorates significantly after signals pass through walls, and subscribers consequentially have an inferior broadband service experience. For 1Gbps subscribers, the experienced bandwidth can be far away from the true gigabit bandwidth due to these coverage challenges.
FTTR solution enables the provision of a premium experience in homes, which are increasingly becoming a vocal point of online office, online education, online shopping, telemedicine, and more. These demands pose higher requirements on home broadband networks.
Fiber is used to replace Wi-Fi uplink networking or traditional Ethernet copper cables between Wi-Fi access points, thus extending fiber to each room using PON technology. Optical network terminals (ONTs) integrate the functions of optical modems and routers to achieve an enhanced experience in full fiber setup, including gigabit full coverage, seamless Wi-Fi roaming.
stc has conducted the first FTTR pilot in a multi-story villa in Riyadh. Based on this fiber networking solution and Wi-Fi 6 ultra-band technologies, the gigabit Wi-Fi can reach each room to provide smoother experiences in smart applications like ultra-HD videos, education, cloud office, virtual reality, and video surveillance. When a user moves from one room to another, the connected end terminals can be switched instantly to ensure that services are not interrupted.
FTTR solution provide telecom operators additional operational capabilities to identify problems proactively and resolve remotely which results reduced customer complaints and home visits. New solution comes with mobile app, which also enables subscribers to manage the home network by themselves, enabling self-diagnosis and self-recovery; these benefits dramatically improve the user experience.
Eng. Bader A. Allhieb, stc Infrastructure VP, said: “It is vital that stc develop and deploy the latest technology solutions to meet the needs of our customers to ensure the best experience. FTTR solution provide high-bandwidth and reliable connectivity across the customer home. FTTR technology is different from the current fiber-based solution. It is necessary to understand the use cases of FTTR and develop corresponding infrastructure requirements. We are working with Huawei as solution provider and their solutions are enabling stc to stay ahead of the market, as a leading provider of integrated communications services in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
Mr. Sunxiaofeng, Huawei stc GKAD CEO, said: “These types of initiatives are at the frontier of innovation in an increasingly connected Saudi society. We are proud to support stc as a long-time partner in the Kingdom, and look forward to scaling this technology to more premium broadband users’ homes and organizations in the future.”
Today’s FTTR solution will open market commercial opportunities for telecom operators as residents who live in large villas, flats, and houses are more likely to adopt the FTTR networking solution, and upgrade their broadband package to higher bandwidth, increasing the average revenue per user for operators.
