Copper line pre-qualification assessment for high-speed broadband in Malaysia

Abstract

The copper access-network operators face the challenge of developing andmaintaining the cost-effective digital subscriber line (DSL) services that arecompetitive toother broadband access technologies. The copper line qualityassessment process is crucial to ensure the customers enjoy their speedsubscription. Through this process, service providers can evaluate the capabilityof copper lines before deploying the broadband service. Furthermore, for theunstable condition of copper lines, the root cause of the problems can be identifyingearlier, which helps the operators to do preventive action and avoid offering theservice to customers using that copper lines. This paper discusses the proposed prequalification assessment method and the impact of every proposed stage. Thisproposed assessment showed that the speed performance would be dropped morethan 50% if the impairments exit in the copper line. Thus, any service providerscan avoid serving high-speed broadband to subscribers using the unstable cablecondition. Through this preventive process, it will benefit the service providers.