Work package 4 carries a significant weight in terms of the importance of its
results for the BReATH project and the project.s goals. Strategic Modelling provides the ability to represent both services and network attributes in a holistic cost model, with a geographic distribution. The capital, operational, services infrastructure and network costs will be included in the modelling. Basic tariffing will be included to allow .time to payback. to be assessed. The model will allow different service combinations and different technologies to be compared, with the ability to easily change the mixes. It will also allow the effects of different rates of deployment to be examined and a range of ‘what if?’ scenarios to be examined. This workpackage will provide a framework model that can be used to examine a range of scenarios. Subsequent activity will identify network evolution plans that support growth of services in metro, urban, rural and isolated scenarios for promising technology options, taking account of the specific needs defined by the scenarios.Strategic modeling will provide guidance and set the refined requirements and criteria for gathering data, developing
appropriate methodologies and evaluating strategies (based on the earlier conducted techno-economic analysis and studies in WP3). Strategic planning will exploit the results from the case studies and the strategic modeling activities as to investigate and exhibit a set of potential strategies and (yardstick) factors for deploying (or expanding) broadband service. It will therefore provide a comprehensive framework for examining and assessing for strategic decisions regarding broadband deployment.Sensitivity analysis and risk assessment will also be considered in the various stages of developing and applying
strategies or evaluating broadband service proposals in order to uncover uncertainly factors (economical, political, legal), life cycle and other time constraints, risk conditions and unprecedented parameters (as these may apply on a per case or country basis). Part of this task will be to determine and factor-in any network (access) and information security risks as a lot of emphasis is placed on secure information/network systems and electronic communication. The potential rewards by applying different strategies and the criteria to meet profitability will be displayed.Strategic modelling and planning will consider scenarios where, for instance, a mix of technologies becomes necessary
(e.g., where required network range exceeds the selected technology capability) and will provide the capability to explore alternative solutions (and their implications) if these are financially more attractive (e.g., modify or upgrade existing network or service). Some (early) activities of this workpackage will run in parallel with WP3 (Case Studies) in order to immediately benefit from the ongoing effort in WP3. Another sought activity is the encouragement, i.e., through the Special Interest Groups, of forging synergies, alliances and partnerships between actors that will identify and explore business opportunities. We anticipate that the strategic planning exercise and the various project events will intensify such collaboration efforts that will be stimulated until the project.s conclusion and beyond (e.g., by the networking hubs that the BReATH project anticipates that will spawn).As part of WP4, the interdisciplinary BReATH project team will
- Develop and deliver generic (most appropriate) models to define infrastructure and operations and set out a methodology for developing the broadband access and aggregation requirements, including cost and performance characteristics.
- Produce network evolution plans to support growth of services in metro, urban and rural scenarios.
- Determine key components in deploying broadband access services
- Work together using input from the workshops and the Special Interest Groups as well as their own knowledge and expertise to define a series of business models representing as many diverse scenarios as possible. This will take account of existing and required service network infrastructure as well as core and access.
- Generate broadly-based models using a well proven, techno-economic modelling tool to build and analyse scenarios, taking into account the investment in the network infrastructure, revenues and tariff structures, the demographics and the take up.
A geographic reference model will be constructed based on a country having well developed broadband residential
services so that the model can be .normalised. and validated to ensure that it yields results in the expected way. This will enable the reference data to be mapped to each country or region being studied, with adjustments based on local knowledge, cultural differences etc. The demand patterns will be examined and the resulting bandwidth requirements assessed so that the peak traffic and busy hour can be estimated and geographically scaled according to the defined scenarios. The output from this initial stage will be used to prepare estimates of penetration and usage for each market sector. This output will be in the form of a template of values giving data such as tariff structure, busy hour, peak bandwidth, etc. Full documentation giving justification for the model structure and assumptions will be provided.The techno-economic models built will be used to test different development strategies, for example comparing
technologies and prioritizing service introduction to meet social objectives. These will be used to assess the types of technology required and to understand the financial impact of rolling out services and infrastructure at different rates. Using the strategic model and broadband connectivity information together with the services and geographic data, a series of studies can be conducted to investigate the profitability of different combinations of services and delivery technologies and alternative strategies of deploying technology and growing services. This will include network capacities, technology limitations and range limits. The objective will be to use the model to understand the effect of alternative deployment strategies and to provide one of the inputs to determining .best practice. for the area and in setting benchmarks.Lastly, models will be compared to known conditions and also presented at workshops and special interest groups to
confirm validation. The workpackage final outcome will be to develop a ‘Good Practice Framework’ that will define key stages in designing or developing delivery of residential broadband services.