Copper Switch-Off - Economic Analysis and Operator Experiences of Decommissioning Copper

As ultra-high speed network deployments continue to progress, operators have to decide on the fate of their legacy copper networks. Literally, they must manage their exit from the copper era.

Aging copper-based infrastructures are increasingly costly to maintain, especially when the operator is faced with rising customer expectations for network performance and quality of service impacted by FTTP standards. Over the past two years, incumbent operators have started to announce their copper switch-off dates and to implement the decommissioning of their legacy networks.

However, NGA deployment plans are not proceeding at the same pace everywhere, and although migration to fibre is proceeding steadily, a significant proportion of broadband access is still based on ADSL.

Based on operators’ first-hand experiences with copper switch-off initiatives in Europe, Asia and North America, this report aims to provide an in-depth view of how copper decommissioning initiatives take place, what is at stake for the various parties, and how players balance the many diverse and sometimes countervailing interests at work behind the switch-off of legacy networks.