ITU-T Study Group 15 Session

Francesco Montalti

Biography & Abstract

Biography: Francesco Montalti received the degree in Physics with honours from the Rome University “La Sapienza” in 1976. After some years spent at the ITT Face Standard Laboratory as researcher, in 1985 he joined SIP, now Telecom Italia, working on the Industrialization of New Technologies and as responsible for the specifications of cables and the associate hardware used in the whole telecommunication network. At present he is in charge of Outside Plant Engineering in the Open Access Division of Telecom Italia. Its responsibilities include cables and accessories development, network design and installation rules.
From 2001 to 2008 Francesco chaired ITU-T Study Group 6 (Outside Plant and related indoor installation). Under his leadership Study Group 6 developed Recommendations and Handbooks in its core competency areas for the network deployment, cable installation, operation, maintenance and restoration including devices and associated hardware giving useful advice and expertise  especially to the developing countries.
In October 2008 he has been appointed Vice Chairman of ITU-T SG15, with the responsibility of WP2 (Optical access/transport network technologies and physical infrastructures).
Francesco is also involved in the standardization activities of IEC TC 86.

Abstract: The economical feasibility of FTTH is strictly related to the reduction of capital expenses for the construction of the access network as well as cabling of existing buildings.
The most serious drawbacks affecting the construction of Ultra Wide Band optical network, also known as NGAN (Next Generation Access Network), are the high costs of the infrastructures deployment, as well as the social implications, such as traffic interruption, noise generation, permissions requests, etc.
These factors are even more important due to the particular environment of the urban areas.
This item has been considered by all the major Telecom operating Companies at global level and solutions applicable to particular urban environments have been developed and tested.
About ten years ago, ITU-T SG6, envisaging this growing need of the Telecommunication Community, started the standardization of innovative, cost effective and low environmental impact techniques. As a matter of fact these techniques are now available and widely used in the access network, as they allow the reduction of installation time and of the environmental impact, giving the possibility of road restoration on the same day, allowing also infrastructures sharing with other subjects (like public lighting Companies) in areas where the Digital Divide is the main problem to be addressed.
Concernig the optical connection inside the existing buildings, the so-called “Brownfield”, the deployment of an FTTH architecture is even most critical, because of the economical and technical implications.
The main difficulties for optical fibre installation are:
- limited availability of telecommunication infrastructures (i.e. pipes from the basement to the living units), especially in old buildings
- congestion of existing tubes (copper, TV cables,…)
- difficulties to obtain the authorization to install “at sigth” solutions on the staircases
In such a context, the objective of the work to be carried out by SG 15 is to identify technological solutions, together with installation techniques, that allow to minimize the cabling impact on buildings and at the same time optimize the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for the Telecom Operators.
The target solution should guarantee small dimensions, easy, flexible and quick installation, possibly without use of specialized crews, low environmental impact and cost effectiveness. Its installation has to be optimized for the very different existing infrastructures, where the copper pairs and/or other cables are present, and different environment (indoor/outdoor).  For such a purpose also new classes of fibres are being addressed, that can withstand very small bend diameters, in order to be easily installed inside customer premises without heavy penalties on the power budget.