Several mature and standardized optical access network
technologies are available for network operators providing
broadband services, being now in deployment phase; therefore
cost estimation, business analysis, efficient deployment
strategies, network and topology design issues for FTTx access
networks play an increasingly important role regarding
profitability and market success. In a competitive environment,
techno-economic evaluation supports the optimal choice among
available technologies. Even the tradeoff between future proof
technical superiority and short term investment minimization
requires a farseeing decision. In our point of view, cost
estimation and techno-economic evaluation is strongly related to
strategic network design: among others the uneven population
density, irregular street system or infrastructure have
significant impact on the network topology, thus the deployment
costs as well. In order to deal with these aspects, a high-
level, strategic network design is necessary that adapts to
geospatial characteristics of the services area, providing
accurate and detailed network information for the techno-
economic evaluation [1]. We have developed a topology designer
methodology that supprts the above requirements, providing
(near) optimal topology of the fully or partially optical access
network, based on the geospatial information about the service
area: digital maps, existing infrastructure and subscriber
database. Automatic topology design for large-scale service
areas, with 10.000s of subsribers is a highly complex
mathematical problem. The tough algorithms for a near optimal,
yet efficient solution. The developed algorithms were evaluated
regarding their speed and accuracy. Based on topology design
results, a detailed and flexible techno-economic comparison is
carried out, since the framework handles various broadband
access network technologies, as presented in a case study.