scte long read
costs have gone up. We don’t have growth in our economy. Some of our customers have told us that they need to reduce their costs altogether. Moving from fibre back to mobile isn’t something we see that much but equally, the customers that we want to connect to fibre tell us mobile is at this moment enough if it’s cheaper.”
is made available in the building, so that’s always available as an option; they put this remote PHY DAA node in the basement of that building. Then they use DOCSIS just for the building network. DOCSIS is operating only from the home and the remote PHY node is in the basement, which is then serving coax broadband services to the tenants.” He went on, “Therefore there are new DOCSIS subscribers emerging because that’s a reasonable, uncomplicated way to deliver gigabit speeds to people living in MDUs.” Stefaan Vanhastel, head of Marketing and Innovation for Nokia, Fixed Networks also sees operators taking a pragmatic approach to existing older MDU buildings where it may be cost-prohibitive or physically impossible to run fibre to each unit. “Operators are leveraging technologies like MoCA Access and G.fast to deliver multi-gig speeds using existing coax or copper. These solutions still deliver high-quality internet speeds, but at lower costs and faster time to market so users don’t have to wait for fibre to arrive to their buildings. At the same time, the technology evolution enables seamless hybrid deployments with unified, ‘single pane of glass’ management systems that make it easy to operate.” There are all sorts of contributory factors hindering progress in Finland; some are specifically Finnish problems as we have seen, but a stagnant economy is something we are all experiencing. “ At the moment, the Finnish economy is not very good,” Veli-Matti said. “We used to have high inflation, but not anymore. Even so,
Brr! It’s cold!
As if things weren’t tough enough for your average telecoms provider in Finland, try squeezing 12 months’ worth of infrastructure build into a few short summer months. Laying cables into frozen ground, amongst the most densely forested in Europe isn’t really an option. “During winter, when temperatures drop to -25°C, network construction essentially stops.” Aleksanteri Pyrrö is President and CEO of Nestor Cables, one of Finland’s leading fibre optic cable manufacturers. Founded in 2007 to preserve the Finnish tradition of producing high-quality cable, Nestor is certainly benefitting from the fractured and elaborate telecoms landscape in Finland, but there is an art to installing it, given the harsh climate. “The bulk of fibre deployment happens between roughly June and September, sometimes stretching to five months depending on conditions. It creates a seasonal bottleneck that’s completely normal for us — but might surprise others.” The challenge is that customers increasingly operate on an ad hoc basis. Orders come in urgently — “we need it now, or yesterday.” Managing that within a compressed build season requires careful planning. Again, this hadn’t occurred to your London-based writer, where real weather tends to happen elsewhere. We just talk about it more than anyone else. A testament to these hardy people, over the many conversations that took place to write this piece, the harsh, seasonal conditions literally preventing work for most of the year – this issue didn’t even come up. Aleksanteri smiled. “Well, probably the reason why it hasn’t is because it’s so normal for us.” Making the most of such seasonal work explains Nestor’s aggressive expansion plans into other areas of Europe, the UK, USA and the Middle East. Nestor is competing with Hexatronic and Prysmian, which while healthy for competition, obviously there are other factors. “It’s a competitive market because everybody can put fibre wherever
Volume 48 No.2 MAY 2026
45
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