Andalucía Assesses the Investment Needed to Deploy a Fiber-Optic Network

The setup of fiber-optic telecommunication networks involves high investment efforts. The Regional Government of Andalusia assigned us the development of a tool capable of evaluating the deployment cost of a network that was not to be limited only to connecting large cities, but also to include smaller towns, in order to prevent them from staying behind the progress of the Information Society. The Andalusian regional Government aimed to deploy a network capable of accessing most of the municipalities in the region, even those municipalities that could not be profitable from a monetary perspective. We developed a nonlinear mathematical programming model with special focus on the investment costs. The costs included the parts corresponding to the civilengineering works, as well as those related to the telematic link deployment. The solution of such a complex problem was found by a genetic algorithm, which was previously tested with a set of trial problems. The results were used to persuade private companies to expand their fiber-optic networks to reach small towns. The concept of information highway has come to mean high-speed telecommunication networks. These networks require an infrastructure that will support the long-distance exchange of information via electronic means, required for different business activities. The future information super-highway will have to combine in a single infrastructure the best features of all the required networks; it will need a bandwidth that will guarantee the quality necessary for television, interaction among customers, and secure financial and commercial transactions. The development of switching techniques, bandwidth sharing, and fiber-optic transmission makes possible networks that provide high quality, and integrate many services under the same user interface.