Transforming Athens City Hall with Nexans Fibre To The Office (FTTO)

Why Fibre To The Office (FTTO) is your go to infrastructure solution for old buildings!

Dealing with limited space inside a historical building

Have you ever been to the Acropolis? The Parthenon? Athens is certainly known for its rich history but time did not stop there. The Municipality of Athens is committed to modernising its internet infrastructure, bridging the digital divide, and fostering entrepreneurship. Nexans has previously been involved to help modernise and digitalise Athens government buildings – one of these the city hall, requiring a flexible, cost-efficient, future-proof, scalable and upgradable network to provide high-speed broadband Ethernet to employees. What sounds like an easy upgrade can soon become a hassle if you ignore the special requirements of historical buildings. Several challenges had to be to overcome, as work needed to continue undisturbed during installation, and the historical building housing Athens’ administration had very limited pathway space for cabling and no capacity for distribution rooms.

Why Athens chose Nexans LANactive Fibre To The Office (FTTO)

FTTO is a last-mile technology for Gigabit Ethernet in office LAN. Nexans LANactive FTTO solutions save installation costs, reduce CAPEX and OPEX, and can outlast several generations of active equipment. There are also considerable benefits in terms of energy consumption, network administration maintenance, rollout and associated costs. FTTO infrastructures can grow with the user´s needs from the very start. They can easily be adjusted to new bandwidth requirements and applications and ensure higher network availability in critically important environments.

More than 40% energy savings in historical buildings?

What sounds like a contradiction is indeed possible. FTTO helps reduce energy consumption and therefore, in parallel, decrease CO2 emissions during the use phase, allowing for a lower carbon footprint. In a traditional LAN, all active network equipment must be powered and cooled in distribution rooms housing active floor switches. With FTTO, there’s no need for this. The benefits of RJ45 copper cords and fibre cabling are combined for maximum performance with reduced energy consumption. Data is transported over a fibre optic channel with lower energy losses in the cable so less heat is generated, saving on cooling. FTTO switches consume very little power and support PoE/PoE+, which allows electrical power to be sent along with data over Ethernet cabling. This way the city of Athens can secure more than 40% energy savings in its city hall.