Multi Service Access Everywhere

            

  About Muse

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Objectives

The overall objective of MUSE is the research and development of a future, low cost, multi-service access network. The access network should provide secure connectivity between end-user terminals and edge nodes in a multi-provider environment. It should be suited for the ubiquitous delivery of broadband services to every European citizen.

The scope of the project is broadband access for residential subscribers: the figure shows the different elements of the access and edge network addressed by MUSE. Research will be carried out on access and edge network architecture, access and edge node functionality, innovations of first mile solutions, and the interworking with the home and SOHO network.

In order to achieve Broadband for all, MUSE will investigate access and edge networks that have the following target features:

 

Low investment cost and operational expenses: the residential subscriber should spend no more than 50 Euro/month depending on the offer of broadband applications and services,

Multi-service and multi-hosting capable: suited for many types of known and yet unknown services with the appropriate QoS (Quality of Service) over a single common infrastructure, as well as for hosting various (competing) service providers in that same infrastructure,

Open service enabling access platform: allow for new revenue-generating services and for collaborative business models in which each player in the value chain gets his fair share,

First mile solutions scalable in both bandwidth and user density, that can reach at least 80% of the European citizens and are ready for a cost effective migration of the bandwidth to 100 Mbit/s per subscriber by the year 2010,

Well integrated in an end-to-end view: appropriate inter-working with the metro/core network and the home network,

Plug-and-play for the end-user.

   

MUSE aims at a consensus view of the future access and edge network achieved by the co-operative research of almost all major players in Europe.

Standardisation is key to achieve low cost and interoperable solutions. MUSE aims to re-affirm the position of the European industry in international standardisation. MUSE aims to define a set of standards allowing for interoperability between access network elements and CPE across the different network layers. In order to achieve this objective, MUSE partners are making co-ordinated contributions to        

                     

 

 DSL Forum

HGI (Home Gateway Initiative)      
                                        

ETSI (TISPAN and TM6)     

ITU-T      
   

The concepts of MUSE and the interoperability will be proven by prototypes in end-to-end lab trials. 

The project is organised in two phases of about two years each. Phase I started in January 2004 and was completed in February 2006. In phase I,  MUSE defined the multiservice access architecture (following two network models) and realised three lab trials according to three different deployment scenarios:

  Access network migration

  Ethernet and IPv6 optimised access

  FTTx

Phase II started on January 2006 and runs until December 2007. In phase II, the MUSE access network is further enhanced by

  embedding new service enablers in the access network elements to create more added value for multimedia applications,

  preparing the fixed access architecture to support fixed mobile convergence,

  comparing new concepts like distributed architectures and node consolidation (the latter enabled by XL PON (Extra Large Passive Optical Networks)).