TAREA 2.

APLICACIONES DE LA IO

NOTA TOMADA DE REVISTA INFORMS

NBN: Operations Research Saves Billions for the Worlds Largest
Broadband Project
The Problem
Australia is building the largest high-speed broadband network in the world. The
National Broadband Network (NBN) is the largest and most expensive
infrastructure project ever undertaken by an Australian government. The NBN is
important because it will help keep Australia ahead in an increasingly online world.
The NBN mandate is to reach all Australians regardless of where they live.
Covering an area around 80% of the size of the United States, the NBN will cover
almost 13 million premises. Fiber connections will be made to 93% of these
premises. The remaining hard-to-reach places across the expanse of Australia will
be connected through wireless or satellite technologies. The project will take 10
years to complete with an initial capital cost of $37.4 billion.
The Analytics Solution
Early in the project, NBN leaders realised that there was extraordinary potential to
use the power of operations research to optimize the enormous design and
construction task posed by the roll out. NBN Co contacted Biarri, an Australian
commercial mathematics company founded in 2009, to provide the O.R. expertise
to develop the optimisation tools.
To meet NBN Cos need, Biarri created FOND (Fiber Optic Network Design), a
network flow mixed integer program that creates multiple trees spanning the
demand network. This formulation minimizes the cost of components, cables, and
labour within a FSAM, subject to a variety of constraints. This formulation

maximizes the use of existing infrastructure to minimize construction costs;

avoids costly new infrastructure installation by intelligent and often
unintuitive reuse of newly installed infrastructure; and
ensures full network architecture compliance for all designs produced.
The Value
To date, over 500 FSAM initial designs have been completed using the
optimization methods developed by Biarri. This has saved an estimated $30 million
in construction costs, with the planning time per module reduced from 145 to 16
days.
The construction savings from these FSAMs alone is estimated at $250 million. As
the rate of design and construction of the more than 4,000 FSAMs increases, the

JULY VERNICA GALINDO GUERRERO

TAREA 2. APLICACIONES DE LA IO

savings of the optimization tool is forecast to be $325 million per annum, with $300
million saved in construction costs and $25 million saved in design costs. Over the
lifetime of the project this will amount to $2.2 billion in avoided costs.

JULY VERNICA GALINDO GUERRERO