Relevance of research on telecommunications networks is predicated upon the implementations which it explicitly claims or implicitly subsumes. This paper supports researchers through a survey of Communications Service Providers current implementations within the metro area, and trends that are expected to shape the next-generation metro area network. The survey is composed of a quantitative component, complemented by a qualitative component carried out among field experts. Among the several findings, it has been found that service providers with large subscriber base sizes, are less agile in their response to technological change than those with smaller subscriber base sizes: thus, copper media are still an important component in the set of access network technologies. On the other hand, service providers with large subscriber base sizes are strongly committed to deploying distributed access architectures, notably using remote access nodes like remote OLT and remote MAC-PHY. This study also shows that the extent of remote node deployment for multi-access edge computing is about the same as remote node deployment for distributed access architectures, indicating that these two aspects of metro area networks are likely to be co-deployed.

翻译：电信网络研究的相关性取决于其明确声称或隐含包含的实施方式。本文通过对通信服务提供商当前在城域网领域的实施情况以及预计将塑造下一代城域网的趋势进行调研，为研究人员提供支持。该调研由定量分析和定性分析两部分组成，其中定性分析通过领域专家访谈完成。在多项发现中，研究发现用户基数较大的服务提供商对技术变革的响应敏捷性低于用户基数较小的服务提供商：因此铜线介质在接入网技术组合中仍占重要地位。另一方面，用户基数较大的服务提供商正大力部署分布式接入架构，尤其是采用远程接入节点（如远程OLT和远程MAC-PHY）。本研究还表明，用于多接入边缘计算的远程节点部署规模与分布式接入架构的远程节点部署规模大致相当，这表明城域网的这两个方面可能协同部署。