  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.
