Fiber-to-the-Home is a reality for about 10 million consumers worldwide. As a solution for broadband to new and existing developments, it’s unbeatable. FTTH simply offers more bandwidth and flexibility at a similar price. A decade ago, the cable companies spent almost $84 billion to pass nearly 100 million households, with a lower-reliability, lower bandwidth technology.
For the same $850 per household, fiber has become the go-to technology for public and independent telecoms, utilities and even some cable companies. Almost all large developers are turning to fiber for its future-proof ability to perform.
Wireless alternatives, like WiFi and WiMAX, can’t deliver high-consumption technologies like HDTV… in fact, they have trouble with even a standard TV signal. The DSL variants— even cable and satellite links— can deliver HDTV, but with low reliability and high operating cost. And that’s just today— what about the broadband demands of the future?
Think about this: one bundle of optical fiber cable, not much thicker than an ordinary pencil, could carry ALL of the world’s current communications traffic.
Different people look at FTTH in different ways:
- Engineers constantly talk about bandwidth, as if raw capacity to move data is an end itself
- Consumers are concerned with bandwidth products and services on the market right now, not future technologies that will almost certainly require greater broadband capability
- Political leaders, economists and academics see bandwidth as a publicly available infrastructure, a utility that makes it easier to develop new products and start new businesses
Infrastructure affects property values. A house with public street, water and sewer, schools and utilities is worth much more than a house without those same commodities. And just as people argue about how much is enough with public utilities, the same holds true for bandwidth. Who should pay for it? Should it look like a telephone system (which historically uses a network technology different from an Ethernet or office network), or should it be a network resembling what the cable companies have developed?
If you’re working in property development— in either residential or business structures— why outfit your beautiful new buildings with 120-year-old copper technology that costs as much (or more) than fiber, and will be perfectly obsolete in just a few years?
If you run a telecom or cable company, why give up competitive advantage to the builders of fiber networks that are cheaper to run, more reliable and can deliver premium services that you can’t?
If you are a municipal official, how can you explain to your constituents that your community will be bypassed by the successor to the Interstate Highway System, the Information Highway?
And if you are a consumer, can you afford to buy a home that will have to be extensively re-equipped in a few years to accommodate that hot new video technology or phone system your job demands?
