Begin forwarded message: > Fiber-to-the-Home Hits 1m US Subscribers > ---------------------------------------- > Date: 10/6/2006 1:39 PM > Link: http://www.squeet.com/redirect.aspx?redir=http%3a%2f% > 2fwifinetnews.com%2farchives%2f007032.html&f=26240&e=18819602 > > > > > A million fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) subscribers is quite a > remarkable landmark: Two industry groups note that 6m homes are now > passed by FTTH, and that subscribers increased 50 percent in the > last six months. Homes passed jumped from 2.7m in late 2005 to 6.1m > today. The associations estimate that US broadband penetration is > just 44 percent with FTTH being one percent of that; dial-up only > is 28 percent, the same as no Internet access at home at all. > > Although this is a site devoted to wireless data, some readers > would be surprised that I am a great supporter of FTTH. In any > comparison, wire beats wireless for exclusive bandwidth delivered > for the same adapter cost, usually by a speed factor of 40 in LANs. > For instance, 802.11g delivers 54 Mbps of raw bandwidth; gigabit > Ethernet, with a built-in adapter or a cheap add-on card deliver > 1,000 Mbps of raw bandwidth. > > Fiber can carry an awesome capacity and have its capacity upgraded > by changing out components, not fibers, making it a potential multi- > decade technology to the home as copper and coax have ultimately > proven to be. The ultimate home connection option should, in fact, > be fiber, because there's nothing better. > > Now the reality. Wireless has a leg up in most large-scale > deployments because of the tremendous cost of bringing fiber to the > home. Companies like ATT are looking at large-scale FTTN (fiber to > the node) in which the fiber is brought to the neighborhood, and > then a short-range wire is used to connect to the home. It's > cheaper, but it restricts the ultimate bandwidth fairly > tremendously. It also leaves out intracity and intra-LAN services > that could work over unused bandwidth on FTTH that isn't > provisioned for pure Internet or pure video services. > > We're seeing lots of Wi-Fi networks get pitched as what I call > best-worst networks for cities. They're remarkably cheap to install > compared to fiber, even as they deliver potentially anywhere from > 1/1000th to 1/50th of the FTTH or FTTN potential bandwidth. Wi-Fi > is best-worst because it's the best we have (ubiquitous, no > license, no ownership of the band), but worst because it's not > designed for this purpose, and thus an industry has grown up around > trying to make metro-scale service work without breaking > compatibility with existing Wi-Fi adapters. > > Most broadband technologies now, wired and wireless, are simply > patches on not being able to afford installing fiber to every home > even in major urban areas. Some would say that this is a conspiracy > of sorts; Bruce Kushnick argues that telcos received billions of > dollars to build promised networks that have never materialized and > the money is strangely not being returned. But no one denies the > cost and hard physical work to roll out 85m households with fiber. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ TELECOM-CITIES Current searchable archives (Feb. 1, 2006 to present) at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Old searchble archives at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
