Bandwidth envy

It’s not surprising to hear that home buyers consider high-speed Internet connections via fiber to be an important amenity. In fact, I don’t need a survey to tell me that homes with fiber optic connections sell better than those without.

That’s a bit like taking a survey to find out whether kids prefer ice cream to broccoli.

What the study released by the Fiber-to-the-Home Council last week purported to show was that homeowners preferred high-speed Internet connections via fiber optics to other amenities. The other amenities against which fiber optic connections were compared included: green space or walking, jogging, biking trails; community parks and pools; 24-hour neighborhood patrols; and fitness centers/clubhouses.

It’s pretty clear from this list that the survey is aimed in part at home developers, who make choices about which amenities to offer and, in this market, are no doubt looking for the things most likely to sell a new home. For that group, fiber optic connections seem to be a no-brainer because, for greenfield construction, there is little added cost and a lot of bang for the buck.

But looking at the larger picture, to include existing homes as well as new developments, fiber optic connections are one amenity that a homeowner often can’t choose to get. It’s not like putting a pool in your backyard or adding a deck — your service provider has to decide to offer fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and to bring that network to your neighborhood and even to your street. Once it’s there, sure, you have a choice. But whether you take the FTTH-based service or not, being able to say it’s available could help sell a home.

Conversely, there are a lot of U.S. residents who would love to have this amenity but can’t get it and most likely won’t ever get it. Some of those residents can’t even get broadband and aren’t likely to anytime soon — even with the federal stimulus package, now that stimulus distributors are defining broadband as 768 kb/s.  Even some consumers in the service territory of Verizon, which has a major FTTH commitment, won’t ever see fiber optics to their homes because of the economics.

We are destined to be a nation of fiber haves and fiber have-nots. I can tell you it sucks to be one of the latter.

E-mail me at carol.wilson@penton.com.