Writing optical history

Historians eventually may look back on the current era in telecom and humor themselves by thinking about the decisions traditional telecom service providers had to make. Fiber to the node, or fiber to the home? Fiber to the curb, or fiber to the neighborhood? Regardless of their ultimate decision on network architecture, for many carriers the decision to deploy fiber to the home, curb, neighborhood or node is loaded with so many factors, that it's easy to understand if they simply threw up their hands in frustration.

Carriers that are deploying FTTx are engaged in a historic trend that has witnessed numerous defining events, to the point that each successive deployment is almost now considered to be a relatively routine event — if it's ever possible to consider bringing up to 100 Mb/s to every home a “normal” event, that is. In greenfield environments, particularly the large housing developments popping up on the fringes of virtually every metropolitan area, it's almost become expected that at least one service provider (often with the consent and encouragement of developers) will offer fiber connections to each home. What goes better with a three-car garage than that healthy serving of bandwidth?

Not unlike most technology leaps in the industry, it was largely the independent telcos that first took the risk on deploying FTTx, starting in the late 1990s in rural communities that were experiencing growth spurts. However, the technology graduated to the big time when BellSouth, SBC Communications and Verizon issued a joint request for proposal for an FTTP network two years ago. Along the way, as in many large multi-carrier deployment plans, the telcos involved diverged on their original vision. In this case, SBC and BellSouth are opting to bring fiber to the node and complete their loops with very high-speed DSL technology, while Verizon has stuck to the FTTP model.

In many ways, FTTx is the ideal technology metaphor for the development of an industry that is maturing from a monopoly and regulated mentality to an open competitive environment.

The vast majority of carriers deploying fiber inevitably bring up the subject of triple-play services. Indeed, telcos, particularly the three involved in the RFP, justify their deployments by pointing to the ability to offer voice, high-speed data and video services over the same infrastructure. With the massive amount of bandwidth enabled by FTTx, all three services also can be delivered in an IP format that makes the bundle cheaper to provide. In many cases, moving into all three services is a matter of competing with cable operators that are quickly moving into the same market with their hybrid fiber/coax networks.

Ultimately, cable operators also may have fiber directly into every home they service. Given the billions of dollars in cash the largest cable operators have dumped into their networks — making them two-way for cable modem service and upgrading from analog to digital and high-definition video — it makes it unlikely they will be able to justify to their investors the need to spend more on bringing fiber that last several thousand feet.

That makes this point in the telecom history unique. Telcos, which have spent the better part of this decade slicing capital expense budgets, now have an opportunity to leapfrog the most modern cable technology. The result will be the ability to provide a bundled package that isn't just a series of disparate series of services but rather an integrated offering that blends all three elements of the triple play. Getting that bandwidth to the home is just the first step in the process.