Agnostic Fiber
July 16, 2009
Are you aware that fiber optic strands have no idea if they are attached to a residence or commercial building? None whatsoever. On occasion somehow, “experts” in our industry confuse things such as FIOS, for example, which is a residential service and not a business service.
Well, FIOS is a fiber platform – it does not know what service runs over it. Moreover, FIOS is a fiber termination directly into a home or business.
Why do I bring this up? Let’s play connect the dots.
First, for disclosure purposes, I am a fiber bigot – dark, dim or lit – I am a fiber bigot. I guess one can say I have diversity towards and sensitivity to optical fiber. Lit fiber provides a host of spectrum colors as well beyond dark and dim. I am like part of a fiber Optic Rainbow Coalition – I like all the things fiber can do.
Today I happen to read that Motorola has sold off its Fiber-To-The-Pedestal (FTTP) business and is keeping its Fiber-to-The-Home (FTTH) business of products. For those of you still relying on Ma Bell, “to the pedestal” results in the last point between the pedestal and the building/home are copper. For those looking at the “H” in FTTH – once again, whether it’s a home or building – the fiber strands do not discriminate.
Question: Why did Motorola sell off FTTP business but not FTTH interests?
Another article I read from Infonetics Research states that video will triple in consumption by 2013. For sake of connecting the dots, let’s say Infonetics Research is half-right with their forecast.
Cisco also announced a new product this week. This product is geared to the television set to provide – get this — affordable video conferencing. Sure there will be early adopters, but it is fairly important Cisco is making such a capability available targeted to households.
Connect the dots … what medium can handle this with scale, reliability, speed and lowest/cost per bit? Copper? Coax? EVDO? 3G? 4G? LTE? WiMax? BPL? Fiber?
I’ll let you be the judge.
By the way — those televisions supporting high-definition video – its 30 megabits a channel.
Connect the dots my friends – unless you are moving, you want to have a direct fiber connection.
Motorola is making a move, Cisco is making a move, and Infonetics if half right…which tells me the legacy networks are incapable from a physics perspective.
Then again, this past week, our government issued a definition of Broadband for America as a measure: 768 kilobits. Can someone give me the math on watching a high-definition video or real time program via IPTV over a 768 kilobit link?
Written by Dave Rusin - Telecom Executive
Posted by wbrache | Filed Under American telecom, Telecom Blogs, Telecom USA, Telecom bloggers, Telecom broadband, Telecom terms, Telecommunications bloggers, Telecommunications industry
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Would that the UK government had a vague idea that fibre optic is important.
Their recent report – http://www.culture.gov.uk/images/publications/digital_britain_interimreportjan09.pdf – gives no impression that they have a clue.
768k is a pretty anemic goal from my point of view. But to people who’s only option is 56K dial-up available, it is screaming!
With all the networks at our disposal (wireless, CABLE TV, FTTH, etc.) with which to build bandwidth to the customer , I think we could set the bandwidth bar a little higher. FTTH might be the preferred network option, but wireless (WIMAX, LTE or other) may be more cost advantageous and quicker to deploy for certain areas.
I have to say, I would love having fiber to my home; as long as they provided more bandwidth at the same (or lower) cost!