Pipeline Publishing, Volume 4, Issue 4

	This Month's Issue:
	Maintaining Network Health

How a Bundle of Fibers Could Change Everything: A Conversation with Joe Savage
of the FTTH Council

By Tim Young

Everyone knows that the face of telecommunications is changing. The model that is emerging, much to the detriment of traditional telcos, is a growth of triple play in the cable sector and increasing adoption of digital voice by current cable subscribers, while telcos travel the much harder road of developing and marketing video options for their own triple play bundles. One constraint on the telcos has everything to do with bandwidth. Traditional telephone networks don't seem to cut it. There is a better way, and it could change everything. Unfortunately, it's not a quick fix.

Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) is on its way and it's a real coax-killer. It's lightning fast, provides enough bandwidth for diverse revenue streams, reduces churn, and reduces OPEX. It has the ability to deliver as much bandwidth as most residential customers could need or want in the foreseeable future. The only problem is that it isn't coming fast enough. Pipeline sat down with Joe Savage, President of the FTTH Council to chat about FTTH and what it means to telcos and the rest of the world.

Pipeline: How is Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) changing the face of telecommunications?

Joe Savage: The face of telecom is changing regardless of access technology. FTTH allows those changes to be in incorporated much more easily and because its bandwidth capability can support continuous movement in terms of voice, data, and video services. By now everyone is aware that triple play is how companies are going to compete for subscribers. It's all about video services, quality voice, and high-speed reliable data connections. That's become the barrier to entry. Added to that list are all sorts of services like home security, mobile bundling, and other services. FTTH provides the big pipe that allows all of those services to reach subscribers. We put out a survey to FTTH subscribers and found that it is not only changing telecom, but is affecting how people live and work. More telecommuting. In some cases, FTTH subscribers prefer the voice and data quality in their homes to those in their offices. That cuts down on drive times and fossil fuel usage. Communities with FTTH in place tend to attract businesses like call centers that rely on the network because they have a strong, reliable network in place.

PL: Can FTTH save telcos?

JS: Yes. In fact, it can save cablecos and other companies as well. As Verizon and 340 other SPs in the US are demonstrating, once you have introduced FTTH, you deliver superior video, more reliable data services, and the ability to offer higher downstream and (more importantly) higher upstream capabilities to residential broadband

Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) is on its way and it's a real coax-killer. It's lightning fast, provides enough bandwidth for diverse revenue streams, reduces churn, and reduces OPEX.

subscribers and users of high-speed internet. Subscribers regularly comment that video quality is better. Video quality can continue to get better, but since it takes about 20 years to convert the whole nation over to a FTTH infrastructure, we'll probably go through two or three more generations of even more improved video services. That will require FTTH given the issues of bandwidth exhaustion in twisted pair and coaxial cable networks that are being described today. It's very comforting to have all that surplus bandwidth to throw at any kind of video quality or channel lineup requirements that come down the pipe.

PL: It amazes me that there are people who seem to suggest that there's such a thing as too much bandwidth. Why are there so many out there who are resistant to network growth and content with cautious increases in bandwidth?

JS: There's a big strategic answer to that, and then there are a lot of tactical things. When people start talking about how much bandwidth you need, what they're really talking about is how much bandwidth they can deliver. When folks start adding up channels, it some how always magically adds up to what's available. One of the hits against FTTH is that it takes a long time. It's an intensely human activity, because you've got crews out there stretching cables and plowing yards. A bucket truck is not going to go twice as fast every 18 months. Some of the SPs have said that they can't wait until they have the entire network deployed, and that they need to use a partway fiber solution. That's going to allow them to address more subscribers more quickly. That may or may not be the case, but that's why some people do that. If you talk to CTOs, pretty much everyone says they are going to

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