Does FTTH Solve Our Data Needs?

Tuesday, 03. 9. 2010  –  Category: T2 Communications

As was discussed in the previous article, “The Demand for the Data Pipe,” data consumption continues to grow at a strong pace thanks to the increasingly IP based communication and entertainment products entering the marketplace.  This comes as no surprise to network providers, who are seeing their networks being tapped out not just by the super users, but by regular (often low revenue generating) consumers.

Clearly, data consumption is not just a network’s concern.  It also affects the content providers, who want their products available and working well to anyone who wants to use them.  As a result, even these companies are stepping in and pushing to expand and improve how data networks operate.

In February, Google announced a new initiative in which they would be funding the development of fiber to the home (FTTH) networks to as many as 50,000 homes in the United States.  The project would team Google up with municipalities with the goal of driving 1 gigabit per second connections to each home, a data pipeline that is nearly 20 or more times the size of connections from current phone and television networks.

Replacing Copper with Fiber

In most of the United States, phone and television network providers have built their network with a last minute consisting of copper.  While they use fiber for transport, the part that ends in the consumer home and ultimately restricts their data capacity remains copper.  In recent years, initiatives by AT&T and other providers have been to extend the fiber in their network closer to the home.  However, few have decided to take the dip into going fully FTTH.  Instead, they choose to end it before it enters a neighborhood.

It is not surprising that legacy providers are so determined to keep using their copper lines.  After all, they have invested billions of dollars over many decades to build it out.  Now, to scrap it all for fiber would be both costly and labor intensive.  But copper can only do so much, and it remains to be seen if new compression technologies can really help bridge the gap.

Limitations of Copper Lines

Remember, copper networks for phone companies used to only handle…well, phone.  Then, internet connections were layered over top of them.  Now, television too is being added to the network, causing some real limitations as to the amount of content that can be pushed over a single connection.

Verizon is an example of one company who realized that it is time to embrace the increasing need for data and start laying the foundation of an all-fiber network.  Their FiOS product now sits in front of millions of homes and has put them on the road to either selling or retiring their existing copper network.  Why would a company so deeply invested in copper decide that its time was up?

The fact remains that copper by nature is not capable of handling the work load that a strand of fiber does.  Depending on your network design, fiber can provide 2-10 times the capacity.  Additionally, copper is well known for signal loss, which is one of the main reasons why it lacks the capacity and cannot be run over long distances.

Copper networks, in large part, have also been retro fit for current needs.  Instead of the network being built for the current and future opportunities, providers are going back to old networks and splicing in the required upgrades to make it work.  It is quickly becoming the network equivalent of Frankenstein—seemingly ideal at first sight, but with so many places to go wrong.

In the end, it really comes down to whether data deployment is about “How do we make it work?” versus “How should it work?”  And with the success of small FTTH operators, large scale deployments like Verizon FiOS, and new the new initiative by Google, the battle of network strategy is clearing favoring an all fiber mentality.

David Fleming is the Director of Corporate Communications for T2 Communications, a CornerWorld company.

Tags: copper, data connection, David Fleming, fiber, FiOS, FTTH, Google, internet, IP, Verizon