FEATURE FIBRE TO THE HOME
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Five common FTTH myths debunked
Objections to fibre to the home (FTTH) simply do not stack up, says Hartwig Tauber
at the time (1943), viewed through the lens of history it seems rather silly. In any case, the statement is probably apocryphal. Tere is no record that Watson ever said anything of the sort. Te trouble is that, once a statement has been
T
repeated many times, it starts to take on an aura of authenticity, even if it is outdated or was simply untrue in the first place. Tis seems to be the case with much of the ‘common knowledge’ around fibre to the home (FTTH). But the myths about FTTH are persistent: there’s no demand; we can’t
8 FIBRE SYSTEMS Issue 1 • Autumn 2013
homas J. Watson, chairman and CEO of IBM, famously said: ‘Tere is a world market for about five computers’. While this statement would have been accurate
afford it; there is no business case; it’s too risky; governments have more urgent issues. It’s not hard to see how some of these myths
arose. To keep up with demand, telecoms operators are migrating from telephone and cable-television networks based on copper to networks based on optical fibres, which can deliver higher speeds. However, migration to an all-fibre network requires major investment and takes considerable time to complete – probably at least a decade in most countries. Many operators, mindful of the short-term desires of their shareholders, would like to implement cheaper upgrades that provide more instant gratification. Equipment vendors have developed new technologies to boost broadband speeds, such as fibre to the cabinet (FTTC), very-high speed digital subscriber line (VDSL), and vectoring. And isn’t the whole world going wireless anyway? Well, it’s not quite that simple. It’s time to set the
record straight.
Myth #1 There’s no demand
More than 100 million homes already subscribe to a fibre-optic broadband connection – roughly equivalent to about one out of every 20 homes on the planet. Te greatest concentration of FTTH subscribers can be found in the Asia Pacific region, where FTTH subscribers numbered 79 million by the end of 2012. In Japan, where FTTH deployment started over a decade ago, the majority of Japanese broadband subscribers use FTTH. In the United States, a nation of about 118 million households, over 11 million of them already subscribe to FTTH-based services. Russia alone had 8.9 million FTTH subscribers at the last count, even though large-scale deployment only started recently (nearly three million were new subscribers in 2012). Tese statistics clearly demonstrate that, where FTTH is available, people will connect to it.
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