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2 | The Advantages of Optical Access | FTTH CounCil

Over the past decade, fiber optic cable, once used only for long-haul

communications, has been extended all the way to end users’ premises.

Today, fiber to the home (FTTH) is a mature, proven technology, and

with costs that are comparable to and even below those of old copper

technologies, it is certain to be the technology of choice for service

providers moving forward.

In the United States, FTTH is available to about one home in five. In

countries such as Japan, Korea, Denmark and Sweden, the figure is closer

to four out of five. Due to vast gains in available bandwidth, reliability and

security – gains that spur economic growth and enable new services for

telehealth, distance learning, cloud computing and more – these nations

have committed to deploying fiber on a broad scale.

In 2010 alone, fiber-fed home businesses sustained 700,000 jobs –

mostly new jobs – in a poor U.S. economy. Fiber deployments stimulated

investment and economic growth in communities across the country,

and stimulus funding established the promise of further expansion in the

coming years.

The details are in this publication, which gives network builders, real

estate developers and managers, and government officials an overview

of the power of fiber optics and the benefits it delivers to communities. It

makes the business and environmental case for fiber to the home, as well.

For more information, please visit www.FTTHCouncil.org.

We call fiber the Light Fantastic. When you’ve read this primer, you’ll

see the light!

Daniel O’Connell

President

FTTH Council North America

FTTH CounCil | The Advantages of Optical Access | 3

Reliability... Bandwidth... Affordability... Future-Proofing... Standards... Security... Economic Development... Sustainability... New Broadband Content & Services... Higher Revenue...

Fiber to the Home: Pathway to Ultra-Broadband . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Fiber and Bandwidth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Applications for FTTH Providers: Beyond The Triple Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Fiber: The Light Fantastic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Telehealth: The Time is Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14FTTH Aids Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Builders, Real Estate Developers and FTTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Questions Real Estate Developers Ask About FTTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18Beating the Recession with Fiber: Three Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21Focus on Municipal Priorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24Key Questions Municipal Officials Ask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24FTTH Success Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28Introducing 1 Gbps to the Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30Understanding Fiber Network Architectures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31FTTH Council Certification Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

This primer was originally written by Steven S. Ross and updated by him and by Masha Zager, both of the Broadband Properties staff. It summarizes research commissioned

by the FTTH Council as well as independent reporting by the authors and by BBP contributing editor Joe Bousquin.

Contents

FTTH providers notice significant economic impacts borne by fiber; 42 percent specifically cited expansions or establishment of large businesses. Source: RVA LLC.

Local Economic Impact of FTTH Noted by FTTH Providers

3%3%

5%6%

8%22%

42%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45%

Residential growth Construction stimulus

Quality of life (services, home education…) Rural growth/agricultural efficiency

Business efficiency Work from home/SOHO expansion

Large business development


Fiber to the home: Pathway to Ultra-broadband

Fiber to the home (FTTH) has be-come the leading technology for next-generation communica-

tions networks worldwide. On every continent, telecom providers are build-ing FTTH networks to replace legacy copper networks that are running out of headroom to support the demand for communications services. Because governments view fiber as critical na-tional infrastructure, many have de-veloped national broadband plans to encourage the buildout of fiber.

Already, fiber reaches at least 200 million homes globally – a tenth of all the households in the world – and an estimated 62 million households subscribe to fiber-based services, in-cluding voice, video, data and more. In the United States, fiber reaches 20 million homes; half of those now have direct fiber optic connections, as do 17 million homes in Japan, more than 12 million in Korea and 8 million more in Europe. These numbers continue to grow exponentially. China alone expects to have 100 million fiber sub-scribers by 2015.

Providers and governments around the world all agree fiber to the home is the endgame for communi-cations infrastructure. No alternative infrastructure is even a contender (al-

though wireless networks are being integrated with FTTH – more on that later), and everyone agrees that fiber will meet the world’s needs for the foreseeable future. The only debates involve the speed of the transition.

why Fiber?The reason for this striking degree of unanimity is simple: FTTH offers far

more bandwidth, reliability, flexibility, security and longer economic life than alternative technologies, even though its price is comparable. It is also less ex-pensive to operate and maintain than copper.

Because of these advantages, FTTH can support many more communica-tions services than legacy infrastruc-tures, including newly emerging ser-vices such as health care and cloud computing. Fiber’s reliability and se-curity are particularly critical for such new services as telehealth and telepresence.

FTTH also allows network opera-tors to derive more revenues from to-day’s communications services. FTTH subscribers today often spend 30 to 40 percent more per month than DSL subscribers – not because basic ser-vices are more expensive (they aren’t), but because more and better pre-mium services are available.

For example, multiple simultane-ous HD channels are difficult to imple-ment well over any medium but fiber; 3D TV and high-definition video com-munications are even more challeng-ing. At the end of 2010, Verizon, thanks to its all-fiber FiOS network, was within

The number of Internet-connected devices in the home will grow from 2 billion today to 10 billion in 2015, says Pyramid Research. Only FTTH can meet this demand for in-home bandwidth.


a few cents per month of the highest average monthly customer revenue of any large network provider on Earth.

Because other media have inher-ently limited capacity, tweaking more bandwidth from them becomes in-creasingly difficult and expensive as time goes on. This isn’t true of opti-cal fiber, whose capacity is effectively unlimited.

Fiber can handle any bandwidth demand with ease. In fact, one bundle of fiber cable not much thicker than a pencil can carry all of the world’s current communications traffic. The technologies for transmitting data over fiber are well understood, and the upgrade path for the electronic components that send and receive signals has been defined for years into the future. If anything, increasing fiber bandwidth will become less expensive rather than more expensive.

who’s bUilding Ftth? By our count, well over 700 network operators have already deployed FTTH in the United States. Even in a down economy, most developers put fiber into new properties and many are up-

and municipal buildings. In 2010, when Google announced that it planned to build one or more community fiber networks, more than 1,100 local gov-ernments proposed their communities as suitable locations. (In March 2011, Google selected Kansas City, Kan., for its initial fiber deployment.)

adding ValUe to ProPertiesAccess to utilities makes private prop-erty more valuable. A house is worth much more if it has access to a public

street, water and sewer services, pub-lic schools and other utilities than if it does not. In the same way, FTTH adds value to properties. Fiber connections make single-family homes easier to sell and multiple dwelling units easier to rent. Renters and buyers know they can get the most attractive services available on the market today – and that if an exciting new service is intro-duced in a few years, they’ll be pre-pared for that as well.

This publication explores these is-sues, and more, in detail. It’s written in nontechnical language so you can un-derstand the value of next-generation infrastructure – and what it means to you – without a degree in optical engineering.

We want to communicate ... The Advantages of Fiber to the Home.

Fiber duct being laid in Chennai, India.

Telepresence is one of the advanced applications that depends on a high-bandwidth, high-reliability network. In this photo, the people on the far side of the table are actually sitting in a remote office, but can interact with the local group as if they were physically present.

grading existing properties. Larger telcos are deploy-ing fiber in cities and suburbs, and smaller telcos in rural areas. Cable providers use fi-ber to compete

for lucrative commercial-services busi-ness. Even some small electric compa-nies have extended the fiber networks they use to manage their own facilities to serve their customers as well.

Municipalities are attracted to FTTH because it positions their com-munities for tomorrow’s jobs and eco-nomic growth. Nearly 100 localities have built or are building fiber net-works to serve residents or businesses; hundreds more have fiber to schools


Fiber and bandwidth

Q: What is bandwidth?A: In a network, bandwidth (what

engineers call bitrate) is the abil-ity to carry information. The more bandwidth a network has, the more information it can carry in a given amount of time. Networks with high bandwidth also tend to be more reliable because fewer bottlenecks disturb the flow of information.

Q: How much bandwidth – or information delivered by bandwidth – do we need?

A: A standard-definition television signal requires a bandwidth of about 2 Mbps – two million bits (ze-ros and ones) per second. HDTV re-quires as little as 2.5 Mbps if the im-age is rather static – a person being interviewed, for instance. But fast action, such as in some sporting events, requires more – as much as 8 Mbps, even with new compres-sion technology such as MPEG-4. Now, full-frame 3D is hot. While it can be delivered at 2.5 to 3 Mbps, a high-quality experience requires closer to 5 Mbps. 3D immersive HDTV – a technology already being used in some academic and indus-trial settings – will require between 50 and 300 Mbps.

Q: What about data?A: Bandwidth requirements for many

kinds of data are exploding. For example, the digital cameras that consumers buy can create larger and larger images. In health care, the medical images produced by equipment such as CT scanners are orders of magnitude larger than camera images – a hundred times larger, and more. The biggest growth in data trans-mission has been for video, and this trend is expected to continue at least for the rest of this decade. Video requires not only extra band-width but also extra reliability. The smallest delay in data transmission can result in distorted views.

Q: Can’t copper carry high bandwidth?

A: Yes, copper can support high bandwidth, but only for a few hun-dred yards. The longer the signal travels on copper, the lower the bandwidth. Optical fiber is unique in that it can carry high-bandwidth signals over enormous distances. Fiber uses laser light to carry sig-nals. Under some circumstances, a signal can travel 40 miles (60 kilometers) without degrading enough to keep it from being re-ceived. Another difference is that fiber is better able to support up-stream bandwidth – that is, from the user out to the network. High upstream bandwidth is important for video communication and for many business applications.

Q: What exactly makes fiber “future proof”?

A: The equipment necessary to send light signals keeps getting better. So equipping an existing fiber net-work with newer electronics and with lasers that pulse light faster, or lasers using different wavelengths of light, can vastly increase avail-able bandwidth without changing the fiber itself. The new electron-ics are very cheap compared with the original cost of laying the fiber. Therefore, once fiber has been deployed, network operators can keep increasing bandwidth at very little cost.

Q: How long has fiber optic technology been in use?

A: Fiber optic cable has actually been used in communications networks for more than 30 years. Fiber first delivered a signal directly to an American home (in Hunter’s Creek, Fla.) more than 20 years ago. Before that, fiber was – and still is – relied upon to carry communications traffic from city to city or country to country. The first trans-Atlantic fiber cable was laid in 1988. Almost every country on earth has some fi-

ber, delivering services reliably and inexpensively.

Q: All providers seem to claim they have fiber networks. What’s different about fiber to the home?

A: Don’t be fooled! It is true that most cable and DSL networks use fiber. In these networks, the fiber carries the signal close enough to a home so that copper can carry it the rest of the way. However, this approach requires expensive, difficult-to-maintain electronics at the point where the fiber meets the cop-per. The available bandwidth is far less than an all-fiber network. And these halfway approaches do not allow symmetrical bandwidth – ex-isting cable and DSL systems can download much faster than they can upload information.

Q: Isn’t that good enough?A: That depends on what you want to

use your bandwidth for. If all you want is to send emails, download songs or share family photos, the bandwidth provided by today’s cable modems and DSL lines may be good enough. If you want to log on to the corporate LAN from home and work effectively, you’ll need more. And what about uploading a high-def video of the school play, or sitting down to dinner with family members a thousand miles away?

Q: Why does it matter how close to the home fiber comes in DSL and cable systems?

A: With copper cable, there is a marked relationship between dis-tance and available bandwidth. For example, the latest commercial versions of DSL can carry a signal of more than 200 Mbps for about 750 feet. Over a distance of a mile, DSL can deliver only about 30 Mbps. That’s the theoretical limit. In prac-tice, the real bandwidth is less.

Q: With cable and DSL, there’s often a difference between advertised


VisUalizing Fiber-borne bandwidth

Source: BBP LLC

BandwidthComparisons

Only the BeginningIn a few years, even 1 Gbps will look small. Soon, most content will be 3D and ultra-high-definition.

64 Kbps: Phone Line

128 Kbps: ISDN

1.5 Mbps for a T1 Line

20 Mbps: Wireless maximum per user with latest technology

100 Mbps: DSL maximum per user with latest technology

160 Mbps: Cable maximum per user with latest technology

Today, fiber’s bandwidth is orders of magnitude bigger than other technologies. As the new generation of 10 Gbps equipment is deployed, the fiber circle will move off the page.

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and actual bandwidth. Is that true for fiber?

A: Cable, DSL and even wireless net-works are usually more heavily oversubscribed than fiber – that is, providers promise users more than the total amount of available band-

width because they know all users aren’t going full throttle most of the time. As a result, copper-based networks slow down during peri-ods of heavy use – such as when teenagers come home from school. Fiber has enough bandwidth that

providers can guarantee high speeds with little or no oversub-scription. If a fiber network is de-signed properly, users will always get the speeds that are advertised. The Federal Communications Com-mission now insists that carriers de-liver the bandwidth they advertise.

Q: Is FTTH technology expensive?A: In new construction, fiber costs

about the same as copper to build, and it costs much less to oper-ate and maintain. Building fiber to the home is expensive only when compared with not building any-thing – that is, with adding new electronics to an existing copper network or building fiber only part of the way to the home. The prob-lem is that these less-expensive


solutions don’t always meet users’ needs. In the last few years, the flood of video content has outrun the ability of older technologies to handle bandwidth demands. Pro-viders are shutting off or slowing

down service or imposing prohibi-tive fees for customers who exceed monthly bandwidth caps. Custom-ers don’t like these restrictions, and they don’t appreciate being called “bandwidth hogs” for using

services they have paid for. In ad-dition, it’s not clear that providers save money by failing to meet us-ers’ needs, because limiting band-width means limiting revenue po-tential as well.

Increased bandwidth lets us do familiar things faster. Send an email. View a website. But its real value is that it lets us do entirely new things with our computers, cam-eras, televisions – with our network. Today, the network is often called the “cloud,” which is a way of saying, “I don’t even have to think about where data is stored or where processing is happening.”

Things we talk about in everyday conversation today would have been bewildering a decade ago. In the past few years, we have seen such dazzling innovations as

• Tablet computers for easy access to games, ebooks, TV programs, email, shopping, banking and an ever-expanding suite of new “apps.”

• Smartphones that aren’t just for mobility anymore but are increasingly used for personal media con-sumption in the home.

• Internet-connected televisions, radios, set-top boxes, Blu-ray Disc players, cameras and picture frames that receive or deliver movies, TV and photos via the Web.

• Voice over Internet Protocol telephones that direct incoming callers to any line and take messages in text and video as well as voice.

• Social media that keeps people continuously in touch and up to date – who needs phone calls anymore?

• Two-way video communication whose quality is good enough to bring the illusion of “being there” to teleconferencing. It’s called “telepresence.” High-definition video communication has even reached the home market; telecommuting workers can send telepresence robots in their offices to sit in for them at meetings while they watch from their home TVs.

• Easy distribution of user-created video that lets grandparents see children, musicians develop audi-ences and manufacturers demonstrate new products.

• Digital media lockers that let consumers store mu-sic, TV, videos and services in the cloud and access them from many devices.

• Telehealth devices and applications that bring medical services to remote areas and to the home-bound elderly.

YouTube appeared in February 2005 and quickly be-came one of the five largest users of bandwidth on earth and the largest single user of Internet bandwidth. The social networking platform Facebook, the world’s most visited site, has more than 600 million active users who share photos and videos, play games and use half a mil-lion other embedded applications.

The least expensive netbooks today come with 160 GB hard drives, because users need the file space. And if they need the file space, they also need to transmit large files and back them up online. Users become annoyed when network speeds lag behind local connection speeds – and USB transfer rates have now reached 5 Gbps.

Internet-connected TV sets and set-top boxes let viewers watch high-definition online video on the big screen as easily as they can watch video from the local cable or phone company. Users don’t have to “think Inter-net” to put Internet video on the TV. They just check out what’s available, using their TV remotes. Internet-capable TV models are today’s standard offering.

New services let people access health care and take classes from their homes. With home automation, resi-dents can take care of their homes while they’re away, using Internet- connected security cameras and remote energy monitoring devices.

Telecommuting and home-based businesses are on the rise, too. In October 2010, market researcher Mi-chael Render reported that new businesses created by fiber-connected residential users had pumped more than $40 billion into the economy in just the previous 12 months, the largest source of new jobs in 2010. Owners and managers of multifamily communities are turning social rooms into fiber-connected business centers and concierge offices.

We have every reason to believe that innovation will continue, that bandwidth needs will keep on growing – and that only fiber to the home, with its superior reliabil-ity and plentiful upstream capacity, will be able to keep delivering the bandwidth we need.

the ineVitability oF bandwidth growth


a decade ago, cable companies introduced the triple play of voice, video and data that has

now become the standard telecom of-fering worldwide. But fiber’s greater bandwidth and reliability gives FTTH providers the option to think beyond the triple play and offer multiplay ser-vices tailored to the needs of particu-lar communities.

Fortunately, new broadband ap-plications become available every day, and many of them create opportuni-ties for use or resale by fiber providers. These new applications fall into sev-eral categories. Some help differenti-ate fiber-to-the-home communities; some generate additional revenue streams for providers or help retain customers; still others can be used by providers or property developers to manage their assets more efficiently. Many do all three.

diFFerentiating a CommUnityFiber has become the norm in new de-velopments, especially in new master-planned communities, according to market researcher Mike Render. In or-der to further differentiate their com-munities, developers are now seeking applications to leverage their fiber infrastructure.

Telehealth gives residents in-stant access to medical specialists via videoconferencing from the home, the fitness center or the community room. The videoconferencing may be integrated with Internet-enabled diagnostic devices (blood pressure cuffs, respiration measurement, etc.), electronic medical records systems, online prescription services and on-line appointment scheduling. Tele-health helps keep older adults living independently longer, and it is a boon for members of the “sandwich genera-tion,” who are responsible for caring for both their children and their elders.

Social applications use the fi-ber infrastructure to build a sense of community. They range from social

networking sites focused on the com-munity, to intranet sites featuring lo-cal news and events, to Web-based or IPTV video channels broadcasting local athletic contests, artistic pro-ductions and political discussions. Because these offerings can be inter-active, they easily trump conventional “public access” stations on cable.

Home-automation and con-cierge services, such as Verizon Concierge, take advantage of the fi-ber network within a community to make residents’ lives comfortable and convenient. Cameras that recognize residents’ cars entering the commu-nity can alert parking attendants and security personnel and then turn on lights and heating or air conditioning at home. Residents can connect with

one click to community services or schedule a dry-cleaning pickup, pizza delivery or home repair. These appli-cations can also help owners control energy use.

Mobility is easier to accommodate with a robust fiber-to-the-home net-work. Using the backhaul afforded by FTTH, providers can offer Wi-Fi con-nections to residents in indoor and outdoor public spaces throughout a community. Residents can bring their laptops or tablets to the pool, check email from the laundry room or listen to Internet radios in the gym.

generating new reVenUe streamsCustomers have become used to pur-chasing such over-the-top Internet

aPPliCations For Ftth ProViders: beyond the triple Play

Interest in Futuristic Services Current FTTH Users Over Age 55

16%

17%23%

25%

26%

27%30%

31%

35%

36%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%

Advanced online college

3D TV

Business video conferencing

Advanced websites/full video

Remote home and pet monitoring

Two-way video calling

Advanced online shopping

One device for TV, Internet, & phone

Very large HDD with super resolution

Online face-to-face healthcare

Interest in Futuristic Services Current FTTH Users Under Age 40

33%41%

42%46%

47%47%

49%50%

52%52%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

3D TV Advanced online college

Two-way video calling One device for TV, Internet, & phone

Online face-to-face healthcare Advanced online shopping

Remote home and pet monitoring Advanced websites/full video

Business video conferencing Very large HDD with super resolution

Older FTTH customers put online face-to-face health care above other video services, but one in six say they’d also use FTTH for online courses. Source: RVA LLC.

Video applications are pacing broadband use by FTTH customers under age 40. Source: RVA LLC.


services as Skype or Netflix, but often they’re happier to deal directly with network providers they know and trust. Broadband providers of all kinds now offer a variety of applications to their customers through Web portals or through set-top boxes, often at lower prices than the customers could obtain by purchasing these services directly.

These applications reduce cus-tomer churn; they lower expenses by keeping more traffic in-network; and they create new revenue streams. Be-cause fiber-to-the-home networks have virtually unlimited capacity and unparalleled reliability and remote service monitoring, fiber providers have a far wider choice of applications for resale.

online storage allows users to store their data files on the Internet, access them from anywhere and share them with others. Indeed, the cloud computing revolution has moved ap-plications from the desktop to the Web. Service providers are now sup-plying the types of services to business customers that until recently were pro-vided by corporate IT departments.

Home security, like many other technologies, is migrating from ana-log to digital. Digitally based home security allows residents to control settings, receive alerts and view their homes via the Internet or cell phone. Digital security systems also support a wider range of sensors – not only tradi-tional motion detectors but cameras,

water detectors, smoke detectors and many others. Because digital security uses wiring that is already installed for broadband, it is inexpensive to install and makes economic sense for renters as well as homeowners.

over-the-Top Video may be of-fered as either an adjunct to or a substi-tute for a pay-TV offering, and it may be delivered either through a provider’s Web portal or via a specialized set-top box or a hybrid set-top box. The busi-ness models, technologies and even legal status of provider-delivered OTT video are evolving rapidly – a fact that demonstrates the enormous amount of interest in this application. If OTT video eventually displaces the traditional pay-TV model, fiber-to-the-home providers are well-positioned to benefit from this change because they can guarantee the quality of user experience.

Videoconferencing or video chat is universally available through free or low-cost Web-based services, but it is cumbersome and the quality is often poor. Fiber to the home, with its high upstream bandwidth, presents oppor-tunities for providers to make high-quality videoconferencing avail able,

and several such services have been introduced in the past year.

FTTH providers are generating new revenue streams not only from residential and business customers but also from advertisers, utilities and wireless providers.

Targeted advertising sold to advertisers represents an important potential revenue stream. One mech-anism is through IPTV, which lets pro-viders insert ads based on nearly any criteria. IPTV ads can be sent to house-holds with certain demographic crite-ria, or to households (or even individual TV sets) with certain viewing patterns.

Another potential source of adver-tising dollars is t-commerce, in which television viewers click the remote on an ad – or even a product placement in a television show – to either see more information about the product or actually to order it.

Automated meter reading is usu-ally the first smart-grid application that utilities deploy because it is relatively straightforward to implement and has an immediate payback. Though most fiber deployers that have installed smart meters on FTTH networks are ei-ther public or cooperative electric utili-ties, a few telcos are installing and read-ing smart meters and charging utilities on a per-reading basis.

Beyond automated meter reading, such smart-grid applications as de-mand-response programs, SCADA and outage investigation greatly reduce electric utilities’ operating costs. Smart-grid applications are major reasons that electric utilities across the country are now building fiber infrastructures. The federal government’s stimulus programs have subsidized smart-grid upgrades and coordinated FTTH with smart-grid initiatives.

Mobile backhaul has become an enormous revenue opportunity for fiber deployers. The exploding de-mands for mobile bandwidth have made clear to wireless providers that they must upgrade the connections from their cell sites to the Internet

Fiber-connected cameras can be used for com-munity security applications.

Rural telco BEK brings local sports events to its video customers; this is the mobile studio.


(traditional connections are copper T1 lines with 1.5 Mbps bandwidth). FTTH deployers are already beginning to run fiber to the busiest cell sites – about one cell site in five is now served by fiber. In addition, the next genera-tion of wireless architecture will move all baseband processing from cell sites to the cloud; cell sites will have to be connected via fiber to hubs where processing takes place.

ProPerty managementBroadband enables property owners to control their properties and assets more efficiently than ever before. The addition of broadband – especially the high-capacity, high-reliability broad-band that fiber enables – turns “smart” buildings into “genius” buildings, according to one expert. Internet- enabled sensors and applications au-tomate work that was once done by maintenance crews – and get it done it more quickly and accurately. Broad-band applications also help own-

ers communicate with tenants and employees.

Guarding construction sites can be managed through IP-based video surveillance. Asset tagging, typically with inexpensive RFID, helps prevent theft or misplacement of equipment, and tags worn by employees help make sure people are where they’re autho-rized to be. Videoconferencing allows construction managers to make virtual site inspections more frequently than they can make physical inspections.

online work order scheduling helps property managers be more re-sponsive to their residents while reduc-ing operating expenses. Residents can request repairs at any time – not just when the office is open or they can find the super – and management person-nel can deal with problems that require personal attention rather than routine requests. Residents can be automati-cally notified when work is completed.

energy management and water management can be broadband-en-

abled. Motion sensors, intelligent thermostats and automated venti-lation equipment can keep public spaces and unoccupied units at ap-propriate temperatures; applications that moni-tor and analyze usage help property managers and residents find op-portunities to shift loads to nonpeak times and re-duce their overall usage.

Remote music lessons.

Join the FTTH CouncilIsn’t it time you enjoyed the benefits of

FTTH Council membership? The Council offers several membership categories, with dues starting

at only $395/year for organizations and as little as $50/year for individuals.

We are:n Independent telecom providers from across

North America that are future-proofing their networks by upgrading to FTTH.

n Competitive broadband providers that are differ-entiating their offerings with all-fiber connectivity.

n A wide variety of FTTH equipment manufacturers and other broadband solutions providers showcasing their latest products.

n Engineering, outside-plant, consulting and construction firms that work with telecom service providers to design and deploy North America’s next-generation networks.

n Municipalities and electric utilities that operate all-fiber networks as a way of enhancing prospects for local economic development.

n Educational institutions, students and individuals interested in learning more about all-fiber networks and their role in communities’ economic growth and competitiveness.

n Industry and professional groups whose missions are enhanced by the availability of ultra-broadband networks.

Our areas of focus include:n Building a legislative and regulatory framework

for advancing FTTH deployments.n Educating policymakers and the public about the

benefits of FTTH.n Sharing information and best practices concerning: ‑ Emerging optical access technologies and

FTTH industry trends. ‑ All-fiber network design, operations and

optimization. ‑ Fiber-to-the-home business planning and

marketing strategies. ‑ Smart-grid and green technology evolution. ‑ High-bandwidth consumer applications,

content and in-home networking.

For more information, please consult the membership section of the FTTH Council website,

www.ftthcouncil.org, or email [email protected].

Electric meter set up to transmit smart-grid information.


Unlike copper cable, which car-ries low-voltage electrical sig-nals, fiber optic cable carries

information by transmitting pulses of light. The pulses are turned on and off very, very quickly. Multiple streams of information are carried on the same fi-ber at the same time by using multiple wavelengths – colors – of light.

The pulses of light are usually cre-ated by lasers. (Some short-range fiber systems use LEDs.) The equipment that transmits signals keeps getting faster and cheaper, so the same old fiber can be used to carry ever more information. New equipment is just slipped in.

Fiber has many advantages over copper wire or coaxial cable, as it is easier to maintain and delivers far more bandwidth. Three of the biggest advantages are these:

1Signals travel long distances inside fiber cable without degradation – 50 miles or more in some real-world

networks and 65 miles or more in the laboratory. By contrast, bandwidth decreases in copper wire or coax as the distance traveled increases. Short lengths of coax, for instance – the lengths typically found in a small building – can carry 1 Gbps if the coax network is well designed. That’s 500 times more bandwidth than typical broadband services using DSL over copper wire, and 200 times more than typical broadband over cable TV coax. But those speeds are impossible over longer distances.

The closer fiber gets to a building, the shorter the copper loop and there-fore the faster the service that can be made available to the building’s resi-dents and businesses. Fiber all the way to the living unit can deliver virtually unlimited speeds.

2Fiber cable is thin. Individual fibers can, in fact, be made thinner than a human hair. Thin fibers can be carried on

a narrow ribbon or inside a microduct

of hollow plastic typically less than 1/8 inch in diameter. One typical fiber cable configuration with about 200 super- thin strands is about the thickness of a standard coax cable.

That fiber cable could theoretically carry enough bandwidth to handle all

the information being sent on earth at any one time today. The bottom line: Fiber can be hidden easily on the sur-faces of walls in old construction. It is also flexible and rugged. In 2007, many vendors introduced inexpensive fiber that is tough enough to be stapled to

Fiber: the light FantastiC

Even in today’s deployments, which often do not exploit the full potential of fiber, FTTH has a siz-able, and growing, downstream bitrate advantage over cable and DSL. The advantage of fiber is even more apparent on the upstream side – on average, FTTH connections have more than three times the upstream speed of cable or DSL connections. Source: RVA LLC. (DSL and cable data for 2007–8 not available.)

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

2007 2008 2009 2010

FTTH

Cable Modem

DSL

Comparative Bitrate in Mbps, Downloads

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

5

2007 2008 2009 2010

Comparative Bitrate in Mbps, Uploads


walls by installers and flexible enough to be bent around sharp corners. Though such fiber had been available for years, in the past it had been dif-ficult and expensive to manufacture. Optical fibers made of polymers (plas-tics) rather than glass are now starting to be deployed for indoor networks. These cables are easy to install and close to invisible.

3Once installed, fiber is up-graded by changing the electronics that create and receive the light pulses, not

by replacing the cable itself. Fiber ca-ble deployed in the access network is considerably longer lived than copper. It has a recommended depreciation life of 20 to 25 years, according to consult-ing company Technology Futures Inc. in a study commissioned by several Tier 1 telephone compa-nies. The actual physical life expectancy of fiber is even longer; its economic life is limited by the pros-pect of competition.

4Fiber networks are far less expensive to maintain and

operate than copper net-works. The fiber is amaz-ingly reliable. Nothing hurts it except a physical cut or the destruction of the building it is in. Pas-sive optical networks, or PONs, are the most

common type of fiber network. They use a minimum of electronics. In fact, there are no electronics at all between

the provider’s central office and users. This improves network reliability and cuts deployment costs. But optical networks that do require electronics in the field have some advantages as well, especially when a network is built to carry content from multiple provid-ers on the same fiber. Either way, the amount of power needed to run a fiber network is far less than that needed to run a coax or other copper network. This aids reliability and contributes to sustainability as well.

Average Number of Times ModemRebooting Necessary Per Month

1.5

2.4

2.5

3.4

4.9

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

FTTH

DSL

FTTN

Cable Modem

Wireless

Another measure of FTTH reliability: Customers report only about 1.5 reboots necessary per month – better than twice the reliability of cable. Source: RVA LLC.

Very Satisfied with Specific Internet Aspects, FTTH Versus Cable Modem

69%

64%

63%

61%

58%

49%

46%

52%

42%

43%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Reliability – service uptime

Broadband speed

Installation process

Consistency of speed

Provider’s customer service

Telcos generally outperform cable operators on service, but telcos offering FTTH widen the gap even further. Source: RVA LLC.

Most Important Advantages of FTTH As Reported by Customers

0.5%0.5%0.6%0.8%1.0%1.1%1.4%

2.3%2.5%2.7%3.0%

5.2%5.4%5.8%5.8%

9.8%10.7%

15.8%20.2%

44.8%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50%

Can run two computers at once Easy installation

Lines are buried/ not overhead Better technology/ up to date

No satellite dish Video-on-demand/ movie downloads

Better than previous cable company Other

Convenience DVR

General positives - pleased to have it Better customer service

Number of channels/ entertainment choice Fewer weather disruptions

Quality Cost

Bundle of several services on one bill Reliability/consistency/ no hassles

Picture clarity/ video claritySpeed/ faster/ better Internet/ bandwidth

Bandwidth and reliability were cited most often by customers as FTTH advantages. Source: RVA LLC


Fiber’s bandwidth, reliability, safety and security have made it the technology of choice for

in-hospital networks, and health care providers increasingly depend on fi-ber for exchanging huge image files and even for remote consultations and surgery. Until recently, regulatory requirements have limited the oppor-tunities for using broadband to sub-stitute live-at-home options for costly nursing home care. A recent study in Philadelphia, however, suggests that these savings are too large to ignore. Moreover, the situation studied could be copied by many local network pro-viders under current regulations.

NewCourtland, a senior services provider in Philadelphia, operates the LIFE program, modeled on the Medi-care/Medicaid Program of All-Inclu-sive Care for the Elderly (PACE) initia-tive. PACE serves individuals who are

age 55 or older, certified by their state to need nursing home care, able to live safely in the community at the time of enrollment and in a PACE service area. A total of 75 providers in 29 states have received Medicare and Medicaid waiv-ers to operate PACE programs.

Although all PACE participants are certified to need nursing home care, the program keeps 93 percent of par-ticipants living safely in the commu-nity. PACE providers deliver all needed

medical and supportive services, in-cluding adult day care, medical care, drugs, social services, medical special-ists, and hospital and nursing home care when they become necessary.

By employing remote monitoring technology, NewCourtland enabled 33 residents to move from traditional nursing home care, realizing an annual savings of more than $1.8 million. Es-sentially, the technology helped sub-stitute a $125 per month technology

telehealth: the time is now

hoUsing with teChnology saVes mediCal Costs

Number of patients 33 in 26 housing units or rooms

Annual technology cost $39,000

Annual home care cost $249,600

Total nursing home cost avoided $2,135,250

Annual savings $1,846,650

Become a CFHP!Certified Fiber to the Home Professional Program

The rapid growth in FTTH is creating significant demand for technical staff trained in FTTH technology and installation techniques. Many service providers are struggling to find enough trained staff. In response to this need, the FTTH Council has embarked on a training and certification program in cooperation with professional training organizations, educational institutions and other third-party training programs offered by major vendors and service providers.

This program benefits the fiber industry and develops in-demand job skills for people dislocated during the current recession.

Certification as a CFHP indicates a professional level of technical competence in fiber-to-the-home technologies. Certification requires demonstrating knowledge of and familiarity with FTTH architecture, network design, deployment technology and operational skills, not a specific vendor’s products.

Candidates for CFHP certification include management and supervisory staff, technical support managers and administrators, design specialists, telephony and network engineers and administrators, and advanced network engineers and administrators. Individuals participating in or graduating from community and technical college programs in telecommunications can also be candidates even if they have little or no experience in telecommunications.

The Council recommends participating in a training course before taking the certification exam. The current CFHP course consists of two days of classroom instruction and is structured to provide competence in overall FTTH theory, terminology, topology, equipment and system cost estimation.

CFHP COURSE DATES for 2011Dallas, TX (at the Broadband Summit) • April 28 - 29, 2011Spartanburg, SC • June 1 - 2, 2011St. Louis, MO • June 9 - 10, 2011Seattle, WA • July 6 - 7, 2011Minneapolis, MN • September 7 - 8, 2011Orlando, FL (at the FTTH Conference) • September 26 - 27, 2011Austin, TX • December 8 - 9, 2011

The first two-day CFHP training course has been developed by The Light Brigade with assistance from FTTH Council member companies and organizations. For more information, go to www.lightbrigade.com.

After completing the course, candidates can take the online examination to confirm certification on the FTTH Council’s website. Those who successfully demonstrate knowledge of the course matter through this online examination by achieving a passing percentage of 80 percent or higher will receive the CFHP designation and a certification diploma valid for three years. The CFHP exam and certification fee is $150 for the three-year period. After that time, another exam will be required to maintain certification. For further information, please contact [email protected].


For service providers con-cerned about the impact of their networks on the envi-

ronment, there’s good news about fiber. The environmental impact of FTTH is more positive than that of traditional copper networks, according to a Pricewaterhouse- Coopers study commissioned by the FTTH Council and released in October 2008.

Even with conservative assump-tions about take rates, the greenhouse gases produced in manufacturing equipment and deploying networks are far lower for fiber than for cop-per networks and are outweighed in about five years by the savings from increased telecommuting alone. Tele-commuting saves more than triple the amount of greenhouse gases released by powering the network.

That’s an annual carbon-reduction dividend of close to 20 percent. Other environmental impacts are recouped with fiber in time periods ranging

from one to six years, according to the report, which examined an “average” American FTTH deployment. The im-pact of any actual network would be slightly different from the typical case that was studied.

Earlier studies have shown smaller annual savings, but almost all studies show a positive impact. Savings on gasoline (both for commutes avoided and for commuters who now enjoy less congestion on the highways) are partially offset by extra electricity use at home and by the power used to run the networks.

Savings are likely to increase in the future as the uses of broadband networks expand. For example, Price-waterhouseCoopers did not consider other energy-saving applications, such as:

• Telepresence, which is beginning to replace a significant amount of business travel;

• Cloud computing, which enables

data centers to be located near sources of renewable energy;

• Smart-grid applications, which make electricity generation and distribution far more efficient; or

• Distance learning, which reduces travel for educational purposes.

About three-quarters of green-house gas emissions in the network life cycle come from the manufacture of active network equipment, Pricewater-house Coopers found. The researchers also examined how FTTH deployment affected such environmental issues as resource depletion, air acidification, algae growth in the oceans and the release of toxins into the environment.

By every measure, FTTH had a ben-eficial environmental impact. A more complete presentation of the report’s results can be found at http://www.ftthcouncil.org/en/knowledge-center/documents-of-interest-to/ftth-equip-ment-vendor/environmental-bene-fits-of-ftth-deplo.

Ftth aids sUstainability

cost per person for $225 per day in nursing home costs, starting in 2008. Seven of the patients were in a group home, and 26 lived separately.

Instead of staffing the patients’ homes with live-in help, NewCourt-land installed a Healthsense eNeigh-bor system that includes sensors placed around the home, biometric devices as appropriate, medication dispensing, and a check-in button in each person’s home. A problem or un-warranted change brings a call from the monitoring center and, if neces-sary, a response from nearby staff. In a group home, there is one caregiver, supplemented with regular extra sup-port mornings and evenings.

“Keeping even one person out of

the hospital can pay for all systems for a PACE program for a year,” said Jim Reilly, Director of Courtland Health Technology. “And more important, the individuals we helped were motivated to leave a nursing home and move into the community, making the extra effort to participate in rehab.”

Inside the patient’s living unit, all the equipment is connected by Wi-Fi to a network gateway. Fiber providers, whose networks rarely suffer outages that require on-premises gateway re-sets, have a huge advantage over DSL or cable providers in supporting pro-grams like this one.

“Keeping even one person out of the hospital can pay for all systems for a PACE program for a year.

The individuals we helped were motivated to leave a nursing home and move into the community, making an extra effort to participate in rehab.”


bUilders, real estate deVeloPers and Ftth

V irtually all large developers of single-family homes and many developers of multi-

family communities add FTTH to new properties. Many are working on ret-rofitting older properties as well. Ret-rofit work has expanded as new-home sales have fallen in the recession.

Before the housing boom ended, Michael Render of RVA LLC estimated, on the basis of surveying home buyers and developers, that FTTH added about $5,000 to the price of a home. The size of the increase is less certain now, but it is clear that FTTH homes sell faster.

By mid-2006, FTTH was economi-cally viable in new developments with as few as 80 MDU living units or 100 single-family homes. That number has

continued to fall due to improvements in deployment technology. As fiber and fiber deployment costs have fallen

and copper costs have increased, fiber has achieved cost parity with copper in most new construction.

Major Categories of Fiber-to-the-Home DeployersAnd Take Rates, Winter 2010

25.0%

30.0%

32.0%

42.0%

44.0%

58.0%

85.5%

Municipality or Public Utility District Acting as Wholesaler

Regional Bell Operating Company (within MSA)

Competitive Overbuilder (Urban)

Municipality or Public Utility District Acting as Retail Provider

Competitive Overbuilder (Rural or Suburban)

Incumbent Rural Telephone Company

Developer With Competitive Overbuilder

Source: RVA LLC

Source: RVA LLC

FTTH Homes Passed, March 2011(Cumulative, North America)

19,40035,700

72,100

110,000180,300

189,000

970,000 1,619,5002,696,846

3,625,000 4,089,000

6,099,000

8,003,0009,552,300

11,763,00013,825,000

15,170,900

17,227,000

18,249,90019,966,200

20,914,476

-4,000,000

1,000,000

6,000,000

11,000,000

16,000,000

21,000,000

Sep-01 Mar-02 Sep-02 Mar-03 Sep-03 Mar-04 Sep-04 Mar-05 Sep-05 Mar-06 Sep-06 Mar-07 Sep-07 Mar-08 Sep-08 Mar-09 Sep-09 Mar-10 Sep-10 Mar-11

Source: RVA LLC

FTTH is now available to almost one out of five American homes. In the six months be-tween September 2010 and March 2011, an additional 948,000 homes were passed by fiber despite the recession and the worst winter weather in a decade. That’s below the previous 6 months but in line with the same period a year earlier.

For single-family homes, customer-premises equipment is typically located outdoors.


FTTH Homes Marketed, March 2011(Cumulative, North America)

19,400

35,700

72,100

110,000

180,300

189,000

413,221

829,7001,754,300

3,218,600

5,079,9996,643,000

7,996,400

10,082,065

12,369,000

13,875,600 16,048,500

16,992,60018,167,300

19,344,791

0

2,000,000

4,000,000

6,000,000

8,000,000

10,000,000

12,000,000

14,000,000

16,000,000

18,000,000

20,000,000

Sep-01 Mar-02Sep-02 Mar-03Sep-03 Mar-04Sep-04 Mar-05Sep-05 Mar-06Sep-06 Mar-07Sep-07 Mar-08Sep-08 Mar-09Sep-09 Mar-10Sep-10 Mar-11

Source: RVA LLC

The number of homes marketed for FTTH rose by almost 1.2 million from September 2010 to March 2011, a gain slightly above the previous six months and well above the year-earlier period. The latest six-month increase was far below the 2.2 million record logged for March 2009 to September 2009, but it shows a clear turnaround.

FTTH Homes Connected, March 2011(Cumulative, North America)

5,50010,350

22,500

38,000

64,700

78,000

146,500

213,000

312,700

548,000

671,000

1,011,000

1,478,597 2,142,000

2,912,500

3,760,0004,422,000

5,275,000

5,804,800

6,452,300

7,094,800

-500,000

1,000,0001,500,0002,000,0002,500,0003,000,0003,500,0004,000,0004,500,0005,000,0005,500,0006,000,0006,500,0007,000,0007,500,000

Sep-01 Mar-02 Sep-02 Mar-03 Sep-03 Mar-04 Sep-04 Mar-05 Sep-05 Mar-06 Sep-06 Mar-07 Sep-07 Mar-08 Sep-08 Mar-09 Sep-09 Mar-10 Sep-10 Mar-11

Source: RVA LLC

FTTH connections are rising. The number of homes connected rose by 647,500 from September 2010 to March 2011, faster than in the same period a year ago, while the ratio of homes connected to homes passed remained steady at a record 32 percent, up from 29 percent two years ago. The number of new connections, 647,500, is higher than the total of 529,800 a year earlier but well below the record 853,000 of March 2009 to September 2009.

Percent of US Households Passed and Connected to FTTH, 2006 - 2011 (RVA LLC data)

0.6% 0.9% 1.3%

3.5%

5.3%6.8%

8.1%

9.9%

11.9%13.0%

15.1%15.7%

17.3% 18.2%

1.8%2.5%

3.2%3.8%

4.6% 5.0%5.6% 6.2%

0%

2%

4%

6%

8%

10%

12%

14%

16%

18%

20%

Mar-06 Sep-06 Mar-07 Sep-07 Mar-08 Sep-08 Mar-09 Sep-09 Mar-10 Aug-10 Feb-11

Passed

Connected

More than 18 percent of all homes in the U.S. were passed by fiber by March 2011, making FTTH technology a major player in broadband and video services. More than 6 percent of all U.S. households were actually connected to FTTH.

There is a wide range of devices for placing

fiber underground.


Q: How can I justify adding to the price of a home in a weak market?

A: The data are clear: Homes sell for higher prices when they are wired for high bandwidth and provide access to fiber. What’s more, FTTH homes sell faster than non-FTTH homes in the same market. In good times, this may translate into a greater profit, but it’s even more important in bad times. If few homes are being sold, you can bet that homes with high-bandwidth amenities will sell faster. This is equally true for rental properties: Developers of multiple-dwelling unit communities say their new buildings lease up faster if they can advertise them as fiber-connected.

Q: Do I need to hire an engineering firm to design the installation?

A: Fiber does need to be engineered in large apartment complexes – that’s true for coax, too. But smaller installations, as with smaller corpo-rate LANs, do not need that kind of sophistication to work well. Greater standardization, clever new sys-tems from equipment vendors, fiber that can be stapled and bent tightly around corners, the growth of distributor-supplied design help

and an expanding corps of quali-fied technicians have made less-formal design regimes feasible in the last few years.

Q: Do I have to worry about other labor on my construction site damaging the fiber cable?

A: Optical fiber is very, very thin – thinner than a human hair. But fiber vendors have developed many techniques to protect the fibers from harm. Cable can be ar-mored to ward off cuts. Contrac-tors can route inexpensive micro-duct – hollow plastic tubes typically three-eighths of an inch in diam-

eter – through walls before the walls are closed in with drywall or other materials. The microducts are easily repairable. After every-thing else is done, thin fiber can be “blown” through the microduct for hundreds of feet. New fiber can be bent almost like copper. Some vendors offer fiber in thin adhesive tape that can be rolled onto walls.

Q: Do any building codes pertain to fiber? The stuff seems inert.

A: Yes, all the regular fire and life-safety issues apply. For instance, just as copper with PVC sheathing

QUestions real estate deVeloPers ask aboUt Ftth

Likelihood of Adding FTTH Lines, Current Non-RBOC FTTH Providers

9%

2%

15%

70%

4%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Very unlikely

Somewhat unlikely

Somewhat likely

Very likely

All customers have FTTH

Source: RVA LLC

Fiber can now be bent tightly around corners.

Thinner, more bend-tolerant fiber also allows more compact fittings, like this box. That makes installation easier in older structures.


would be considered a life-safety hazard because of the combustion products released when it burns, so would various plastics used in fiber that is meant for outside installation. Indoors, look for Low Smoke Zero Halogen (LSZH) cables. If you are using thin plastic microduct that fiber can later be blown through, it should be labeled Halogen-Free Flame Retardant. You use a simple junc-tion box to change from “outside” to “inside” wiring, just as you might with electrical cables.

Of course, you should check with your local building code inspector. Aside from fire issues, codes may govern where fiber optical network terminals (ONTs – the boxes that convert pulses of light from the fiber into electrical signals for the computer or TV) may be placed on the out-side walls or in common areas. A few municipalities spec-ify where in the home the network connections should be placed.

Q: Where should we put users’ network connections, assuming there is no specific building code or guidance document covering that subject?

A: You should expect users to desire broadband connec-tions in virtually any room in the house – bedrooms, office-dens, the kitchen. That’s because Internet connec-tions these days accommodate telephones, televisions, set-top boxes, digital picture frames, security sensors, fire and smoke monitors and, of course, computers. As the “Internet of things” develops, more and more appliances will be Internet-enabled.

Because portable consumer electronics devices, such as smartphones and tablets, in addition to appliances, in-creasingly communicate with the Internet via Wi-Fi (ap-pliance manufacturers have now adopted a standard for building Wi-Fi into major appliances), you will also need a wireless gateway. Such gateways are offered by all ven-dors as standard-issue, to be used on the home side of fiber network deployments.

Most of the devices in FTTH networks convert electri-cal signals that travel along wires to pulses of light that travel on fiber, and back again. Let’s start at the begin-ning of a fiber network.

olt stands For oPtiCal line terminal.The OLT puts the pulses on the fiber in the first place. Because most of them are located in telephone ex-changes and other network central offices, residents and property owners rarely see them.

onts are oPtiCal network terminals.These are the devices at the consumer end that turn light pulses back into electrical signals. They are some-times called ONUs, for optical network units. In net-works built by cable companies they may be called micronodes. Customer devices, such as computers, usually expect Ethernet – a standard networking tech-nology. Your computers and home wireless system use Ethernet and probably have Ethernet connectors built in. A typical ONT turns the light pulses into Ethernet signals.

In the United States, ONTs are typically placed in cigar-box sized enclosures on the outside walls of houses or apartments. But they can be made smaller than a deck of cards and can be placed inside customer premises as well.

Fiber ConneCtiVityYou’ll also hear about the point of presence, or POP. That’s the point at which the signals from multiple cus-tomers join the rest of the extended network.

Pedestals and larger fiber distribution hubs are en-closures. They can hold beam splitters that take the signal from a single fiber and divide it (typically be-tween 8:1 and 32:1 but as much as 128:1) among fibers that go to individual dwelling units.

Pedestals and hubs can be below ground, above ground (they often look like short posts or squat, air-conditioner-size boxes) or attached to buildings. Con-nections and splits can also be made in boxes that are hung under roof eaves, in attics or basements, on tele-phone poles, or on what look like power lines or phone lines. For best reliability, many contractors bring two fibers into each dwelling unit from the pedestal. The fi-ber leading from a hub or pedestal to a user’s premises is called the drop cable.

ComPonents oF a Fiber-to-the-home network

Fiber networks are easy to test; the testing device often pinpoints the exact location of a problem.


Q: In single-family homes, I often see ONT boxes hung on the outside walls. Can they also be placed indoors?

A: Yes. In harsh climates, where heat or heavy snow could affect the out-side installation, you will probably want to put ONTs indoors. Outdoor ONT models are sometimes placed in garages or utility rooms; you can also buy small, portable indoor models that are more like cable or DSL modems, and connect them

with tough, flexible fiber that can be laid anywhere. Indoor ONTs,

which are popular with apartment dwellers, can be designed to be user-installed.

Q: Why do ONTs require backup bat-teries?

A: Optical fiber cannot conduct elec-tricity. Thus, to keep a network con-nection running during a power outage, you need a battery at the user premises or a fiber cable that includes a thin copper conductor connected to an off-site battery. This requirement may change as cellular phones replace landlines – a change that has already taken place in most of Europe. In North America, where most customers still have landlines, many standard designs are available for in-wall, between-stud boxes that hold the battery, ONT and fiber connections.

Q: Does every dwelling unit or office need its own ONT located at the unit?

A: No. Separate ONTs for each unit in a multiple-dwelling-unit building can be located centrally, often in a basement or an equipment cabi-net. There are also ONTs designed to serve multiple units, typically 4 or 8. This flexibility is made pos-sible by new, smaller, low-power circuitry and by the fact that some ONTs can deliver 1 Gbps or more – enough bandwidth to share among multiple customers.

Q: Is lightning a problem with fiber?A: No. In fact, because fiber does

not conduct electricity, lightning strikes do not affect fiber at all.

Modular ONT can be customer-installed.

Pathways for structured wiring can be created before walls are finished.


mdU in lexington, kyWhen Ball Homes of Lexington, Ky., started building Forty 57, a 360-unit luxury apartment community just southeast of downtown Lexington and the University of Kentucky, it needed an edge for today and the fu-ture. With the first units coming online in May 2009, the developer was not only leasing a greenfield development in the midst of the Great Recession but also offering a higher-end product for a sophisticated demographic at a time when doubling and tripling up had suddenly come back into vogue.

To add value to its offering and ensure that the community stayed on the cutting edge of technology for the foreseeable future, Ball Homes partnered with Little Rock, Ark.-based Windstream Communications. After negotiating a bulk subscription deal for residents, Windstream deployed a GPON fiber-to-the-unit network at the community to light up a triple-play of-fering of voice, video and data, includ-ing dedicated 911 connectivity. Now,

for $89 a month, residents can enjoy a take-if-you-want base programming package that includes 12 Mbps data speeds; 60 channels of DISH Network programming, including HBO; and in-

coming terrestrial phone service plus 911 over traditional phone lines. It is the first fiber-to-the-unit MDU in the Lexington market.

Although Ball Homes thought an optional amenity would be more palatable during tight times, Wind-stream saw nearly a 100 percent take rate from residents who moved into the first phase of the project, and oc-cupancy was 75 percent after nine months. Why? Forty 57 has amenities that go beyond the pool, gym and community lounge.

“By going with fiber, we’re at the top of the game here locally while future-proofing the property for the foreseeable future,” says Brandon Buf-fin, Ball Homes’ IT director. “It’s been quite a positive.”

mgm CityCenter las VegasImagine that you’ve just arrived at a ho-tel. As you walk into your room, a bell-hop greets you by name, switches on the lights, puts some music on the ste-reo and draws the curtains to reveal a spectacular view. The bellhop asks you for precise instructions about how you would like the room to be lit, heated

beating the reCession with Fiber: three Case stUdies


and shaded; what your tastes are in music and video; what time you would like to wake up – and, by the way, can we send up anything for dinner?

Now imagine that all these things happen as if by magic, with no hotel employee in sight. Guests at the ARIA Resort and Casino and the Mandarin Oriental, the two hotels in Las Vegas’ new CityCenter, are treated to this kind of personalized automation based on technology from Control4.

CityCenter, a joint venture be-tween MGM Resorts International and Dubai’s Infinity World Development Corp. is a 67-acre complex on the Las Vegas Strip that is still under devel-opment. CityCenter is billed as the world’s largest private green develop-ment, with all its buildings receiving LEED Gold certification.

Guests can use remote controls and bedside panels to control their en-vironments and save their chosen set-tings. They can select scenes such as “good night,” which turns off the lights and TV, shuts the curtains and turns on privacy notification. Wake-up scenes awaken guests in a “subtle and more soothing way” by gradually changing temperature, lighting, curtain opening and music volume.

Televisions in guest rooms also serve as giant computer monitors; as screens for game consoles, cameras and MP3 players; and as communica-tions centers that display everything from voice mails to package deliveries.

Because all the devices in the room communicate automatically with the hotel system, guests don’t have to complain about the remote’s needing new batteries or the mini bar’s need-ing replenishment. The system does the complaining for them before the guests become aware that anything is lacking.

Of course, it goes without saying that CityCenter guests have access to plenty of wireless Internet bandwidth and to many HD TV channels. The re-sulting solution not only provides a “Wow!” experience for guests but also

helps the hotels reduce energy costs and improve their operations (and, of course, call attention to their green status). Probably the biggest sav-ing comes from being able to easily change climate-control settings, close the shades and turn off the lights in unoccupied rooms.

CityCenter’s room automation is supported by an extremely robust IP infrastructure. MGM Resorts ran fiber to every guest room with 1 Gbps band-width. The network was designed to minimize the number of communica-tions closets on guest floors, leaving more space for guest rooms. City- Center distributes voice, video and data over the IP network, and its in-ternal building systems use the same network for communications. MGM Resorts expects the infrastructure to have plenty of capacity for additional applications for many years to come.

In the CityCenter room-automa-tion system, as in Control4’ s residen-tial solutions, ZigBee sensors attached to devices such as light switches, dim-mers and keypads communicate wire-

lessly with a Control4 control unit in each guest room. The control units, in turn, communicate over the fiber net-work with a centralized server, which enables building staff to manage the entire system remotely.

Control4 now has more than 10,000 guest rooms deployed. It estimates that, depending on a hotel’s location, its energy efficiency and how it imple-ments the Control4 solution, the pay-back period is between two and five years. Focusing on energy manage-ment alone, the payback is less than two years.

Control4 has generalized the hos-pitality solution for use in other types of multifamily communities, such as condominiums and traditional neigh-borhood developments, where devel-opers want to use technology for both lifestyle enhancement and sustain-ability.

saCramento rentalFor Trammell Crow’s Steve Hester, just getting the Alexan Midtown project up and running was a Herculean task. In 2007, while his team was planning


the 275-unit mid-rise on the edge of Sacramento’s hip Mid-town area, the wheels started coming off capital market financing. Originally, Trammell Crow had envisioned the project as a condominium whose units would be marketed to young professionals working in Sacramento’s health and government sectors, but it had to modify that plan quickly as lenders began to balk.

The company thought the project still made sense as a rental. The site is located in Sacramento’s “medical triangle,” within easy biking distance of three major hospitals, includ-ing the UC Davis Medical Center, and just a few minutes from the California State Capitol and myriad state govern-ment offices and agencies.

There was only one catch: Given Sacramento’s starring role in the housing debacle, with the area routinely ranking near the top of foreclosure statistics nationally, the rental market was flooded with houses that otherwise would have been for sale. That, in turn, put pressure on apartment rents.

For the Alexan Midtown to compete, it would need to of-fer residents more for their money, including state-of-the-art technology that would appeal to the young medical and gov-ernment professionals that were still its target market. That was especially true because of the Midtown price point – studios were advertised for just under $1,400 a month, more than double the rent of other entry-level digs in the area.

One differentiator materialized by chance. Because the aesthetics of the project called for existing overhead cables to be buried underground, Hester got to work contacting the owners of those cables. One happened to be Roseville, Calif.-based SureWest, an independent ILEC that has been aggressively rolling out IP-based services in Northern Cali-fornia. SureWest started offering IP-based HDTV as early as 2006 in the greater Sacramento area and already had a fiber ring running right past the Alexan site.

“I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and that almost never happens, where there’s actually existing fiber fronting the property,” Hester says. “If it does happen, you usually can’t tap into it because it’s for 911 or a hospital or someone else’s dedicated use. But in this case, we had SureWest right there, and they were only too happy to serve the property.”

Because the property already had fiber running literally to its door, the developer decided to make an investment for the future and take the fiber path all the way to all units. Now, residents can choose data speeds up to 50 Mbps. “Of-tentimes, people talk about having a fiber network. But I think … that term has gotten watered down, just as the term ‘organic’ has been overused in the food industry. No-body knows what it means anymore,” Hester says. “But at the Alexan, we have the real deal. This is a pure fiber system. As far as we can tell, no one else in the market can say that.”

The project has been a success for SureWest, which has signed up 55 percent of the project’s tenants. And it has been a success for Trammel-Crow as well.

In 2006, the FTTH Councils for Europe, Asia and North America standardized the definitions for fiber to the home and fiber to the building (also called fiber to the basement). They are:

Fiber to the home (Ftth)A fiber optic communications path that extends from an operator’s switching equipment to at least the boundary of a home living space or business office space. The definition excludes architectures in which the optical fiber terminates before reaching either a home living space or business office space and the ac-cess path continues over a physical medium other than optical fiber.

Fiber to the bUilding (Fttb)A fiber optic communications path that extends from an operator’s switching equipment to at least the boundary of a private property enclosing homes or businesses. The optical fiber terminates before reach-ing home living spaces or business office spaces. The access path then continues over another access me-dium – such as copper or wireless – to subscribers.

Other definitions are not standardized but are com-monly used by people in the industry:

Fiber to the node or Fiber to the neighborhood (Fttn)FTTN is not defined by the FTTH Councils. In general, it refers to a system in which fiber is extended to a street-side or on-pole cabinet within 1,000 to 5,000 feet of the average user. From there, copper or wireless serves users, typically through a variant of DSL (Digital Sub-scriber Line).

FTTN should not be confused with hybrid fiber-coax (HFC), an architecture used mainly by cable com-panies to implement DOCSIS, the standard that allows data to be transmitted over cable TV systems. In a typi-cal HFC system, fiber runs to each DOCSIS node and coaxial cable running from the node serves between 100 and 500 users. Nor should FTTN be confused with RFoG, an FTTH technology that uses the signal proto-cols developed for DOCSIS. With RFoG, each user gets its own DOCSIS micronode.

Fiber to the CUrb (FttC)Similar to FTTN, except that the fiber is brought much closer to user premises – typically closer than 1,000 feet and often closer than 300 feet. FTTC installations may use either VDSL or Ethernet (over copper cable or wireless) to bring the signal from the fiber termination point to the user. Point-to-point wireless is sometimes (and rarely) used in rural areas simply to bring a signal from the roadway to a home that could be a mile or more away.

Ftth Versus other types of Fiber networks


Q: How can I determine whether my community is underserved? Residents complain about lack of bandwidth, and real estate agents say property values are suffering, but most residents have some broadband access and the incumbent operators plan to upgrade in a few years to DOCSIS 3.0 and fiber to the node.

A: It sounds as though these upgrades will be installed just as broadband needs will increase beyond what DOCSIS can easily deliver and what FTTN can deliver at all. Be sure to take the needs of the business community into consideration in addition to those of residents. Many economic development of-ficials believe 1 Gbps access is needed to lure new businesses to a town. Also, the Commerce Depart-ment’s national map of broadband accessibility says DOCSIS 3.0 up-grades are possible for only 82 per-cent of the nation’s homes, at most. The shortfalls tend to be in smaller communities.

Q: Can a fiber network help bring new business into my community?

A: There’s quite a bit of evidence that fiber connectivity encourages businesses to stay, allows them to grow and attracts new businesses, particularly in high-tech industries. FTTH also facilitates home-based start-up businesses. Of course, it’s

only one component of an overall economic development strategy.

Q: Don’t DOCSIS 3.0 and FTTN both use fiber?

A: They use fiber, but usually not all the way to the home. The last 1,000 to 5,000 feet from the fiber’s endpoint to the home is copper – coaxial ca-ble in the case of DOCSIS, plain cop-per wire for FTTN. That limits band-width, reliability and versatility.

However, you should check with the cable company to find out whether its DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade will make use of one of the new FTTH transitional technologies – RFoG (for Radio Frequency, or RF, over Glass) or DPoE (for DOCSIS Provisioning of EPON). These stan-dards are more compatible with existing cable networks than “con-ventional” FTTH but can bring fiber directly to the premises, so they are gaining interest from cable compa-nies. They can eventually be con-verted to conventional FTTH, too.

Q: My town’s residents are just like others in the region, and maybe have even slightly higher in-comes. Why don’t the phone and cable companies consider them attractive customers for FTTH?

A: Many cable companies, telephone companies and independent broad-band providers are now installing FTTH. But the companies operating

in your town may have prioritized other service areas that offer them more geographical or demographic advantages. Or, they may not have access to the capital needed up-front to expand their services.

Q: The telephone company that operates here is installing FTTH in the new development just 10 miles up the road. Why not here?

A: It is usually easier to install fiber in new developments than in existing ones. The fiber goes into the same trenches that have to be dug any-way for water, electricity and sewer service. In fact, copper wiring usu-ally can’t be run that way, so fiber is usually cheaper. Also, the new residents are not already tied to a cable or phone provider, so who-ever installs a FTTH network in a new community has an easier time signing up customers.

That’s why most new, large housing developments are being equipped with fiber.

Q: Would installing fiber require that my streets be dug up?

A: It depends. Many network builders in North America use aerial fiber installed on poles along with exist-ing telephone, electric and cable wiring. Where trenching is imprac-tical, contractors can often use hor-izontal drilling or pull fiber through existing ducts, water pipes, sewers

by the end of 2011, the eco-nomic stimulus program will have increased the number

of municipal fiber networks to nearly 100 and expanded several existing networks. The business case for others has improved thanks to “middle mile”

fiber also funded by the stimulus. And then there is Google’s plan for part-nering with municipalities on 1 Gbps fiber, starting in Kansas City, Kan.

All this activity has made municipal officials keenly aware of the potential for using ultra-broadband to promote

economic development and enhance the quality of life in their communi-ties. But they still need answers to many questions, for example about technology choices and private-sector partnerships.

FoCUs on mUniCiPal Priorities

key QUestions mUniCiPal oFFiCials ask


and gas lines rather than digging up streets and sidewalks. In addi-tion, many cities already have us-able fiber under their streets – fiber that is not being used to its limit. Finally, when there is no good al-ternative to trenching, new micro-trenching techniques may allow it to be done with less disruption to traffic. A deep groove is cut quickly into the pavement with a large cir-cular saw on wheels, and fiber is laid into the groove.

Q: What might I do to get fiber to my residents without building my own network? My town has too much debt now to borrow more, and we have no experience operating a municipal utility.

A: You might try lobbying the incum-bents – the cable and telephone companies serving your town now. You could offer such incentives as a reduced franchise fee, access to public property or an accelerated permitting process. If you own an institutional fiber ring connect-ing municipal buildings, schools

and libraries, you might be able to propose “fiber swaps.” In addition, some communities launch educa-tional campaigns about the value of FTTH and encourage residents to commit to taking fiber services if and when a provider offers them.

You might also invite outside companies to consider bringing FTTH to your residents and offer the same kinds of incentives de-scribed above. Or you could enter into a public-private partnership to build a fiber network jointly with a private partner. In Europe, such partnerships are common, especially for large projects such as those bringing fiber to all homes in Amsterdam and Vienna.

In the last few years, this ap-proach has begun to gain trac-tion in the United States, with a variety of different arrangements between the public and private parties being used. In fact, when Google proposed in 2010 to build an FTTH network in one or more American communities, more than 1,100 communities responded with proposals for how they could work together with the company.

Q: Is it better for the same company to run the network and provide services, or should we consider an open-access network with multiple providers?

A: There is no clear answer. Open-access networks, where the net-work builder (either a municipal or a private entity) “rents” band-width to a potentially unlimited number of content providers, are more common in Europe and Asia than in the United States. But they have worked here as well. At pres-ent, open-access networks in the United States tend to be either

Distribution box for fiber lashed to existing aer-ial cable; this method is quick and inexpensive.

Pulaski Electric System, a municipal electric utility in Pulaski, Tenn., uses its FTTH network to operate a smart electric grid and deliver triple-play services to residents.


municipal networks or networks built by companies that specialize in bringing fiber to new buildings and subdivisions.

Municipal utilities sometimes prefer to provide services directly, at least at the outset, for two rea-sons: First, it gives them more control over the quality of user experience on their networks, and second, they may have difficulty attracting third-party service pro-viders to start-up networks. The downside of a closed network, however, is that there is less variety in content and services. Many pub-lic broadband advocates believe that opening networks to innova-tive service providers is the best way to maximize the networks’ value for their communities. Net-works built with broadband stimu-lus funds must allow open access.

Q: What about Wi-Fi or WiMAX? The FCC’s National Broadband Plan calls for wireless in remote

Prefabricated pedestals a few feet high are un-obtrusive and hold fiber distribution points. Some models can be entirely buried.

Though new wireless technologies have made possible all kinds of exciting services, wireless access alone cannot attract new businesses.

areas. Isn’t that a good substitute for fiber?

A: Wi-Fi, WiMAX and cellular service are important public amenities, but they are not substitutes or re-placements for FTTH. Rather, they complement and extend fixed fiber networks. In fact, given that many wireless access points and cell sites are now fiber-connected – and that most of them will be soon – wireless service can be considered an ap-

plication on a fiber network rather than a separate type of network.

Though new, high-bandwidth wireless technologies have made possible all kinds of exciting con-sumer and business services, wire-less access alone cannot attract new businesses to a community or enable businesses to grow. Wireless networks that cover wide areas are not reliable enough to deliver video and other emerging broadband services with high quality of service.

In general, no one has been able to develop a compelling business case for a municipalitywide Wi-Fi network. However, Wi-Fi in targeted areas such as commercial shopping streets may be worth considering.

In addition, many multifamily community owners find that com-munity wireless, as an adjunct to wireline broadband, is a valuable amenity.

Q: Where can I go to find out more? A: The FTTH Council, www.ftth

council.org, has quarterly meetings and monthly webinars. Broadband Properties’ municipal portal, www.munibroadband.com, can direct you to a number of additional re-sources. The magazine also main-tains a database on its website, www.bbpmag.com, that shows all FTTH deployments by munici-palities and others, including small telephone companies.

OECD data for 1996-2007 analyzed by Raul L. Katz and Javier Avila, Columbia Institute for Tele-Infor-mation, for a 2010 paper


seven hundred thousand FTTH subscribers operated home-based businesses in 2010, and they added $41.6 billion to the U.S. economy in the 12 months

ending August 2010. That number, calculated by market researcher Michael Render of RVA, is a conservative esti-mate.

To place this figure in context, 700,000 jobs is more than the entire U.S. economy created in 2010!

FTTH access is correlated strongly with establishment of a home business, according to Render’s data. Doubling the download bitrate of broadband services adds 0.5 per-

cent to the number of broadband customers with a home business. Small businesses also depend on broadband reliability and on upload speed – both areas where fiber vastly outpaces other broadband technologies.

Some of this business revenue, of course, would have existed even if the business owners had no fiber access. But Render attributes nearly $10 billion of the $41 bil-lion directly to fiber, because some of his survey respon-dents said their businesses would not even be possible without fiber and others said fiber made their businesses more efficient.

Ftth generates Jobs

Correlation of % who have done telework withDownload/Upload speed (Mbps)

DSL

Cable Modem

FTTH

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

50%

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

FTTH access is strongly correlated with working at home, in RVA LLC customer survey data from spring 2010.

Correlation of % who have a home-based business with Download/Upload speed (Mbps)

DSL

CableModem

FTTH

15.6%

15.8%

16.0%

16.2%

16.4%

16.6%

16.8%

17.0%

17.2%

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

FTTH access is correlated strongly with establishment of a home business, in the

RVA LLC data. Doubling the bitrate adds a half percent to the number of

customers with a home business.

9%

13%

7%

0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% 14%

2010

2009

2008

2010 Research Shows 9% of FTTH Homes Report Home-Based Business Only Possible

or More Efficient Due to FTTH Home-based businesses are clearly facilitated by fiber; 9 percent of FTTH customers in spring 2010 claimed that fiber made their home business possible or more efficient. Source: RVA LLC.


the reliability, bandwidth and future-proofing of fiber to the premises creates new jobs and

preserves old ones. Some examples:

aUbUrn, ind.In 2005, Cooper Industries, a Fortune 200 company whose global data oper-ations were located in Auburn, was at a crossroads – it had to either expand its Auburn facility or relocate. The compa-ny’s most critical requirement was for fast, resilient and reliable broadband. Auburn Essential Services, a munici-pal broadband provider, worked with Cooper to craft a business-class broad-band service and thereby preserve $7 million in annual payroll for the community. In addition, the city has retained a number of Internet-depen-dent, small but growing businesses.

bristol, tenn.The Bristol Herald Courier’s new print-ing production facility features a state-of-the-art printing press – the first of its kind in the country. Owned by Media General and built by BurWil Construc-tion Company, the $21 million facility has 50,000 square feet that is dedicated to producing and distributing seven Southwest Virginia newspapers. Jim Hyatt, Media General’s regional vice president and publisher, said the high-speed data transfer and reliable fiber optics were the main reasons for locat-ing the facility in Bristol. More exam-ples from Bristol, Tenn., are available at www.btes.net/btestestimonials.html.

bristol, Va.BVU OptiNet has fundamentally changed the economic face of South-west Virginia. Thanks to grants from the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Virginia Tobacco Indemnifi-cation and Community Revitalization Commission, businesses in seven rural counties in Southwest Virginia now have access to broadband speeds of up to 1 Gbps and transparent LAN ser-vice, which vastly improves their com-munications and networking capabili-ties. High-tech companies Northrop

Grumman and CGI have both built major facilities in Russell County, and two new industrial parks are cur-rently under construction in Buchanan and Tazewell counties. By 2008, the high-tech infrastructure had already brought 1,220 new jobs to Southwest Virginia, with more than $50 million in new private investment and $37 mil-lion in annual payrolls. Growth has continued through the recession.

Another significant benefit is that small health clinics in isolated loca-tions of Southwest Virginia can now be digitally linked to larger compre-hensive hospitals. The University of Virginia at Wise launched the state’s first undergraduate software engi-neering program due to partnerships with Northrop Grumman and CGI. In addition, the town of Lebanon turned a former shopping center into the Vir-ginia Technology Development Cen-ter, a new high-tech training facility to be managed by the University of Vir-ginia at Wise.

lenowisCo Planning distriCt Commission, Va. and ky.More from Southwest Virginia: Several business were able to stay or expand in the region because of broadband, including both home-based busi-nesses and larger ones such as Crutch-field Electronics. New businesses that located in the area because of the broadband network include OnePartner, an advanced technology and application center and the only

commercial Tier 3 data center in the United States. Holston Medical Group stores its electronic medical records at OnePartner’s data center, taking advantage of the data center’s ca-pacity and connectivity to run virtual clinical trials. Altogether, the network attracted an estimated $50 million in corporate investments in the region and created 1,200 jobs even as the re-cession deepened.

Residential customers are using broadband to better their lives in this economically depressed area as well. In a survey of its most recent 271 custom-ers, 29 percent said they used their new broadband service either for distance learning – to earn degrees that would make them eligible for better-paying jobs – or in home-based businesses. These work-from-home employees and owners of cottage industries rep-resent a wide range of businesses, such as an interior designer using broad-band to search for design inspirations, agents managing health insurance programs for a national health insur-ance company, a person managing orders for a national floral service over the Internet and a toolmaker selling wedges for leveling mobile homes.

maCon and lebanon, mo.Shane Mayes, CEO, describes his On-shore Technology Services as a rural outsourcing company. It provides software development and integra-tion and other technology services in an outsourced fashion in competition with vendors in India, China, Mexico, Russia and Brazil. His company opened in 2005 and has employees around the state. Mayes said he chose Macon and Lebanon for his offices because those cities had already run fiber to every business and household in their area His company would only open offices in communities with access to high-speed Internet, Mayes said.

Chelan CoUnty, wa.Yahoo picked Wenatchee for a data center site. Said Kevin Timmons, Ya-hoo’s vice president of operations, “We

Ftth sUCCess stories

It is easy to find ducts for fiber.


chose North Central Washington for this important facility because of the great quality of life here, the immedi-ate availability of suitable space, the ‘can-do’ spirit of port and other com-munity leaders we’ve met, the cost and reliability of electricity, and the access to a world-class fiber optic net-work. They’ve taken all the right steps to create a terrific environment for us.”

Cody, Powell and ten sleeP, wyo.Eleutian partners with CDI Holdings of South Korea, a market leader in English education, to teach conver-sational English to South Korean stu-dents via high-speed videoconferenc-ing. Headquartered in rural Ten Sleep, Wyo., Eleutian Technology operates nine teaching centers throughout the Western United States, including in FTTH communities Cody and Powell. They are open for business 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It’s the larg-est new job creator in the region. Said President Barack Obama in January, “In Ten Sleep, Wyo., a town of about 300 people, a fiber-optic network allowed a company to employ several hundred teachers who teach English to students in Asia over the Internet, 24 hours a day. You’ve all heard about outsourc-ing. Well, this is what we call ‘insourc-ing,’ where overseas work is done right here in America.”

Rob Duncan, COO of Alpine Access, a provider of contact center services that uses home-based agents, opened

a virtual call center in Powell as well. He said, “Consider the 5,500 residents of Powell, Wyo. With 20 percent of the population below the poverty line and the town located 500 miles from the largest metropolitan area, the citi-zens knew something drastic needed to be done to save the idyllic quality of life they cherished in a small town. Together they decided to spend $4.9 million on connecting each home to a private-public fiber optic network. This high-speed access helped connect them with distant relatives, provided online shopping and opened up new markets for local businesses. It also made the entire population attractive to virtual call center recruiters.”

doUglas CoUnty, wa.Sabey’s new data center campus, In-tergate.Columbia, sits on 30 acres and accommodates two data center build-ings, including one 205,000-square-foot structure and one of 188,000 square feet. The buildings are served by a new, redundant substation on site. Douglas County PUD, along with its grid of hydroelectric power, sup-plies the site with abundant, inexpen-sive electricity, thereby reducing elec-tric costs by 40 to 70 percent. Multiple fiber carriers are available to provide redundant service.

gainesVille, Fla.Gainesville’s municipal network has attracted businesses to the area and allowed them to expand. The Prog-

ress Corporate Park, located outside Alachua, has been served with broad-band since 1998 and now hosts many biotech organizations as well as the University of Florida’s Sid Martin Bio-technology Incubator. GRUCom is also providing fiber services to Santa Fe College’s new Alachua Corporate Training Center, which will be located next to the research park. The center will provide workforce training for the biotech industry.

The City of Gainesville partnered with the Council on Economic Devel-opment to provide high-speed con-nectivity to the Gainesville Technology Enterprise Center, which also fosters early-stage technology start-up com-panies. Several businesses that re-ceived connectivity at the enterprise center have matured and moved to lo-cations where GRUCom’s services are available and continue to use them to-day. The fiber network has also allowed several existing companies to receive superior service at much lower prices.

JaCkson, tenn.The Jackson Energy Authority, a pub-licly owned utility, built a fiber-to-the-premises system in its home town and surrounding areas and opened the system to service providers that sell telephone, Internet access and cable television to local residents and businesses. Among the companies in Jackson taking advantage of this state-of-the-art network: Trinity Solu-tions, Xpert Systems Integration and Interworks. All three, which position themselves as providers of IT support services for small businesses, locate their servers in Jackson Energy’s op-erations center.

laFayette, la.The municipal FTTH system has at-tracted call centers and a myriad of video production operations – firms that depend on reliable broadband to move huge files back and forth among video editing and special effects firms worldwide. The result: thousands of new jobs.

Recent advances in deployment technology have made installing fiber in multiple-dwelling-unit properties quick and inexpensive.


Few individuals need 1 Gbps broadband to their homes to-day, but many people are bet-

ting that a gigabit will be the standard soon enough. Google chose Kansas City, Kan., over 1,100 other applicants for its first 1 Gbps FTTH build, and EPB Fiber Optics (the municipally owned network in Chattanooga, Tenn.) is now offering 1 Gbps access to residential and business customers throughout its service area.

Announcing its program last year, Google offered several scenarios. “Imagine sitting in a rural health clinic, streaming three-dimensional medical imaging over the Web and discussing a unique condition with a specialist in New York,” its statement said. “Or downloading a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five min-utes. Or collaborating with classmates around the world, while watching live, 3D video of a university lecture.”

google and kansas City“In selecting a city,” said Milo Medin, Google’s vice president for access ser-vices, “our goal was to find a location where we could build efficiently, make an impact on the community and de-velop relationships with local govern-ment and community organizations.

... We’ll be working closely with local organizations including the Kauffman Foundation, KCNext and the Univer-sity of Kansas Medical Center to help develop the gigabit applications of the future.”

Pending approval from the city’s Board of Commissioners, Google ex-pects to offer 1 Gbps service as early as 2012. Medin says Google will “also be looking closely at ways to bring ultra-high-speed Internet to other cit-ies across the country. ... We can’t wait to see what new products and services

will emerge as Kansas City moves from traditional broadband to ultra-high-speed fiber optic connections.”

Medin described Kansas City as only “the start, not the end of the project.” He added, “Over the coming months, we’ll be talking to other inter-ested cities about the possibility of us bringing ultra-high-speed broadband to their communities.”

ChattanoogaEPB’s 1 Gbps service is available to ev-ery home and business within EPB’s 600-square-mile, nine-county service area. The Internet service rides on EPB’s all-fiber, smart-grid network, which EPB built with the help of a $111 million grant from the Energy Department before the economic stimulus added more smart-grid funding nationwide in 2009.

The city says its 30 Mbps entry-level service lets users download and record four channels at once for view-ing later. And the electric utility saves at least $40 million a year on power by, among other things, reducing theft of electricity and shaving peak loads. But as Harold DePriest, CEO of EPB, said, “The overriding consideration is that this is a real tool for economic development for our community. It is the basis for creating the products and services of the Internet of the future. And it’s in Chattanooga today.”

introdUCing 1 gbPs to the home


For historical reasons, optical net-works developed along several parallel evolutionary paths. Un-

like the Betamax/VHS wars, no one won the FTTH wars, so network build-ers can now choose among several options or even mix and match them as needed. The “family” of passive optical networks now has two major branches – PON and AON (also called P2P) – and many technical variants within those branches.

PON stands for “passive optical network.” Networks are passive when they have no powered electrical de-vices between a central office and an end user. All the handling of the light beams that carry the signal is done with mirrors, prisms and fiber.

AON stands for “active optical net-work.” As the name implies, these net-works have electrical devices – gen-erally Ethernet routers and switches – along the fiber path. These days, the “active electronics” are usually in cen-tral offices rather than in remote cabi-nets or local points of presence.

For this reason, the industry has begun to call active networks point-to-point or P2P networks. This refers to the fact that each end user gets a dedicated fiber (or several dedicated fibers) extending from the central of-fice to the user premises. By contrast, in a PON, which is sometimes called a point-to-multipoint network, each fi-ber in the central office carries signals to as many as 128 customers (16- and 32-way splits are normal with today’s most widely used PON standards).

Because each fiber requires its own laser, P2P networks require more power and space in the central office. But because they do not require fiber distribution hubs (containing optical splitters) in the field, they tend to be simpler to operate.

eVolUtion oF Pon standardsWithin the general category of pas-sive optical networks, there are two branches. One is based on Ethernet, the same standard that is used in home

and corporate local-area networks. The Ethernet branch has been standardized by IEEE – the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The other branch is based on carrier standards from the ITU – International Telecommunication Union – and is more “telephone-like.”

the itU FamilyBPON (for “Broadband PON”) was the first PON standard widely used in North America. It is based on the ATM protocol and has a top speed to us-ers of 622 Mbps and upstream speed of 155 Mbps, but it allows the use of a separate wavelength of light to sup-port video services.

BPON has largely been replaced by GPON, which allows 2.48 Gbps down-stream to the user and 1.24 Gbps up-stream and also has a separate video wavelength. GPON supports ATM, Eth-ernet and TDM (the protocol phone companies use for ordinary telephone service) by wrapping or “encapsulat-ing” the data packets with extra bits.

GPON became commercially avail-able in 2006 and is the most widely used standard in North America today. A new upgrade, 10G GPON, is now becoming commercially available. As the name implies, downstream bandwidth is about 10 Gbps – four times the current standard. Upstream bandwidth has also been increased fourfold. However, 10G GPON is not expected to displace GPON in the near future; it is more likely to be adopted for enterprise use, mobile backhaul and fiber to the building applications.

the ethernet FamilyThe second branch of the PON family tree is the Ethernet branch. Ethernet is also used for active networks.

The first Ethernet PON (EPON) stan-dard was released by the IEEE a few months after the GPON standard in 2004. The standard was quickly up-graded to 1.25 Gbps, twice the origi-nal bandwidth, as new electronic parts became available.

Networks using that speed are sometimes called EPON and some-times called GEPON (for Gigabit Ether-net PON). 2.5 GigE equipment started to be deployed in 2009 and equip-ment using 10 GigE in 2010. Like 10G GPON, 10G EPON is not yet used for individual residential deployments.

new tyPes oF Ftth networksNew fiber optic technologies are be-ing developed to meet new needs. For example, the RFoG (Radio Frequency over Glass) and DPoE (DOCSIS Provi-sioning over EPON) standards allow cable providers to use their existing DOCSIS protocols with all-fiber net-works. RFoG also permits the use of existing cable devices at the headend and user premises.

WDM-PON adapts wavelength-di-vision-multiplexing electronic equip-ment developed for the transport por-tion of the network for use in the access network. WDM-PON can provide the kinds of speeds seen in intercity net-works (currently up to 100 Gbps). De-ployment in homes and businesses, especially in MDUs, is now occurring.

Understanding Fiber network arChiteCtUres

The FTTH Council will certify any home installation that meets its standard – fiber optic cable that extends all the way to the boundary of the home premises. Certified proj-ects may display the program’s badge in their advertising.

Certification is important because companies like to claim they have fiber networks, even when the fiber does not go all the way to the home. This can lead to consumer confusion. Consumers sometimes think they are getting the full benefit of 100-percent fiber broadband when in fact they are not. Once constituents understand the ben-efits of fiber, they will embrace it:

• Consumers will understand the difference between FTTH and other “fiber networks” that aren’t as good and will embrace the superior experience of FTTH.

• Communities will understand the benefits that broad-band brings in terms of jobs, wages and direct benefits such as medical and education ser vices – especially when delivered in the best possible form – FTTH.

• Investors will understand the benefits to compa-nies that make the effort to build fiber to the home networks – in terms of increased customer loyalty, competitive advantage, return on invested capital and revenue.

Details and an application form can be found on the Web at www.FTTHCouncil.org.

1. FTTH, or fiber to the home, identifies a telecommuni-cations architecture in which a communications path is provided over optical fiber cables extending from the telecommunications operator’s switching equip-ment to (at least) the boundary of the home living space or business office space (the side of the building or unit). This communications path is provided for the purpose of carrying telecommunications traffic to one or more subscribers and for delivering one or more services (for example Internet access, telephony and/or video-television).

2. For the FTTH Council to certify any service provider’s net-work as operating over fiber-to-the-home access and to grant that service provider use of the Fiber-Connected Home badge, that service provider[, and their network,] must identify the location, size, and equipment being used in sufficient detail for the Council to effectively cer-tify those deployments. The service provider must also confirm that commercial services are currently being delivered to revenue-paying subscribers.

3. The service provider must exhibit a high level of com-mitment to network-wide FTTH deployment as indi-cated by its “Strategic Commitment” to FTTH in its net-work. “Strategic Commitment” is defined as the ratio of:

Total number of residential households in service pro-vider’s serving areas to which services can be marketed over an FTTH access network (homes passed), divided by total residential households subscribed to voice, data or video services, served by service provider’s entire wireline network (total residential communication subscribers).

This ratio must be 10 percent or higher.

Join the FTTH Council – see page 11 Become a CFHP! Certified Fiber to the Home Professional Program – see page 14

To learn more about fiber to the home:

FTTH [email protected]

the Ftth CoUnCil CertiFiCation Program

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