RE: So why don't US citizens get this?

* michael.dillon · * Mon Jul 28 08:30:53 2008

> I belive there are just few major cities in the US that have 
> a comparable or higher concentration of people like other 
> large cities around the world.

So then...
Why do major US cities not have fiber to the home yet?
Of course, here in the UK, FTTH won't go to London first:
<http://www.h2onetworksdarkfibre.com/news/?news=Bournemouth-becomes-the-
UKs-first-Fibrecity>
<http://www.northernireland.gov.uk/news-deti-150108-high-speed-broadband
>

There are already plans afoot to roll out FTT? darn near everywhere
here.
<http://www.ispreview.co.uk/news/EkEyEpAFykbCFYrArU.html>
FTTC is far more interesting that FTTH, because it is not just a
technology buzzword driven idea, but one based on economics. It is
cheaper to rollout a nice high bandwidth fiber link to most
neighborhoods than to use that fat bundle of copper pairs. But, on the
other hand, it is cheaper to leave that last quarter-mile intact and
only build out fiber where new development is being done. 

So the real question that is much more interesting is as follows:
Does the US lag the world in high-speed fiber to the cabinet (FTTC)?

> I'd bet that if you deploy fiber in a given radious in a 
> suburban area in Japan you may reach hundreds or thousands of 
> potential customers, do the same a little bit north from 
> where I live and you will reach a dozen guys, 50 cows and a 
> couple of hundred chickens.

Don't let the copper thieves know where you live. They might show up one
nice Sunday morning bright and early to clean out the county's copper
wire. When I lived in British Columbia, Canada in teh 90's, I noticed
that our incumbent telco was well ahead of the game. They were putting
up fiber everywhere and then following up by cutting the fat copper
cables into sections for recovery of the metal. They even ran fibre into
remote valleys were there were only a few dozen families and it was
probably economically worthwhile because they recovered a higher dollar
value of copper from those remote locations.

> Still I beleve is interesting to analyze why the US is 
> lagging behind on high speed services.

Analysis paralysis perhaps? AKA bipartisan politics.

--Michael Dillon