North American Network Operators Group
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Re: So why don't US citizens get this?

  • From: Jack Bates
  • Date: Mon Jul 28 10:39:10 2008
[email protected] wrote:
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.

It is cheaper to bore fiber and attach more remote systems than to use the already existing copper? I'm curious how you come up with those economics. (seriously, that wasn't sarcasm)

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)?

Good question. I'd say my little backwoods part of the world is roughly 10% FTTC, probably less.

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.

Yeah, mom was a little aggravated that she lost her connectivity in the valley out in El Salvador because one weekend thieves stole the entire stretch of copper down the mountain off the poles.

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

Analysis paralysis perhaps? AKA bipartisan politics.

I have a high speed cable competitor here in town. They love sucking up the competitive profits in town. Of course, our plant footprint by law is about 20 times theirs. They weren't required to service pop and his cows 20 miles out where you'll never catch up on costs. Estimated population is roughly 5-6k. I've heard similar issues with CLEC's in small population areas. They suck up the profitable areas, and stay out of the areas where you will *never* recover your money. This was the whole point of regulation to begin with in my opinion; to ensure that every household had a phone line, even if it lost money.

Of course, who cares about the rural areas. They always get the fallout from regulation changes made with the big cities in mind. If the want fiber to every home, they'll either have to up their incentives or remove the competition to average out profits. Forcing competition to the same requirements as the incumbent should effectively kill them off in the rural exchanges and keep them in the big cities. The last I checked, NTT didn't have to compete for their high profit areas while losing money on the fringes (I presume Japan still has SOME rural areas?).

Jack