ü  The community looks better. The streetscape isn't cluttered with ugly communication pedestals.

ü  It doesn't use or conduct electricity, supporting our "green" building platform.

ü  Those residents with the right equipment enjoy more vibrant television.

ü  It supports faster Internet access, file sharing and downloads.

ü  It enables economical bundling of services.

ü  It increases property values. By industry estimates, properties that have direct fiber-to-the-home are valued $5,000 to $9,400 more than similar properties that do not.

ü  It offers multiple benefits to all generations of homebuyers

ü  And services can be ready at move-in, unlike most telephone and cable companies.

ü  It is far more reliable than coaxial cable

  Fiber-to-the-home (FTTP) the delivery of a communications signal over optical fiber from the operator’s switching equipment all the way to a home or  business, thereby replacing existing copper infrastructure such as telephone wires and coaxial cable. Fiber-to-the-premise is a relatively new and fast-growing  method of providing vastly higher bandwidth to consumers, and thereby enabling more robust video, internet and voice services.

  Optical fiber uses light instead of electricity to carry a signal. It is unique because it can carry high bandwidth signals over long distances without degradation. Copper can also carry high bandwidth, but only for a few hundred yards – after which the signal begins to degrade and bandwidth narrows.

  Optical fiber has been used in communications networks for more than 30 years, mostly to carry traffic from city to city or country to country.

  Connecting homes/businesses directly to fiber optic cable enables enormous improvements in the bandwidth that can be provided to consumers. While DSL and cable modems generally provide transmission speeds of up to five megabits per second on the download (and are generally slower when  uploading), current fiber optic technology can provide two-way transmission speeds of up to 100 megabits per second.

   Further, while cable and DSL providers are struggling to squeeze small increments of higher bandwidth out of their technologies, ongoing improvements in fiber optic equipment are constantly increasing available bandwidth without having the change the fiber. That’s why fiber networks are said to be “future proof.”

 

  If all you want to do is surf web pages, download a few songs, send and receive some photographs, or watch streaming video at current picture quality levels, then the bandwidth provided by today’s cable modems and DSL lines is probably good enough.

  But the world is moving toward vastly higher bandwidth applications. Companies like Netflix, Amazon and Wal Mart are preparing to offer feature length movies for download. More people are looking to upload their own home movies into emails or web pages.

  Consumer electronics companies are coming out with devices that connect televisions to the Internet. High-definition video is fast becoming the state-of-the-art – and one high definition movie takes up as much bandwidth as 35,000 web pages. All of these applications – and many others we haven’t even dreamed of yet – are going to require much greater bandwidth than what is generally available today, even from so-called “broadband” providers.

 

  Think about it. A little more than two years ago, the Internet video service You Tube didn’t even exist. Today, You Tube viewers watch 100 million video clips a day. It was the advance from dialup to DSL and cable modem that made You Tube possible. And now a growing number of Americans are watching their favorite television programs and news and sporting events over the Internet.

   We have no reason to believe these innovations will stop. This trend will continue into high-definition video, telemedicine, distance learning, telecommuting and many other broadband applications that have thus far been limited only by the amount of high-bandwidth connections into people’s homes.

   Only fiber-to-the-home can deliver the bandwidth we are going to need in the future. Fiber-to-the-premise providers are now providing this higher capacity at competitive prices.

  DSL and cable modem rely on copper wire to deliver signals to your home – and copper can deliver high bandwidth only over very short distances. That’s fine if you happen to live a few hundred yards from your provider’s switching station, but most people don’t.

  Optical fiber does not have this limitation and thus is able to carry high bandwidth signals over great distances to homes and businesses. Only fiber-to-the-premise can deliver the immense bandwidth that the applications of the future will require.

  Fiber-to-the-premise services are being rolled out nationwide at prices that are competitive with video, voice and data services being delivered by incumbent carriers. In places where consumers have previously had little or no choice in their video and Internet services, the addition of a fiber-to-the-premise competitor has helped keep prices down and lift service quality.

  As of March 2007, 1.34 million U.S. homes were the number of homes in the U.S. now receiving video, data and voice services over direct fiber optic connections. The number of fiber-to-the-premise subscribers has doubled over each of the last two years.

  The construction of fiber-to-the-premise systems began in earnest only in the last three or four years, and today about 1.2% of households are connected with fiber. Only about half of all U.S. households have any form of broadband connectivity.

 

  Yes. A recent study by RVA & Associates, a Tulsa-based consulting firm, surveyed home buyers and developers. It found that fiber-to-the-premise adds about $5,000 to the purchase price of an individual dwelling.

  Japan is a world leader, with nearly eight million fiber-to-the-premise connections. South Korea and many European nations also lead the U.S. in the number of homes connected directly to fiber networks. However, the U.S. now leads all these countries in annual growth in the number of connections.

  Verizon, the nation’s largest provider of fiber-to-the-premise service, has wired up nearly 900,000 homes, mostly in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, Indiana, Florida, Texas and California.

  More than three dozen municipalities and local public utilities across the U.S. have built their own fiber networks. Many developers of new residential communities are wiring up their new developments with fiber.

  Many FTTH subscribers across the nation are getting their service from small rural telephone companies, medium-sized telephone service providers, cable companies, and private facilities-based competitive local exchange carriers.

  Yes. Because they typically carry video services and thereby compete directly with incumbent cable television providers, fiber-to-the-premise providers normally must comply with state and local regulations governing the cable television industry.

  Most states leave it to municipalities and/or county governments to issue video franchises. And, while federal law requires local governments to allow competition, in many cases the strictures placed on new entrants are too onerous to enable them to take the financial risk of building a new system. Accordingly, about a dozen states have streamlined their video franchising processes, and it’s in these states where the bulk of fiber-to-the-premise deployments are occurring.

  A study done in Texas showed that, after that state streamlined its video franchising process, video-enable fiber-to-the-premise deployments grew eight times faster there than in the rest of the country.

 

  The technology for drilling and burying cable has changed a lot over the past decade. Contractors can now use horizontal drilling techniques, where underground conduits are installed at a single entry point and special equipment runs them to their destinations without having to dig open trenches.

  Sometimes fiber can be put in existing ducts, water pipes, sewers and gas lines. And many network builders use “aerial” fiber that is installed on poles along with existing telephone, electric and cable wiring.

  Not at all. While the vastly higher bandwidth and transmission speeds offered by fiber-to-the-premise is certainly enabling video providers to offer a wider range of products and services, users of other applications will benefit as well.

  Gamers will get access to more powerful multi-player applications. Avenues will open for distance learning and telemedicine. Opportunities for telecommuting and working at home will increase. And, just as Internet applications and solutions have grown more sophisticated with the expansion of available bandwidth thus far, you can be sure that this leap into next-generation broadband will inspire further innovations that we cannot even imagine at this point.

 We all know that FTTH matters to subscribers and to network operators.