A Verizon Executive Blog? A Rarity
I came across an interesting blog by a VZ exec that goes by the moniker "PoliBlog" on the Ballmer-Herbst list. It's owner is Lincoln (Link) Hoewing - Assistant Vice President, Internet and Technology Issues. I've posted the entry that caught my attention below. I note that the candor expressed by the author is refreshing, in some parts at least. I believe that his message, for its tutorial benefit, along with the comments below his entry (which appear LI-FO, for some reason) are worth reading.
I should point out that his reference to, and explanation of, "head room", while correct, applies to both total systemwide capacity and the amount of "headroom," or additional capacity, required on an individual subscriber's channel in order to to support mixed, time-sensitive applications/services such as voice and live video/gaming at the highest possible level of quality on a best efforts basis.
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PONdering Broadband
Link Hoewing
Oct 03 06
Lots of attention has been paid recently to announcements that a French company is planning to test a fiber network soon that will supposedly run at speeds far surpassing virtually anything in the U. S. The implication some are drawing? Yet more evidence that America is falling farther behind in the race to build better broadband networks.
But the violins are not playing yet and Rome is not burning. The reality is that fiber to the home networks are growing faster in the U. S. than any place else in the world. According to the Fiber to the Home Council “The US is the Fastest Growing FTTH Market. FTTH homes climbed by 215% in 12 months ended March 2006.” Verizon’s deployment of fiber to the home is a major reason for this performance. We’ve got ground to make up but we’re move rapidly ahead.
Verizon has been rebuilding its network using fiber optic technology for nearly two years under the FiOS brand name. It is taking fiber connections all the way to the home. These glass lines have lots of capacity but they can’t do anything without the necessary protocols or network operating standards to make them run.
In Verizon’s case, we adopted the Passive Optical Network or PON architecture and protocols when we originally began building our fiber network. PON networks have many advantages. They offer virtually unlimited capacity because they can be expanded by changing out the electronics that generate the light signals that drive fiber networks. No new fiber lines need to be installed. Once the fiber leaves the switching office and runs through the neighborhoods, no electronics are required, unlike DSL or cable modem systems. This makes the system highly reliable and virtually impervious to things like signal interference.
Under Verizon’s Fiber to the Home architecture, thirty-two homes share 622 Megabits per second of capacity downstream into the home and 155 megabits upstream. This system has allowed us to offer speeds of up to 30 megs down and 5 megs up and some 4.4 million homes can today access these connections. We even have some locations today where 50 meg connections are available.
Continued at:
poliblog.verizon.com
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