My thoughts tend to wander on this topic, and I'm not taking a coherent, wholistic view, apparently. And that's okay in a world where revolutionary outcomes depend on breaking away and thinking out of the box, especially when comparisons can not be tracked on a linear scale.
Whether or not fiber is too expensive or not is a function of who is doing the analysis, most often.. and what model they are designing around. Granted, most PONs and other flavors of FTTH have simply taken the approach of emulating the constructs of HFC, using RF carrier that is super-imposed onto lambdas, or over native individual fibers.
The end terminals remain the same, and there is no net gain in overall channel capacity or additional feature capabilities.
How about changing out the residential hardware model and the payloads that they receive with something that is less restrictive, allowing the potential of optical to manifest itself?
"As verification of the expensive equipment problem, aren't there a lot of greenfield FTTH projects completed(fiber run), and the fiber remains dark? If I'm wrong can you point me to some residential builds, beyond a trial, where the fiber has been lit?"
Not sure where your point of reference is here, Mike. The greenfield dark fiber builds that you cited are somewhat different from those that actually fit the model you are referencing. I suspect that you are referring to the fiber that remains unlit in long haul venues, for the most part. I would caution here, however, that the strategies employed by those carriers (the so-called fiber barons) who pulled those _extra_ strands, are radically different than those who would do FTTH or even metro area networks.
The long-haul fiber barons overbuilt their routes intentionally, with the stated (and demonstrated) goal of selling off dark fibers to smaller players and to those who needed diverse routes, as a means of financing their own builds.
In reality, each of the barons will tell you that they themselves don't need the full 288 strands, or anything near that amount, or however many they put in the ground between city pairs, for their own use.
Instead, they needed to put those in the ground to sell to others, as a means of augmenting their capital requirements over time. In effect, becoming dark fiber wholesale sellers, and traders, to, and with, other carriers.
Here's a surprising view from Verizon, btw, that caught my eye the other day:
Message 14961391
As you read this piece, take note that Hoffman from VZ makes a point that their architecture explicitly does "NOT" make use of FSAN, which is the original blueprint for PONs. At the same time, however, they "are" making use of extant ngdls (next generation digital loop carrier) components in certain ways, which in my mind tells me that they are still dealing with bandwidth restrictive measures. The points made in the article that are most noteworthy, however, have to do with the principal's claims that handling fiber now is cheaper than handling copper. A first, as far as I know, coming from an ILEC.
FAC |
