Mike, re:
"I'm talking about actual FTTH residential builds. I thought BellSouth was doing some FTTH builds in new home developments. I thought they numbered in the thousands.
They do, but that's still only a drop in the bucket compared to their serving territory. Lest we forget, there were two BLS rollouts. One was a pilot for FTTH, and the other was their unique blend of Integrated Fiber in the Loop (IFITL), or something like that, which was introduced as a mix of PON and NGDLC network architectures and elements, providing 10- and up to 100 Mb/s Ethernet service to homes.
The latter was not a pilot, it was for real, and it's still working in the Atlanta area. as far as I know. But I don't know the extent to which it was rolled out.
The pilot, however, which is also made up of permanent connections, served fewer homes and consumed less resources. It, like I sated earlier, used fiber, but it also emulates HFC to some extent, because they are using RF modulation (FM, I believe) on glass to support NTSC video (I think they are using Optical Solutions Inc. wares, but I'm not absolutely sure at this stage).
Have any of those type residential FTTH builds been turned on yet? And if I recall correctly, ftth(the person) also brought to our attention a residential FTTH builder.
I believe you are referring to either CLW (Clearworks) or WOW. Yes, those, too, are doing HFC emulation, and I don't consider them to be a part of the next generation FTTH unless they come out with something that more fully exploits the potentials of the technology. At the present time they are merely substituting the coax portion with glass, but they are running everything else same-o, same-o. With the possible exception of allow full-duplex 10 Mb/s Ethernet [please don't ask if it's shared or switched, Justone;-) because I don't know] in some instances. By exploiting the technology more fully, I'm referring to doing something along the lines of what Canarie (CANet) is doing in Canada. See URL below. Note that here, even CANet is discussing "customer-empowered" networks, similar to the theme of homeowner involvement over in Palo Alto.
canarie.ca
There have been others, and some of them clearly are not interested in pursuing bundled TV/Phone/'Net access, and would be satisfied with providing the best of breed of the 'Net access portion only, for now... and the other services would soon follow, when they migrate to streaming media over IP, or voip, respectively.
I don't think that the BLS's, or any other RBOC's trial or pilot, would treat fiber lavishly. During pilots they never do, and the people running them usually have to beg, borrow and steal to get the show on the road. Telco engineers are very funny that way, since they must account, somewhere, for every molecule of resource that they use. I could be wrong about this, but I'll stay with it until someone can prove otherwise. I remember the original ADSL trials in Dover Township, and according to some of the engineers involved with that one, it was a wonder that they were ever able to get the Westell units procured.
FAC |
