HAMILTON – Fibre to the home is certainly possible – and from a pure bandwidth point of view, certainly desirable. From an economic point of view, though? Not so much.
And is such a conversion going to happen any time soon here in Canada? Not likely. At least that was the consensus around the lunch table I sat at Tuesday at Carmen’s Banquet Hall in Hamilton during the SCTE Ontario Chapter Winter Technical Conference.
Well over 200 from the technical and engineering side of the cable industry descended on Hamilton to hear 10 speakers wax eloquently about the advantages of fibre to the home, how and when it can be deployed and why it’s a must.
It may well be a must in certain parts of the world, especially perhaps Stateside where Verizon is spending over $20 billion on bringing fibre thisclose to people in order to deliver the quad play – one which includes high definition TV and hundreds of television channels
But in Canada, said the folks from Cogeco Cable, Source Cable and a few suppliers at my lunch table, as long as Bell Canada and Telus, the two dominant telcos, attempt to deliver video without committing to FTTH, there’s little incentive for MSOs to drive fibre so deep when they can continue to hold a bandwidth and speed lead over their competitors with new technology like switched digital and channel bonding.
Having taken part in that conversation at lunch, I felt a little sorry for the presenting suppliers, all of whom built excellent cases for FTTH upgrades, even though FTTH deployments are a ways off for cable, except maybe in brand new subdivisions.
Commscope’s Roy Boylan told attendees that in the U.S. many new home builders insist on fibre to the home when constructing. “They claim it increases the homes’ value,” he said. And cable companies are doing it there because of the competitive threat from the telcos, especially Verizon’s FiOS.
The advantage to today’s fibre overhaul, should cablecos choose to accept such a plan, is that neither the customer premises end – the coaxial cable in the home and set top boxes – nor the CMTS, has to change. Just the cable in the middle – and maybe a repeater along the way.
“We’re not going to touch the headend. We’re not going to touch the customer premises equipment,” added Boylan, who says he knows MSOs have zero interest in swapping out boxes, altering their provisioning and billing systems and so on.
FTTH – or fibre even a little deeper than it already is among MSOs – is a much more affordable proposition now than it has ever been. In the not so distant past, fibre deployments in the field meant lots of costly, time consuming, fibre splices.
“Now there are fewer field splices,” said Corning’s Mark Conner in his presentation that showed IPTV deployments pass over 9.6 million homes in North America. “With hardened connectors, it’s led to a gradual decline in the costs – and faster deployment… That same technician can now go much faster.”
So maybe deep fibre isn’t quite so far off after all.
