COMMENTARY: Is fibre-to-the-node good enough?

CANADA'S ILEC's SURE hope so. They need it to be. Every quarter, when telco CEOs face industry analysts, one or more of them invariably ask whether the telcos' rebuild strategy of only bringing fibre to a neighbourhood node, within a kilometre or so of a group of homes, will provide enough bandwidth to make them competitive in the broadband video world. They also invariably point to U.S. telco Verizon, which is building fibre to the home (or curb or the premises, whatever you'd like to call it) so that it can deliver on its aggressive rollout plans for its Fios...