FCC Study: $62 Billion To Bring FTTH To The Unserved > How much to wire the entire population

said by Philmatic:

Seriously, I would like a study to be commissioned to determine how much it would cost to wire up every apartment complex, house, farm, double-wide, high-rise, school and library to fiber.

How much would that be? 500 billion? 1 trillion? Isn't that worth it? How much could the government make BACK by leasing or selling the lines to multiple carriers so they can compete on it?

Fiber to every residence in america would mean voice (VoIP), video (IPTV), data (Internet) to every residence. They could literally replace all copper based services (POTS, DSL, T-Carrier access) with a much faster and less problematic back haul. OTA could even go away conceivably.

said by BlueC:

A lot of apartments and hi-rises (newer buildings) are already wired with Cat 5e or Cat 6. IMO, that's already sufficient for awhile, no need to replace those infrastructures with fiber.

What those buildings need is FTTB. From there, copper can handle the rest without much of a fuss. And yes, copper can still deliver video, data, and voice.

I think some people still think the fiber is this magical material that solves all of our problems. What you need to understand is the effectiveness of fiber, and that's when it's outdoors and used for long distances. Single family homes (suburbs) will obviously benefit from fiber. MDU environments can still utilize copper indoors but utilize fiber-to-the-building for proper service. So really, the more urban environments that have buildings already wired with Cat 5e or Cat 6, it should be very easy to get high speeds to everyone.