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| Fiber to the home was assumed to be on the way Let's set the wayback machine to 1985. That was the year I joined an ATIS ANSI-accredited subcommittee that was writing standards for digital telecom networks. I represented a large computer company, putting me in a minority there (surrounded by Bellheads, some very smart and some, well, bellheads). There was "narrowband ISDN" (what is normally called ISDN), which was a couple of years away from trials. There was frame relay, which was just being thought up as a replacement for X.25. And there was a new CCITT (now called ITU-T) project that we were the US input to, called "Broadband ISDN". In CCITT terms, Broadband began at 50 Mbps; 2-50 Mbps was merely "wideband".
B-ISDN was starting to be developed by telcos (remember PTTs?) worldwide as their response to the potential threat of cable. I first saw a cable modem being marketed in 1982. (It didn't catch on with the cablecos at the time, but they could have bought the product.) The telcos in 1985 thus figured that the best defense was a good offense. If they could offer video, then they'd be able to fight the cablecos on their own turf. Now in 1985, cable TV was old technology, all analog, mostly one-way 300 MHz coax with lots of repeaters. To get over 100 channels on the brand-spankin'-new Cablevision Boston system, they pulled dual coax. The telcos figured they could jump-start this with fiber optics.
So the B-ISDN project focused on what were outrageously long time frames, even by telco standards (for whom it takes three hours to watch "60 minutes"). We figured we'd see narrowband ISDN widespread around 1990, and B-ISDN roll out in volume somewhere in the late 1990s.
It was around the beginning of 1986 when CCITT really adopted "ATM" as the core technology of B-ISDN; before that, there was interest in using TDM over OC-3. B-ISDN with ATM was assumed in 1986-1990 to begin at OC-3 (155.52 Mbps); that was expected to be wide enough for one HDTV channel plus whatever else a house might need. (Today's 20 Mbps HDTV compression was not anticipated in the days when an 80286 was a "turbo" CPU.) The old copper telco plant was depreciating, so replacing it with FTTH over 20 years or so seemed, well, both sensible and inevitable. We continued using these assumptions well into the 1990s.
That, my friends, was the background of Bell's broadband promise. DSL was not on the table. In 1993, the Internet wasn't even open to the public yet; the high-speed applications were expected to include telecommuting, LAN interconnection, videoconferencing, video-on-demand, and as-yet-uninvented services. The Bells figured that they were going to do this FTTH thing to keep ahead of CATV. And they wanted out of the old rate-of-return regulation, because they foresaw higher productivity (or perhaps union busting, knowing Bell Atlantic) leading to lower costs. Rate caps would let them keep their higher profits.
Of course when it came time to actually look hard at FTTH, the numbers didn't add up. The Bells saw DSL as a mid-life kicker for the old copper plant. And they didn't see enough demand to pay for FTTH. They still don't -- the FCC's bargain in the UNE review is no bargain! But TeleTruth's argument is truthful; the Bells were talking about FTTH broadband, and conveniently forgot it after winning rate caps. | |
| These are good posts,
you know it does make sense that they would want to squeeze every last dollar out of the copper plant. Of course they do spend money for muxes and conditioning those lines, but that cant be near as much as fiber muxes and all that kind of network.
I think t-1 still has a leg up on DSL. You have lots of voice T's out there and t-1 is just more reliable. Plus some telco's really like the idea of splitting services on channel banks. | |
| There was a recent article in the Washington Post on how copper had a lot more life in it. While FTTH may be the ultimate ideal...
Copper Lines Regaining Luster
With the Obstacles to Fiber, Phone Companies Are Tapping the Old Infrastructure
Friday, February 7, 2003; Page E01
»www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dy···=printer | | |
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