Trollhawk
join:2005-05-28
3 edits | reply to fiberguy
Re: Nice Speeds
I think you made the best point so far, fiberguy. It says right in the top paragraph, "...and will be appealing for companies looking for less expensive alternatives to running fiber straight to the home."
It's all about the money, people. Regardless of what technology is superior, it's all about ROI(return on investment), and each company will do what it believes will be most profitable within their own time frames.
I'm not bashing fiber, but would you rather wait 7+ years on 6Mbps broadband to get a 100Mbps fiber connection, or would you rather have 25Mbps xDSL within 2-3 years, and upgrade that to fiber in another 5+ years? And yes, I know Verizon is already deploying fiber, but how long will it take them reach 18 million households? That's the estimate another telco is saying they'll be able to reach with xDSL by 2007.
Let's not forget that xDSL is a technology, not a physical carrier like copper or fiber. Telcos don't have to run a new transmission medium to your house to enable xDSL. Only the endpoint equipment needs updating, perhaps even just a firmware update in some cases. That makes it much easier to bump up speeds until fiber can be run all the way to the prem.
Regarding T1's etc., VDSL will even replace those where it makes economical sense. Just like Tx's, VDSL can be run on multiple pairs. For those who only think in terms of price, speed is not the only determinant. Tx's cost more for their quality of service, ie- less downtime, quicker time to fix. VDSL will also be priced accordingly- more for Tx replacements, less for consumer VDSL.
Lastly, telcos employing VDSL are not doing it in lieu of running fiber. They are actually doing it while concurrently running fiber. For example, SBC's project lightspeed is an initiative to get fiber run to within ~5kft of each home, so that they can offer more people faster xDSL, in less time than it would take to run fiber to same amount of homes. The next logical step(assuming we don't all go wireless) would be to replace the "last mile" copper to the home with fiber.
So to sum up, I don't think VDSL is an alternative to fiber in the long run, but it is a very good "next step" before fiber reaches the majority of households. |
