Around February of 2011 I noticed that Mexico's largest phone company Telmex started laying fiber-optic cable around my neighborhood in the city of Chihuahua in the state of the same name. At the time I was not entirely sure for what reason, after some research I confirmed that it was for an FTTH (Fiber to the Home) roll-out, as suspected. Chihuahua is not as large or commercially important as other cities in Mexico such as Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey. Chihuahua is not as densely populated as any of the previously mentioned cities and it only has 819,543 inhabitants as of 2010, yet Telmex was rolling-out FTTH like in in other small cities, as I later discovered.

In contrast, El Paso, Texas (the nearest US city) which has a similar population size -- is probably not going to be considered for FTTH builds in the near future. Households in El Paso are stuck with "vanilla" DSL and Cable, which only goes to about 15 Mbps.

It is worth noting that there are three companies that have already rolled-out FTTH in Mexico: Iusacell, Totalplay (sister company of Iusacell) and Axtel. Iusacell’s service is already available in very limited areas of Chihuahua City, but it is aimed at small and medium size businesses at high cost. Although, I suspect that prices will go down once Telmex gets their service deployed at full capacity and Totalplay, which is targeted towards households, distributes the service their sister company Iusacell offers. On the other hand, Axtel has no plans to broaden their market beyond the "big 3" which is a shame because they are the only ISP that currently offers 100 Mbps symetrical. Unfortunately, their prices are still very high for their 100 Mbps service, around the equivalent of $200 USD a month for the symmetrical 100/100 Mbps.

Axtel's service roll-out is very limited since it only covers the most profitable areas of the most profitable cities in Mexico. Iusacell/Totaplay service more areas, but they also confine their services to high profit areas. While Telmex's roll-out isn't going to cover full cities any time soon, it is by far the most aggressive roll-out of them all.

Telmex's roll-out is limited to one central area here in Chihuahua City, which only covers around a 4Km (about 2.5 miles) radius. It is a good start, but a far cry from servicing the entire city. So that about sums up the current state of fiber-optic service in Mexico. I have to point out: I thought the fiber roll-out had stopped here, but it hasn't. They are still laying fiber in new areas, some of which have underground cabling.

Telmex started installing FTTH in other cities around 3 months ago and here in Chihuahua about a month and a half ago. As soon as I found out that they had started, I gave Telmex a call and sure enough it was available in my area, without wasting a second, I requested the service for me and my girlfriend. The installation was extremely easy compared to their competitors. Iusacell and Axtel have a ring shaped area that goes around a part of the city and if you are not within 500 meters (about a third of a mile) of that ring you are out of luck. They also fuse a new fiber to every household from what I have heard.

In contrast, with Telmex the fiber is already laid outside of every house that is served by the central office, and installing the fiber on those houses doesn't require the installer to splice the fiber since it has already been done. All they need to do is show up with a pre-terminated fiber cable on both ends and make a hole in the wall to connect the ONT (Optical Network Terminal) to the terminal on a pole. Here's some photos of my install, if you're interested.

This one shows the cover of a splice enclosure and a terminal, the terminal is the one on the left:
This one shows the splicer and the fiber optic splice enclosure:
Now we fast forward into my home installation, this is the pre-terminated cable
They have different cable lengths, but they all come pre-terminated already, so connecting the ONT to terminal on the pole is very easy. Here's pic of the terminal on the pole:
Here is one with the installation crew members connecting the cable to the terminal:
Telmex did not lay the fiber themselves, they had another company do it for them. So I was not really all that surprised they lacked the equipment to properly test the integrity of the fiber. They actually had to resort to connecting the ONT outside just to see if the fiber was lit or not. Here is a pic of the ONT when they used it to test the fiber outside:
The ONT got a fiber signal, so they continued with the installation, here is the installer on the roof:
After that, they drilled a hole in the wall and ran the cable through it, this is where they terminated the fiber. From another fiber cable goes to the ONT, notice how the copper installation is left intact. Fiber on the left, and POTS / DSL on the right:
For now they let you keep the DSL service, and the land-line still works from the twisted pair, but they said that they will eventually take all the copper lines down. Finally, here are some shots of the ONT.


There are currently three tiers available from Telmex, and they are all DSL; they have not even officially rolled-out ADSL2+ yet, which is what most people will end up with. ADSL2+ trials started in early 2010 and they have yet to make the service official. Telmex’s current home internet service plans are 1 Mbps for $400 pesos (about $35 USD), 2 Mbps for $600 pesos (about $52 USD) and 5 Mbps for $999 pesos (about $86 USD, all prices include tax). It is rumored that as soon as Telmex rolls out the service in an official capacity, they will offer 20 Mbps, 40 Mbps, and 100 Mbps plans with no price changes to their FTTH customers. Now, regardless of which tier you have, once they install fiber at your home the service is free and limited to 20 mbits until they go official.

Telmex would go from one of the most expensive per Mbit providers on the planet to one on par with Europe's best. I will update BBR once the FTTH roll-out is official. Here is a pic of the pamphlet that advertises FTTH as being of "no extra charge" to your current service:
The first thing I did was to determine if it was a gigabit ONT. Sadly, it is not. It comes with 100 Mbps Ethernet only, so speeds greater than 100 Mbps will not be possible with this ONT, which suggests Telmex has no plans of offering more than 100 Mbps any time soon. The ONT has Wireless N included, but at my girlfriend’s house I could only connect as "G" for some reason (did not even try it at my house). No biggie, I know for sure it does not have MIMO anyway. Therefore, I was not planning on using it as my main router and I quickly disabled WiFi at my and my girlfriend's house. The ONT has very limited options; it does not even have a bridge mode, which means you have to establish the PPPoE connection on the ONT no matter what. The firmware on the ONT looks very basic. I suspect Alcatel-Lucent did not have much time to add a pretty GUI; this might change in the future.

As for speeds, the download speeds are extremely consistent; I can get a sustained download of 20 Mbps with no problem whatsoever, or as some applications show, around 2400 kbps. I also noticed about a 12 ms latency reduction.

The upload is supposed to be 4 Mbps, and at my girlfriend’s house I had no problem getting Speedtest.net to hit 4 Mbps every now and then. But at my house, I have yet to hit 4 Mbps. I get anywhere from 1.5 to 3 mbps on uploads. Here are a few pics from Speedtest.net. The first highlights my DSL service results, the second FTTH results; the graphs clearly show when FTTH takes over:

For those wondering what kind of equipment is being used for this roll-out, I have heard that the equipment consists of Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent and Tyco brands. Cisco 7609-S i hear is the brains of the network, with centrals interconected at 720 Gbps. Tyco gear i think is the one being used for the outdoor stuff and Alcatel-Lucent provides the ONT.

If you are in Mexico and have no clue if the service is available in your area, you can call Telmex. They are being somewhat slow with the installations because they basically have to convince all the households in a designated neighborhood to let them install new cabling. If you or your neighbors call them they will rush the installation, otherwise you might be in for a long wait. That is why so far I am the only one in my neighborhood with the service installed; otherwise I might have been waiting until they got around to the neighborhood where I live.

This article is part of an effort to solicit paid content from the Broadband Reports community. If you'd like to participate, please contact us.