Fiber technology continues to become more flexible and less expensive, which should result in a ramp-up of FTTH installs over the next few years. Corning's new bendable fiber should make apartment installations much easier, and the technology (which uses nanostructures to act as light guardrails) has already caught the eye of Verizon. Similar bendable fiber solutions have also popped up in South Korea, though they're made of plastic.

A similar project in Europe aims to reduce the cost of installations via the use of plastic optical fiber (POF). EU-funded POF-ALL project has been working on making apartment installs less expensive. Such cabling efforts usually account for 30% of a FTTH line's installation costs. The project also means to make optical networking safer for home do-it-yourself installs, since staring down a live fiber line can cause eye damage. From PhysORG:Given that plastic absorbs more light than glass, there are distance limitations. The group says they can use green light to transmit 100 megabits a second over a distance of 300 meters. They can use red light to transmit 1Gbps over 30 meters. The researchers subsequently hope to push those ranges out substantially.