What is the Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH)

As a medium for telecommunications, fiber optics is much faster than conventional wire, because it uses light instead of electricity to send information.

One emerging technology in this sector has been Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH), also called Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP) or Fiber-to-the-Building (FTTB). FTTH brings fiber optics directly to homes/buildings, while a similar technology, fiber-to-the-node (FTTN), brings the fiber optics to a community and then connects the fiber optics to the homes with a traditional copper cable. In the past, consumer telecom networks had a high-speed backbone with lower speed cables running to users' homes and offices. The high-speed backbones were able to carry the combined capacity of all the users, but the infrastructure running to the users severely limited the speed and bandwidth available to consumers. FTTH allows for much larger bandwidth and much faster delivery speeds, which are essential for modern "triple-play" deliveries in which access providers offer video, data, and telephony services. It also requires the installation of new transmission, wiring, and receiving infrastructure.

Currently, two major service providers are rolling out FTTH fiber optic access plans: AT&T, with U-verse, Verizon, with FiOS, while Comcast is rolling out a competing technology called Docsis 3.0. Consumers are increasingly streaming and downloading large files, like movies, and engaging in video-chatting, using the small cameras that are attached to many new laptops. Both AT&T[1] and Verizon[2] offer "high-speed" connections of speeds up to 10 Mbps - but with the demand that services like video-chatting and streaming video put on networks, the 50 MBPS offered by Docsis 3.0[3] and FiOS[4] look far more appealing. As a comparison, DSL has a speed of 1.5 Mbps. The telecom giants jumping on the FTTH bandwagon signals that fiber optics is set to go mainstream, and demand for fiber optics infrastructure will grow. It's likely that larger telecom infrastructure companies like Alcatel and Tellabs will receive most of the fiber optics business, but smaller firms like Emcore could also get in the game.

October 2, 2011

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