While it is true that fiber optic networks have been used for long-distance phone service since the 1980s, unfortunately, it doesn't mean that FiOS can be simply "turned on" all over the country at once. Were that the case, though, I'm sure several Verizon execs would be doing cartwheels right alongside you.

As is usually the case with truly worthwhile undertakings, if you really want something done right, you need to be prepared to spend a little more time on it. In the case of FiOS, "done right" means bringing technology to your door that will give you room to grow for decades to come, not a quick-fix bandwidth upgrade that's good enough for the time being. But bringing the future of broadband technology to America does take time, for several reasons.

The "Last Mile" Challenge

So, if Verizon already had over 10 million miles of fiber optic cable laid out before it started on FiOS, why is it still taking so long? A big part of it has to do with that pesky mile number 10,000,001. While connecting one wire center to another with miles-long fiber optic cable was not always a picnic itself, for decades, the real challenge for communications companies has been trying to solve what's known as the "last mile" problem. That is to say, how does a communications company maintain a strong, clear signal as its network "branches out" like capillaries to the thousands of households it services?

According to leading telecommunications researchers, cable (a.k.a. hybrid fiber-coaxial, or "HFC") is not the ideal last mile solution for our ever-increasing bandwidth demands, due to its inherent "shared medium" nature -- each new subscriber that taps into the cable line can affect the downloading and, especially, uploading capabilities of everyone else in the service area. So if the joker down the street is sharing his entire music collection with his online buddies, it's you who can end up paying the price with a painfully slow connection.

With FiOS you never have to worry about what your bandwidth-hogging neighbor's doing, because the only thing you're sharing with him is a zip code. You get your own all-digital, optical fiber that runs right to your home, not split off to hundreds of other houses like coaxial cable. The simplicity and practically limitless bandwidth of fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) make FiOS the ideal last mile solution. But building the FiOS network is neither quick nor easy.

There's always a "but," isn't there?

Unlike your cable company, which can simply hook a modem up to the cable that's been buried in your yard for 20 or 30 years, all that FiOS fiber has to be laid afresh, neighborhood by neighborhood, street by street. The metaphorical "last mile" becomes more like thousands of them as the FiOS network branches out and grows, passing three million homes a year. With FiOS still in the early stages of deployment, a major milestone will be in 2010, by which time Verizon hopes to have passed 18 million homes, or over half the homes it serves.

The good news is that while building the FiOS infrastructure is quite a lengthy and labor-intensive process, fiber optics are a much simpler and lower maintenance system in the long run than cable -- line problems often can be fixed remotely from the central office -- so you probably won't have to see those guys digging up your street again any time soon.

But complicated and time-consuming installation isn't the only holdup....

Read Pt. 2...

Posted by Jim 2.0 | tagged: last mile, fiber, bandwidth, upgrade, compare, rollout, install, FiOS, network