FTTP fear factor

Some worry that RBOC Fiber-to-the-Premises plans provide more hot air than substantive value.

Fervor over Fiber to the Premises has the attention of many network executives who, like George Mason University's Randy Anderson, have been locked into reliance on traditional T-1 lines to outfit remote sites with high-speed connectivity.

Of FTTP, Anderson, director of network engineering and technology at the Fairfax, Va., university, says: "We'd love to explore that possibility." He considers FTTP as a potential alternative to DSL, which he hasn't embraced because of its dubious track record on reliability.

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What to ask your RBOC FTTP: The new DSL?

Fervor over Fiber to the Premises has the attention of many network executives who, like George Mason University's Randy Anderson, have been locked into reliance on traditional T-1 lines to outfit remote sites with high-speed connectivity.

Of FTTP, Anderson, director of network engineering and technology at the Fairfax, Va., university, says: "We'd love to explore that possibility." He considers FTTP as a potential alternative to DSL, which he hasn't embraced because of its dubious track record on reliability.

FTTP promises better performance and greater speed than DSL, which is delivered to the premises via copper. It will run at 100M bit/sec vs. the 1.5M bit/sec or so DSL hovers around, sources say. For corporations, proponents point to applications such as PC backup, telecommuting and high-definition videoconferencing as ripe for FTTP deployments.

Yet some industry watchers say the buzz surrounding FTTP might be more hot air than substantive network plans. Even Anderson notes that he doesn't anticipate FTTP soon displacing any network connections.

"A lot depends on the carriers getting an effective FTTP strategy and really supporting it," he says. "For businesses, that is really key. They have to be able to get the access and be assured that it will stay up and get fixed if it happens to go down. DSL does not have any of those advantages."

FTTP relies on passive optical network (PON) technology to bring high-speed fiber optic all, or almost all, the way to a remote office, small business or home. It requires carriers to replace antiquated copper with entirely new fiber infrastructure.

Questions for your RBOC • When will FTTP be available, especially for my hard-to-outfit locations? • What would my users be able to do with fiber infrastructures that they cannot do now with DSL or high-speed cable service? • Would my company have to share in trenching or other costs associated with extending fiber to a facility? • For users with multiple locations and points-of-sale activity: Would volume discounts and increased reliability offset an investment in fiber?

While fiber optic is finding its way into carriers' long-haul infrastructures and has heavily penetrated larger metropolitan-area networks (thanks to the efforts of now mostly defunct upstart competitive local exchange carriers) experts say that when it comes to extending fiber to businesses or homes, it is more a case of almost than all the way.

FTTP will change that, says Daniel Briere, CEO of consultancy TeleChoice. "FTTP is the next big push in fiber," he says.

Three of the four regional Bell operating companies - BellSouth, SBC and Verizon - certainly have indicated as much. In May, they turned FTTP into public network buzz when they announced the adoption of the ITU-T's G.983 standard for ATM PON. Further, the three companies gathered bids in August for the equipment needed to assemble FTTP backbones. Companies are hush on the fine print in that RFP, but industry experts say the carriers are examining offerings from Alcatel, Cisco, Lucent, Nortel and Siemens.