Verizon getting its fiber

In the fiber-to-the-premise, or FTTP, watch, all eyes are on Verizon.

Analysts expect the regional Bell operating companies to begin its fiber-to-the-premise buildouts early next year. Some believe Verizon has already selected its vendor(s) for the project.

Both Needham and Co. and UBS Warburg believe AFC will supply gear for Verizon’s initial buildout, and perhaps for SBC and BellSouth, as well. AFC and partner Harmonic – which makes optical gear for last-mile headend applications – are going up against Motorola/Quantum Brdge and Alcatel/Scientific-Atlanta.

AFC’s initial contract is a short-term deal spanning 12 to 18 months, analysts say, for overbuild and greenfield applications. Verizon will evaluate the AFC/Harmonic system in these initial applications before issuing other RFPs and including other vendors in 2005, according to UBS Warburg.

“We believe that it is more likely than not that all three vendors will be part of Verizon’s plans before the

deployment numbers become anywhere near large,” Needham’s Anton Wahl wrote in a research note. “We believe the future of the access network is too important for Verizon to depend on only one or two

vendors, as was the case with Alcatel and the DSLAMs starting in 1996.”

And if RBOCs don’t employ a massive and much-accelerated TV-over-fiber or DSL strategy over the next few years, they will be “roadkill in the cable TV companies’ paths,” Wahl states.