 | July 1, 2000 |
Home wired home
OUTLOOK: Fiber-to-the-home becomes accessible, for some
Deploying fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) has long been dreamt of but seldom accomplished, due to daunting cost. However, proponents continue to argue that traditional infrastructures will eventually give way to fiber to feed insatiable consumer demand for broadband Internet access.
An emerging alternative for solving the last-mile bottleneck in a less costly fashion is to share the cost of FTTH deployment among the households in a multiple dwelling unit (MDU). MDUs, whether high-rise or campus style, offer attractive density for cost-effective delivery of fiber-to-the-home. Developers get an attractive amenity with which to lure residents, and typically get a cut of the revenue as well. The service provider gets a captive market for its offerings.
What's more, MDUs can later be used as nodes to expand the fiber-optic network to nearby single-family neighborhoods.
Service provider CoreComm has taken this approach, forming a new subsidiary called CoreComm FiberCo in its service territories. The new company will initially target residential MDUs and work together with landlords to construct facilities and deliver services.
As its main business, CoreComm provides telephone and Internet services for residential customers using its own network and last-mile wires leased from local carriers. The company has networks in Chicago, Cleveland, and Columbus, and will be initiating service in Detroit, New York, and Boston in the next several months.
By constructing its own last-mile infrastructure, CoreComm FiberCo leapfrogs over the need to lease. The outfit's FTTH offering will include local and long-distance telephone service bundled with 10-Mbit/sec Ethernet access to the Internet. The price point is roughly equivalent to the cost of buying telephone service and DSL or cable-modem service from separate vendors. Future developments could include the delivery of multichannel television and advanced video services such as video-on-demand, streaming video, video-mail, and television/Internet integration.
Meanwhile, the multi-dwelling approach is taking off in the DSL market as well. Internet-ready buildings are the stock and trade of EDSL Networks, which provides service providers and building owners the infrastructure to offer Internet and intranet services. EDSL's inTENcity service switch is a complete hardware/software system that provides a 10-Mbit/sec Ethernet DSL connection for each subscriber using existing phone lines.
Cahners In-Stat says the multi-tenant broadband market will reach $2 billion by 2004.
—Margot Suydam
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