A Fiber-to-the-Home Council report indicates that deep fiber is alive and flourishing among small independent telcos, broadband service providers, municipalities and cable companies despite the well publicized fact that Verizon has throttled back its much-ballyhooed FiOS deployments mainly because it costs too much.
The FTTH Council used RVA Market Research to conduct the study that found 16 percent of North American homes have access to fiber and that 5.8 million homes receive television, high-speed data (HSD) and/or phone services via fiber feeds. A report by the same firm last year found 4.4 million homes getting service. Verizon gets credit for providing a "large proportion" of these deployments, but the report says, "a lot of small local exchange carriers in the U.S.... are ready to pick up the slack, along with some cable TV companies deploying RFoG and some larger Canadian companies going FTTH."
The report gives some credit to Google and its proposed gigabit FTTH networks but adds, "many communities aren't waiting and are taking matters into their own hands."
For more:
- see this story
- and this post
Related articles:
Verizon learns fiber is expensive but works as well as advertised
Bye-bye FiOS? Verizon winding down its FTTH rollout
RVA: 4.4 million FTTH links in North America