Telecom Trends: Will winter freeze out FTTH in Canada?

Friday, July 27, 2007

Will winter freeze out FTTH in Canada?

California-based market intelligence firm, iSuppli, has issued a report that may suggest the realities of Canadian winters could stand in the way of telco upgrades to fibre to the home (FTTH) architectures.

FTTH now is a competitive threat to MSOs in a few regions where the cost of deployment is not prohibitive. These regions include Japan, where fiber can be aerial fed from the central office, i.e. using telephone lines or in this case fiber lines strung from telephone poles. Other regions include Verizon’s territories in the United States, which are more than 60 percent aerial fed—and in Paris, where the existing sewer systems provide a low-cost conduit for running fiber to buildings. For most other regions, the cost of deployment is very high.

FTTH deployments in these regions can be between 12 to 15 times the cost of deploying broadband over a telco’s copper plant. The cost factor will slow down the widespread, global deployment of FTTH—but will not stop it.

To what extent do our winter ice storms and consumer resistance to unsightly overhead wires contribute to Canada's phone companies lagging Verizon and NTT in FTTH?

When will telcos here take the leap to all fibre access?

Technorati Tags:
iSuppli, Verizon, NTT, FTTH

Posted by Mark Goldberg @ 7/27/2007 07:30:00 AM