Telecommuting
Once fiber gains significant penetration, it could revolutionize the way we work. Telecommuting removes geographic location as a necessity, so a business's workforce is no longer tied to a specific location. This not only improves quality of life for employees, it also paves the way for more sustainable living.
Businesses today are concentrated geographically. However, cities and metropolises are dense population centers that are not sustainable. Telecommuting can change this, Felten said. “It's very possible for someone to live in a remote village and be just as relevant to the business community as if they were living in the center of the biggest city in the country.”
With fiber connectivity, one no longer needs to be at the office to have instantaneous access to IT resources. “Right now work is not an activity, it's a place,” Felten said. “This is an inheritance from the industrial age where you had to be in a physical plant to produce something.”
Telecommuting transcends borders, in the case of a Hollywood producer who returned to his home country of Sweden. “Instead of being locked up in a dark room working on films all day long, he can now do the same job in the comfort of his own home and country, where he is able to see family and friends on a daily basis,” Tauber said. “With FTTH, he is able to upload his finished work very quickly.”
FUTURE-PROOF
“Fiber is future-proof in the sense that although we don't know what services will come yet, fiber is our best bet to support it as it comes along,” Waugh said. Fiber is virtually unlimited in terms of bandwidth, agreed Render of RVA. “It will be able to scale as new exchange equipment is developed.”
With fiber networks being deployed all over the world, many services that are currently limited or not available will be made possible in the not-so-distant future. “Fiber network infrastructure, and the data capacity it provides, is required to bring greater levels of efficiencies to the digital aspect of our lives,” Clifton said. Without fiber, next-generation services cannot develop.