In 2010, Australia began to roll out its national broadband network, intended to deliver fiber optics to more than 90 percent of homes. Fiber to the home (FTTH) will eventually become mainstream in most regions, and its increasing penetration has already begun to spur the next generations of services. a&s takes a peak into the future to see what FTTH holds in store.
In 2010, Australia began to roll out its national broadband network, intended to deliver fiber optics to more than 90 percent of homes. Fiber to the home (FTTH) will eventually become mainstream in most regions, and its increasing penetration has already begun to spur the next generations of services. a&s takes a peak into the future to see what FTTH holds in store.
Telco operators and cable companies have been pushing fiber closer and closer to the living room; it is only a matter of time before the last mile is replaced by fiber. “With the support of fiber back haul, existing last-mile copper may be useful for another couple of decades, but it will all eventually be upgraded to fiber,” said Neville Clifton, Chief Technologist and Director of Alarm New Zealand. This is partly because fiber is easier and more cost-effective to maintain. The other part of the story is that fiber displays several qualities that are simply not available in other broadband technologies.
Mainly two things limit current services: upload bandwidth and quality of service, said Hartwig Tauber, Director General of the FTTH Council Europe. Although download speeds have increased over the years, upload speeds have generally had little improvement. What this means is that the “information highway” hyped for the past two decades has been somewhat one-way.
Next-generation networks will eliminate these barriers and deliver the same speeds up- and downstream, with the same reliability and quality of service to each subscriber at a lower cost. “With fiber, it does not matter whether you are 10 kilometers away or 5 meters away — you will get the same service,” said Benoit Felten, CEO of Diffraction Analysis. “This allows for a truly universal network.”
Fiber will act as an enabler and provide the platform for a new round of innovation in online services. Today, there are few services that actually use the full capability of fiber. However, they are beginning to emerge, which is what the Australian government is essentially betting on. “Once we pass the tipping point, these services will emerge quite fast and therefore they will justify having such a state-of-the-art infrastructure in place,” Felten said.
There are at least three areas where fiber connectivity can be revolutionary: communication, home automation and cloud services.
COMMUNICATION
FTTH will change the way people communicate. The increase in bandwidth allows for cheaper and clearer voice calls, but more importantly, it allows more reliable and higher-quality video calls. “Imagine living 100 or 200 kilometers away from your nearest friend or family,” Tauber said. “Being able to communicate with them on a daily basis will increase quality of life.”
Another promising application of high-quality video over high-speed broadband is video conferencing. Video conferencing reduces the need for traveling, which in turn reduces expenses for businesses. It can also increase productivity and knowledge sharing among a geographically scattered workforce. “Today, bandwidth bottlenecks limit the quality of the picture,” Tauber said. “Upload speeds of the broadband connections are still very slow if fiber connectivity is not available. This makes it impractical in some business settings.”
Education is another application where video conferencing can provide added value. There are already online tutors that make video calls rather than show up at the front door. Some individuals can even use their off-hours to teach English to children across the world, said Michael Render, President of RVA.
In South Korea, there is a pilot project where remotely controlled robots teach children English. Teachers are free to reside in their own nations, saving the South Korean government a significant amount of travel and accommodation expenses.