December 19, 2007 10:28 AM
FTTH Council Shares Stories of Real World Impact of Fiber
The reasons for why we need fiber-to-the-home are too often couched in terms that are either overly grandiose (broadband cures all) or too technical (we need gigabits because...).
Yet there are stories being told of the real-world impact of big broadband networks.
Yesterday I stumbled across a sampling of four articles doing just this on the FTTH Council's website.
One details the joy one gamer had had in connecting to the Internet at the speed of light.
A second highlights how fiber is enabling the creation of virtual offices.
A third follows along similar lines, demonstrating how fiber supports home-based businesses.
And the fourth relevant article discusses fiber's role as a next-generation amenity in greenfield developments.
None of these articles necessarily contain anything revelatory, but they all are well-written and they all contain nuggets of truth and insight into the specific impact fiber is having on people's lives. And they all also make the effort to talk about bandwidth needs without using too much tech speak to explore why big broadband is needed for the subject of each article.
It's heartening to see the FTTH Council take steps to tell the human interest side of their story for why America needs the big broadband provided by a full fiber network.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure who wrote these articles or when they were written, and looking back on their site I'm not 100% sure how I found them in the first place. But hopefully the fact that they do exist suggests that the Council is engaged with doing more to try and sell FTTH based on the merits of what it enables and not solely on the merits of the technology itself.
Comments (1)
What I find interesting is that at this point in history this is the first time the Last Mile bandwidth actually exceeds or at least meets what we can deliver in the last 100 feet in ones home.
What is still missing however, and I feel Google will shortly fill (using their Cloud Computing approach), is 10/100Mbps links to Googles Data Centers accessing content/applications bypassing the best effort Internet completely. This service will be delivered in partnership with the local Broadband Service providers FTTH networks and or the 700Mhz Wireless Network providers. The Carriers will miss out on much of this in that they will still only be able to provide what I call NArrowband links to mobile users until they get the LTE Technologies in 2012-2013
All this high bandwidth service will be sold at a premium (and the users-gamers especially, will jump on it, with the Internet as a low cost or free link. SO much for Network Neutrality
jim A. (aka Jacomo)
Posted by Jim A on December 19, 2007 3:54 PM