January 15, 2008 10:45 AM
I Missed the Punchline from My Last Post - How "HD" Proves Need for Gig to the Home
So if we've got the potential for there to be a form of HD that requires a minimum of 124Mbps within the next decade, to me that suggests that the only wireline access technologies we should be considering are those that can undoubtedly provide speeds in excess of 1Gbps to homes within the next ten years.
I'm not suggesting forcing anyone to do anything, but instead that government should not be incentivizing the deployment of any network that is not designed to eventually expand to meet the demand for a gig to every home.
On a related note, I think it's high time we start up the rallying cry of "No New Copper in the Ground!" It's been a couple of years, but the last I heard the majority of new home developments were still putting copper into the ground for telecommunications. This is utterly flabbergasting to me as it's my understanding that the cost of laying fiber is now roughly the same as putting in copper, yet fiber has lower operating costs and an exponentially higher potential for delivering bandwidth. What am I missing here?
I can understand why private interests are dissuaded by the huge capital expenditures fiber to the home demands, but from the perspective of creating a national broadband policy, the government needs to be thinking about this long term as anything they're spending money on should be with an eye towards the let's-only-have-to-do-this-once long-term and not the how's-it-going-to-make-us-money short-term.
And all you have to do is look to the future of "HD" video to see that some day soon you too will have reason to want/need a gig to your home.
