The lack of high-speed Internet access in some areas of the U.S. has
been hotly debated, even as that digital divide has narrowed. But a
new, wider gap is being created by technology that will make today’s
broadband feel as slow as a dial-up connection.
Much like
broadband enabled downloads of music, video and work files that weren’t
practical over dial-up, the next generation of Internet connections
will allow for vivid, lifelike video conferencing and new kinds of
interactive games.
But while access to cable and phone-line
broadband has spread to cover perhaps 90 percent of the U.S. in the
space of a decade, next-generation Internet access looks set to create
a much smaller group of ”haves” and a larger group of ”have nots.”
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The
most promising route to superfast home broadband is to extend the
fiber-optic lines that already form the Internet’s backbone all the way
to homes. Existing fiber-to-the-home, or FTTH, connections are already
10 times faster than vanilla broadband provided over phone or cable
lines. With relatively easy upgrades, the speeds could be a hundred
times faster.
In the U.S., the buildout of FTTH is under way, but
it’s highly concentrated in the 17-state service area of Verizon
Communications Inc., which is the only major U.S. phone company that is
replacing its copper lines with fiber. Its FiOS service accounts for
more than 1.8 million of the 2.9 million U.S. homes that are connected
to fiber according to RVA LLC, a research firm that specializes in the
field.
FTTH is also offered by some small phone companies,
cooperatives and municipalities, like Chattanooga, Tenn. The other
major phone companies, like AT&T Inc. and Qwest Communications
International Inc., are laying FTTH in ”greenfield” developments, but
aren’t pulling fiber to existing homes. Some cable companies are doing
the same.
Graham Finnie, chief analyst for the telecom research
firm Heavy Reading, believes 13 percent of U.S. households will be
connected to fiber by 2012. Since Verizon is the major builder, the
vast majority of those will be in Verizon territory on the East Coast,
Texas and California.
”That does beg the question: What happens
to everyone else? There’s going to be a huge community of people who
are not getting FTTH in the next five years,” Finnie said.
”A
quarter of the U.S. is going to get one of the best networks in the
world,” said Dave Burstein, editor of the DSL Prime newsletter.
The
rest of the country, he said, is going to be stuck with slow DSL or
cable, though the latter is due for upgrades in the next few years that
will boost top speeds fivefold.
Still, it’s not entirely clear
that people on fiber connections are going to have a big advantage over
slowpokes on regular broadband. Today, there is not much that can be
done on a fast connection that can’t be done on a standard one. Fiber
is already available to a third of South Korean homes, but that hasn’t
revolutionized society there, at least not yet.
Increased used of
video, particularly high-definition video, is seen as the future of the
Internet, but most cable modems and high-end DSL are already capable of
streaming HD video downloads. However, fiber connections support higher
upload speeds, potentially making for better video conferencing from
the home, which in turn creates opportunities for distance learning.
Games also could get a jump in realism and online interactivity,
Burstein said.
Not only are U.S. regions going to differ
tremendously in how fast they get fiber, the differences between
countries will also be huge. Apart from South Korea, Finnie cited
Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Sweden as other front-runners. He
estimates that almost half of all Swedish households would have fiber
by 2012, for instance.
”This is not a market where there’s a
smooth progression across countries and regions – it’s going to be
extremely variable,” said Finnie.
Considered as a whole, the
U.S. will be ”middling” in the international comparison, trailing the
pioneers but well ahead of other developed nations like Finnie’s home
country, Britain, which he estimates will have 3 to 4 percent
fiber-connected homes in 2012.
The fiber buildout is going to
take more time and be more patchy than the introduction of broadband
because it’s so much more expensive, Finnie said. Cable modem and DSL
connections are retrofits to links originally laid down to provide
video and phone service, respectively. Fiber-optic lines will be the
first links that are built for data to reach U.S. homes.
The
costs will remain high, because getting permits for the buildout and
drawing the physical lines is ”a hugely physical, human-type
activity,” said Joe Savage, president of the FTTH Council North
America. While the cost of the equipment keeps dropping rapidly,
two-thirds of the cost of connecting a home are labor, he said.
