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The twenty-first century heralded countless changes across our landscape; arguably none will be more important than the transformation of our telecommunications providers' means to deliver services to residential and business consumers. This phenomenon is being underpinned by two technologies: Internet protocol (IP) and optical fiber. Today, the technology is available to provide voice, video, and data services over a common protocol-IP.
Figure 1
Carriers are quickly moving to maximize the number of services they offer to a single customer via a bundled offering. Technologies such as voice over IP (VoIP), IP television (IPTV), and broadband are becoming commonplace across our society. As bundled services and technologies are deployed, carriers are realizing that their original networks, designed to efficiently deliver a single service, are stressed and in many cases incapable of offering the desired services. Figure 1 depicts forecasted subscriber service and bandwidth demand (note new compression schemes include MPEG-4 and Microsoft Windows 9/VC1). Today's networks are being designed to provide more than 20 megabits per second (Mbps) while three to five years from now, carriers will need capability of more than 40 Mbps as multiple services are used in the home, high-definition TV (HDTV) becomes more prevalent, and users demand faster Internet connections. This is resulting in the largest investment in the access network since the turn of the century and the wiring of the western world for voice services.
Leading this investment wave is the deployment of single-mode optical fiber deeper into these access networks to curb the high bandwidth requirements of their customers. Increasingly, carriers are finding that deploying the fiber all the way to the customer enables network future-proofing, maximizes the symmetrical bandwidth throughput of a carrier's access network, provides for network reliability, reaps significantly reduced operating expenses and affords enhanced revenue opportunities. The industry refers to this technology as FTTH.
