Optical Fiber Conference
At this weeks Optical Fiber Conference in Anaheim, CA a Market Watch session focused on FTTP. The most interesting talk in this session was given by Ralph Ballart, Vice President, Broadband Infrastructure and Services, SBC Labs, Inc. He said that rollouts of SBCs Fiber to the Node and Fiber to the Premises networks will begin starting in the last quarter of 2005. He also gave some technical details which are partly described below.
For the greenfield FTTP deployments SBC will use the newer GPON technology as compared to BPON technology used by Verizon. As this article in Lightwave Magazine describes, GPON offers a much higher overall bandwidth and a higher bandwidth utilization efficiency than BPON. Also BPON is locked into the ATM protocol while GPON has a choice of protocols. This means that SBC will have sufficient bandwidth to offer TV over IP while Verizon has to use a separate wavelength for RF TV signal transmission similar to what cable TV companies do now. This article in Lightreading gives more details on SBCs IPTV effort. SBC is serious about IPTV. One issue that I'm not clear about is whether SBC has to go through te same regulatory hurdles as Verizon by offering IPTV instead of RF TV. If not, there is a clear advantage. Also, if the bandwidth to the user is high enough, what is to stop others from offering IPTV service over broadband lines?
Looks like by waiting a year longer than Verizon to start deploying, SBC is able to offer a more current technology solution. Well see if Verizon updates its plans. But it seems like what SBC is doing deserves more attention.
|
