Remember when cable companies lined our streets and installed miles and miles of cable to connect us to what is now a standard in each household? Cable TV! Now it is happening again but this time it is the phone companies. Yes, phone companies are beginning to cut the copper to each home in America and replacing it with optic fiber.
One news source reports:
“When Henry Powderly II ordered Verizon Communications Inc.’s FiOS fiber-optic service, he knew he was about to be connected to the future of telecommunications.
He also got unplugged from its past. Which meant that while Powderly was gaining features, he was losing some telecommunications options.
Verizon’s installer - without warning, Powderly says - removed the copper wires that used to carry his phone calls. For most of the world, copper still links homes and businesses, as it has for a century.
Verizon’s new high-bandwidth fiber lines are fully capable of carrying not only calls but also Internet data and television with room to grow. But once the copper is pulled, it’s difficult to switch back to the traditional phone system or less expensive Digital Subscriber Line service. And Verizon isn’t required, in most instances, to lease fiber to rival phone companies, as it is with the copper infrastructure.”
As reported above the copper infrastructure will one day be replaced by a more efficient more powerful “fiber line system”. What a boon for the fiber optics industry!
The article continues:
“The New York phone company has made it clear its entire network is going to fiber-optics. Verizon has decided to spend $23 billion to make fiber available to 18 million homes by 2010. Network maintenance savings could top $1 billion a year, Verizon said.”
While AT&T Inc. and Qwest Communications International Inc. are also retiring their copper networks, they’re not touching the so-called “last mile” of copper wiring that runs from each customer’s dwelling to the central office where other lines aggregate. Laying fiber, a robust pipeline, through the last mile is much more expensive because each line goes to a particular home or business.
Verizon is taking the pricey route because it believes fiber offers a superior service that will lure customers away from cable operators, who now offer telephone service in addition to television and high-speed Internet.”
All in the fiber optic industry will benefit by the transition from a copper based infrastructure to a optic fiber infrastructure at the residential level! Just a bit of good news we thought we would share. We will keep you posted.
Source: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/V/VERIZON_CUTTING_COPPER