Government Should Spur Faster FTTH Rollout, Comptel Plus Told

SAN FRANCISCO -- Fiber deployment to customers is edging up due to market forces, and could expand more rapidly if government authorities would lower obstacles, said Comptel Plus panelists. Fiber to the Home Council President Heather Gold said the percentage of homes passed by fiber is only about 25 percent, but should approach 70 percent within five years.

Chris Levendos, Google Fiber head of network deployment and operations, said pushing FTTH is a national “necessity” because it's a “critical infrastructure.” He said consumer demand and economic benefits are driving FTTH networks. Not only have broadband incumbents improved services and cut prices in the Kansas City, Missouri, area since Google rolled out FTTH there, but the city has become a hub for startup activity and business growth, with existing companies relocating there from around the country and even the world, he said.

Gold said there are six connected devices per person, with Cisco expecting the number to double in four years, creating the need for more fiber capacity. President Chip Pickering of Incompas (the new name for Comptel, see 1510190061), said Internet video growth was also a big fiber driver, but Levendos and Gold said rising programming costs are inhibiting even more fiber delivery of video. “That's got to be [changed],” Levendos said. Pickering said congressional Republicans and Democrats don't agree on much, but there's an emerging bipartisan consensus backing actions to stimulate best practices to ease pole attachments and access to rights of way and federal facilities.

Gold said every community should have a fiber plan and “dig once” policy to streamline installation of conduits and fiber. Levendos said government should help fiber providers find necessary information and streamline not only digging policies but processes for obtaining local permits, rights of way and “make ready” pole-attachment work. “These are fairly uncomplicated things” in most cases, he said. He acknowledged Google hadn't had much success coordinating with other telecom providers on digging and laying conduit and fiber.

FirstLight Fiber can deal with costs and delays, but needs more predictability, said CEO Kurt Van Wagenen. A 10-mile fiber line can take 3 to 12 months to lay, depending on local processes, and costs can sometimes exceed estimates by five times if a utility says it has to replace poles to accommodate a half-inch fiber line, he said somewhat incredulously.

He said his company is happy to voluntarily give retail competitors wholesale access to a fiber line it has built to an office building, which he said discourages overbuilding. But Gold said government-mandated wholesale access to fiber isn't economical for serving residential customers. Fiber hasn't been depreciated “many times over” as copper lines have, she said.