Which Canadian ILEC will be the first to boldly go forward with an investment in the future such as fibre to the home?
Verizon’s CTO, Mark Wegleitner, was recently interviewed by CNet News on the occasion of having passed the million subscriber mark for its FiOS service. On the question of whether other ILECs are getting it wrong by investing in DSL, he said:
DSL is a good technology. Our concern was more about what happens a few years out. And that’s why we picked fiber. And I can’t really predict how other technologies will grow, but we know that fiber gave us the headroom we needed.
Besides delivering a platform for innovative services, FiOS has the added benefit of inoculating against churn – Verizon is reported to be disconnecting the twisted pair to the home, and competitors do not enjoy regulated access to the fibre access plant.
From a technology solution perspective, DSL seems to almost always be playing catchup – a little behind the data capacities of coaxial cable. In late January, Videotron and Cisco announced 100Mb services over DOCSIS 3.0. IPTV over copper seems to be one of those ‘almost as good‘ solutions for broadcast TV.
When the current financial engineering focus at many of the Canadian ILECs is through, it would be interesting to see them emerge with bold announcements in innovative infrastructure and technology. Fibre would be one such approach. IMS and next generation wireless would be another.