Verizon Fiber to Homes: What happened?

jae

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Jul 31, 2001
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I remember hearing about super high speed fiber lines coming into residential areas back in like 2005 (i think). Super Fast Data, Voice, and Cable over fiber-optic. I thought it was gonna take over.. So what happened?
 

JackMDS

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 25, 1999
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While the following has nothing to do with Verizon Fiber per-se it depicts the process.

As an example you might read or heard in the last few years stories about Cisco's plans for the few years.

It does not matter what we think/hope/wish.

This is the era of Greed and Marketing over technology.


See here - http://www.cnbc.com/id/100457747

So forget about the past "stories" from Cisco, Verizon, or any one else.



:cool:
 
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VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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I remember hearing about super high speed fiber lines coming into residential areas back in like 2005 (i think). Super Fast Data, Voice, and Cable over fiber-optic. I thought it was gonna take over.. So what happened?

Yes? It's called Verizon FIOS, and now with the higher speed tiers, it's called "FIOS Quantum".

I have 75/35 Internet service and TV, for ~$127/mo after taxes and fees.

Don't ask me why they've mostly stopped expanding, though. Apparently the customer attach rate in deployed areas was/is still too low. Verizon got too greedy, they want big huge quick short-term profits. So they're getting rid of their DSL subscribers, not expanding FIOS (too costly), and instead, is trying to push everyone to cellular wireless broadband (LTE). One reason for that is cost of deployment to end-users is low (just put up a few towers here and there), and they get to charge $$$ for data plans and especially monthly overages.

So far, FIOS has remained without any sort of data caps, although there were a few reports of throttling of heavy users, but nothing really confirmed.
 
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cmetz

Platinum Member
Nov 13, 2001
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Wall Street happened.

How DARE Verizon spend a lot of capital to build a better future? That puts a drag on profits NOW, and we can't have that, can we?

Pretty much drove the CEO out over this. New CEO got the message loud and clear, VZ has announced that they're not expanding FIOS to new markets. But don't worry - they will be happy to offer you home high speed Internet service over their egregiously overpriced 4G network!
 

rsutoratosu

Platinum Member
Feb 18, 2011
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Im lucky to get fios 4-5 years ago and after doing research, its pretty much confirmed that expansion is stopped.. its very sad, one of my other friends can't get it.. blows
 

Engineer

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
39,230
701
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Maybe cable and Docsis 3.1 (up to 10Gbps down/2Gbps up on copper) will bring some gigabit joy to the masses in the near future, especially considering that cable operators are starting to roll out up to 300Mbps on Docsis 3.0 (Comcast IIRC).

Also, IIRC, there seems to be work on putting TV on TCP/IP, therefore eliminating the dual, separate bandwidth requirements for internet and TV. There was talk that this would vastly improve speeds on copper and would be cheaper for the ISP's/TV operators to deploy and maintain vs what they are using now. Time will tell I suppose.

Also makes me wonder how far "Google Fiber" will go now, especially with the government (FCC) pushing gigabit internet to all the states as quickly as possible (I'm assuming government subsidized networking, etc.)
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
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How DARE Verizon spend a lot of capital to build a better future? That puts a drag on profits NOW, and we can't have that, can we?

FiOS was always about Cable TV, not Internet. If they had known that cord cutting was going to progress this quickly, they would have killed the project before it started.
 

cmetz

Platinum Member
Nov 13, 2001
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jpiniero,

>FiOS was always about Cable TV, not Internet. If they had known that cord cutting was going to progress this quickly, they would have killed the project before it started.

[Citation Needed]
 

cmetz

Platinum Member
Nov 13, 2001
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Maybe cable and Docsis 3.1 (up to 10Gbps down/2Gbps up on copper) will bring some gigabit joy to the masses in the near future, especially considering that cable operators are starting to roll out up to 300Mbps on Docsis 3.0 (Comcast IIRC).

Also, IIRC, there seems to be work on putting TV on TCP/IP, therefore eliminating the dual, separate bandwidth requirements for internet and TV. There was talk that this would vastly improve speeds on copper and would be cheaper for the ISP's/TV operators to deploy and maintain vs what they are using now. Time will tell I suppose.

Also makes me wonder how far "Google Fiber" will go now, especially with the government (FCC) pushing gigabit internet to all the states as quickly as possible (I'm assuming government subsidized networking, etc.)

At the end of the day, DOCSIS is a hack, just like DSL. It happens to scale a lot better for two reasons: coax cable has more bandwidth, and the cable guys built out (had to) fiber-to-the-node, so for a long while now it's actually worked more like the AT&T U-Verse implementation of DSL than the more traditional home-run (to the CO or to a big RT) implementation of DSL. But you're still trying to shoehorn data service into a cable technology - and often, a cable plant - that wasn't built for it, and you hit physical limits and run into voodoo reliability problems and it's a big headache.

At some point, the cable guys are going to have to face the music and go FTTH too.

Google Fiber is very interesting to me for a few reasons.

Historically, post-Telecom Act, there were some overbuilders - RCN comes to mind - and they did okay, for a while, but at the end of the day the economics of being an overbuilder are pretty brutal. It's really unclear to me how GF can overcome the history here.

The telcos and cable companies - they play to win (win being their win, not necessarily public good). They put up shill "public interest" groups who loudly proclaim that more choices and competition is clearly bad for you, they make a lot of political "contributions", they know the politicians and the regulators well and have an army of lobbyists who can help them see things their way, etc. They've been doing this for a LONG time, and if they weren't good at it they'd have been toast a long time ago. And then, when that doesn't work, well... you know... accidents happen. Oops... did we do that? Google is likely to find that they just aren't able to be evil enough to play in this particular sector of the economy.

Finally, Google, as many large tech companies do, is going to find themselves becoming a competitor in one area to their critical business partners in another. What happens when Verizon or AT&T really decide that Google is a problem? All the Android phones can disappear from their wireless stores overnight... they can push out firmware updates that might have a bug or two... they can cause traffic to and from Google's critical web properties like the search engine and Youtube to get routed through a really unfortunate set of overloaded circuits. This might just be war, and Google might just find that they don't really have the stomach for it. Remember what happened when Google decided they were going to take on eBay? That lasted publicly for what... days?

I hope GF is for real and not purely a PR exercise, and I hope they're going in with the best of intentions. I know they put together a team of people who are entirely capable of doing excellent things, and they have the capital to do it. But this is going to be a really, REALLY tough expansion for Google to make.
 

Engineer

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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701
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At the end of the day, DOCSIS is a hack, just like DSL. It happens to scale a lot better for two reasons: coax cable has more bandwidth, and the cable guys built out (had to) fiber-to-the-node, so for a long while now it's actually worked more like the AT&T U-Verse implementation of DSL than the more traditional home-run (to the CO or to a big RT) implementation of DSL. But you're still trying to shoehorn data service into a cable technology - and often, a cable plant - that wasn't built for it, and you hit physical limits and run into voodoo reliability problems and it's a big headache.

At some point, the cable guys are going to have to face the music and go FTTH too.

I can agree with you that at some point, FTTH is going to have to happen. But at this point, to get 30 to 100 times the current bandwidth (or more) without laying all new lines is nothing to sneeze at.
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
15,685
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[Citation Needed]

From following FiOS from the beginning, it was rather obvious. Even though Verizon had the ability to do so without local support, they very rarely built out in a town unless they got or thought they could get the local cable franchise rights. They touted this 100 year plan which blew up on them because the prospects of cable tv's future moved so quickly.

I can agree with you that at some point, FTTH is going to have to happen.

FTTH is dead because it costs too much.
 

cmetz

Platinum Member
Nov 13, 2001
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I can agree with you that at some point, FTTH is going to have to happen. But at this point, to get 30 to 100 times the current bandwidth (or more) without laying all new lines is nothing to sneeze at.

The future improvement claims being made by the cable guys are marketing numbers. I believe that freeing up channels can get more capacity, but I'm extremely skeptical about two orders of magnitude. Not all RF channels are created equal, especially for upstream use. Cable systems are usually way too oversubscribed in the upstream and they need to put a lot of the extra system capacity into being able to handle that better, rather than offer increasingly high theoretical per-sub max rates. Also, freeing up channels is extremely, and I mean *extremely* painful for the MSOs to do - they've been talking about it for years, DOCSIS 3 makes it a lot more worth doing, but still the MSOs are channel locked.

The big reason why FTTH is the way out for the cable MSOs is that it's a clean(er) slate for them. It's entirely possible to get an order of magnitude out of the cable system - it's just a whole lot harder when you have to do that as a transition and not break all your existing subs and services.
 

lamedude

Golden Member
Jan 14, 2011
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Comcast has already ditched analog. It looks like they already have 8 channel downstream (channel IDs are 3-7 in the modem page) and 3 channel upstream (2 64QAM, 1 16) here. If you're close to the node Comcast offers FTTH.
 

Cabletek

Member
Sep 30, 2011
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I remember hearing about super high speed fiber lines coming into residential areas back in like 2005 (i think). Super Fast Data, Voice, and Cable over fiber-optic. I thought it was gonna take over.. So what happened?

Recovering the cost of deployment through cost of services turns out to take longer than estimated with users only ordering internet, and streaming through services like Netflix or stealing it through things like torrent downloads, instead of paying the fat, overpriced, triple play service to Verizon.

That coupled with the recession lead Verizon to put the brakes on for deployment of its FIOS Plant and services. They even sold some of it off with old copper line service in the west to Frontier communications, [after it finished cheery picking the big cities with lots of potential customers in the smaller acreage, but higher per capita areas {like NY city for example}] to get out of supporting the less profitable areas. I suspect frontier will file bankruptcy in a few years and it is in reality just way for Verizon to get out of supporting the more rural areas it build FIOS into, but that gets into politics and no one wants to hear about that.

So basically until the recovery where people start paying too much for services to them, like they do with say TWC, Cox, or Comcast again, Verizon has plant build on HOLD, or until someone legally challenges them and forces to keep with their word any way. truth be told I think the cable co's were right when they said Fiber costs too much to build to the home to deploy the same services coax is already built there for. Especially when the DOCSIS 3 channel bonding came out and worked. However, in the future the bandwidth will eventually likley exceed the ability of 1Ghz copper coax, and fiber will finally be the medium of choice. Unless wireless gets a lot better.

http://stopthecap.com/2012/09/25/ve...nt-franchise-obligations-cfo-tells-investors/
 
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Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,957
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What about new developments and subdivisions? Dunno about the US, but in Canada, a lot of new residential developments are getting FTTH.

The problem though is even if you get FTTH and fast speeds, usage caps are quite low. It doesn't really help that much to have 100+ download speeds if your usage cap is still 75 GB. However, the caps are starting to get bigger now too, for everyone.

Everyone is dragging their feet bringing FTTH for existing neighbourhoods though. For older neighbourhoods, the best they are getting is FTTN (which is what I have). I'm not complaining though, since FTTN gets me 25+ Mbps speeds from third party ISPs on VDSL2. (I'm not on cable because congestion is terrible in my area on cable.)

But yeah, in Canada FTTH and FTTN is all about TV. It seems the big reason Bell (the telephone company) has been heavily introducing FTTN to existing neighbourhoods is because they're pushing their version of cable TV. The faster internet is just a bonus for consumers.
 

lamedude

Golden Member
Jan 14, 2011
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AFAIK greenfield deployments are FTTH but to provide a uniform experience (I think that's the excuse) they're capped at the same speed as their DSL tiers.
 

T_Manero

Junior Member
Feb 27, 2013
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I just joined . . . . doesn't video streaming take up most of internet traffic. Then on cable/satellite . . . 200 channels and nothing to watch except Law & Order and NCIS ?
Shouldn't the country get more sleep to stay awake during the day, go outside & fix the house and work on landscaping, interact with their children instead of households watching TV in separate rooms, etc.
Or just watch old shows instead of the new blood & gore & reality crap.
So why fund a copper/fibre highway towards cultural mediocrocrity, obesity and oversized media content profits.
 
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Leymenaide

Senior member
Feb 16, 2010
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From what I heard Verizon is for sale. They will sell it and the new owner’s will collude with Comcast and rates will go up another 30-40% while they reduce service.
 

Mushkins

Golden Member
Feb 11, 2013
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What happened was they took our money for it, then the politicians put it in their pockets.

Then they took our money for it again, and put it in their pockets.

Still no techs out there laying fiber that we paid for twice.
 

ScottMac

Moderator<br>Networking<br>Elite member
Mar 19, 2001
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Gaining the municipal permits is an ugly pain in the butt, and can get expensive with the bonds required.

Trenching fiber (or direct boring) is also extremely expensive for the distance covered in most municipalities.

By the time they (would have gotten) get the fiber network built out the way they originally described, LTE wireless will be well on its way for much less investment and much quicker return on investment with waaaaaaaaay less legal and political hassles.