• Goal 1: At least 100 million U.S. homes should have affordable access to actual download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and actual upload speeds of at least 50 megabits per second.
• Goal 2: The United States should lead the world in mobile innovation, with the fastest and most extensive wireless networks of any nation.
• Goal 3: Every American should have affordable access to robust broadband service, and the means and skills to subscribe if they so choose.
• Goal 4: Every community should have affordable access to at least 1 Gbps broadband service to anchor institutions such as schools, hospitals and government buildings.
• Goal 5: To ensure the safety of Americans, every first responder should have access to a nationwide public safety wireless network.
• Goal 6: To ensure that America leads in the clean energy economy, every American should be able to use broadband to track and manage their real-time energy consumption.

As you can see besides the ambitious targets on the number of homes access to broadband, the plan also contains ideas about how to use the network: first responder and energy consumption management are among them.

Cloud computing, video, remote storage, and other bandwidth-intensive services are driving demand for higher-speed connectivity. Data center and enterprise network managers must replace existing 10-Gbit/s links with 100-Gbit/s links to meet user expectations and business needs. Carriers are upgrading transport links to 100 Gbit/s or more as suitable solutions become available. To meet these needs, equipment providers are developing new systems with 40-Gbit/s and 100-Gbit/s interfaces that cover distances from a few meters to several hundred kilometers. During 2010 there will be significant investment by equipment vendors in 40GE and 100GE solutions for both the data center and enterprise backbone.

‘ The march to all-fiber networks is showing no sign of letting up in the United States and Canada,” says Joe Savage, president of the FTTH Council, which promotes and tracks the growth of fiber to the home in North America. “Given the growing sophistication and bandwidth requirements of online and video applications, as well as the high satisfaction that current FTTH subscribers are expressing about their fiber service, the growing consumer demand for end-to-end fiber is now a fact of life and something that our members are working hard to satisfy.”

This also means the take rate, that is the relation between the number of connections and the number of people subscribing to services delivered over FTTH networks is going up. This is good news for companies like Verizon that deploy these expensive networks, as it means more and more people recognize the value of the services over FTTH networks.

Anybody involved in fiber is excited about the current state of the industry. Despite the economic downturn caused by the financial crisis, still major investments are made in fiber deployment. This indicates the strenght of the industry, its major players with their long term strategy, as well as high expectations of economic return.  Long term visions are needed, as high deployment costs have been one of the main factors of the -relative- slow growth of fiber to the home networks.

Historically costs of deployment have been an issue to move FTTH forward. As every house or condo has to be connected separately high costs were involved.  Costs have been coming down a lot through smart engineering, e.g. development of pre- connectorized cables. The economics for large FTTH, FTTC, FTTP, FTTN or other FTTX deployment for service providers like Verizon and AT&T is working out.  End-customers in general pay at least 20% more for FTTH services than for DSL or other copper based services, but this premium is well worth the investment for what you get in terms of additional data capabilities and speed.

The main telecommunications companies have been deploying fiber to the home networks in the most populated areas in the USA. Think New York, San Francisco, Houston, Boston etc. Via the stimulus money provided by the Obama government more money will be available as tax cuts and grants for small rural municipalities to deploy their own fiber networks.  This means in future the fiber infrastructure will be all over the US and more services are expected.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfeqZy0c5PI

In the 2007 the estimated broad band penetration in Latin America (Central and South America) is estimated to be around 10-15% of the households.  This is relative low to e.g. North America where the degree of penetration is estimated at 55-65% for the same year.  However, this offers tremendous opportunity. Densely populated areas in the US and Europe are beginning to get covered with fiber networks, while dense and developed ares in South America (e.g. Sao Paulo in Brazil) are hardly covered. If you look at FTTH network deployments in South America, Telefonica and Telmex have some projects running and have plans for deployments in the future. The current status is though that FTTH basically still has to start in Latin America. Expert opinions vary, but by 2014 Latin America could catch up to around a penetration degree of 40%. It is expected that in terms of penetration percentages Colombia, Mexico and Argentine will be leading. In absolute subscribers Brazil will be the leading nation. Current broadband penetration in Brazil is estimated at 5% for 2009, and for narrow band this percentage is around 20% for the same year.  Triple play (data, voice, video) will be the majority of the services consumers will subscribe to.

Though FTTH is still in an infancy state in South America, expectations for the future are high. Though certain deployment projects have been delayed, countries as Brazil have not been hit that hard by the current financial crisis. This means investments, though delayed, will continue.

Se ha utilizado la fibra de optica puesto que un rato largo para los comunicaciones transcontinental, no obstante FTTH es algo una novedad con granes expectativas. Muchos países en Asia son principales en el acceso de FTTH de los clientes, los países líderes son el Sur Corea, Hong Kong y Japón. En Europa especialmente los países nórdicos son principales. En los E.E.U.U. varias compañías están desplegando una red de fibra a la casa, FTTH, y han comenzado con las áreas pobladas. El paquete del estimulo del gobierno de Obama contiene los incentivos para el depolyment de FTTH en áreas rurar. Estas áreas son servidas a menudo por las pequeñas compañías de telecomunicaciones rurales. El futuro de FTTH parece brillante, como los consumidores requieren más datos debido al uso del aumento de YouTube, transferencia de la música y las películas etc. Sin embargo, la competición de las empresas del cable del traditonal con las compañías de telecomunicaciones llegará a ser más feroz, como ambas han incorporado el mismo reino de los servicios de consumidor.