http://www.zdnet.com/article/fiber-broadband-is-it-a-waste-with-5g-and-elon-musks-satellites-on-the-horizon/?loc=newsletter_large_thumb_featured&ftag=TRE17cfd61&bhid=24728584684180976123116719441341
Fiber broadband: Is it a waste with 5G and Elon Musk's satellites on the
horizon?
With all the hype surrounding Google Fiber and its competitors, will we look
back on the whole experiment as a colossal waste of resources or a long overdue
harbinger of better internet?
By Jason Hiner | February 5, 2017 -- 23:00 GMT (15:00 PST) | Topic: Networking
If you're a telecommuter, an entrepreneur, or a technology lover, and fiber
broadband is coming to your area, then you're likely chomping at the bit to get
it installed as soon as it's available.
I know I am. Since Google Fiber named my city as fertile ground for gigabit
broadband, other internet providers like AT&T have raced to match Google with
ridiculously fast internet plans of their own.
Google Fiber has succeeded in reigniting competition for faster internet across
the US. However, now that Google Fiber has reached a similar conclusion as
Verizon FiOS did a decade ago -- that digging expensive ditches and laying
cables might be a 20th century way of solving the problem -- what's going to
happen to the fiber broadband movement?
For example, AT&T had been on a gigabit tear in 2016, as it increased its
fiber-to-the-premises roll-outs to a total of 29 different metro areas across
the US, with plans for dozens more. That compared to nine metro areas for
Google Fiber in 2016, with another dozen or so on the potential list. AT&T even
thumbed its nose at Google in the process.
Meanwhile, cable providers like Time Warner Cable upgraded internet speeds by
6x for free to keep customers in the fold. Even smaller ISPs looked for ways to
join the fiber revolution, such as CenturyLink, which reported in 2016 that it
had found ways to get FTTP deployments down to $500-$800 from the tradition
$1,000 or more it cost to lay fiber to each home or business.
Now that Google is retreating from FTTP rollouts in favor of fixed wireless
(powered by its Webpass acquisition), it's unclear yet whether its fiber
competitors will lose their enthusiasm for FTTP. Since Google chased out the
Google Fiber CEO and laid off 9 percent of its staff last fall, AT&T has gone
very quiet about its Fiber plans. Instead, it's been touting its 5G trials and
its new "AirGig" technology to deliver gigabit internet over power lines.
Telecom companies are naturally questioning whether they should continue these
laborious, expensive deployments of fiber when wireless gigabit is only a few
years away. So-called "fixed wireless" replaces a cable or fiber modem with a
box that has a wireless chip like the one in your smartphone plus a strong
antenna. Once 5G arrives, these boxes will be able to operate at gigabit speeds
-- with no new ditches to dig and no cables to lay.
At the same time, Elon Musk's SpaceX is planning a global network of 4,000
low-orbit satellites that would blanket the entire planet with gigabit
internet. If approved, SpaceX said these satellites would offer low latency in
the neighborhood of 30ms, which is comparable to today's cable and DSL
connections and much faster than the 600ms that has plagued traditional
satellite internet providers. SpaceX wants to start launching these satellites
in 2019. Qualcomm, Boeing, Virgin, and others are considering similar plans for
satellite internet.
Another factor to watch is DOCSIS 3.1, the cable internet standard that allows
cable companies to offer gigabit speeds over existing cable lines. Since cable
already reaches over 60 percent of US households, this could also mean a
massive upgrade to gigabit speeds in the years ahead. Comcast, America's
largest cable internet provider, has already started rolling out gigabit cable
upgrades.
With all this in mind, what's the advantage of gigabit fiber? Top notch fiber
connections have much lower latency than any other type of connection -- as low
as 2ms. That opens up new possibilities for telepresence, team collaboration,
and virtual reality and augmented reality over the internet.
The other big advantage to fiber over wireless, satellites, power lines, or
upgraded cable lines is that it's much more future-proof. While we're racing
toward 1 gigabit speeds by 2020, by 2025-2030 we're going to be demanding 10
gigabits. Fiber will find it much easier to scale up to meet that demand than
these other types of connections will.
In short, when these other technologies catch up to fiber broadband's gigabit
speeds in the next few years it will lull us into thinking that the telecom
companies that spent a fortune on FTTP only ended up with a short-term
advantage of 2-3 years. But make no mistake, the companies that are investing
in FTTP today are likely to be the leaders in 2025 when the next wave of
technologies -- especially artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and
mixed reality -- will demand much more robust connections from both the home
and the office. It's also going to be critical to the future of the smart home
and the smart city, since many of today's most connected cities across the
world have determined that laying fiber is the foundation that many of
tomorrow's most connected services will be built upon.
The big question is whether Google Fiber, AT&T Fiber, Verizon FiOS, or any of
their competitors will have the stomach to stay the course on FTTP.
