Brisk Demand for Broadband
Om Malik provides DSL adoption stats for several medium-size US telephone companies. The rural and rural-suburban market segment shows strong demand.
Everybody wants broadband, it’s no longer a niche for the affluent.
And copper broadband (DSL) is not the whole story. We’ve hit a tipping point for fiber to the residence or business. In a greenfield (brand new build) deployment, the cost for fiber now pencil in close enough to copper that most telcos are choosing fiber.
Many are falling into the passive optical networking (PON) trap, But the advantages of active star fiber network topology using Ethernet makes PON much less attractive, even if it costs a little less per subscriber.
Om concludes:
Are these trends the ultimate proof that Broadband has gone mainstream?
YES! For example, consider this relatively new catch phrase in the access business:
FTTTC:
Fiber to the Trailer Court.
[see also this note on fiber access]