I've mentioned here in the past about green fiber and while I truly believe that there is a green mpact to wide-scale FTTH roll-out I haven't yet seen a comprehensive analysis to justify deploying FTTH for reasons of ecology... until this morning.
I have a Google Blog alert with the word FTTH, which points to a lot of blog posts in languages neither me nor Windows can read (I'm guessing Japanese and Korean are top of that list) but this morning my eye was attracted to this post called An Elegant Solution, Ignored. The blog it comes from is by Billy Ray, CEO of the Glasgow, Kentucky Electric Plant Board and it's called Red, Blue & Green.
What's interesting about Billy Ray's post is that he looks at the costs of developing more electrical power versus the savings in energy consumption that FTTH would allow by regulating "heating, air conditioning, water heating,
freezers, refrigerators, washing machines, clothes dryers, dishwashers,
etc." remotely. Instead of producing yet more peak power capacity at $2-4k per kilowatt, he argues, building an FTTH (at $2k per home) network would easily save at least a couple of kilowatt of peak power per home
...
The economic impact and the environmental impact, in this approach, is the icing on the cake. I am reminded of the reasoning of the Loire regional authority who have favoured the further deployment of their FTTO/FTTH network instead of adding another 45km of highway in their region. It seems that when seen in terms of alternative allocation of budget, FTTH deployment should be a much easier decision.
That being said, Billy Ray's argument is compelling but, as he states himself, ignored.
Shame.
