A study recently released by NTCA (the "voice of rural telecommunications") indicates that an increasing number of rural service providers in the USA are planning deployment or actually deploying FTTN or FTTH to their subscribers. Conclusions like this have to be taken with a pinch of salt, especially in the context of the US market where very few studies are undertaken with the sole purpose of finding out facts.
Still, there are some interesting numbers in there and - not being in the business of telecom lobbying myself - I will take them at face value because I think they tell an interesting story. According to the study, 59% of the surveyed US Rural Carriers (130+ respondants, roughly a third of US Rural Carriers) use FTTC/FTTH to deliver services. That seems very high to me, but I suppose in a declarative study such as this one, even carriers who have limited pilots would answer yes to this question. Kind of hard therefore to judge of what the exact scope is here.
What's more interesting to me is that amongst these 59%, intentions to further deploy FTx are clear:
- 73% of them intend to offer FTTN to 75% of their subscribers by 2011
- 22% intend to offer FTTC to half or more of their subscribers by 2011
- 55% intend to offer FTTH to half or more of their subscribers by 2011
What do these high percentages tell us? First that FTTC is clearly of limited strategic importance in low density areas where copper loops are long and finding an aggregation point in the field serving enough customers might be complicated. Second, that rural carriers clearly operate under different economic constraints than their larger urban brethren. Some people were a little fabbergasted during the FCC Workshop of Future Fiber Strategies two weeks ago when Tim Nulty started his speech saying:
"I will state flatly that in any part of rural America where you can aggregate an average of 10 premises per mile, you can economically deliver universal fiber without any grants or any universal service funds whatsoever."
If the NTCA numbers are to be trusted, it looks like he might very well be right and might not be the only one thinking this...
