BROADBAND COMMUNITIES is the leading source of information on digital and broadband technologies for buildings and communities. Our editorial aims to accelerate the deployment of Fiber-To-The-Home and Fiber-To-The-Premises.
Issue link: https://bbcmag.epubxp.com/i/145944
Editor's notE The Incurable Optimists CEO & EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Scott DeGarmo / scott@bbcmag.com PRESIDEnT Jeffrey M. Reiman / jeff@bbcmag.com PUBLISHER nancy McCain / nancym@bbcmag.com CORPOR ATE EDITOR, BBP LLC Steven S. Ross / steve@bbcmag.com EDITOR Masha Zager / masha@bbcmag.com ADVERTISInG SALES Scott DeGarmo / scott@bbcmag.com DIREC TOR Of CLIEnT SERVICES Heather Duke / hduke@bbcmag.com OnLInE nEwS EDITOR Marianne Cotter / marianne@bbcmag.com DESIGn & PRODUCTIOn Karry Thomas COnTRIBUTORS Joe Bousquin David Daugherty, Korcett Holdings Inc. Joan Engebretson Richard Holtz, InfiniSys w. James Macnaughton, Esq. Henry Pye, RealPage Bryan Rader, Bandwidth Consulting LLC Robert L. Vogelsang, Broadband Communities Magazine BROADBAND PROPERTIES LLC CEO Scott DeGarmo PRESIDEnT Jeffrey M. Reiman VICE PRESIDEnT, BUSInESS & OPERATIOnS nancy McCain CHAIRMAn Of THE BOARD Robert L. Vogelsang VICE CHAIRMEn The Hon. Hilda Gay Legg Kyle Hollifield BUSInESS & EDITORIAL OffICE BROADBAnD PROPERTIES LLC 1909 Avenue G • Rosenberg, Tx 77471 281.342.9655 • fax 281.342.1158 www.broadbandcommunities.com Broadband Communities (ISSN 0745-8711) (USPS 679-050) (Publication Mail Agreement #1271091) is published 7 times a year at a rate of $24 per year by Broadband Properties LLC, 1909 Avenue G, Rosenberg, TX 77471. Periodical postage paid at Rosenberg, TX, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to Broadband Communities, PO Box 303, Congers, NY 10920-9852. CANADA POST: Publications Mail Agreement #40612608. Canada Returns to be sent to Bleuchip International, PO Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2. Copyright © 2013 Broadband Properties LLC. All rights reserved. 2 The FTTH Top 100 list celebrates organizations committed to making fber to the home afordable. " Google Fiber and its high-speed clones are too expensive for your city." "Fiber all the way is superfast, but it's also super-expensive." Tose aren't my words. Tey are taken, respectively, from a recent article in a national, general-interest publication and a report by a wellknown industry analyst. I'm just glad they haven't discouraged the FTTH Top 100 organizations (and many others). Yes, fber to the home is expensive. So are airports, water tunnels and electric plant. But "expensive" doesn't mean "impossible" or even "uneconomical." COMpUTERS wERE ExpENSIvE I am reminded of the famous, though perhaps apocryphal, prediction by IBM chairman Tomas Watson that his company might someday sell a total of fve computers. Computers were expensive! But they were also extremely useful, so people at IBM and elsewhere kept looking for better ways to design, build, program and use them. Eventually, they became afordable. Meanwhile, those inexpensive mechanical tabulators on which IBM frst built its fortune disappeared. Te organizations on the BroadBand Communities FTTH Top 100 list are all looking for ways to make fber to the home afordable – and, given that fber now passes about a ffth of the homes in the United States, I would say they've had a great deal of success. As a group, they are tackling all the major cost drivers that stand in | BROADBAND COMMUNITIES | www.broadbandcommunities.com | July 2013 the way of universal fber to the home. Interestingly, one thing that is not expensive is optical fber itself, which Corning's Bob Whitman points out costs less per linear foot than fshing line or dental foss. Putting fber in the ground is expensive, but advances in trenching and microtrenching are bringing those costs down. Putting fber into buildings is expensive, but advances in fber protection and management are helping reduce that cost, too. (Because there are so many kinds of buildings, there are many, many fber management solutions.) Permitting can be expensive and time-consuming, but Google, Gig.U and others are beginning to redefne the way deployers and communities can work together. Advances in electronics, photonics, supply chain management and many other felds are also chipping away at costs. As corporate editor Steve Ross points out elsewhere in this issue, the revenue side of the equation is equally – if not more – important. After all, is a technology expensive if it costs more but yields far more benefts? Some Top 100 organizations are making contributions on the revenue side by pioneering new broadband services and new ways to manage multiple services. So congratulations and three cheers for the FTTH Top 100, a group of incurable optimists who won't take "too expensive" for an answer. masha@bbcmag.com