Verizon Wants to Work with You On FTTH Installs

According to Verizon -- by far North America's largest provider of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) services -- there are big opportunities for integrators to work with it to extend the value of a fiber optic connection inside the home.

That's what Tushar Saxena, director of home networking for Verizon, told attendees at the FTTH Summit Tuesday at EHX.

Indeed, the number of homes in North American with FTTH services is growing rapidly, according to a recent report by the Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) Council, the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) and RVA Market Research.

The study shows that 2.14 million North American homes are connected to the Internet via end-to-end fiber.

The 2.14 million homes represent nearly 2 percent of the households on the continent. This compares to 1.01 million connections as of September 2006, meaning that the annual growth rate has increased to 112 percent from the 99 percent that was measured last March, according to the study.

Adoption of FTTH video services is also up, according to the study, especially over the past six months. Passing the 1 million mark, 1.05 million North American homes receive FTTH video services, representing an annual growth rate of about 160 percent.

Fiber inside integrators' clients' homes is a good thing, says Mark Komanecky, president of Westborough, Mass.-based simpleHome, pointing out that it "will help drive the sales of existing and emerging home entertainment solutions, such as multiroom digital music solutions, media rooms and projection-based theater systems."

There is an obvious symbiotic relationship between what integrators do and what FTTH providers do, says Gerry Lynch, president of Topsfield, Mass.-based System 7.

"Our entertainment systems depend on digital media and fiber is the fastest method to transport it. Our home automation systems are all networked and fiber offers the fastest connection and smoothest streamed video for a network."

The study shows that the "take rate" by consumers of FTTH services has risen from 22.3 percent to 26.8 percent in the most recent six-month period included in the study. Verizon leads the FTTH market with about two-thirds of total installations.