 | Zach Adams is the marketing manager for Craw-Kan Telephone Cooperative. Craw-Kan offers cooperative members security systems, local telephone, long distance, high speed internet, digital cable television, IP television and cellular phone service. Zach can be contacted directly at Craw-Kan (620)724-8235 or by emailing zach@ckt.net. |
Communications
2010-09-01 10:21:00
What is “Fiber to the Home?”
Question: What is Fiber to the Home? I’ve heard of dial-up, cable, Internet…and now this? Is it all the same thing?
Answer: In a nutshell, FTTH (Fiber To The Home) is the idea of bringing high-speed networking, digital television and telephone service to residences using fiber optic communication across fiber optic cables. Fiber optic communication is a method of transmitting information by sending pulses of light across an optical fiber. Simply put, an optical fiber is a thin strand of glass.
Although we think of cable modem and DSL services as "high speed" today, they are too slow to support networking of applications envisaged for the future such as high-definition IPTV. Fiber optic cables last a long time when buried in the ground but can also be deployed in the air on utility poles.
Telecommunications companies developing FTTH technology plan to support 100+ Mbps bandwidth per home. They view fiber optic cabling as the best technology for high-speed, high-quality residential wide area networking, eventually replacing both telephone and cable TV lines. The costs to get FTTH services off the ground are high, but fiber to the home installations are steadily increasing around the world.
