The screech and white noise of the telephone modem are a distant memory for those digital natives who adopted the Internent early. But the humble phone line is still the dominent medium for which the world's broadband is delivered into customer's homes.
That's about to change with many government and private initiatives rolling out optical fiber as copper's successor. Opportunities for a diverse set of provider each with a unique, competing set of services can all share the capacity on offer. Fiber is pretty much the best future-proof high-capacity data conduit science can provide.
Fiber optics is a mature technology. Firms that operate Internet backbones are laying strands of fiber, so much so, there has been a glut of switching capacity in the wholesale market. Which not only has taken a profit centre out of monopoly telcos. Its allowed may smaller ISPs to get a niche subscriber base, in under-serviced regions.
The dominant telcos continue eke out higher data throughput rates of existing backhaul fiber installations by upgrading the electronics at each end of the conduit. Pundits gush over the enormous capacity that can theoretically pushed through one of these little strands of glass, if only our computing power were enormous enough to accomodate it.
Much of ageing copper at the customer end has been the yolk around the neck of the telcos that own them. The capital costs, managing the network eat into profits. Whereas the mobile telecoms businesses are far more profitable and relatively cheaper to operate. So the copper network is left on life support.
And things are getting worse for the humble domestic telephone, the subscriber base is choosing to drop the landline in favor of cellular. Those that keep broadband have little choice in what type of cable that enters their homes. Thus a limited choice of broadband provider. For example, Verizon seems to have much of New York market for itself.
This is a curly problem for government. Infrastructure in wired telecommunications, is seen as a fundamental right. But the copper and coax strewn around the urban landscape suited a bygone era of phone and cable. Monopoly owners are reticent to the enormous capital risks in a refresh, and have little incentives to change.
The South Korean and Australian governments have set aside billions for fibre to the home projects. Australia has a four billion dollar contract with Telstra, Australia's biggest telco, for access to their suburban pits and poles. Rollout is a slow process, with very little payback for stakeholders, during construction. A possible change of government in Australia this year, may see an untimely demise of the ideal elements of the project.
But the payoff may be enormous at least for partners with big visions for the spare capacity fibre has on offer. Multi channeling of services along the single strand of fibre is an important feature of the architecture, which ensures a faster return on investment. But for some applications like 4k, the ultra-HD TV, optical fibre becomes the only realistic delivery mechanism.
Copper has a relatively short operational life and it's signal can be degraded with electromagnetic interference or shorted out by water. Contrast it with fibre, which is little affected by harsh environments, and has a much longer service distance and operational life. Any refit of telecommunications infrastructure needs to dig deep for this technology, because the future payoffs make for a compelling argument.
A counter argument to flows of fibre over the land, has been uptake in handheld computing. Portable devices are accounting for a larger slice of eyeball time. Its their portability and ubiquitous access across both celular and WI-Fi networks makes them so compelling. Mobile connections to Facebook are now more common than the desktop browser.
Whatever the future holds for the humble telephone, it's government money and legislation that will be needed in order for the next generation of boxes with blinking lights to enter our homes.
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