Verizon’s FiOS: Another Name for Cable

In those areas where Verizon is the Local Exchange Carrier, a new campaign to bring fiber to the home is underway.  It sounds sexy, but FiOS is an old idea that has proven too expensive up to now: how can anyone extend a landline, a landline powerful enough to handle broadband, to every dwelling unit?

The answer is: no one can bring broadband landline to every dwelling unit because it won’t pay for itself.  WiMAX can bring wireless broadband to the home, but it’s not here yet.  But we know it’s possible to bring broadband into those homes that want it and make broadband in the street pay. The solution is: limit FiOS deployment to affluent and above-median income areas first, and then slowly but surely move from telephone and TV to wireless.  The secret is no secret: FiOS puts the broadband in the street and, once that happens, all you need are little boxes (WiFi calls then “nodes”), to send the signal for all things wireless into the home.  If you’ve been reading about DAS (ask for several back issues of PlanWireless to find out more), you know the pattern: fiber in the street, wireless to the house.

So should AT&T be worried?  Actually, SBC (which was Southwestern Bell Corp.) has been thinking about this for years, but they have been too busy changing their name to AT&T.  Bell South has bought a lot of WiMAX frequencies, so broadband doesn’t even need fiber in the street; just a WiMAX signal from a tower as far away as 30 miles to the box in the street will do.  So, SBC (AT&T) buys Bell South.  But AT&T still needs a major wireless network, so SBC (AT&T) buys Cingular along with Bell South and now the wireless carrier will be known as AT&T.

That still leaves Sprint Nextel, which has no more landline (Sprint had to shed it), but has more WiMAX licenses than anyone.  The missing key ingredient would be broadband in the street and, as reported here almost one year ago, Sprint Nextel has formed a strategic alliance with most major cable companies, including Comcast, which used to be AT&T.

That leaves T-Mobile, which hasn’t been sleeping through this. T-Mobile owns more WiFi hot spots than any other wireless carrier, and T-Mobile sees the larger network coming together through nodes or access points.  Let someone else worry about the fiber backbone. Once FiOS or cable in the right-of-way is opened up, T-Mobile steps in and says “Please provide our hot spot with a broadband connection.”  For inter-connection reasons, the broadband carrier can’t say “no.”

So Verizon may be the first to test the concept of providing wireless from their broadband in the street, but they all will follow.  Verizon will hang a Verizon Wireless box in the street and FiOS will be the backhaul connection.  And what will your local government do about it?  Will your local government even know about it?  Probably not until some alert citizen, commonly called a “troublemaker” at City Hall, calls to say “what’s that box doing outside my home and don’t they have to go through zoning or something?”

To learn more, subscribe to the PlanWireless newsletter...

Top of
page

Kreines & Kreines, Inc.
58 Paseo Mirasol, Tiburon, CA 94920
Phone: (415) 435-9214
Fax: (415) 435-1522
e-mail: mail@planwireless.com