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Others meanwhile are catching up:
CenturyLink gigabit service is now avail-
able in more than 600 cities, including
14,000 multi-tenant units (MTUs) and
100,000 businesses, the company an-
nounced in October. And Comcast is
leveraging its investments in latest-gen-
eration DOCSIS 3.1 to deliver 1Gbps
over its existing HFC network infrastruc-
ture in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Miami
and Nashville as of the end of 2016. It
also launched Gigabit Pro in selected
service territories last year offering
2Gbps, now available in some 18 mil-
lion homes across the U.S.
At the same time, competitive
providers are starting to prolifer-
ate. Competitive cableco WOW! Has
launched its “Gigatopia” broadband in
four markets – Auburn and Huntsville,
Ala., and Evansville, Ind., and Knox-
ville, Tenn. Rocket Fiber, meanwhile,
has been providing gigabit service
in Detroit for nine months, at a price
point of less than $200 per month.
It passes 700,000 residents and
business users in 149 square miles
in central Detroit with fiber – an area
where 60 percent of residents don’t
have broadband, and 80 percent of
school-aged kids don’t have Internet
at home at all. It also serves busi-
nesses and government.
Rising Usage
Although a gigabit connection for
a single device may be overkill today,
businesses most certainly will con-
tinue accumulating connected devices
in the long term – everything from con-
nected insulin pumps to smart parking
sensors. The move to cloud-based
services for a growing range of applica-
tions is a key driver of this as well.
CenturyLink, for instance, is posi-
tioning its gigabit fiber service as a
platform for customer growth, creating
a business model around bundling
access with VoIP and managed IT
solutions that businesses can tap
into to enhance their operations and
competitiveness. That includes fiber
access to multiple wide-area network
connections, such as MPLS-VPN,
metro Ethernet and the CenturyLink
SD-WAN solution.
It’s also a way for CenturyLink to
expand its addressable market to
more small- and medium-sized busi-
nesses. To support this effort, Centu-
ryLink business fiber service bundles
also come with a core set of cloud-
based business application services
for no additional charge, including
Microsoft 365, website hosting and
management, and data back-up.
“By offering fiber-ready services
to MTUs in our local markets and of-
fering speeds up to 1 gigabit, we can
more quickly connect our business
customers to the power of the digital
world and offer them affordable and
scalable business solutions previously
only available to large enterprise com-
panies,” said Dean Douglas, company
president of sales and marketing.
In one real-world example,
ADTRAN’s Huntsville campus recently
converted to gigabit speeds, which
opens up an array of productivity-
enhancing changes.
“This has improved our user experi-
ence and gives us the opportunity to
add services,” said Jay Wilson, senior
vice president of technology and strat-
egy at the communications infrastruc-
ture supplier. “We can now subscribe to
disaster recovery-as-a-service, and can
make sure we have interconnectivity
with our R&D offices in Germany and
India; we have HD video links, and large
files are being shared every day.”
The sharpest inflection point for
gigabit service may be in terms of per-
ception, which is where channel part-
ners come in.
“A Gbps Internet connection might
appear frivolous, but a decade ago
some commentators may have ques-
tioned the need for a touchscreen-
based device capable of transmitting
data at 150Mbps, with storage for
tens of thousands of HD photos,
video quality sufficient for broadcast,
a pixel density superior to most TV
sets, a secure finger-print reader
and billions of transistors within a
64-bit eight core processor,” Deloitte
researchers noted. “Yet modern
smartphones with this specification
are likely to sell in the hundreds of
millions of units this year.”
Positive Change
for Communities
Gigabit investment also is catalyst
for economic, educational and govern-
mental innovation.
The FTTH Council Americas has
found that access to fiber may in-
crease a home’s value by up to 3.1
percent. Using the National Broadband
Map and a nationwide sample of real-
estate prices, the group investigated
the relationship between fiber-deliv-
ered Internet services and housing
prices. The boost to the value of a
typical home – $5,437 – is roughly
equivalent to adding a fireplace, half of
a bathroom or a quarter of a swimming
pool to the home.
Source: IHS Markit
Growth in Global Broadband Subs by Technology
Source: Point Topic
Source: IHS Markit
Global Port Revenue, 1G - 100G
hich area of mobile security
you think you are
What would you like from your
vendor to help you improve
$340
$330
$320
$310
$300
$290
$280
$270
$26
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
US $Billions
100.00%
90%
60%
30%
0%
2013
18%
18%
21
30%
2014
80.00%
60.00%
40.00%
20.00%
0.00%
-20.00%
-40.00%
6.5%
Cable
-16.4%
FTTH
FTTx
Others
-3.9%
Copper
Satelite Wireless
89.6%
4.5%
8.4%
6.0%
$60
$50
$40
$30
$20
$10
$0
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
1G 2.5G 10G 25G 40G 100G
US$ Billions
Source: Unify Square
D ily Usage of UC Syste
End Us
Source: Be terBuys
18%
Other
38.6%
Marketing
Desktop Virtualizat
Investment Rate T
Source: Computer Economics
Adoption Rate
Percent of Organizations
0% 10% 20% 30%
Desktop
Sharing
Video
Conferencing
& Voice
Instant
Messaging
Zettabytes
32
Channel
Vision
|
January - February, 2017