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NewsGlobe: Interviews
Jim Farmer speaks out on FTTH
Like cable TV, ubiquitous reach will take time
by Sean Buckley
Jim Farmer, CTO of Wave7 Optics, who spent 25 years of his career with the legacy Scientific Atlanta, remembers a time back in the early 1970s when cable TV was still in its formative stages and it was not as prevalent as it is today.
Farmer believes that FTTH is in the midst of a similar transition phase. In the following Audiocast interview, Sean Buckley talks to Farmer about emerging FTTH trends as they affect both the traditional telcos and the cable operator.
Farmer answers the following questions in this Audiocast:
• Although no one can debate the fact that bringing fiber to every home is
the ultimate broadband dream, it’s still an emerging concept. What’s your
take on the overall state of the FTTH market and how has it evolved?
• Like every other telecom industry segment, FTTH has had its fare share of debate over two main architectural approaches: point-to-point Active Ethernet and PON. Do you believe there are advantages/disadvantages to each approach?
• While targeting single family homes with FTTH has enough of its own
challenges, going into an MDU is even more challenging because a service provider has to deal with getting access to the building and running wires through a tight environment. Do you see continued interest in service providers targeting the MDUs?
• One of the interesting elements of the independent telephone service
providers—a market that Wave7 has served well—is that many of them
also have cable networks. To better serve that market segment, Wave7
has pioneered its RF return technology to help ease cable’s transition to
FTTH. Being at this since 2002, do you see an ongoing trend of cable
operators using this method?
• Staying on the subject of the cable operator, there’s also the proposed
SCTE RFoG standard for FTTH. What’s your feeling about this particular
standard or is it still too early to tell what effect it could have?
Click here to listen to the Audiocast
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