AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon are pursuing radically different approaches in the quest to deliver real broadband to the American home. With capital expenditure concerns in mind, AT&T and BellSouth are extending fiber to the the neighborhood. There will be a large market for this type of broadband until sometime in the next decade. Verizon has made the decision to bring fiber directly to its customers' premises. Many naysayers are highlighting the challenges confronting Verizon (see, e.g., "Verizon Hits Hurdles in Big Bet on New High-Speed Network" in today's Wall Street Journal). But they ignore that the costs of laying fiber are decreasing rapidly and will be approaching that of DSL later this decade. Verizon's optical network will be mostly installed and paid for when its major rivals scramble to extend and re-engineer their own antiquated DSL architectures sometime during the next decade.
George Gilder analyzes the potential of DSL and fiber in the March 2006 edition of the Gilder Technology Report ("The VDSL2 Silicon Slalom") ($).
