Fiber-optic deal is reached
By Brian Bergstein
ASSOCIATED PRESS

May 29, 2003

NEW YORK - The nation's three biggest regional phone companies announced an agreement yesterday to standardize the construction of residential fiber-optic networks, in hopes of getting ultra-fast Internet connections to homes more quickly and less expensively.

In a letter to telecom equipment makers, Verizon Communications Inc., SBC Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. said they had agreed on technical details that affect how everything from centralized switching centers to customers' home modems will be connected.

The companies' goal is to bring far more homes and small businesses a "fat pipe" that can pump voice calls, data, TV broadcasts and bandwidth-intensive applications like videoconferencing at speeds far faster than existing DSL and cable-modem services.

"This is something you see in all technology industries," said Michael Coe, a spokesman for San Antonio-based SBC. "When they get serious about deploying a system, they say, 'We need to have one standard.'"

Fiber-optic lines transmit information in bursts of light, far faster than the electronic signals that course through traditional copper wiring in phone networks.

While many big office complexes are well-fed with fiber-optic lines, phone companies have said they were reluctant to spend the billions required to bring fiber to individual homes because of federal regulations that force them to lease their networks to competitors at regulated prices.

Only 37,000 U.S. homes are directly fed by fiber lines, up from 10,000 a year earlier, according to Render Vanderslice & Associates, a market research firm.

But in February, the Federal Communications Commission agreed to lift the sharing requirement on new broadband networks.

That prompted Bell critics to say it was time for the phone companies to put their money where their mouths have been, and actually begin investing in new fiber.