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Fiber to the Premise
To combat access line loss and unbundling rules, increase broadband speeds, and become all-in-one advanced services providers, the legacy ILECs worked together to create specifications for new fiber optic networks to create a comparative advantage to prevailing MSOs and CLECs. FTTP or FTTX transformed the vision of the phone companies and positioned them as broadband and entertainment companies. Using PON technology and following their existing infrastructure, they were able to deploy FTTX fast and to a majority of their footprint. Whether providing services to single family homes or the MDU space, methods of construction may be different, but the technology remains the same. Bringing fiber optics the last mile will future-proof their networks for the many years to come. It creates a runway for broadband and IPTV needs of tomorrow’s connected home.
For more information about Fiber to the Premise and its application, please read my FTTP page.
Femtocell Technology
A lot has been made about the data-intensive nature of today’s smartphones. iPhones, Blackberries, and Android devices put great pressure on wireless networks, especially with iPhone users on AT&T’s sprecturm in major metropolitan cities. Now with Monday’s annoucement of the Windows Phone 7 devices, wireless carriers will need the additional bandwidth on their networks to handle the data traffic. Although Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and t-mobile will be rolling out their 4G LTE and HSPA+ deployments in the upcoming months that will alleviate some of the pressure, they are still looking at ways to off-load data traffic to free up their spectrum. In fact, a new study from ABI Research forecasts that mobile data offloading will triple within the next five years. You can already see it in the works now. The introduction of the iPhone three years ago brought radical changes to the way mobile data is being handled now. With iPhone users bogging down its network, AT&T started offering free Wi-Fi access at business partners StarBucks, Barnes & Noble, etc. And at Wi-Fi enabled homes/offices, smartphones switch to use that broadband connection rather than the cellular one. The study finds that about 16 percent of mobile data is diverted from the mobile networks today, and that is expected to increase to 48% by 2015. While off-loading mobile data will increase, the about of data traffic itself will grow by a factor of 30. That means the offloading of data will have increased by 100-fold.
Scrambling to maintain the Quality of Service of their mobile data connection, wireless providers have a couple of options: increase network capacity at a great capital cost, or divert that traffic to alternative connections. One such connection utilizes the femtocell technology. Introduced last year, femtocell is a new mobile network architecture that leverages a customer’s broadband connection to improve coverage and off-load data to provide new economical and reliable voice and broadband services. This is a great way to improve indoor coverage when line of sight communication is hindered by buildings or hills/trees. Although these micro-systems are gaining industry momentum, not a lot of marketing has been seen and customer adoption of the technology is still unproven.
There is an opportunity to get the broadband and mobile service business from households currently using separate service providers. For integrated service providers such as Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-Verse, femtocells create an adjunct to the mobile service. Operators can increase their overall customer base and reduce subscriber acquisition costs by selling bundled services.
As customers move to mobile video, streaming music, and other mobile content, Wi-Fi, femtocell, and media optimization technologies will play specific roles in relieving network congestion. 4G operators need to make pico/femtocells part of the next generation network architecture to reduce cost and economically deliver adequate capacity and reliability. Picocells are merely indoor, single-sectored, low-power antenna that blankets the site with mobile coverage over a broadband connection. Data offloading saves money as well as relieves network traffic. Femtocells do that at a tiny fraction of the per-Gigabyte costs of a 3G network. It adds up to potential savings for the wireless operators.
FiOS for Commercial Real Estate
What may have been lost in all the news about the housing market crisis is that the commercial real estate market has been hit even worse. Some metro areas have reported vacancy rates upwards of 30%. With businesses downsizing or “right-sizing”, there is an abundance of office and retail space available and property managers are desperate to fill them. Now the burning question is, “What makes your property more attractive than the next?” Companies are now looking to streamline their business operations and to reduce overhead so they can function more efficiently. Having a technological advantage and marketing that differentiation will bring new customers in. And this is where FTTP and FiOS/U-Verse will help. This technology brings a fiber optic pipeline directly to the property to deliver unprecedented bandwidth. Businesses are more tech savvy and look for a reliable broadband connection to not only conduct day-to-day business transactions, but to upload documents and videos and as a means of a redundancy check for more dedicated circuits. FiOS/U-Verse provides a great solution for both at a fraction of what a T1 line would cost. Aimed at small to medium business customers, having such a connection at a potential real estate location should be a necessity, not a luxury. But with that being said, tenants cannot make this distinction without the marketing collaboration between the commercial real estate property management company and the local provider of fiber-to-the-premise incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC), whether it be Frontier, Verizon, or AT&T. Joint marketing and sales efforts by both parties will lend to a greater acquisition rate and lead to better retention of the tenant. Marketing strategies can range from co-branding on the property managements website to signage outside the property promoting “FiOS or U-Verse” is here to dedicated relationship managers to educate existing tenants out the advantages of the products. The property has an amenity that is coveted by today’s data-intense businesses. Businesses will benefit from reduced overhead costs and a great product that is future-proof for all their telephony needs.
Quang M. Le, MBA 