Fiber Choice: Current Costs vs. Long Term Flexibility
Lowest cost today:
- neighborhood switch sites serving ~1000 homes, distances up to 2000 meters
- multimode fiber (cheaper splices and converters)
- data only (10 Mb/s Ethernet, 100 Mb/s in a few years)
But we may need single-mode fiber for CATV and 1000 Mb/s over meters
- Single-mode splices and media converters add ~$1000 per subscriber to the current costs
- CATV electronics add another ~$1000