An Ignoble Experiment

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Picture some 17,000 miles of fiber-optic cabling--equaling six trips between New York City and Los Angeles--and you'll have some idea of how much infrastructure Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) has installed in the Big Apple. That infrastructure includes interoffice and backbone network equipment, specialized fiber for large enterprises, and consumer and SMB FiOS services.

The nearly 90 million feet of fiber, spanning all five boroughs at a cost of $3 billion-plus so far, "is the largest, most ambitious fiber-optic deployment in any U.S. city," according to Kevin Service, Verizon's president for the carrier's Northeast area. "We have invested more than $3 billion in the city alone, making it one of the most 'fiberized' cities on the planet."

As of December 2013, Verizon says it's been meeting its Cable Franchise Agreement benchmarks with the city, wrapping network upgrades in 90 percent of the Bronx, 89 percent of Brooklyn, 94 percent of Manhattan, 90 percent of Queens and virtually all of Staten Island. Also included in the statistics are FiOS connections to more than 60,000 New York City public-housing units.

How is all this fiber being deployed in New York's concrete canyons? In April, Verizon got the go-ahead to test a "microtrenching" technique that reportedly will use much thinner wire and less equipment, translating into install times of only a third of current practices.

Verizon also is using its Magic Wire scheme it says "seamlessly and almost invisibly adheres to moldings in compact city apartments," coupled with a small desktop optical-network terminal that replaces house-mounted devices.

For more:
- see this release

Read more about: FiOS, Fiber Optic
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This week's sponsors are Neustar and Spirent.

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2. Zayo solidifies U.K. presence with Geo dark-fiber buy

By Debra Baker

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Bandwidth infrastructure provider Zayo Group LLC is purchasing London-based Geo Networks Ltd. for an undisclosed sum.

The deal will close immediately, funded by a combination of cash on hand and a draw from Zayo's revolving credit facility.

Bringing Geo, a dark-fiber provider, into the fold will add more than 2,100 route miles to Zayo's European network along with connectivity to 587 on-net buildings. Geo also provides managed networks and colocation services to media companies, service providers, financial services, data centers and gaming organizations.

In the U.K. alone, Zayo's fiber footprint adds 1,800 miles of national fiber connecting 130 data centers, telehouses and Internet exchanges along with offering direct access to Manchester, Birmingham and other large commercial regions, the buyer says.

The purchase also establishes a Zayo presence in Ireland through an optical fiber subsea system called the East-West Ring, which connects to many of Dublin's data centers and cloud service providers.

For more:
- see this release

3. ABI: Global fiber broadband adoption keeps Huawei, ZTE at the top

By Debra Baker

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Increasing fiber-optic broadband coverage and adoption are driving fiber-optic broadband device shipment growth, according to a new study from ABI Research. ABI reports that fiber-optic customer premises equipment represents 26 percent of total shipments in 2013, which translates into 146 million devices.

As such, the group projects shipments of nearly 155 million in 2019. ZTE retained its No. 1 spot as overall broadband CPE market leader, followed by Arris and Huawei. Huawei and ZTE also are the top fiber CPE vendors, with combined shipments totaling some 75 percent of fiber-optic CPE sales last year.

Internationally, ABI Vice President and Practice Director Jake Saunders said that subscribers finally are beginning to transition away from DSL-based broadband toward more fiber offerings, with carriers choosing to upgrade to such advanced technologies as VDSL2 vectoring.

On the cable broadband side of the business, ABI found CPE shipments grew some 2 percent last year, to 55 million units. This number is expected to grow as more cable operators push DOCSIS 3.0 deployments.

"Nearly two-thirds of cable CPE shipped in 2013 were DOCSIS 3.0 standard devices," said ABI industry analyst Khin Sandi Lynn, adding, "DOCSIS 3.0 CPE will account for over 84 percent of cable broadband CPE shipments in 2014."

For more:
- read the release

4. ITU: Africa set to double Internet connections by year's end

By Debra Baker

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By the end of 2014, the ITU predicts 40 percent of the global population--approximately 3 billion people--will have access to the Internet in some way, shape or form, with most new users coming from third- or fourth-world nations.

A USTelecom blog reviewing the ITU's numbers points out that, in Africa alone, Internet use is expected to rise to 20 percent by year-end, double the users counted in 2010.

Nearly 80 percent of the population in developed countries will be connected by year's end, ITU forecasts, with the largest penetration in Europe, followed by North America and South America, and finally Asia-Pacific.

It looks like wireless will continue to leapfrog fixed broadband services moving forward, with global mobile-broadband penetration reaching 32 percent by the end of the year. The ITU believes mobile-broadband subscriptions will reach 2.3 billion globally, with 55 percent of all mobile-broadband subscriptions expected to come from new developing-world users.

On the down side, the ITU predicts an ongoing decline in fixed-telephone penetration. When December rolls around, the agency warns that global operators will have lost some 100 million lines dating back to 2009.

For more:
- see this USTelecom blog

5. Convergys taps Voci for cloud-based speech-transcription services

By Debra Baker

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