There's good news and bad news about the U.S. fiber growth -- On the good news side, fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) installations have grown 83 percent since last October and fiber now reaches 398 communities in 43 states, according to research released by the Fiber Optic Communities in the United States (FOCUS). On the bad news side, the U.S. is badly lagging the rest of the world in fiber deployment and is, in fact, losing ground. '"There are roughly 213,000 premises wired with fiber today out of 100-some million. It's not a very big percentage," said Max Kipfer, FOCUS' founder and president. "As a country we dropped to 16th in the world in fiber deployments." Europe has over a half million and Japan has 1.2 million fiber-connected premises. Ninety percent of Danish residents have access to 10 megs of data or better and pay only 30 Euros a month for it, he said. "We're a long way away and we're dropping fast," he said. Kipfer blamed several factors for the nation's slow fiber deployments.
Try to imagine this scenario, that General Motors and Ford were given exclusive franchises to build America's interstate highway system, and also all the highways that connect local communities. Now imagine that, based upon a financial crisis, these troubled companies decided to convert all "their" local arteries into toll-roads -- they then use incremental toll fees to severely limit all travel to and from small businesses. Why? This handicapping process reduced the need to invest in building better new roads, or repairing the dilapidated ones. But, wouldn't that short-sighted decision have a detrimental impact on the overall national economy? It's a moot point -- pure fantasy -- you say. The U.S. political leadership would never knowingly risk the nation's social and economic future on the financial viability of a restrictive duopoly. Or, would they? The 21st century Global Networked Economy travels across essential broadband infrastructure. The forced intro...