The FTTH Opry

Greetings from the FTTH Conference in Nashville. I'm writing to you from the Gaylord Opryland Resort, a ginormous compound with glass ceilings and a whole bunch of fiber in the basement, where exhibitors representing the fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) industry are displaying their products and services.

Today, I listened to Greg Solomon of Enablence Technologies talk about how municipal utilities can deploy fiber-optic networks with a cost-effective plan. Solomon highlighted competition and a sustainable business plan as two main things for municipal utilities to understand, along with hiring the right personnel for the job (CTOs, technicians, gurus, sales and customer service reps, etc.).

Municipal utilities, Solomon said, need to understand their costs related to the physical network equipment, personnel and maintenance.

On a similar note, I heard Jim Farmer of Enablence Wave7 talk about the strengths and weaknesses of the competitors that municipal FTTH networks might face, cable companies in particular. Farmer noted that cable companies are particularly vulnerable in providing upstream bandwidth.

The themes I've picked up so far are on the ever-growing hunger for more bandwidth that network operators are facing. One way to solve that, obviously, is to build out a fiber network, a technology that as of yet has no limitations to bandwidth capacity.

I will report back later with more from the conference. Until then, check out Geoff Daily's blog App-Rising. I had the pleasure of meeting Geoff here, and he's a powerful advocate for community broadband deployment.

Cheers!