iQ MAGAZINE

With Amsterdam and Paris joining other cities in Europe announcing plans for fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks, a question emerges for SMBs: What does this trend mean? The answer is: Not much, for now.

"It doesn't fundamentally change things for SMBs," says Camille Mendler, vice president of Telecom Strategies at Yankee Group Research. "You can get a lot of horsepower from DSL. Of course, it's nothing compared to what you can do with fiber. Clearly, fiber is a superior solution, but it's just not economically feasible in many cases."

FTTH brings fiber-optic cable directly to homes. While DSL might provide 20 to 30 megabits of bandwidth, FTTH can theoretically deliver about 1 terabit (1 million megabits). The more bandwidth, the better the ability to deliver broadcast-quality television and two-way videoconferencing, for example.

In the near future, DSL and Wi-Fi mesh and WiMAX should provide stiff competition for FTTH, according to Mendler. But eventually, she predicts, FTTH's greater bandwidth may make it the preferred choice.

If FTTH does emerge as the top contender, it will bring both a challenge and an opportunity to SMBs, according to Deepinder Sahni, senior vice president at research firm Access Markets International Partners. "It means your competition will develop new ways to interact with customers," Sahni says. "So you have to think about your Website and the applications you enable on the site in ways that will leverage that new bandwidth."

iQ Magazine, Second Quarter 2006