As US deployments of Digital Subscriber Line service over today's copper local loops continue to increase, there are indications the telephone companies are looking to the future, possibly one that doesn't involve copper at all.
Rather than continue to invest in copper infrastructure, local service providers are expected to increase their investment in fiber-optic technology to improve their local loops, driving fiber deeper into neighborhoods and in some cases right up to the subscriber's doorstep. If and when that happens, the need for Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) as a last-mile fast lane will go away.
So does DSL have a long life expectancy? That's a tough call.
Incumbent local exchange carriers, which say they're working diligently to take as much advantage as possible of the century-old infrastructure that exists today, have been reluctant to invest the time and money to build a fiber infrastructure until they absolutely have to. The arrival of DSL - and growing demand for the service - may have given some an incentive to put off those fiber investments even longer.
In the first quarter of 2000, the number of DSL deployments in the US rose 50 percent over the previous quarter, according to statistics in a May 5 report from TeleChoice. With the total number of DSL lines deployed in the US reaching 754,770 by the end of the first quarter, it's safe to say DSL is very close to the million-line mark, if not beyond it.
Regardless of this, the amount of new copper being laid has stagnated in favor of fiber.
"It is possible that we would install additional copper, so we never say never, but there is not a current aggressive installation of new copper specifically for the rollout of DSL," says Bill Kula, a spokesman for the DSL unit at GTE, soon to be called Verizon Communications after the completion of the merger with Bell Atlantic.
A penny for your thoughts
Kula says copper rollouts have reached the end of an era. "There's an abundance [of copper] in the ground, and we're putting that to good use with continued DSL rollouts," he says.
Tim Weiss, senior consultant at TeleChoice, says DSL has come to the rescue for copper. While telephone companies were planning fiber rollouts, DSL arrived, giving local carriers a way to utilise the high-frequency portion of the copper pair for the same features for which fiber was being installed, namely new and improved telephony features, high-speed data access and competitive offers for cable television. "I think those extra services you'll be able to layer will keep copper alive," Weiss says.
Even the use of fiber means the extended use of copper. Around the country in cities such as Phoenix and Clearwater, telephone companies are conducting trials of Very High Speed DSL, which uses a copper-fiber hybrid technology to maximize the potential of DSL, with throughput speeds of up to 26 megabits per second. The Bell companies do this by wiring fiber from the central office to remote terminals around the city and then terminating to copper loops of up to 4,000 feet to the customer premises. So far, the trials are getting good results, but it's still going to be a few years before VDSL reaches wide-scale deployment.
Matt Rotter, executive director of megabit services at U S West, says he sees a time when consumers will not only be able to get DSL, but also have clear choices of which provider they would like. "The reality is [when] those astronomical growth rates taper off, you'll see increasingly competitive price rates," Rotter explains. "There's a lot of demand out there, and the question will be who can be a better service provider."
Eventually certain
In time, the focus will turn to fiber, and its use not only as a hybrid technology to aid the proliferation of DSL, but to provide optical throughput all the way to the curb. When this will happen is a question no one seems to want to answer, since investments in DSL are far from being paid off as of yet.
Telephone companies say the release of such a timetable would be a competitive taboo. The only ceiling that can be assessed for copper comes from Rick Hofman, director of fiber efforts at Bell Atlantic. He notes that the copper already installed typically is replaced every 25 years, and he says it's doubtful that anything recently laid down will ever be replaced.
TeleChoice's Weiss says that right now, the only investments in fiber are happening in new build areas where copper density is low anyway. Fiber is still daunting to telephone companies, though, because of cost.
"While it may be more expensive to install, as a service provider you have to ask yourself, are you going to earn more over time by slapping some fiber wires down?" Weiss says. "With the long-term rewards of having fiber at the curb and the services you can put across that, if you can't build a business around that, you have a problem."
