Installed first cost economics of fiber/broadband access to the home

The authors probe the economics and issues associated with providing fiber access to the residence by examining the cost of the underlying technologies. They compare the installed first costs of access for voice on copper, voice on fiber with low-speed optoelectronics, and broadband access based on SONET/ATM (synchronous optical network/asynchronous transfer mode) for optimistic, average and conservative cost scenarios. They show that fiber will be cost-competitive for voice during the 1990s and predict that broadband access will become cost-effective during the next 10 to 15 years. The importance of developing voice-on-fiber access approaches that can be evolved to full switched broadband capability is highlighted