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Fiber to the Home

The common home and small business computer user has drastically evolved since 1994. With this evolution has also come the demand for higher bandwidth. People who once used their personal computers strictly as word processors are now partaking in a vast array of bandwidth intensive activities. From viewing photos to listening to music to watching streaming video to working away from the office, the increased network utilization has rapidly brought to light the limitations of the existing copper-based networks to homes and businesses, referred to as the “last-mile.” The copper-based Ethernet standard has been reengineered several times over to increase from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps over the past eleven years (1994 - 2005) reflecting this need for higher bandwidth. However, as demands continue to increase with such things as Video on Demand (VoD) and High Definition TV (HDTV), only fiber can deliver the requirements set forth. The other transmission technologies of copper and wireless have limitations in terms of bandwidth, reliability, cost and coverage.

Fiber networks offer a variety of advantages over other broadband access solutions. Some of these were previously mentioned when comparing the mediums of fiber and copper. Fiber optic cable is easier to install, is more secure, is more fault proof (EMI, lightning strikes, etc), and is highly reliable. Additional advantages are introduced when discussing the FTTx technology specifically, such as the added data capacity and the services that are only made possible from the expanded bandwidth. The primary disadvantage is that new fiber that needs to be laid to support this network along with the inherent cost for that.

KTC is currently building our fiber to the home network throughout the Kaplan area. Stay tuned for our service rollout in the near future.