No One Wants Fiber to Every Home

A big fan of fiber-to-the-home [FTTH for those abbreviating at home], Daily too often meets disbelief about its feasibility, doubt over its necessity, and, most troubling of all, lack of support from the very people responsible for helping achieve that goal. The feasibility camp has a point: deploying fiber is expensive, some argue too expensive for rural areas. But that's simply not true. The necessity camp is one that frustrates Daily greatly. Despite these being learned people, they've bought into the hype of a wireless world, that eventually we won't even need wires. But the main inspiration for this article is the camp that's responsible for our broadband infrastructure but that for various reasons have not yet embraced the goal of 100% fiber deployment. One faction of this camp has obvious reasons not to support it: they want to continue making money of their initial investment in a copper infrastructure. Cable companies and many telcos don't want to see fiber laid to every home because it's not likely that they're the ones who'll be laying it, so if fiber gets laid that means not only do they have to face a new competitor but that competitor will be able to offer a vastly superior network. Making matters worse is now everyone's talking about their fiber networks, which muddles the message of why we need the ultimate goal to be full fiber networks.
http://app-rising.com/2008/06/no_one_wants_fiber_to_the_home.html