FTTH (“Fibre to the Home”)
Getting High Speeds
Any telecommunication network infrastructure that deploys optical fiber technology as part of its local loop network or in its last mile connection to the home instead of the usual wireless or copper wires is termed as FTTH or Fiber to the Home. It is part of the wider FTTx assignation to describe various last mile networking configurations to the point of termination such as Fiber to the Building (FTTB), Fiber to the Premises (FTTP), etc.
Fiber for the Internet
Fiber optic cables are made of fine glass strands thinner than hair strands. Each strand can carry data signals in excess of 2.5 gigabits per second or Gbps. The internet network backbone is now made almost exclusively of fiber optic cables laid out under the sea in bunches connecting different points around the world. Their massive bandwidth capacities are suitable for the millions of concurrent users on the net. These cables get terminated in telecommunications companies in a backhaul configuration from where different networking technology can be used for the last mile connectivity to the home.
Using copper cables have their inherent bandwidth limitations that can create bottlenecks in online applications that increasingly require larger bandwidths. Here, fiber to the home configurations opens up the bottleneck nicely.
Typical DSL bandwidth that uses standards copper phone cables have a bandwidth hovering in the 1.5 Mbps point. A telecommunications company can provide a commercial grade FTTH with a bandwidth of 100Mbps which is about 66 times a lot faster than any DSL.
An Expensive Solution
Fiber to the home services are an option that can be costly to most homes and consequently are used instead in condominiums to serve its many dwellers or in office buildings for their commercial tenants. Even the lower end FFTH offering just 10 Mbps can be off-putting if you are just a casual user. But over time, these charges are expected to go down as bandwidth costs are fast declining.
