Technology Futures, Inc. has published a report that looks at the economic life of singlemode optical fiber cable installed by incumbent local exchange carriers.
The report is titled: "Depreciation Lives of Fiber Optic Cables in the Local Exchange."
The report was authored by Ray Hodges, a senior consultant at Technology Futures, and Lawrence Vanston, Ph.D. The report addresses the economic life of singlemode optical fiber cable installed by ILECs in the local exchange network. The depreciation lives of these cables are derived from analysis of demand, technology substitution, physical mortality, and competitive factors.
The research was sponsored by the Telecommunications Technology Forecasting Group (TTFG), a consortium of telephone companies comprised of Bell Canada, BellSouth
Telecommunications, Qwest, SBC, Sprint, and Verizon.
"When fiber was introduced into the local exchange in the early 1980s, we had little on which to base depreciation lives," says Hodges. "We now have experience regarding the
physical mortality of fiber as well as experience with singlemode fiber replacing multimode fiber.
"There are now advanced types of fiber capable of displacing the embedded singlemode as well as competitive issues that must be considered in the depreciation life estimation," he adds.
The report finds that:
* Today's embedded standard singlemode optical fiber cables are already
obsolete for high-density, long-haul applications and may also become so in the local exchange.
* There are three types of advanced fibers available today that have
significant advantages when CWDM or DWDM are utilized.
* Approximately 95% of U.S. households will be online by 2020, and almost all of these will be broadband users.
* Presently, there is very little fiber in the distribution plant. The timing of placing distribution is late enough that, in all likelihood, it will be advanced fiber. With long-haul fiber already using advanced fiber and newly placed distribution fiber also being advanced fiber, a bottleneck will be created in the middle of the network that contains the most outdated singlemode fiber.
Technology Futures forecasts that, by 2010, ILECs will provision one-third fewer access lines than today, and that by 2015, less than half as many. Competition will strand large quantities of network equipment including optical fiber cables, reducing the economic life.
Technology Futures is based in Austin, Texas. For more information visit www.tfi.com.
