Fiber to the home (FTTH) is a method of fiber optic communication where the telecommunications signal is delivered from the carrier's switching equipment all the way to a home or business, replacing existing copper infrastructure such as telephone lines and coaxial cables. FTTH is a relatively new and rapidly developing approach that provides consumers and businesses with higher bandwidth, enabling stronger video, internet, and voice services.
Connecting homes directly to fiber optic cables can greatly improve the bandwidth available to consumers. Current fiber optic technology can provide up to 100 megabits per second of bidirectional transmission speed. Additionally, as cable modem and DSL providers strive to squeeze higher bandwidth increments out of their technologies, ongoing improvements in fiber optic equipment are continually increasing available bandwidth without requiring replacement of the fiber. This is why the fiber network is referred to as "future-proofed."
Today, over 15% of homes have access to FTTH networks, with over 5.3 million households in North America currently connected directly to high-speed, high-bandwidth fiber networks. Thousands of connections are made daily. As FTTH service providers continue to deploy and add customers, we can now see what the next generation of broadband means for the consumers who use it.
Just as the evolution from dial-up internet to DSL and cable modems led to innovations and applications such as YouTube and Skype—similarly, ample bandwidth will leap to 100 megabits per second or even higher.
