Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Copper Retirement

The copper plant is being replaced - quickly, as fiber to the whatever is rolled out, the copper plant is being retired. CLEC's, especially Covad and XO, are yelling to the FCC. Other groups are telling Congress that this will result in a national security issue as fiber goes down with a power outage. That grandma won't be able to call 911 in a storm. (Let's not mention that cellular still doesn't have E-911 compliance, even though VoIP has that mandate).

Tom Evslin, co-founder of AT&T Worldnet, says copper will be gone by 2013 (see story here).

This means that mid-band ethernet won't take off (since it requires up to 8 pair of copper). Neither will ADSL2+ for the same reason.

Hatteras should be worried; they make ethernet over copper gear for BellSouth and XO.

Covad's whole strategy of line powered Voice with DSL revolves around copper - as does New Edge, EarthLink, and every other CLEC in the US.

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