Verizon’s Hill says military officials challenged the company to come up with a network technology for its buildings and campuses that would meet its bandwidth requirements for the next 25 years while reducing power usage.

``We started looking at how Verizon was addressing this in people’s homes with FiOS, and we said this fundamental architecture works for an office building, too,’’ Hill says.

A key advantage of Verizon’s Converged Fiber-to-the-Desktop is that it is built on FiOS technology tested as far back as the mid-1990s.

While Verizon primarily uses equipment from Motorola for its FiOS service, similar customer premises equipment is available from Tellabs, Nortel, Ericsson and others.

The fiber-to-the-desktop offerings developed by Verizon and SAIC are geared toward new buildings and campuses and major renovations. These installations replace traditional copper Category 5 or Category 6 cable with fiber-optic networking, which has higher bandwidth and costs less.

He predicts fiber-to-the-desktop offerings will be popular with federal customers. ``Fiber has always been attractive to the government for security reasons because you can’t tap it,’’ he says.

The new fiber-to-the-desktop offerings from Verizon and SAIC originate at the data center, where a piece of equipment called an optical-line terminal resides. From this box, fiber-optic cables carry light-based communications through distribution hubs, which then split out individual fibers to end users. Each end user has an optical-network terminal, which is about the size of a cable modem, to support a PC and digital telephone.

Verizon’s Converged Fiber-to-the-Desktop as well as SAIC’s SCS provide 2.4Gbps of download capacity and 1.2Gbps of upload capacity.

Both offerings reap major savings in electricity usage because they eliminate the need for workgroup switches and repeaters to carry communications between the data center and the end users, Verizon and SAIC officials say. The only power required is for the optical-line terminal in the data center and the optical-network terminals at each desktop.

``Nothing between the end user and the wiring closet is powered at all,’’ says Blaine Overstreet, lead systems engineer on the Annapolis Junction building for SAIC, which touts a minimal electricity savings of 80% with its service. ``We use a single fiber to each user. The optical-network terminal takes only a 9- or 12-volt transformer.’’

Since less hardware is required, these fiber-to-the-desktop set-ups need less floor space in a data center as well as smaller wiring closets on every floor of an office building.

Another drawback is that the IP phones used in these applications won’t work if the power goes out.

``The only negative we see is power over Ethernet,’’ Overstreet says. ``As people deploy VoIP in their enterprises, they are primarily using power over Ethernet. In this environment, with no workgroup switches, it’s all being fed from a small, lower-powered optical-network terminal. You do have to have locally powered devices like IP phones. . . . If the power goes out, employees are going home.’’

LAS VEGAS – Verizon plans to expand its 50Mbps FiOS Internet service to cover all 10 million homes and businesses that are currently within its FiOS network footprint.

During his keynote address at NXTComm08 in Las Vegas today, Verizon COO Denny Strigl said that all homes and businesses in Verizon’s 16-state FiOS footprint will have the option of subscribing to Verizon’s 50Mbps FiOS service starting next week. The service, which is currently the fastest of all Verizon FiOS service options, allows peak download speeds of 50Mbps and peak upload speeds of 20Mbps.


Recently, Verizon has begun tailoring its FiOS technology more toward enterprise users, and is currently testing out an installation in a four-story office building in Annapolis Junction, Md., that the company says will be ready to be occupied in September. Currently known as the Converged Fiber-to-the-Desktop service, Verizon’s future enterprise offering will be based on the same Fiber-To-The-Premises (FTTP) technology as its current consumer offerings.

Verizon today offers its FiOS fiber-optic voice, data and video services to roughly 10 million homes and businesses by 16 different states, and the company projects that its FiOS footprint will reach more than 18 million homes and businesses by 2010. The upgraded 50Mbps FiOS service will replace its existing 30Mbps offerings in parts of California, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington. FiOS customers in Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island already have access to the 50Mbps option.

Looking toward the future, Strigl told the NXTComm audience that Verizon plans on adding 3 million new households and businesses to its FiOS footprint per year. He also said that Verizon had been running trials for FiOS technology that would offer peak download speeds of 100Mbps. While Strigl wouldn't commit to a firm timeline for upgrading FiOS to 100Mbps, he said he expects it to “come to us in not too distant future.”

Verizon offers its 50Mbps FiOS service for $89.95 per month in New York and Virginia, and for $139.95 per month with an annual service plan everywhere else. Currently, Verizon has an estimated 1.8 million FiOS Internet subscribers and 1.2 million FiOS TV subscribers.