Fiber vs. Copper (Verizon vs AT&T) for Home High Speed Internet

Fiber vs. Copper (Verizon vs. AT&T)...

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Verizon technology chief talks fiber
CTO Mark Wegleitner explains why Verizon is spending billions to take fiber to the doorstep.

By Marguerite Reardon Staff Writer, CNET News.com -->
Published: July 6, 2007, 4:00 AM PDT

Verizon Communications is finally starting to reap the benefits of its aggressive fiber-to-the-home strategy with more than 1 million subscribers.

Mark Wegleitner, Verizon's chief technology officer, has been championing this strategy for the past three years. The network, called Fios, takes fiber directly to the side of people's homes and provides near-limitless bandwidth that can be used to deliver a "triple play" of services including high-speed Internet connectivity, telephone service and TV. The company already offers Internet service that runs at 50 megabits per second. And it's testing service at 100Mbps.

The largest phone company in the U.S., AT&T, has taken a different approach, only deploying fiber farther into neighborhoods and using existing copper to deliver it the "last mile." Wegleitner and other Verizon executives were adamant that a fiber infrastructure, in the long run, would be better. Critics of the strategy said that the budgeted $18 billion to build the network was too expensive. But with more than 1 million Fios Internet customers and nearly 500,000 Fios TV customers signed up, it looks like Verizon's strategy is working.

Read the full article and interview.