Fibre-To-The-Home (FTTH) is the ultimate technology for
delivering high speed broadband to consumers.
The term "Fibre Broadband" is sometimes misused, referring to
"Fibre-To-The-Cabinet" (FTTC) technologies such as VDSL and DOCSIS,
but true FTTH brings the transmitted light signal from the
operators exchange directly into the consumers' home using optical
fibre for the entire route.
FTTC is often chosen by operators due to the costs associated with
replacing the existing copper connections with fibre. Actually, the
cost of installing fibre is no more expensive than installing
copper (if you start from a clean slate), but operators have
previously deployed a copper infrastructure and they need to
maximise their previous investments.
However the last copper connection is ultimately limited in its
capacity, and eventually the transition to fibre will need to be
made.
The goal is to make this jump from copper to fibre as easy and
cost effective as possible, and that is what Fujikura has been
doing in Japan since the mid-nineties.