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JIM BARTHOLD
WINfirst is putting its money - $1 billion - where its mouth has been.
That's how much the Denver-based overbuilder will spend over the next five years for equipment to build a fiber-to-the-home residential network to deliver 100 megabits per second (Mbps) of symmetric voice and data. In the same sheath, WINfirst will include the gear needed for a traditional hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) video network.
Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Austin, San Diego and Sacramento are the first target markets for the parallel network that will offer high-speed data, four ports of telephony and 102 digital video channels.
"It sounds too good to be true," says Dave Heyrend, VP-engineering of Western Integrated Networks, WINfirst's construction deployment arm. "It's the play that makes sense."
Heyrend credits WINfirst's greenfield approach as the network's justification for pushing such a futuristic plan.
"You're looking at an installed base of copper and even coax that's out there," he says. "Where do you take the next leap in technology? Everybody realizes that's fiber-to-the-home."
For the time being, WINfirst's network will be split along more conventional HFC lines when it comes to video.
"They didn't want to fight City Hall going in in the beginning," says John Slevin, cable access VP/GM of Lucent Technologies "They wanted to win customers."
Lucent is providing the lion's share of technology and expertise for the project.
WINfirst is not shy about taking on both incumbents such as Cox Communications and other overbuilders such as Grande Communications, which is already starting rebuilds in the Texas markets.
"Realistically, only one will make it," says Heyrend of the ironic competition between two overbuilders.
WINfirst is counting on being the winner because fiber-to-the-home is so far out in front of what other networks offer today.
"It could be considered overkill if you judged it by today's standards," says Heyrend. "As you see the demand for bandwidth almost becoming insatiable, speed to the Internet, as well as content going in both directions, not only from a server to a customer but from customer to customer in a peer relationship" gains importance.
But 100 Mbps of symmetrical bandwidth?
"You're talking about bandwidth that's never been there before," says Slevin. "Think about Napster on steroids, with the ability to not only upload and download audio content, but now video content as well."
There seems to be a limited residential audience for this horsepower today.
"It's our intention to put in a network that has the capacity for the next 10 to 15 years without us having to upgrade or rebuild," says Heyrend.
That network, while a definite residential stretch, is nothing new, adds Slevin.
"All these product elements exist in a commercial environment," he says. "We know where the costs are going to."
From the fiber network perspective, 80% of the $1 billion cost is to Lucent for equipment, software and services and 20% to Avaya, Lucent's former enterprise network group, for data switching.
There are also costs for the cable network and in-home consumer premises equipment that WINfirst has not yet revealed.
"We need a digital box," Heyrend says.
The in-home data connection, he says, "is Ethernet, which has been around for a long time," thus "we're not restricted by any of the DOCSIS principles, specifications" and don't need cable modems.
It's all part of the plan, says Slevin.
"We've taken a single strand of fiber, delivered it down from a remote terminal ... and then we're building a microthin demarcation terminal that will be on the side of the house and will contain an optical transceiver to terminate the single fiber into the house," he says. "Then we pop it into an Ethernet residential gateway to do the necessary connectivity into a regular RJ-45 like a 100BaseT connection into a data network in the house."
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