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BellSouth at Home in Atlanta
By Reed Miller

A 5-year-old dream among many an industry player is just about to become a reality.

BellSouth will exploit passive optical networking technology and fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) to furnish digital video, Internet access, digital audio and telephone services to suburban Atlanta customers.

But far, far better is this little gem: BellSouth not only will conduct a mere trial. No. No. The Atlanta-based regional carrier will deploy a serviceuntested and unparalleled, but still a likely sign of things to come.

"We envision leaving the (service) in Atlanta for up to a year to iron all the bugs out," said BellSouth Communications Manager John Goldman. "Then after that time, we will start installing the service in some new (neighborhood) builds. In 2001, you will get a massive deployment, going under the assumption that (fiber) cost will be down to a comparable level to copper."

The undertaking will begin as a 400-home rollout, but will invade the BellSouth region during the decade.

BellSouth will continue its 2-year-old effort to deploy asymmetrical digital subscriber line (ADSL) service, but the technology is now seen as more of a stopgap.

"ADSL is whetting the appetite of the public for more bandwidth," Goldman said. "It is a step in the evolution of fiber-to-the-home. ADSL is an interim technology for fiber-to-the-home. Fiber-to-the-home is where everything is headed. The price is coming down, until soon it will be just as cheap, if not cheaper than copper, to install.

"This is the platform for the future," Goldman added. "We have done fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC). We have done ADSL. This is the next step. There are people like Bill Gates developing applications we cant even imagine. We want to be ready for when 30 Mbps is a common demand."

Checking specs

What will make BellSouths plan "passive" will be the use of optical splitters that require no electrical power. In this case, the protocol on the fiber will be asynchronous transfer mode (ATM).

"What ATM passive optical networking does is allow you to launch high bandwidth signals toward the customer," said Bruce Price, sales director for access products at Lucent Technologies. Equipment from the Murray Hill, N.J.-based vendor will be used to deploy FTTH.

"In this case, we send a 1,550 nm signal out toward the customers and split it using passive optical splitters. These splitters take the light and split it into many paths32 for 32 customers," Price said.

Tokyo-based Oki Electric Industry will provide equipment to transmit signals from central offices to neighborhoods. Central office gear will be composed of optical line terminals.

BellSouth executives have not yet selected a partner to furnish the passive optical splitters.

Lucent will provide BellSouth with optical network terminals needed in homes to receive signals via fiber. A second networking unit will be required to provide video signals to TV sets.

The initial rollout is scheduled to begin in October. - TB

Reed Miller is senior editor of sister publication "Fiber Optics News." He may be reached at .

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