Verizon Communications may have promised to begin an aggressive fiber-to-the-home buildout this year (the Yankee Group expects Verizon to pass 350,000 homes this year and spend $150 million on equipment doing it), but Chris Rice isn’t so sure. SBC’s senior vice president of network planning and engineering referred to Verizon’s plans as an "alleged" fiber buildout, pointing out, "It’s not in the ground." Rice wouldn’t speculate further on Verizon’s possible actions, but he said that, like SBC, Verizon is not likely to deploy FTTP widely until after the Federal Communication Commission finalizes the details of the triennial review order (TRO) governing the unbundling requirements of broadband network elements.

SBC takes issue with provisions of the TRO that describe different unbundling requirements for single-family homes versus multi-dwelling units, which would force carriers to build out duplicate networks. "I can’t build duplicate networks and make this economical," Rice said. In recent months, BellSouth has made similar complaints regarding the TRO’s unbundling requirements of fiber-to-the-curb.

In the first half of 2004 SBC will use Alcatel gear to conduct FTTP trials in five cities that it will not name (with the exception of Pabst Farms, a 1500-acre planned community in Oconomowoc, Wis., which should begin construction this summer). In the second half of this year, Rice said SBC will have the "potential" to deploy FTTP in greenfields "predicated on the triennial review." If the FCC provides the proper amount of clarity in the TRO, SBC will continue new FTTP builds in 2005.

All the Baby Bells are currently endorsing BPON, an ATM-based passive optical networking technology, a fact that some BPON vendors such as Quantum Bridge tout as a competitive differentiator over competitors such as Alloptic and Wave7 Optics that use Ethernet-based alternatives. But SBC executives at OFC said the company will eventually deploy Ethernet-based PON.

"I’d like to see IP and Ethernet all the way," Rice said. But when SBC and the other two Baby Bells examined PON architectures, "We were looking for something that’s deployable now. No one had a deployable Ethernet solution."