AT&T’s pronouncement today that it will lower its deployment projections and raise spending on its fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) network will no doubt get a lot of attention. What probably won’t surprise anyone, however, is that BellSouth is essentially becoming the third of four Bell carriers to adopt FTTN, leaving Verizon (the carrier with the oldest copper) the only Bell to favor FTTP instead.

AT&T was widely predicted to deploy FTTN in BellSouth territory despite the FTTC network already there. Tellabs reported a drop in sales of FTTC gear to AT&T back in April. And in August AT&T pledged to bring FTTN to South Carolina.

But AT&T’s expansion of FTTN into the Southeast is particularly noteworthy given analysts’ recurring denial that AT&T will actually stick with a copper-based triple play, given its bandwidth limitations. (I usually like to point out, however, that investor sentiment has flip-flopped on this issue over time.)

As a Wall Street investor pointed out to me in response to Qwest’s recent vow to roll out FTTN, “All the RBOCs save Verizon (which has the most aerial cabling) are going with FTTN. I am surprised that VDSL still can't get respect.”

Sure, the phrase “all the RBOCs” sounds strange when we’re talking about three companies, but remember that comments from the next biggest incumbent telcos, Embarq and Windstream, lean more toward FTTN than FTTH as well.

Meanwhile, FTTP is being increasingly deployed by non-RBOCs such as municipal utilities.

In spite of analysts’ reservations about using FTTN as a telco triple-play technology, that’s increasingly becoming the norm. So what do carriers like AT&T know that analysts don’t?

E-mail me at ed.gubbins@penton.com.