If you are looking for an area of housing that is still hot, look no further than Fiber to the Home (FTTH) applications. In fact, the general discussion among developers, communications providers, network operators and fiber-related vendors at the 2006 FTTH Conference and Expo in Las Vegas in October was darn-right cheery and optimistic. And it should be.

For those who missed the event, check out TecHome Builder's photos from the show floor. There were 2,100 attendees and 156 exhibitors at the Venetian Hotel. Held under the theme 'What's Next?' it could have just as easily been themed 'What's Now.'

According to Kathy Harriman, 2006 FTTH Conference Chair and senior vice president for the Electric Power Board in Chattanooga, Tenn., fiber is the only part of the telecom business that has grown over the past five years. According to research from Render Vanderslice and Associates quoted at the conference, the average estimated value of a FTTH home is valuable to developers and homeowners, ranging from $2,485 more to $5,500 more. (See bar chart on page 41). Meanwhile, when developers in the same study were asked why they install FTTH, 58 percent said "futureproofing the home" while 44 percent cited "added lot value."

Those trends were supported by data presented by both keynoters. First, Hiromichi Shinohara, director, NTT (Nippon Telephone and Telegraph) Access Network Service Systems Labs in Japan, told attendees that there are currently 6 million fiber subscribers in Japan, with 300,000 subscribers being added each month. In contrast, he reports that DSL subscribers are declining in Japan. One consumer trend that is boosting fiber adoption in Japan (and across the world) is gaming. Fiber-based connections offer an advantage to gamers due to speed. In other words, a competitive gamer playing a fiber connection will likely defeat an opponent who is not on a fiber connection. If developers and carriers believe that the Japanese market is a preview of the future for the U.S. market, then fiber's success is on the way here.

Meanwhile, Robert E. Ingalls Jr., chief marketing officer for Verizon, offered an even rosier prediction of where the market is heading. Verizon, of course, launched it FiOS several years ago and has been admittedly beaten up by Wall Street because of the high deployment costs. But the foresight of that investment is starting to create dividends, according to Ingalls, who told attendees, "We think we are on a good trajectory to make our return on investment."

"FiOS is the real deal," he told attendees, pointing to the company's two national super headends, nine video hubs, 292 video-servicing offices and 1.8 million homes covered. "Fiber is superior for speed, operations and reliability."

Ingalls claims that fiber is impervious to moisture, unlike copper, and it allows a two-hour DVD movie to be downloaded in as little as 6 minutes vs. 55 minutes for a cable modem connection. By the end of Q2 2006, Verizon will have passed 4.4 million homes and business in 16 states with fiber, with 6 million passes expected by the end of 2006 (with a 16 percent take-rate currently). By 2010, Verizon expects to have 18 million passes with a take-rate of 50 percent among residential clients.

Ingalls said one of the keys to the growth is the way the company has tried to simplify its package for consumers. FiOS TV, which Ingalls says will have 175,000 customers by the end of 2006, offers 350+ channels, including 22 to 27 high-definition channels, 2,800 video on demand (VOD) titles and an interactive programming guide for $39.95 per month. The company offers a tripleplay for $95 per month, says Ingalls. Meanwhile, Verizon has supported FiOS with a national 'All I Want' advertising campaign.

Indeed, several other smaller service providers told TecHome Builderanecdotally that theycredit Verizon with almost single-handedly boosting consumer awareness of fiber. But the company is not stopping there. It plans several services it calls 'widgets' to increase the value and demand for FiOS in the areas of file backup and sharing, security, gaming, music, remote access and video.

"We are looking at all of these services and investing in them," said Ingalls, citing the company's PlayLink gaming service as an example. "All of this [is being offered] with a very low churn rate. Our revenue mix has to change with more coming from applications [such as these]. Every few months we will be rolling out new services. We will still keep it simple."

One of those services uses a multiroom DVR that will have an embedded zip code, so that the weather will automatically come up on the TV screen for a FiOS subscriber. Stock quotes may also be added to the DVR, along with enhanced home-shopping services. He even speculated that the company could partner with a pizza chain, like Domino's, that would allow a subscriber to order "a pizza with a VOD movie" and be billed by Verizon, with payment remitted to the pizza chain. Verizon already has a partnership with Movielink for its VOD titles.

Ingalls quoted the churn rate for FiOS at just 1 1/4 percent to 1 1/2 percent. "That tells the whole story. The proof is in the pudding. The customer satisfaction is almost universal," he said.

CONNEXION TECHNOLOGIES, LANG HONORED

During the FTTH Conference, Connexion Technologies founder and CEO, Glen Lang, was honored with the third-annual FTTXcellence Award. Lang was selected by Corning and Lightwavemagazine from a pool of industry leaders who were nominated by their peers. The award recognizes the individual who has made the most-significant contribution in the past year to the evolution of optical communications technology in North America.

"[This year's recipient] has been a pioneer in funding, building and running FTTx networks in greenfield developments," said award presenter Martin Curran, senior vice president of Corning. Over the past four years, Connexion Technologies has positioned itself as a leader in the fiber industry. Currently, the company has contracts to provide FTTH services to 80,000 units with plans to expand to 200,000 in the near future.

Connexion has grown from 20 employees to 150 in just two years, and Lang cited the company's relationship with D.R. Horton and one of the largest condo developers in the nation as key to its growth.

At the ceremony, Lang received a Steuben glass art piece and a charitable donation was made in his name to One Economy Corporation, a national non-profit organization created to maximize the potential of technology to help lowincome people build assets and raise their standard of living. Previous FTTXcellence recipients are George Bell of Verizon in 2004 and James Hetterick, director of information systems for the City of Loma Linda, Calif., in 2005.

The FTTH Expo exhibits and most of the sessions were targeted toward communications carriers, not necessarily builders or developers. However, for those construction professionals in attendance, there were some exciting technologies and equipment to check out. One standard in particular -- Multimedia over Coax (MoCA) -- was the topic of discussion in several sessions as a possible solution to resolving the 'chokepoint' when the high-speed FTTH service transitions from fiber to copper inside the home.

The MoCA standard allows for high-speed Web access using the existing coaxial cable in the walls of homes ... of particular interest for the existing home market. Verizon has selected MoCA as its preferred transmission mode for its Hybrid Fiber Coax (HFC) network, while AT&T has adopted the competing HPNA 3.0 standard, which does not use coax but instead uses a home's existing high-voltage wiring to transmit data. Both 'no-new-wires' standards would allow a builder to potentially avoid running structured wiring; however, neither is proven to be more reliable or offer the same signal clarity as a dedicated wiring system.