SBC Communications could spend up to $6 billion in the next five years to push fiber to 300- to 500-home nodes for delivery of IP-based digital TV, super high-speed broadband and VoIP services, says SBC Chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre, noting that recent decisions related to RBOC wholesale requirements now allow the company to move forward more aggressively with broadband.
“The recent decision by the Bush administration to allow unlawful telephone wholesale rules to lapse and let stand the FCC’s decision not to unbundled broadband is a positive step,” says Whitacre. “We are now more optimistic that we may be headed toward rational, market-oriented regulations that will promote investment and deployment of new capabilities.”
He adds that “the fact that we seem to be overcoming these obstacles… is a source of optimism” at SBC. The ruling means SBC now will “deploy more fiber than we otherwise” would have. But he adds that the ruling won’t have any immediate affect. “What happens now that the rules have expired?” he says. “On the short term, nothing.”
SBC’s new plan, announced today during the SUPERCOMM opening keynote speech, targets millions of existing residential and small business customers in the carrier’s territory; whereas the carrier’s previously announced fiber-to-the-premises strategy is initially focused specifically at new housing and business developments, Whitacre says. He says that digging trenches to lay fiber in areas where buildings already exist creates “too much disruption”.
SBC is now starting to deploy FTTP, Whitacre says. The fiber-to-the-node builds are pending final clarity on applicable regulatory requirements and successful completion of neighborhood-level trials, which begin this summer, he says.
The “fiber-to-the-node” infrastructure will provide each customer with 15 to 25mbps of downstream and 1 to 3mbps of upstream bandwidth. That will allow SBC to deliver facilities-based video in addition to voice and high-speed Internet services, Whitacre says. (The company already offers television services as part of its bundles through a resale deal with digital broadcast satellite provider EchoStar.) In fact, the company today revealed it is the first U.S.-based service provider to test an IP-based switched television service based on the Microsoft TV IPTV platform, which enables standard and high-definition programming, customizable channel lineups, video on demand, digital video recording, multimedia interactive program guides, event notifications, and other features and services. IP-based television services also will allow TV devices to connect with other devices in the home, according to SBC. The carrier and Microsoft plan to begin field trials of the IP-based TV platform later this year.
Noting SBC’s acquisitions over the years, Whitacre says “we are not just trying to be bigger versions of our old services.” SBC, he says, “is working hard to be a communications company” that looks different than a traditional telco. That’s being achieved, he says, through SBC’s investments in IP technology and fiber. “This is a big transformation,” he says, that until the recent Bush administration ruling was being held back. That ruling will “offer extraordinary benefit to American consumers,” Whitacre says, noting President Bush’s recent comments on the administration’s desire to make broadband widely available to the U.S. populace.
Whitacre also noted during his speech today that SBC already has almost 4 million DSL deployed.
