Ever since Google announced its plans to establish ultra high speed 1Gbps fiber optic network in one of the U.S. cities via Fiber To The Home(FTTH) network, many people have been persistently asking about FTTH, what it is all about and how would it manage to provide upto 1 Gbps data rate data communcation to every consumer of the city, whichever will be chosen by Google.

Hence, we decided to explain the concept of FTTH to our audiences, in order to shed more light over the basics behind the powerful technology that has the capability of providing extremely high speed broadband internet to individual consumers.

Without much ado, let’s jump straight to the explanation…

Fiber To The Home, a.k.a. FTTH is a networking architecture in which any Fiber optics network, where the last mile connectivity is usually provided through copper cables, is physically enhanced in a way that the entire connectivity from the central controlling office to the end consumer transforms purely into Optic Fiber based connectivity.

Hence, in a Fiber to the Home(FTTH) network, the primary difference comes in the last mile connectivity to end consumers. With FTTH in place, the copper cables to end consumers are completely replaced by fiber optic cables, which consequently makes the entire connectivity from central node to the end user, purely through optic fiber.

How does Fiber to the Home(FTTH) effect the data rate ?

• Speed of transmission: Fiber Optic communication is based on transmission of optical(light) signals rather than electrical signals and it’s a well known fact that speed of light is the most ultimate and can’t be exceeded by any other thing, whether electrical pulses or anything else.
• Signal Fidelity: Another notable point here is that Optical signal transmission undergoes very less signal attenuation compared to electrical signals, even over long range transmission. This results in high fidelity of signals sent over Optical medium rather than electrical medium.
• Signal multiplexing: Optical communication takes advantage of Wavelength multiplexing, thereby, transmitting multiple optical pulses through the same optical fiber, at the same time.

Now, when Fiber to the Home(FTTH) is in place, the last mile connectivity to end consumer is completely replaced by Optical fiber, which eventually gives a high boost to data transmission rates, due to ultra speed Optical transmission, high signal fidelity and more signal multiplexing.

FTTB and FTTN

There are some other similar terminologies often used in the context of Fiber to the Home(FTTH), namely FTTB and FTTN.

FTTB or Fiber to the Building, represents a networking scenario where Optical fiber connectivity from central node extends upto a building or a campus, after which the same fiber connection is shared or distributed to multiple users of the building or campus via Copper cables.

FTTN or Fiber to the Node, represents a scenario where fiber is terminated at some community cabinet,  far away(could be upto several kilometers from the user termination point) from actual consumer end and the rest of the connectivity from the cabinet to the end consumer is provided by copper cables.

To encourage uniformity and standard procedures among all the countries establishing Fiber to the Home(FTTH) networks, FTTH Councils of Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific use standard definitions for Fiber to the Home(FTTH) and Fiber to the Building(FTTB).

How Fiber to the Home (FTTH) manages to provide upto 1Gbps data rates ?

The data transmission speeds in Optical fiber as well as Copper cables are limited by distance but the major difference is that the Copper cables offer relatively much more attenuation than Fiber optic cables. For instance, an Gigabit Ethernet that connects networking devices via Copper cables remains limited to 50-100 meter range, while the same Local Area network gets the ability to extend even upto 10 kilometers, if Optical fibers are used instead of Copper cables in the same scenario.

This helps (Fiber to the home)FTTH networks deliver extremely high speed data rates to end consumers. But more use of fiber cable also hikes the cost of building Fiber to the Home(FTTH) networks, thus higher usage cost for the end consumer as well.

Direct Fiber and Shared Fiber

Fiber to the Home (FTTH)  networks could either be based on Shared Fiber or Direct Fiber concept.

In case of Direct Fiber, an entirely dedicated line of Fiber optic cable is given to a single home, right from the central controlling node of an area upto the user premises. This, of course, gives no chance for any wavelength interference, gives full, dedicated access to fiber optic communication for every individual subscriber and maximizes the data transmission speed.

On the darker side, it is a costlier and inefficient alternative of providing Fiber to the Home(FTTH) service to the end consumers as the fiber optic lines are dedicated to every consumer but consumers are not likely to utilize Internet service all the time.

In case of Shared Fiber, the Fiber to the Home (FTTH) network multiplexes multiple user connections into single fiber optic cable, which makes an efficient use of Fiber optic cable rather than wasting unused valuable bandwidth, which is usually the case with Direct Fiber.

Fiber to the Home(FTTH) and Dark Fiber

For establishing FTTH service in any particular area, service provider would certainly take account of pre-established Dark Fiber present in that area, which could be used for partial or complete deployment of Fiber to the Home (FTTH) services.

The more Dark Fiber in an area, the easier it becomes for the service provider to setup Fiber to the Home(FTTH) services in that area.