Mr. Russell is Chairman of the FTTH Council and Solutions Marketing Director for Calix.

Today’s fiber to the home industry reflects a broad and ongoing shift – from that of a pure technology orientation to one focused on monetizing the investments in fiber access and expanding the range of services offered to homes and businesses.

Nearly five million households in the United States now have fiber all the way home. The number of homes passed is about 15 percent of all homes in the U.S.

FTTH is now being deployed by more than ten operators in Canada with the largest just coming on line in New Brunswick with Bell Aliant.

Projects in the Caribbean are now past the “just expensive resorts” stage and are now being built to the actual residents. The same is being seen in Mexico. We are on the road to universal fiber access and we remain focused on that task.

We are taking fiber to the people because the people are demanding it. Despite cobwebbed corners that still believe 768 kbps is broadband, we are building all-fiber networks that will be able to handle our consumers’ ever-growing bandwidth demands for the rest of this century.

Less than 20 years ago, I gave a presentation at an outside plant fiber optics show and conference held by Ameritech outside Chicago. The title of that presentation was something like “Will fiber ever reach all the way to the home?” Not in my wildest dreams did I expect that question to be answered with such a resounding yes in such a short period of time. And no one seems to be happier about that than the consumers who are living in the millions of North American households that are wired up with end-to-end fiber service.

Over the past eight years, the focus of our Council has shifted from simply promoting the idea of FTTH to actually helping the more than 600 North American service providers that are now deploying FTTH technology.

Let’s face it, the principal issue is no longer whether or not to upgrade to FTTH – but rather how and when. As the market matures the questions are less about technology and more about return on investment, marketing and network operations.

If you look at the swift and profound impact that communications technologies have had on our societies – on life, learning, business and leisure – then you know that with fiber to the home almost anything is possible. We can dream big dreams because fiber is being driven by public demand. We just need to deliver what our customers are telling us they want – fiber all the way!