AT&T stiffens backbone

But they're trying to shove IPTV down that 25Mbps pipe too, 7Mbps of which is reserved for Internet, and that's a problem. A single standard ATSC HDTV channel is 20Mbps, so AT&T recompresses it into 6-8Mbps hash and still only lets you tune a single HD channel at a time for the entire friggin' house. Verizon, OTOH, leaves the HDTV data unmolested and lets you tune as many channels as you want. 

Copper works for short-range high-speed networking but FTTN has to work with copper wire that's a kilometer long. Much of that wire is ancient, and even in ideal circumstances it takes some very fancy electronics to make it work at all. Why not get the one-time expense of laying fiber over with and be able to offer service that doesn't suck?

You know what they did here in my EU country doug? as part of anticipating the future they just put plastic tubes in the ground all over whenever they were doing work, figuring that once fiber (or whatever comes) matures they only need to shove it in and not break open the street again.
Seems clever, but what if it's some wireless system that will be kings though :)

InvestorEngineer,

Do you not understand that the backbone needs to have a much higher data carrying capacity than the lines to the individual homes do? If everyone in the US had 25 Mbps to their homes, you'd probably need multiple terabits per second on the backbone to avoid it being overloaded.

I remember when 100Mbit ethernet was being standardized, and everyone was certain that it would be the last copper ethernet standard. Many businesses ran fiber to every office or cubicle because of that. The smart ones only did it when building or remodeling, alongside high quality copper, to cover their bets. A few really dumb ones only ran fiber and were stuck buying expensive fiber NICs for years until they saw the error of their ways and put back the copper.

Here we are 10 years later and 1 Gbps ethernet over copper works just fine and is dirt cheap, and 10 Gbps ethernet over copper is now standardized - albeit with only 25 meters instead of 100 in the current standard. Of course the need for it is at least a few years out except in very data intensive fields like CAD or video.

I suppose if you are going to dig up the streets you might as well run fiber, but if Verizon was smart they'd also run some high quality cat6a copper from the curb to the home, because the equipment to connect to it at 10 Gbps will be cheaper than the equivalent fiber equipment in a few years!

Clearly, fiber is better than copper for maximum performance, but the total cost of installation, termination and equipment makes copper the better choice when it gives you enough performance today. Using fiber when copper is good enough just costs you money, it is like buying a top end quad core PC with high end graphics card today because you believe that's what will be required to run the next generation Windows OS when it comes out in 2011!

AT&T is not just doing FTTN. FTTH is going to NEW construction areas all over the country. They just aren't putting fiber everywhere to the home. too costly and verizon is feeling it in the pocket book. eventually yes they will have to do FTTH everywhere at some point in time, but they don't need to do it all at once. Thats why AT&T is always posting profits and big dividends for their investors.

When AT&T Uverse only gives 25Mbps to the home over antique copper wire, most of which is reserved for their lame TV service, what's the point? 

C'mon AT&T, do the job right and install FTTH like Verizon did. You're going to have to eventually.