Fiber Optics

Now I know Verizon has made quite the splash with their FIOS offering but I'd like to go back to the year 2000 when Charter Communications purchased a little known company called Bresnan Communications that primarily serviced Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan . Back in 1998 I lived in a small, remote town in Michigan and was doing phone support for Charter and met two men who were in the area selling...you guessed it fiber optics. They talked about speeds only dreamed of back then, they said that they could replace a T3 with one cable. We also talked about the home consumer and what it would mean for them, basically higher quality of service at a lower cost point. I met with these men over the next few years whenever they were in the area and was fascinated over the resistence to change that they spoke of. Fiber was not an easy sell. Then Charter and Bresnan came together, Bresnan was already deep into fiber optic rollouts, from a press release "By year-end 1998, the company (Bresnan) had rebuilt and upgraded the large majority of its systems, and launched high-speed Internet service to markets encompassing nearly half of its homes. In partnership with Blackstone, Bresnan acquired in February 1999 more than 400,000 TCI (now AT&T Broadband & Internet Services) subscribers and launched a major capital improvement program to continue to upgrade its new cable operations and interconnect the majority of its systems via fiber optic cable. By the end of 1999, the company anticipates that nearly 85% of its subscribers will be served by hybrid fiber-coaxial systems". So, I guess my point here is that yes, FIOS is cool but Verizon did not discover fiber optics like I hear so many people saying and I should mention that neither did Charter/Bresnan, yet back in 1999 in an area no one has ever heard of, this geeky girl had fiber!  (for a history of fiber optics check out this link http://www.sff.net/people/Jeff.Hecht/history.html )