FTTH Council gives thumbs up to NY governor

DECEMBER 18, 2007 -- The Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) Council (search for the FTTH Council) has praised an initiative by New York Governor Eliot Spitzer to develop a comprehensive statewide strategy aimed at providing affordable broadband access throughout the state.

Earlier this month, the governor announced the formation of the New York State Council for Universal Broadband and set a goal of enabling every citizen in the state's metropolitan areas to have access to transmission speeds of 100 Mbits/sec by 2015, with at least 20 Mbits/sec in rural areas.

"We applaud Governor Spitzer for taking this step toward a 100-megabit future for New York and the accompanying economic and lifestyle benefits for the citizens of that state," said Joe Savage, president of the FTTH Council. "His proposal makes sense because the fiber-driven technology required to achieve this goal is now available, and because our future economic success depends on widespread deployment of vastly superior broadband services."

In March, the FTTH Council called on Congress and the White House to establish a "100 Megabit Nation" broadband policy aiming for universal service at that level by 2015. The council noted at the time that 100-Mbit/sec connections are already common in a number of Asian and European countries and asserted that upgrading U.S. networks is a matter of preserving the country's competitiveness. Shortly thereafter, U.S. Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV) introduced a resolution in the Senate calling for a 100-Megabit Nation policy.

Since that time, legislators in Minnesota have introduced legislation to establish a 1-Gigabit bandwidth goal for the state, Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine has created a Broadband Roundtable to strategize on how to get high-speed access to all the state's communities, and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has filed a bill in the state legislature to establish a Massachusetts Broadband Institute, whose mission would be to extend broadband access to every community in the state by 2010.

"A growing number of government leaders across the country are recognizing that that a 100-megabit nation, powered by fiber optics, is not only achievable over the next few years, but it is also an imperative for our country if we are going to continue to be a world leader in technology," said Savage. "Our message to these visionaries is that the members of the FTTH Council are ready, willing, and able to build the next-generation networks that can make this a reality."

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