For years, fiber has been considered the gold standard for delivering fast broadband speeds to residential customers, particularly in areas where broadband subscriber density justified the cost. But other areas that fiber couldn’t reach remained mostly underserved, forcing service providers to look for alternative technologies that could offer multi-gigabit connectivity all the way to the home.
Indeed, while fiber has been around for a long time, it is not always the best choice when designing a network. Not only is deploying fiber costly, particularly in urban and suburban markets, but providers would be forced to wait quite a while before they could break even on their investment, regardless of the setting. In order to maintain a sustainable business model, operators have always had to balance the investment in time and resources with what their customers are willing to pay for their service levels.
