Fiber gets nimble: small telcos weaving fiber web

While Verizon gets most of the US press for its fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) FiOS rollout, small operators like the Paul Bunyan Telephone cooperative have quietly been laying fiber of their own for years. According to quarterly trade journal FTTH Prism, half of all rural telcos are now deploying fiber of some kind, and many are choosing to run it all the way to customer homes. David Chaffee, who edits the journal, says that he has "been disturbed by some of the attitudes exhibited towards our rural communities by people that should know better." One common attitude: rural residents may need broadband, but they surely don't need (or expect) good service. As Chaffee notes, this short-sighted attitude means five or ten years from now, rural residents with their slow broadband connections will face the same connection issues that dial-up users do today. Smaller operators like Paul Bunyan are trying to change that.