Charter CEO says the idea that fiber is superior is ‘just dead wrong’

MoffetNathanson's Craig Moffet asked Charter CEO Tom Rutledge if cable operators will inevitably have to spend big bucks on fiber deployments to stay competitive in the broadband business. Rutledge said, “We have a lot of fiber in our network, and it’s really a question of where do you end the fiber, and what technology do you use to maximize the connectivity with the end device?” He noted that even a fiber feed directly to a house doesn’t deliver fiber to a device. What delivers connectivity to a device is actually Wi-Fi in most cases. Charter has built an advanced Wi-Fi capacity, which is backed by a fiber backbone and uses hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) cable in the local neighborhood at short distances. A fiber-optic cable doesn’t connect directly to a device in the home. “The idea that this technology [fiber] is transformative and superior is just dead wrong,” said Rutledge. “It’s just another form of transmission.” There would be many in the fiber broadband camp who might disagree with that assessment. They’re lobbying the National Telecommunications and Information Administration heavily to spend the billions of dollars from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act on all-fiber deployments.