Fiber, Convergence, and Communities of the Future

HomeNet is a new class of service provider known as an iTPP (integrated Triple Play Provider). HomeNet provides true convergence —digital telephone, digital video, and digital data services over the same IP network. HomeNet offers subscribers everything a cable or phone company can and more, and at a lower cost. Provo residents, for example, can get from 71 to 139 television channels. They can make phone calls over the Internet, which means every long distance call is the price of a local one. And they can connect their computers to the Internet at 10Mbps (about 600% faster than DSL, 250% faster than cable, and 2,000% faster than dial-up, according to HomeNet).

This service also features equal downloading and uploading speeds. In contrast, DSL and cable sometimes limit your upload speeds to as little as 25% of download speeds. And while access to the Internet is 10Mbps, speeds within the iProvo network top out at 100Mbps. That means people within the Provo community will soon be able to communicate with each other at ultra-high speeds. It also means that any intranets set up within the Provo network will be able to take advantage of these high speeds.

HomeNet's video service takes advantage of IP multicasting to stream MPEG-2-encoded content over the network to its customers. In the iProvo infrastructure, each home has a sort of central hub with an Ethernet converter which breaks out the signals and separates out the services (audio, video, data), explains Jon Moore, HomeNet's Chief Technology Officer. Once separated out, the video signal goes to a set top box, which decodes the MPEG-2 stream. Right now the broadcast video is converted from digital to analog for display as standard NTSC video. Moore says the company is working on a next generation set top box that will feature "high def" images in the 1024-pixel range. He also says his company will at some point probably switch from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4, but right now, all the content providers are supplying their content in MPEG-2.

Today, customers who are more discerning about image quality can get better resolution video (DVD-quality, according to HomeNet) by subscribing to HomeNet's Video On Demand option, which is primarily a movie service. Moore says the company uses a server equipped with a large disc array for its VOD service. The server is currently capable of only 150 concurrent streams, but Moore says HomeNet plans to scale up as demand increases.

So far, the business community there in Provo has not yet caught on to the potential of 100Mbps pipes, says HomeNet Marketing Director Mark Ungerman, but the project is just barely underway at this point, with not even the first phase yet completed. Ungerman believes that video conferencing will eventually be one popular use for this bandwidth, and another will be distance learning. He says there are a number of colleges in Provo (Brigham Young being the most prominent) that have expressed an interest in distance learning to the Provo City Council. Another obvious application is home/business security.

On its Web site, the city of Provo points out some less obvious applications: "Fiber-to-the-premise will allow many services not possible with current technology," the Web site states, and goes on to list "uploading and downloading of immense graphics files, video gaming, telemedicine applications, video-on-demand, business to business connections, telecommuting, and numerous school, local, community, and neighborhood applications."