By Michael L. Carr, Compucon, Inc.
Serving the business consumer's voice, data, and video telecommunications needs through fiber optics represents a significant revenue opportunity for cable companies. The AT&T divestiture, rising local loop phone costs, and general deregulatory philosophy of the Reagan administration have fueled the growth of competition for the telecommunications dollar. Cable operators together with the phone companies, find themselves having to decide between ambitiously pursuing the high speed communications markets or passively standing by to watch one of the new fiber competitors steal the opportunity away and perhaps even threaten their existing business.
This paper begins to examine the cable companies' telecommunications opportunity and the market advantages and threats fiber optic technology represents.