By Tom Warren

Back in 1997 when I graduated from college, I started working at a company called CSP which was a little cable assembly house in Plymouth, MN. It was right down the street from another company called Optical Solutions. They were working on this new technology that used optical splitters to deliver broadband over fiber to residential customers. They were talking about crazy things like splicing optical splitters in the OSP and splicing a jumper into a box on the side of my house. I remember thinking this was never going to take off. I will never need fiber to my house because with DSL I can do anything I want. I can write emails, look at sports scores and even play checkers against my buddy who lives in Kansas City.

Most of my professional career, I’ve worked on bringing fiber to the home. I recently read an article that stated: “All-Fiber Networks Now Pass 20 Million North American Homes”. I guess I am eating crow big time.