Fiber in Asia getting cheaper
Fiber-to-the-home prices dropping by 50 percent in two years? So says UT Starcom's Bill Huang.
Bill Huang, chief technology officer at telecom equipment maker UT Starcom, said the cost of providing speedy fiber optic lines to consumers in Asia will dip to $100 per subscriber in two years. That's down from the current $200 per subscriber price point today.
Speaking at FastNet Futures, an offshoot of the Voice on the Net conference in San Jose, Calif., Huang attributed the 50 percent decline to the high volume of fiber demand and deployment in China and Japan. Huang knows from first-hand experience, since he supplies fiber equipment to Yahoo BB in Japan, the progeny of flamboyant entrepreneur Masayoshi Son.