#Fiber optic backbone map upgrade#

Consumer demand for better and faster broadband will also drive investment in the newer, faster technology.

#Fiber optic backbone map upgrade#

As the cost to maintain aging copper networks increases over time, more providers will choose to upgrade to fiber. Installing a new fiber-optic network is a large capital expenditure for service providers, but maintaining existing networks isn’t cheap either. We’ve also developed a ranking of cities with the most “fiber to the home” (FTTH) infrastructure, a metric that essentially measures how fiber-friendly a city is. For more details on the fiber internet market in the U.S., including the number of fiber optic providers and which communities they serve, see our list of every provider offering fiber optic internet service in the United States. households have access to fiber, according to the Fiber Broadband Association.īelow, we’ll lay out everything consumers should know about fiber internet. In Dallas, fiber internet is available to about 61 percent of residents, and that qualifies as high availability compared to other major metros in the United States. Only 21 percent of internet customers in Chicago, for example, have fiber available as of 2020. Due to the high cost of installing fiber service directly to homes, even major cities are still predominantly served by cable. A fiber internet connection easily can be 10 times as fast as a standard cable connection.įiber is the fastest home internet option by far, but its availability is scattered.

The biggest benefit of fiber is that it offers much faster speeds over much longer distances than traditional copper-based technologies such as digital subscriber line (DSL) internet and cable internet. Fiber internet service is the gold standard of wired residential internet connections.