Fiber-to-the-Home Internet, TV, Phone in One Box

Brian Stretch writes "This looks like a really neat toy. Internet (PPPoE), CATV, DBS, telephone over one fiber optic cable to the converter box that breaks it down into 10BaseT Ethernet, coax, coax, and three POTS lines. I'd prefer more Internet bandwidth, and DBS and HDTV (from over-the-air broadcast) instead of DBS and CATV... but hey, these things could whack both Ameritech and Comcast in one shot. Is anyone familiar with these or any competing devices?"

Comments

Acronym-tastic!

[gvonk]

[PPPoE, CATV, DBS, POTS, DBS, HDTV, DBS and CATV.]

As Dilbert would say, Bingo!

Fiber-distributed telco is more robust

[fishnuts]

Any phone system provider is federally mandated to make sure the system is up 99.999% of the time. In fact, they face hefty fines for even ONE minute of downtime of a service area.
It's to their advantage to build redundancy into their distribution system or face the consequences later.
In the case of fiber-based distribution systems, they use a redundant ring (where a signal has a guaranteed redundant path) around their service area to accomplish this. When someone digs a trench and knocks out the service to a single home, it's still possible to run to a neighbor's house and use their phone in an emergency, so the federal regulations don't require complete redundancy on that "last mile".
Therefore, fiber-based telco services are inherently more robust than telco over copper. Not to mention the advantage fiber has in its resistance to electrical/radio interference lightning.