Abstract

Over the last 50 years residential video has evolved spectacularly in terms of both displayed signal quality and viewer choice. Fiber optic transmission, having brought the benefits of all-digital transport to the interoffice and long haul telecommunications networks, is now poised for a major deployment in the loop plant, which could aid further the evolution of video quality and choice. In 1987 Northern Telecom and Bell South decided to incorporate video into the fiber access system to be deployed in Heathrow, near Orlando, FL. This system was intended to provide design experience in fiber access technologies and to gain field experience in planning, installing, commissioning, and maintaining fiber based residential systems and to explore some of the resultant service opportunities. The Heathrow fiber access system provides subscribers with digital voice, data, and video services from the central office, as shown in Fig. 1.

© 1990 Optical Society of America