Let them eat glass fibre and Cat5 (Score 1)

Unfortunately the content of the article doesn't really address the fundamental challenge they are trying to address. The primary costs in fibre to the home are not in the home cabling but in the fibre construction work to connect up to every home (or out in front to a pit). The cost of glass fibre is also not that significant in comparison to the in home construction costs, and hence the whole thrust of this initiative does not seem to materially help their stated goal. The primary costs are installation related, not cabling type.

I suspect to, their whole statement about "..I have a two-year-old child," ...and I would never install a glass optical fibre in my own home" is a self justifying statement to rationalize their plastic fibre work. A sharp piece of copper wire, a kitchen knife, electricity, laundry cleaners and drugstore items are going to be far bigger threats to children than a terminated optical fibre cable that would most like terminate in a box on a wall, where ethernet via catX cable (or optical patchcords) would connect to home networking gear. For termination of fibre to the home CPE, think of something located near the home electrical switchboard, which may be internally in a wiring closet, or external. In addition optical levels in access networks are also practically not at the levels to cause harm (one would have to work very hard e.g. have a microscope and focus on the end of a terminated fibre - in additiona with an equipment at the exchange end without any optical safety).

I suspect also home data distribution will be ethernet based and this will also undermine their stated research purpose. So if I have a PC/Mac with Gige, DVR with 100mEth, a home network with an CatX interconnections, guess what technology people will look to connect with? Inside the house, CatX is likely to be most common. Gigabit Ethernet switches are already affordable and work well over wired connections and have sufficient range to work through most homes. The interconnect speed to a fibre network right now is in a few 10s of Mbits, with hopefully up to 100M being more common within 3- 5 years. Hence inside the home, even 100M looks fine today, with GigE being fine for a house 'backbone' for the next 5 years. And I hear we expect to have more economic 10G Eth wired connections in early 2012, so there is a path to an economic house 10G backbone next decade... :-). Let the Bit Torrents run free.....