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ANAHEIM, Calif. If past boom and bust markets are any indicator, the recovery of telecom transport following the crash could lead to 20 years of stable growth, the retired research director of Corning Inc. said in a keynote at the OFC/NFOEC conference Tuesday.
Donald Keck used the example of railroad and oil booms to point out that fiber-to-the-home rollouts are being initiated at a time when valuation sanity has returned to telecom equipment and carrier markets.
The "big booms" in new technologies almost inevitably bring investment frenzy in their wakes, making bubble cycles all but inevitable, Keck said. When stock markets crash, public anger is tangible and appropriate, Keck said. But the anger rarely is aimed at the technology involved in the boom.
By the time crashes hit, the technology has become engrained and accepted by the public at large. So the anger is directed to the government, with demands for additional regulation. It was just such a post-recession aggravation that led to Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, Keck said.
Today, there is no reason to think that resurrected interest in fiber to the home, curb, or node is a rerun of broadband hype. Keck said that government-financed fiber rollouts in Asia are based on real demand from residential customers for the bandwidth to support applications such as 3D online gaming.
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