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Remember Interactive TV, the pre-Internet form of interactivity, that failed to fly because content was to be centrally created?

Way back in one of the early-1990s stagings of PC Forum, Bell Atlantic CEO Ray Smith, struggling with the possibility that Interactive TV would fail, declared, "Fiber beats copper on truck rolls alone, even without a business model." I have not been able to find anything like Ray Smith's statement in any Google-able form, nevertheless I heard it with my own ears. Alas, I am also remembering it with my own mind.

Now, fortunately, we don't need my memory. We have current, real-world confirmation. According to Telephonyonline, Chuck Graff, director of corporate network and technology at Verizon, told yet another forum, the NEBS Forum, the same story. According to the Telephonyonline story,

Verizon’s FiOS deployment has enabled the company to reduce truck rolls associated with maintenance of copper phone lines. “Overall, we’ve seen a 39% savings in maintenance,” Graff said.

Of course we don't know whether he's comparing old copper to new fiber, or looking at numbers shaped by deferred maintenance of copper, or citing annual versus lifetime cost, or summarizing the results of a statistically reasonable covariance study. What we do know is that a senior Verizon official said, "39% savings," in public. This is good news. Big news. Worth remembering when telcos and cablecos whine about how much it all costs.

A tip of the hat to Casey Lide at baller.com for spotting this story.

Technorati Tags: fiberoptics, FIOS, FTTH, Verizon