With the new vision of telecoms infrastructure in place, it is not too difficult to see this infrastructure as a utility, and as such it should be seen and costed as a ‘real estate’ investment. A $1200 FttP connection, for example, then represents an annual cost of $60 over a 20-year period – less than the cost of painting a property over that same period.
There are already early indications that a high-speed broadband connection adds to the value of the property. This will not last forever but it will apply for the mid- to long-term.
In Greenfield developments (housing developments, new apartment buildings, new office buildings, business parks) infrastructure could also be deployed as a utility. At the same time this significantly increases the viability of the business models for trans-sector and Over-The-Top (OTT) applications.
In the Fiber-to-the-Farm project in the east of the Netherlands, landowners and farmers are supplying the civil works of digging the trench to the street, thereby greatly reducing the overall cost of the project. Similar projects are now emerging across the world.