Motorola Ships 1 Millionth FTTH Terminal

Motorola has shipped its 1 millionth optical network terminal for fiber-to-the-home deployments worldwide, which include Verizon’s FiOS in the U.S.

The company is fond of touting such milestones — see Motorola Ships 1,000 ‘Wideband’ CMTS Modules (February 2009), Motorola Ships IPTV Set-Top No. 1M (April 2007) and Motorola Ships Digital Set-Top No. 50M (October 2006). No word on whether they had balloons and cake in Horsham, Pa., to celebrate the millionth ONT.

In a passive optical network, the ONT is the thing that attaches to the side of your house. Other service provider customers using Motorola ONTs, which began shipping in 2004, include Cincinnati Bell and Czech telco MagnaLink.

Verizon also uses ONTs from Alcatel Lucent and Tellabs. The telco had 3.1 million FiOS Internet and 2.5 FiOS TV subscribers as of June 30; it reports Q3 results Monday.

Generally speaking, cable operators don’t have an incentive to spend the dough (as Verizon has) on FTTH. There are “fiber deep” options, though, that involve extending the fiber closer to the customer premises and aren’t as costly (see Translation Please: Cable’s Fiber-Deep Options).