2010 Buyers Guide - Broadband Properties

FTTH CONFERENCE COVERAGE
Telemedicine Essential to
Expanding Health Care
Health care providers and corporations
are counting on telemedicine
to improve health care
access while controlling costs, Phillip
Robinson, CEO of St. Joseph Medical
Center in Houston, said in a keynote address
to the FTTH Conference.
St. Joseph Medical Center was a
troubled, inner-city nonprofit hospital
when a group of about 100 physicians
purchased it in 2006 and turned it into
a for-profit organization. Since then, the
hospital has added many new programs
and services; in the past year it has seen
double-digit growth in nearly all service
lines.
Robinson said the hospital’s new
owners have reinvented the organization
Lafayette, La. – a city of 125,000
halfway between New Orleans
and the Texas border – endured
one of the longest and bitterest fights
of any municipality seeking to build its
own fiber-to-the-home network. The results
seem to have been worth the effort.
In February 2009, five years and several
lawsuits after the FTTH project was proposed,
Lafayette Utilities System (LUS)
began serving its first customers with
voice, video and data. Its prices are 20
percent below the competition’s, and the
services it offers are superior.
LUS director Terry Huval told the
FTTH Conference that 70 percent of
Lafayette households and 80 percent
of businesses have expressed interest in
signing up for LUS’ services. However,
the utility’s business case is based on a
conservative 50 percent take rate, and
the actual break-even point is 23 percent,
even if the system’s electronics are
upgraded every seven years.
through the use of technology, especially
in their corporate health programs.
Bringing Medical Care to
Offshore Workers
Telemedicine, including video consultations
with doctors and the use of
broadband-enabled diagnostic equipment,
allows corporations in the shipping
and offshore drilling industries to
cost-effectively deliver medical care to
workers who have infrequent access to
doctors. Telemedicine is also useful for
screening psychiatric patients for hospital
admission – on-screen interviews are
less threatening to agitated patients –
and for diagnosing stroke patients, who
must be evaluated very quickly if they
Municipal Fiber in Lafayette
100 Mbps for All –
No Computer Needed
Because LUS is a municipal electric utility,
it is laying fiber along its own power
line routes, 40 percent of which are underground
and 60 percent are aerial.
Construction is still in progress, and the
system is expected to be complete by the
middle of 2011.
The LUS system is based on a GPON
architecture. A headend delivers signals
to 13 optical line terminals (OLTs) at
electrical substations. Each OLT is connected
to eight local conversion points
and 288 customers, with a 1 x 32 bandwidth
split. The optical network terminals
(ONTs) at the customer premises
connect to electric meters and battery
backup devices.
Residential customers can purchase
up to 50 Mbps symmetrical Internet
service and business customers up to
100 Mbps; all customers receive 100
Mbps symmetrical bandwidth for communication
within the network. The
company offers several standard service
bundles and encourages customers to
build their own bundles as long as the
monthly subscription is at least $44, the
amount required to cover the expense of
building out fiber to the customer. Customers
can mix and match video offerings
to meet their needs – for example,
using a digital set-top box and DVR
are to be treated successfully with clotbusting
drugs.
The hospital recently launched a
partnership with telemedicine provider
MedConcierge to deliver services to the
overseas employees of its corporate clients.
This program will allow employees
to see their regular doctors via videoconferencing.
“We’ve had a great response
from our corporate clients,”
Robinson said. “I think there will be
great demand for these services, and I’m
proud to be the first to provide them.”
Robinson said that, whatever approach
is taken in health care reform,
telemedicine will be essential in expanding
health care services to people whose
needs are currently unmet. BBP
with one television and getting analogonly
services on the others. A TV Web
portal allows residents to obtain basic
Internet access without a personal computer
by plugging a keyboard into the
set-top box.
Challenges for a
New Service Provider
Huval said getting multiple vendors’
equipment to interoperate has been a
challenge due to finger-pointing and the
“blame game.” Saying that the lack of
support by some vendors had shocked
him, he warned the audience, “Demand
unambiguous performance requirements
in your contract.”
Another challenge has been obtaining
video programming – a difficult,
costly and time-consuming process.
Huval suggested that municipal broadband
providers form a video buying
cooperative, much as small telcos and
cablecos have done, to leverage their
buying power.
Finally, LUS’ struggles with the incumbents
are not yet over. Even though
the city prevailed in its lawsuits, Huval
said that “attack ads, bad faith and subterfuge
are too often the norm.” Despite
November/December 2009 | www.broadbandproperties.com | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | 49