How much can carriers save in operating expenses by migrating from copper to fiber access networks? Well, one carrier is hoping to reduce his technical workforce by as much as 25%.

Dumont Telephone is rolling out fiber to the premises (FTTP) in Dumont Iowa (pop. 676), replacing the aging copper in its network. As a result, its maintenance costs are going down, and trouble tickets have dropped dramatically. One of the company's four technicians is planning to retire some time in the next five years, said Roger Kregel, Dumont's general manager, and Kregel may not replace him. "On a four-person team, that's quite a bit," he said.

Carriers with larger work forces might not be able to yield 25% reductions in their technician base. Verizon expects to save $1 billion annually with its FTTP network, the largest of its kind. But across the industry, FTTP deployment costs keep coming down. At the Fiber-to-the-Home Conference this week, Embarq, as well as Dumont and others, described the ways that they are squeezing expenses out of the process. Embarq did it in part by outsourcing some of the installation work to one of its suppliers (echoing the more surprising move it made this year in hiring Nokia Siemens Networks to operate its voice network). Others have done it through advances in fiber that make it more flexible. Others have done it by using pre-spliced fiber.

A lot of these advancements have come through the trial by fire that has now brought fiber to nearly 14 million homes. Telcos are sharing lessons learned. Vendors are improving their products based on customer experiences and developing best-practice heuristics. The industry's institutional knowledge on this subject is bulking up. And new entrants are benefitting from the work of pioneers that made the sizable down payments.

E-mail me at egubbins@telephonyonline.com.