Last week, Verizon Chief Technology Officer Mark Wegleitner strongly hinted to Reuters that his company might explore less expensive alternatives to pure fiber to the home once the company started hitting more rural regions. "What we'd look for is another approach to FTTP," Reuters quoted Wegleitner as saying. "I'm not sure what the trigger point would be. There still could be more gas in the engine for FTTP."

Obviously the statement left myself and others wondering if this meant rural America would be getting some type of FTTN/VDSL FiOS "Lite." Companies like AT&T and Qwest have taken heat for attempting to milk fiber instead of simply embracing relatively "future proof" pure fiber connectivity. The folks at Verizon's policy blog have since weighed in on Wegleitner's comments, claiming that the CTO was misquoted by Reuters. Says Verizon's Eric Rabe:Rabe doesn't bluntly deny an eventual shift to FTTN for rural deployments, but he doesn't exactly give the vote of confidence to non FTTH rural solutions like DSL (too expensive, triple play bundle issues) or LTE ("unproven") either. The debate could be irrelevant. I'd expect Verizon to ignore much of rural America altogether, given they spent billions on lobbying for franchise "reform," which essentially legalized cherry picking.