By the end of the year, Verizon’s current fiber-to-the-premises, or FTTP, and ultra-long-haul fiber network deployments will be more than halfway complete, said CEO Ivan Seidenberg Wednesday in a keynote address at NXTcomm. But the company is already planning for future network migrations years down the road.

In a prepared video segment, Seidenberg introduced the NXTcomm crowd to the Bayers, a family of four in Massapequa, N.Y., the 1 millionth customer of Verizon’s FiOS FTTP service. Three years after its launch, FiOS is now available in 16 states (Rhode Island was added to the list this week). By the end of the year, it will be available to 9 million households, halfway toward its ultimate goal of 18 million homes by the end of the decade. Seidenberg now claims to have more than 1 million FiOS customers and is “closing in quickly” on half a million video subscribers.

Though Verizon is now transitioning from broadband passive optical networks (BPON) to Gigabit PON (GPON), it is already considering future migrations beyond GPON. “By the end of the decade, we’ll be preparing for the next generation of [FTTP] electronics,” Seidenberg said. “Speeds that rival what we deliver over our most advanced business networks today.”

Meanwhile, Verizon expects to add 6000 miles of fiber this year to its all-optical ultra-long-haul U.S. network, passing the halfway point in the planned 50,000-mile network.
Seidenberg also described the future of the company’s wireless services as the broadband network outside the fiber-fed home. While Verizon is upgrading its wireless broadband network today with Rev. A, by the end of the decade, it will be ready for fourth-generation wireless broadband, which will open the door to a new world of applications.

“By 2012, there will be 50 million consumer devices in use with embedded wireless capabilities,” he said. “The innovation curve with wireless is just beginning.”