Air blown fiber (ABF) systems has been around since 1982 through the work of British Telecom. Overseas telcoms in places like the UK, Japan, etc run thier conduit systems aerial making the space extremly valuable(and crowded). The thinking behind ABS was to develop a system that could accommodate moves, adds and changes easily with minimal disruption. Initially, a premises cabling standard was not defined, and there were a number of fiber types available.
Now-a-days fiber standards (62.5/125 µm) have been identified and with the every emerging DWDM technology larger optical bundles are over kill outside of long haul. Even then you can free up 50% of your fiber out of a 288. You simply don't need a 864 ring in premise.
A cost comparison done by BICI reported the total cost per fiber is around $460 per fiber in an ABS enviroment versus about $200 for a conventional fiber cables. Conventional fiber cabling is a proven, standard based design which can easily meet the requirements of the most customers, at a significantly lower cost, well into the future.
Like I say....waste of money :-)
