Solving the "last mile" problem is a goal both the telecommunication and cable industries have pursued for years without discovering a single, easily implementable solution. Now, researchers at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology think they have developed a new type of plastic optical fiber that could potentially be used to provide low-cost fiber connectivity from the consumer to the provider.

Plastic optical fiber isn't as fast as traditional glass, but its 2.5GB/s transfer speed still represents a meteoric leap beyond copper. Currently, the majority of optical fiber is prone to breakage (being made from glass), cannot bend, and can be difficult to connect. The Korea Times reports that the new plastic fiber can be easily bent and connected to additional lines, making it useful in hard-to-reach homes or apartments.

The Korea Institute's new technology isn't the first flexible fiber we've seen on the market—various Japanese companies are also working on their own standards—but the institute claims its plastic-based fiber is both faster and of better quality than anything currently available on the Japanese market.

Verizon, in particular, might be interested in plastic optical fibers. The company's FiOS technology runs fiber directly into the home of each subscriber, a choice that was costing the company well in excess of $900 per subscriber as of last March. Verizon has already shown an interest in flexible cable, and announced last summer that it wanted to purchase Corning's new flexible optical fiber as soon as it became available in quantity.

AT&T (and its U-Verse customers) could also potentially benefit from cheaper optical fiber. Instead of running fiber-to-the-home, AT&T's current U-Verse implementation runs fiber-to-the-node and depends on traditional copper wire to handle the last mile. This saves AT&T a great deal of money—the estimated per-user cost of U-Verse was only $270 (as of March) compared to Verizon's $933—but it severely handicaps the company's ability to offer its customers higher bandwidth in the future. If plastic optical fiber is cheaper to purchase and deploy than traditional optical fiber, AT&T could conceivably alleviate its own inevitable bandwidth crunch while still saving money compared to Verizon.