You could deploy 2 or 3 strands and get more bandwidth to the customer, using perhaps less expensive hardware, or you could maintain fewer strands in the ground and depend on equipment manufactures to maintain an adequate growth in bandwidth capabilities.
Neither approach is going to work for everyone.
-- Dan White
At my previous job we were deploying a hybrid system - a mix of active and PON depending on the requirements of the customer. For the active systems it wasn't homerun fiber back to the main CO - we had a nice ring of fiber to key locations in the City and then we would place a ped where the spurs would connect to. Top that off with a CISCO Wireless Mesh overlay and no matter what speed and mobility you needed you could get it somehow... Our only limit (at the time I left) was upstream to the Internet. --Scott