While we here at Engadget HQ ponder a week-long excursion to the splendorous island of Grand Cayman, we can't help but be swayed even closer to pulling the trigger after reading this news. WestTel, along with suits from WestStar TV and ABC Trenching, has just broke ground on a $15 million, seven-year initiative to bring fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) to the only Cayman island with an international airport. The first phase will focus simply on establishing a fiber infrastructure amongst corporations, initially from Television Centre to Camana Bay, then up West Bay Road to Governors Square. Phase two will see the deployment of HDTV and high-speed internet / voice services to residences along West Bay Road, while followup phases will string it to the rest of the island. We just made your vacation plans a whole lot easier, didn't we?

Move over, 2012. 2010 is up first, and Aspen Optics is asserting that it'll be a banner year for fiber. Granted, we're taking all of this pretty lightly given the industry that it's in, but nevertheless, said company is proclaiming that FTTH (fiber to the home) will soon be known as FTEH (fiber to every home) while FTTO (fiber to the office) will morph into FTEO (fiber to every office). The proclamation does note that we're talking about "developed nations" here, and the release does tend to focus on the UAE in particular, but this provides good fodder for discussion if nothing else. Do you see fiber booming in just 18 months? We're guessing it'll take a few more years beyond that for it to really make a play for significant cable market share, but hey, we'd love to be wrong.

[Via Developing Telecoms]

iProvo, the largest municipally owned fiber-to-the-premises network in the entire United States, has just been sold to Broadweave Networks. The Provo, Utah-based network actually reaches all 36,000 residents and businesses of the city, and manages to connect homes, businesses, government buildings, schools and even traffic signals. The sale price was $40.6 million, which is plenty to retire the outstanding bonds incurred by Provo to build the system. The City itself seems quite pleased, as it gains the advantage of the sale and it continues to enjoy the benefits of the infrastructure. Under the agreement, Broadweave will act as the network owner and service provider, while Provo retains a license to keep on using the fiber as it has in the past. Best of all, the new owner has already promised to "invest heavily in network upgrades in order to increase capacity, features, and performance for commercial customers," though we aren't sure if that means more HD content is on the way.

Right before our very eyes, Portland, Oregon is quickly becoming a mecca of all things HD (not really, but you get the idea). Not even a full month after we learned that FiOS TV was coming to the area and its local NBC affiliate started newscasting in high-def, Verizon has now announced that some 48,000 more homes in the Portland Metro area will soon have access to FiOS. You heard right -- hordes of domiciles in the communities of Beaverton, Sunnyside / Damascus, McMinnville, Forest Grove, Gresham, Tigard, Tualatin and Camas / Washougal can look forward to receiving access to FiOS TV and high-speed internet. No word on a launch date for any of the aforementioned locales, but hold tight, VZW is blazing a path to those areas as we speak.

Remember that Interactive Media Guide that Verizon was promising other markets this summer? Even if not, FiOS subscribers located in Indiana, Rhode Island, parts of New Jersey and beyond will soon get acquainted with Verizon's new method of searching for and finding content. Right on schedule, the firm is rolling out the guide to an undisclosed amount of its FiOS markets, and hopes to "erase the lines between TV, internet, and personal media." Best of all, users won't even have to lift a finger in order to experience the upgrade, and it's slated to be delivered via a network download at no additional cost. So, for those fortunate enough to be included in the first wave of updates, give us some impressions, will ya?

AT&T's U-verse continues building steam towards its HD launch by adding the Showtime family of channels to the service. This includes both Showtime HD and The Movie Channel HD. Of course, HD over Project Lightspeed has been coming soon for quite a while now, but hopefully we are only a few months away. They've recently signed up channels like Starz HDTV, Wealth TV, Discovery HD, MTV Networks' MHD and others. That could be a very compelling package...whenever it's actually available.

AT&T's U-verse FTTN & FTTP service may not actually offer high definition yet, that hasn't stopped them from adding additional programming for HDTV owners. The Starz package, including Starz HDTV and video-on-demand is the latest station to sign up with the service, which we expect will roll out HD in September or so.