AT&T’s recent $5.75 billion acquisition of Lumen’s consumer fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) business is the latest consolidation in the US optical transmission field. It also has wider implications for the telco sector in the US and globally, in terms of fixed/mobile convergence and the primacy of optical connectivity on both fronts. This increasingly includes Free Space Optical (FSO), for terrestrial but also satellite connectivity, as Wireless Watch discussed last week. The AT&T-Lumen deal is also significant for what was not acquired – the rump of the latter’s national, regional, state, and metro-level fiber backbone network infrastructure, coupled with central offices and relevant real estate. This concorded with the strategy of both parties. For AT&T, it consolidates its dominant position in US fiber to…