Re: Goodbye to copper?

Not to get into the politics of copper vs. fibre, but this is true that
most of the infrastructure both telephone and cable TV/Internet is
fibre.  Basically, it is all about signal quality, bandwidth, and price.
If I could get good bandwidth and reliability with tin cans and string,
it would be an option. It really does not matter what technology is
plugged into the home as long as it delivers the desired end-product.
The copper telephone infrastructure was designed for analog voice.
Originally, cable TV was essentially a unidirectional system, and early
cable tv operators had to upgrade their entire infrastructure to
accommodate the 2-way feature. This is whay most cable companies had
very low upload bandwidths. Today, as mentioned, it is mostly fibre
until the last mile.

On 06/22/2009 09:15 PM, jay@... wrote:
> Much of the back bone is already fiber.  The copper is just the "last mile", basically the lines into the houses, on smaller streets and in rural markets. It will be decades before much of that last mile is replaced. Nor does it need to be in most cases.
>  
> Now if the price of copper returns to the levels it saw last year, you may likely see new wiring switching to all fiber in the not to distant future.  But at the moment its still at half the cost it was, and gigabit ethernet is fast enough for most people building new houses and small office buildings.  
>
> As for forcing customers to "switch", this is just telco propaganda to scare customers into higher priced plans they don't need.  Much like they used the "digital" tv switch to scare customers into high priced cable plans. They basically charge more for "digital" plans, even though it saves them billions to switch customers over. I'm not sure what level tech you over heard but many of the verizon fios techs don't know anything that isn't writen in their verizon books.  Much like the geek squad, they are pretty hit or miss on skill level.
>
>  

--
Jerry Feldman <gaf@...>
Boston Linux and Unix
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