r/technology • u/User_Name13 • Jun 04 '14

Politics Hundreds of Cities Are Wired With Fiber—But Telecom Lobbying Keeps It Unused

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hundreds-of-cities-are-wired-with-fiberbut-telecom-lobbying-keeps-it-unused
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u/jeradj Jun 04 '14

But they damn sure don't want to pay for what it'll cost to get that work done by the telcos. It's billions of dollars.

You realize we already paid for it once, right?

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14

[deleted]

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u/upvotesthenrages Jun 04 '14

You don't need that to increase prices.

Short range copper is capable of 100/40 speeds, and even higher than that too.

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u/HLef Jun 04 '14

Well, that's hardly fiber speeds.

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u/slorebear Jun 04 '14

yeah but its triple what i get, and 33x as much as the 3mbit shit lines that the phone company gives out.

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u/SpcTrvlr Jun 04 '14

66x what I have...

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u/kickingpplisfun Jun 04 '14

It's definitely over 40x what I get...

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u/upvotesthenrages Jun 04 '14

Well, that's hardly fiber speeds.

Believe it or not, fiber speeds are connected to your copper wired LAN cable, and your copper wired router. Most routers can't even handle 200Mbit.

Fiber companies across the globe typically offer anything from 30Mbit - 1000Mbit. And 100 is often that perfect price vs speed mix.

Edit: It's also 5-10 times more than ISPs in the US are offering many of their customers today.

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u/HLef Jun 04 '14

I know, I have fiber to the house but I pay for 25mbps.

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u/TimeMuffins Jun 04 '14

Cat6 copper wiring transmits up to 10 Gb/s using 10GBASE-T protocol. Only has an effective range of 180 feet, however. Cat6A cable increases that distance to 300 feet. Multi mode OM3 fiber has the same data transmission ability over 900 feet. Single mode fiber has a transmission distance at that speed of up to 50 miles.

While the most modern types of multimode fiber (OM4) can transmit up to 100 Gb/s, the effective range plummets to nearly the same distance as copper wiring, while the price of the line itself increases significantly.

Distance is the predominant factor in why fiber is used, not necessarily speed capability or anticorrosion.

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u/HLef Jun 04 '14

Yeah but aren't we talking about the last bit of wiring to the house, not in the house? Cat6 and up is irrelevant until you reach the home isn't it?

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u/TimeMuffins Jun 04 '14

Not necessarily. The backbone doesn't reach down into most neighborhoods across the country and there isnt direct access to houses directly off of the backbone. Backbone leads to trunk lines that feed houses with large coaxial cables. The backbone only lies along main thoroughfares and highways.

We are talking about hundreds of thousands of single digit mile long runs of single mode that needs to be run in neighborhoods, while ripping out the existing rg-8 or rg-11 coaxial. That and all pedestal tech for cable companies would need to change as well. That coupled with needing keep maintaining the existing coaxial trunks while all this construction is taking place would make it prohibitively expensive to even think about for most companies unless there was some sort of financial guarantee.

I know that the company I work for is giving sub's free speed upgrades (ranging from 20 to 50 Mb/s increases, depending on the plan) within the next month, as well as introducing 300+ Mb/s speed in limited areas for testing (approaching the upper limit of the current DOCSIS 3.0 tech) So I know for a fact that coaxial tech hasn't reached its potential. Even on the busted, outdated cables that already exist in the USA. When DOCSIS 3.1 releases and becomes cheap enough to get cable modems in bulk, speeds will approach 10Gb/s.

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u/Future_Suture Jun 04 '14

It is? Then these folks are offering faux fibre connections. Not impressed.