Restart state telecom with fibre only

Fergus

I was just looking at this article via slashdot about how high bandwidth fibre installation is basically no more expensive than copper over lifetime:

http://www.corning.com/opticalfiber/guidelines_magazine/eguidelines/vol10/view.aspx?article=1&page=1&region=na&language=en

Wouldn't it be nice if we could just leave eircom and the copper local loops alone to head off into antiquity, and the govt could start again with a new state operation running optics to each house instead, connecting back to the MANs and all that good stuff. There'd be enough bandwidth to allow as many private entities as required to offer services over it.

damien

Love your profile tagline. Cloud needs to do some housekeeping.

lucernarian

I was told by a friend - who also said that Swisscom were looking to take over eircom when eircom at first denied it - that eircom didn't use thick copper cables anymore but use fibre optic. He was suprised to hear that cabinets for new housing estates around town were being served by copper wires (a 400 pair cable in one example as of this year). Reason being that fibre optic was now cheaper than copper as f/o lasts longer.

He came back to me the next day and confirmed that eircom still install large copper cables but he didn't know why not. That's all his father said.

Why would they not use fibre now? Is it more expensive in the short term?

Btw eircom use corning fibre.

OfflerCrocGod

Eircom only care about the short term - anyway what's being talked about here is FTTH which is extremely expensive. It will never happen under the present situation.

Dangger

Wow Fergus lives!!!!

Solair

Most telcos still install large copper cables. It's not very forward thinking in a lot of ways, but they do have to deal with legacy cabling systems.

Installing fiber into those cabinets afterwards woudln't be all that difficult anyway as the existing copper cables run along ducts. Cable (including fiber) can be installed by pushing it through the ducting or, in some cases, blown through with compressed air!! (I'm not kidding they do this)

The most important thing is that they actually have ducts and cabnets in place. The real killer is where areas are served from overhead poles. (i.e. much of the older parts of most of our cities)

TimTim

As far as I know they run fiber optics as far as their exchanges and the likes. Much more bandwith and easier to run one fiber then millions of copper cables. If you ever see how fiber is made on "how its made" on discovery, you'll see what I'm talking about.

Personally the only reason they still use copper as they can say "well we can't give you broadband your copper isn't suitable" with fiber optics this wouldn't be an issue iirc aslong as the attenuation is suitable.

Solair

eircom probabally took it all out and sold it on ebay once they went PLC..

but yea, it's all fiber between exchanges... there may well be fiber to the cabinets in some areas too. It would depend on the local infrastructure I would guess.

Telecom Eireann wern't too bad on the technology side of things... they did spend money eircom have let a lot go to wreck and ruin from what I can see.

I can imagine though... "we can't give you broadband over that fiber, it's the wrong colour. You'll have to use dial up!"

SeaSide

Fibre is alot less forgiving than copper so not really suitable in a domestic situation. Also fibre splicing can go wrong and is a reasonably skilled trade thus more expensive. There lifeline POTS issues too - if there is a powercut you cant ring fire brigade. The cable cos have gone for Hybrid Fibre Coax HFC which is fibre to a street cab and coax from there serving around 20 to 30 houses.

paulm17781

Would fiber to the cabinet be more advantageous than fibre to the exchange? VDSL??

TimTim

paulm17781 wrote:

Would fiber to the cabinet be more advantageous than fibre to the exchange? VDSL??

I'd say the costs of running such an operation and support costs are far higher. A DSLAM in each exchange with VDSL cards and if anything goes wrong an engineer has to go out to the cab while with the current situtation everything is kept in the exchange thus making support easier.

It would be nice for it to happen but I doubt Ireland will see it anytime soon and plus the idea of the local kids smashing up this box and killing my DSL is shocking! Although I would like to think these would be stored in tamper proof boxes.

Sponge Bob

Solair wrote:

Installing fiber into those cabinets afterwards woudln't be all that difficult anyway as the existing copper cables run along ducts. Cable (including fiber) can be installed by pushing it through the ducting or, in some cases, blown through with compressed air!! (I'm not kidding they do this)

Lets say cab x has 100 houses in its service area. 2 x 50 pair underground cables to the cab from the exchange. It is actually very easy (and cheap) to pull a 50 pair out between the cab and the exchange, blow a fibe thru in its place and use the redundant 50 pair in bonded pair modee to power the fibre termination in the cab. You may need 10 pairs out of that 50 to carry enough 48v current to power the fibre/copper a/c conversions etc.

If those 2 x 50 pairs are overhead then forget it .....in Ireland anyway .

eircomtribunal

Fibre to the cabinet seems the next logical step and long overdue.
I remember an ODTR (or ComReg) paper dealing with this scenario.
It will shorten the copper run and increase DSL speed significantly. The technology to put DSAMs into the cabinets is readily available.

P.

Fergus

AFAIK, Esat put fibre in to their street cabinets around Dublin back in the 90s, with copper for just the last part of the run into the street. And as mentioned the cable operators run fibre throughout the neighbourhood too. Nothing new here.

It all comes down to what sort of minimum bandwidth we're expecting to have delivered to each premises/household.

If you have expectations the way eircom would like it, fibre is completely unjustifiable cos sure we only need a phone line, or maybe 1 or 2 mb DSL if you're really lucky.

But in the 21st century, expecting homes to be connected to infrastructure that can deliver at least 100mbps isn't unreasonable. If some ISPs around the world are already providing residential service over 20 mbps today, 100mbps - 1gbps is going to be common enough in decade or two. Heck, DSL is starting to look long in the tooth at this stage.

bk

SeaSide wrote:

Fibre is alot less forgiving than copper so not really suitable in a domestic situation.

Verizon, the largest teleco in the US would disagree with you. They are currently rolling out fibre to their customers. I believe about 3 million customers a year.

Everything else you said about cost and lifeline is completey true, it is just that Verizon has decided that they need FTTH in order to deliver advanced services like TV, VoD and VoIP.

Interestingly Verizon decided that they wouldn't go with FTTC and VDSL as the cost of FTTH wasn't vastly more expensive, yet it offers far greater scalabilty and future proofing.

damien

Amsterdam is doing Fibre to the Premises in 2006

Solair

Just watch as eircom develops the first dial-up over fiber service

zuma

Solair wrote:

Just watch as eircom develops the first dial-up over fiber service

Hey, If they can do it with DSL then they may just end up doing it with FTTH as well!!!!