Cringely suggests we build the last mile ourselves

damien

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060629.html

He talks about coops laying down their own fibre. Rural Communities building their own wireless networks have proved to be successful in Ireland but the idea of coops in urban areas looking after fibre connections, would it work?

Sponge Bob

Not a mad idea , coops built the water supply in rural areas and still own the pipes and if you follow that dig with fibre you avoid rockbreaking and grief

In urban area no. Too much restoration involved (footpaths and stuff)

In urban areas maybe HFC instead.

dahamsta

Ducting would be handy, no?

Sponge Bob

Not necessary .

In a rural area simply bury armoured fibre in soil along the boreens.

jwt

Guess it depends on the trade offs of armoured cable cost versus ducting costs.

Would have thought on a point of future planning/proofing ducting would be the better technical solution.

At least it won't be like mid africa where cabling was laid and almost immediately ripped up by bods in jeeps to recover the copper

Although once you go west of the shannon..........


John

Sponge Bob

jwt wrote:

At least it won't be like mid africa where cabling was laid and almost immediately ripped up by bods in jeeps to recover the copper

Every copper robbing gang in Ireland comes from the Midlands or East , fibre would be the safest thing to lay in Leinster ......for sure

In May

Terence O'Reilly, William Reilly, Patrick Connors, Michael McCarthy and Patrick McCarthy, all from Tallaght, were remanded in custody after they were charged with theft from the new power station at Tynagh, near Loughre

As copper has doubled in price since christmas we will see a halving in Eircoms extensive copper network rollout program to compensate. Fibre vs copper economics has changed extensively in the past 6 months along.

50 pair cable is now about €2 a FOOT see here and here . There are 5000 feet in a mile so the cost of running a typical 50 pair cable 1 mile is €10,000 just for the copper alone.

A 96 core fibre (48 pairs ) is cheaper than that and the joining technology has improved .

jwt

A happy days....there was a time when I was one of 18 people in the UK qualified* to use a fusion splicer to join fibre, found out years later I could have named my price rather that the pittance I was being paid


Re cost analysis I was thinking more along the lines of armoured fibre versus unamoured.


John

*MoD standard...don't ask or I'll have to shoot you

Sponge Bob

Its not that fibre itself is dramatically cheaper in the past 3 years its that copper is dog expensive now and that the fibre joining has dropped in price .

The new copper economics have led eircom to roll out more fibre nodes and use legacy copper to power them.

A pure fibre network with 1000BaseLX type GBIC and SPF modules and network cards (not 1000BaseSX) means that you have a technology that will get a Gb connection working from at least 5km and out to 70km with some implementations of LX .

The big variable is the labour but if the Men of the Village all brought their shovels out for a day

Urban Weigl

I've experience with Robert X. Cringely, and let's just say he tends to be a bit "far out" more often than not. I'm not saying it's not an interesting idea, just saying he (often) spouts off **** to get people to read his columns.

dahamsta

I concur with Urban on Cringley. He's a clever man, but he's also a sensationalist. I have a rant about one of his pieces somewhere, but I can't find it right now.

Bob, I take your point, but I'm an urban boyo as yet. When I move down to East Cork we can talk about armoured cable, but for now I live in the city, and if ducting was available like it should be, co-op FTTH would be much more accessible.

adam

Wcool

I find this article interesting:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5116960.stm

Some people are thinking about creating a network using their wifi router. This could work in cities, I guess. But the distances would be to big in rural areas.

Still, Irishwan.ie is slowly creating a network, but the equipment is a tad more expensive...