10GB over copper

[JackMDS]

10GB over copper.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28233982

 

[Red Squirrel]

Wow at first I was thinking 10g ethernet but this is phone lines, quite an achievement. Telcos already have thousands of pairs going leaving COs and branching off to individual homes. This could very well be used to offer speeds higher than ADSL in places that have enough spare pairs. Depends how drastic the speed drop is though. But if they could offer say speeds of 30/30 even that would be quite a boost for places that can't have fibre like where everything is underground.

 

[VirtualLarry]

This isn't even for "last mile" copper. More like, "last 100 feet". If the telco decided to run a fiber cabinet to the edge of your property, then you could get 1Gbit service over your copper pairs.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

This isn't even for "last mile" copper. More like, "last 100 feet". If the telco decided to run a fiber cabinet to the edge of your property, then you could get 1Gbit service over your copper pairs.

Even still, its a really cool development.

 

[BrightCandle]

30 metres! That isn't useful to telco's for delivering broadband because its not enough for fibre to the curb distances which has to be more like 100's of metres. 30metres just isn't enough distance to make it worth rolling out. Its an impressive speed over that distance, I think that would make a lot of sense to deliver for a new ethernet standard, 30m a lot of business and homes could cope with just fine, but its too expensive to roll it out for FTTC.

 

[Red Squirrel]

The idea is that at longer distances they may be able to offer 1gb, or even 100mb using this tech.

Fibre is still king, but for places where the cable plant is underground you have to try to make copper work. Most ISP's arn't willing to dig up all the streets due to cost and logistics. We just got FTTH here and I'm very lucky the cable plant here is aerial. Lot of people can't get it if they arn't near aerial cable plant.

 

[azazel1024]

It is interesting, but the only way I see this being useful really is fiber to the pole. A lot of residences either have their power pole or a utility service box (for teleco) within the rough 70 meter distance they've proven this to work for gigabit speeds. I know in my case my pole is ~30m behind my house. Of course I already have fiber from the pole to my house, but the principal is there.

A bit easier to hang a coverter on the pole to go from fiber your copper line and hook you up that way than it is to run fiber from the pole to your house and stick an ONT on your house (or in the case of buried, burying it).

 

[BrightCandle]

In many of the cities however the phone line are in the pavements. There it means digging up the pavements everywhere to run the fibre to the very close curb and putting converter boxes on the pavements everywhere, which is a planning permission nightmare.

Its one of the reasons why many postcodes in London are covered by Fibre to the Curb but actually can't get FTTC connections. While BT has upgraded the local exchange it can't actually find decent places to fix the cable boxes that don't interfere with other things. This technology would have them placing more than 10x as many boxes, its simply not practical to do it. It would be easier and cheaper for all involved to terminate the fibre in the house or use much longer runs of copper, which is how they are doing it now.

I can't help but think its got limited uses in particular types of house estates where a switching box isn't a problem every 100metres on the pavements.

 

[azazel1024]

In many of the cities however the phone line are in the pavements. There it means digging up the pavements everywhere to run the fibre to the very close curb and putting converter boxes on the pavements everywhere, which is a planning permission nightmare.

Its one of the reasons why many postcodes in London are covered by Fibre to the Curb but actually can't get FTTC connections. While BT has upgraded the local exchange it can't actually find decent places to fix the cable boxes that don't interfere with other things. This technology would have them placing more than 10x as many boxes, its simply not practical to do it. It would be easier and cheaper for all involved to terminate the fibre in the house or use much longer runs of copper, which is how they are doing it now.

I can't help but think its got limited uses in particular types of house estates where a switching box isn't a problem every 100metres on the pavements.

Mmm, part of the point are fewer runs. If you'd have to run a fiber backbone anyway, what is cheaper, the fiber back bone and then whatever distance you need to run from the backbone to each residence, to an optical network terminal and then in to the house? Or place an ONT along the backbone near each residence, tying in to the existing copper phone lines?

 

[BrightCandle]

With limited space on the pavements and a requirement to get planning permission and get residence input for the placement of every single green box I can see how FTTC can appear to be cheaper and then once the council gets involved and the residents all don't want the box in front of their house in the end your reached customer base drops in reality and breaks your cost graph.

Recently I have lived in 3 places all with FTTC, not one of those places could I actually get it. The local residents all protested against the box and it never got installed, the end result is that actually whole roads are not getting even one box let alone the several this technology would require. While us techies will happily have a green box outside our house if it means 10 gbit/s internet grandma next door wont allow it on the street and so the council wont let it be installed. I suspect BT in the UK is having this problem a lot, its the reason the regulator has now asked them to go beyond just postcode rollout details but the truth is that a lot less than the anticipated homes are actually ending up with access to it.

I can't see an even higher density working out generally. The boxes on the street are a big problem here, many communities just don't want them. FTTH is a lot neater, it might cost more but its penetration would be dramatically higher and require less planning permission applications.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah seems silly that people would protest against a box that is for... FIBRE but people can be weird. Those are probably the same people that protest against wind turbines. They seem to hate progress towards better things.

FTTH makes so much more sense as it is very future proof, and there is less roadside equipment for the ISP to maintain. With FTTC or FTTP that equipment needs power, that means rectifiers and batteries, and a plug to hookup a generator. If you have 3 CO techs in the area and 50 of those boxes and there's a massive blackout, those guys are going to be worked way too hard and stuff may go down.

 

[azazel1024]

With limited space on the pavements and a requirement to get planning permission and get residence input for the placement of every single green box I can see how FTTC can appear to be cheaper and then once the council gets involved and the residents all don't want the box in front of their house in the end your reached customer base drops in reality and breaks your cost graph.

Recently I have lived in 3 places all with FTTC, not one of those places could I actually get it. The local residents all protested against the box and it never got installed, the end result is that actually whole roads are not getting even one box let alone the several this technology would require. While us techies will happily have a green box outside our house if it means 10 gbit/s internet grandma next door wont allow it on the street and so the council wont let it be installed. I suspect BT in the UK is having this problem a lot, its the reason the regulator has now asked them to go beyond just postcode rollout details but the truth is that a lot less than the anticipated homes are actually ending up with access to it.

I can't see an even higher density working out generally. The boxes on the street are a big problem here, many communities just don't want them. FTTH is a lot neater, it might cost more but its penetration would be dramatically higher and require less planning permission applications.

ONTs are generally pretty tiny, you have one for every residence and they are litterally the size of a cable modem. Often easy enough to fit in a wiring box underground. That doesn't mean it would still necessarily mean it would fly or be workable, but in a lot of the world that isn't deeply urban, it would work great. Even in rural situations it might work well. It might not be gigabit capable at longer distances, but if it can even do 100Mbps out to something like 200-300 meters, that would cover a lot of rural areas with an ONT on the pole and then you save several hundred meters of stringing or burying fiber to each residence and just have to worry about the main trunk strung on the pole and hanging an ONT by the existing copper.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Really for long term it just makes sense to have fibre going straight to the home but sadly there can be lot of obstacles that stop it such as existing ISPs lobbying against it, or just plain existing bylaws/rules. Fibre is spliced to small boxes on top of the pole and the drop is actually a really long patch cable. They size it according to how far they have to go. Ex: 50ft, 100ft, 200ft whatever is closest. the rest is coiled at the NID. Another patch from the nid to the ONT inside the house.

For my ISP the ONT has battery backup as well so it does take some considerable space but not the end of the world. Up to the customer to protect the internet side though, but the land line is on the ONT and I think that's really their goal in terms of importance to protect.



Fibre straight to the home from the CO also means no equipment in between that needs to be maintained and powered. My ISP did have to install splice cabinets though. From my understanding of the tech, 64 customers are on one fibre sharing a wave length, and at the cabinet the waves are split into individual fibres going to the homes. The cabinets are passive so there's no power required. When there are nodes all over it means lot of lead acid batteries to keep track of and maintain/replace, and lot of places that require generator hookups when there are extended outages. Let's say you have 2 CO techs and 100 nodes out of power, good luck if there's a massive blackout. I guess you can send other techs with generators too, but you also need to have enough generators.

 

[VirtualLarry]

ONTs are generally pretty tiny, you have one for every residence and they are litterally the size of a cable modem.

Uhm, as a FIOS subscriber, I have to tell you that you're wrong. The ONT is quite a bit bigger than a cablemodem.

 

[azazel1024]

Have you opened the cover? My "whole box" is around 14x14x6 inches hanging in my garage. The actual ONT itself within it is about 8x4x2". The rest is the extra coiled fiber and the backup battery. Depending on how you wanted to package it, you could make it significantly smaller. I also have FIOS. The new box is actually slightly smaller than my old box as is the ONT within the box itself (old one got fried in a power outage).

I don't know that in an urban setting it necessarily makes the most sense to do curb side ONTs instead of FTTH. However, in suburban or rural settings it probably does.

Stringing along the poles in my neighborhood and hanging an ONT on the pole going to the telephone wire would have probably reduced the cost of deployment by at least a good quarter or more rather than the hundreds of feet per residence that the fiber had to be buried (about a quarter of the homes have electrical and telecom run open air from the pole to the house, the rest are buried from the pole to the house). Then compare it to some of the homes near me, that I may or may not have FIOS, where they are legit farms right across the road from me, where it is probably 1,000ft from the main residential power pole to the house. Granted, that is strung there as well, but it saves 1,000ft of fiber, plus the time and effort to string it along the farm's poles carrying their electrical and phone to the house.

FTTH is obviously far superior, but I can certain see an instance where very high speed internet over POTS could be a good thing in terms of saving costs on deployments and hopefully encouraging deployments at least in more rural areas.

 

[master_shake_]

i am from a major isp in your city and this "discovery" is just smoke and mirrors.

our service is the best and the speeds are perfect for everyday usage for any type of person.

we thank you for your business and hope you forget what you read above this statement.

 

[kevinmcg]

Trolled partially by master shake