What's wrong with copper?

Peter Ward · #1 21-10-2010, 09:59 PM

OK this could spiral into a politik type debate.... but: why should the great unwashed be forced to abandon thier copper wire phone connections?

BTW I'd like this to be technical....not party political.

I for one have spliced more than one phone line in my time due to an errant shovel.

We have co-axial for my Net connection.... it's fast enough for my needs (foreign servers are the main bottleneck) and fortunately has not been severed to date, but again a no-brainer if it was.

Optical fibre.....humm... splice kits are *expensive*

...and as for my phone line I have long been of the opinion "if it aint broke, don't fix it". Hence I am srcatching my head wondering why the powers that be are trying to make it mandatory to have a fibre link to my house.

AndrewJ · #2 21-10-2010, 10:14 PM

Gday Peter

Only one comment
After heavy rains, several Telecom pits in my area seem to flood
and it appears to take out the voltages on the copper lines.
( You really dont want to look at whats in there )
The phone still works, but digital comms appears die horribly.
Fibre should probably be immune to that sort of cr@p.

Andrew

Max Vondel (Peter) · #3 21-10-2010, 10:18 PM

I like copper too. Being #29 is nice cos its an odd number. Nestled between Nickel and Zinc, not too far from Iron stability. So I'm sure lots must be made in SN Explosions............. Silver is better for heat and electrical conduction but is too expensive. Horshoes Crabs blood is based on copper rather than iron and has a bluey greeny colour...so I like copper too

Peter Ward · #4 21-10-2010, 10:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

The phone still works, but digital comms appears die horribly.
Fibre should probably be immune to that sort of cr@p.

Andrew

Agreed....

I have seen no detail on what may be in future pits....straight fibre to the house? A node and twisted wire pair could be fine. Optical fibre is great (no-crosstalk, EMP proof: great in times of nuclear war

).... but if all you want is a telephone (and use +4G for the rest) seems like cracking a nut with a steamroller to me.

rmcconachy · #5 21-10-2010, 10:34 PM

The maximum signal rate (speed) with fiber is vastly greater than it is with copper. For those who say "But new technique X means copper can do a bit more now", something equivalent will always be available for fiber too - copper is never catching up. The maximum speed you can get with copper also degrades very quickly as the length of the wire grows longer. You might be happy with your current speed, many other individuals and businesses are not.

However, to cut to the core of your question "why the powers that be are trying to make it mandatory to have a fibre link to my house"? - it is because the Telstra privatization was completely ballsed up. The infrastructure should never have been included as a part of a single private company but separating the infrastructure out of Telstra pre-float would have yielded less dollars for the government of the day. By forcing the installation of fiber the government can upgrade everybody's connection (a carrot), throw enough money at Telstra to make it voluntarily separate (a bribe) and at great cost over come the worst of the problems caused by the privatization (one entrenched monopoly controlling almost all of the retail and wholesale market for fixed lines).

I make no comment as to whether I think it will be worth the cost or whether any specific NBN plans make sense to me. I'm simply giving you my best answer as to why fiber and why it is being made mandatory.

rmcconachy · #6 21-10-2010, 10:37 PM

Peter, the current plan (and implementation in the small areas that have been done) does indeed run fiber all the way to the house. There will be `optical splitters' in the pits but no copper lines at any point up to the outside of your house.

Moon (James) · #7 21-10-2010, 10:44 PM

The fact sheets on the NBNCo site say they are proposing a "Passive Optical Network (PON)"

Quote:

A PON uses small dedicated optical fibre runs from the home to a small cabinet in the street, known as a Fibre Distribution Hub (FDH). In this cabinet the individual fibres from a small number of homes (normally less than 32 homes) are combined together into a single fibre back to the central equipment (akin to a telephone exchange for fibre services)....

So messages sent from the exchange are essentially broadcast to all 32 homes sharing the same FDH using a beam splitter out in the street, and it uses encryption to stop eavesdropping. Messages send from your home to the exchange are more point to point, so they can not be intercepted so easily.

It will be interesting to watch this colossal project unfold.

James

Moon (James) · #8 21-10-2010, 10:58 PM

Another interesting point - the total market Cap of Telstra today at $2.64 per share is 32.8 billion. From what I understand, NBNCo project cost is estimated at $43 billion.

supernova1965 (Warren) · #9 21-10-2010, 11:19 PM

TOO SLOW, TOO OLD TECH, NEEDS REPLACING TOO OFTEN. Lets move into the future not get stuck in the past. That's my 2 cents worth.
And why not move to better and longer lasting Technology. I mean I am sure there were pleanty of people saying that we couldn't afford all the infrastructure that we use now probably were lots that said we didn't need the copper network when the government first started Telecom and wired the country in the first place.

Peter Ward · #10 21-10-2010, 11:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by supernova1965

TOO SLOW, TOO OLD TECH, NEEDS REPLACING TOO OFTEN.

Copper is simple, even I can fix it (even add extra points in the house

) and works well (for telephone calls).

Sure a fibre can carry 2-3 Tb a second....but for a phone call?

What happens when a FDH snuffs it (and they will) ? 32 houses out?

rmcconachy · #11 21-10-2010, 11:56 PM

Many houses have the equivalent of a FDH (called a RIM) on the copper line between them and the exchange Peter (it is a way for Telstra to lay less copper cable). In either case, when the FDH/RIM snuffs it a group of people are peeved until it is fixed. Most of the ways in which fiber might fail already have copper equivalents.

bobson (Bob) · #12 22-10-2010, 12:13 AM

The future is not copper nor optical fiber but wireless.

bob

Screwdriverone (Chris) · #13 22-10-2010, 12:23 AM

The main reason I am keen on Fibre (with me being a telecoms ACA licenced cabler even) is that Optical Fibre will be able to not only take a phone call, but Internet traffic, online shopping, home automation, BROADCAST Free to air TV, etc etc ALL at the SAME TIME, and STILL have oodles of capacity left over for what is to come when some boffin dreams up more things to cram into our already overloaded lives...

With different wavelengths carrying different streams of data, the theoretical bandwidth capacity in the near future (say the next 100 years) is potentially infinite!

Sure, it means I have to chuck away the Krone tool sooner than later, but really, it won't be long before you will be able to buy a Cable Splicer and junction box in Dick Smith or Jaycar for $50. The more there is, the quicker the price comes down and the number of services and content providers goes up.

Also, considering that there is a growing trend where people are not even bothering to connect a land line in new houses anymore because they'd rather fry their brains with mobiles, sooner rather than later, the old PSTN line will be relegated to the scrapheap, one more reason to downsize the exchanges with smaller fibre muxes which can do so much more in the same space.

Bring it ON, I say!

Cheers

Chris

Steffen · #14 22-10-2010, 01:13 AM

There is absolutely nothing wrong with copper, it is one of the most sexy elements in the universe.

In the future of telecommunications it will play a decreasing role, however. Even though clever modulation and signal processing has extended its usefulness by a lot (who would have thought 20 years ago that you can transmit at rates of hundreds of megabits over two pairs of twisted doorbell wire?) - at some point up the bandwidth scale fibre cables become cheaper to produce, implement and maintain.

For the medium term I can see happy coexistence between copper and fibre for years to come.

Cheers
Steffen.

supernova1965 (Warren) · #15 22-10-2010, 06:56 AM

I think this link tells the story

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articl...21/3044463.htm

supernova1965 (Warren) · #16 22-10-2010, 06:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

....but for a phone call?

In the future as the saying goes all our telephone calls will be video as well as audio

Waxing_Gibbous (Peter) · #17 22-10-2010, 08:09 AM

Screwdriverone summed up the technical side brilliantly. Personally, I'm in the same boat as AndrewJ. After a heavy, rain its like talking to someone on shortwave and we have very iffy wireless reception being in a valley. My work is therefore hindered by our wireless broadband and I have to drive 50km into town and back just to upload that days output.
Roll-on fibre optic!

telemarker (Keith) · #18 22-10-2010, 09:47 AM

While not directly related to the preference of any particular element, my gripe is with how copper has been deployed in the past. My wife and I built our house in the first suburb of Gungahlin in the north of Canberra in '93. Not long after we moved in someone came around offering a trial of the "best" internet access in Oz (a trial/research project between a university and a service provider/cable co.), never happenned. What we got instead was Telstra's vision of the future, copper to a RIM. Fast forward 17 years and the best we can get is still ADSL 1, even though there are plenty of ADSL 2 ports available at the local exchange (a mere 1 km away) and has been for years. We, and many in our area, cannot connect to the available ADSL 2 ports because of the RIM technology that was installed. Apparently, we'll be one of the first cabs off the rank with the NBN on the mainland (independents permitting).

To paraphrase Chris...... Bring it ON, I say!

Peter Ward · #19 22-10-2010, 10:58 AM

Sorry guys, I haven't seen a convincing argument for compulsory deploying fibre to homes that just want a plain old telephone service... ie no internet.

The NBN cost of around $4300 per tax payer seems a little lavish to me

Instead of an internet superhighway I'd rather we had a few autobahns

Screwdriverone (Chris) · #20 22-10-2010, 11:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

Sorry guys, I haven't seen a convincing argument for compulsory deploying fibre to homes that just want a plain old telephone service... ie no internet.

The NBN cost of around $4300 per tax payer seems a little lavish to me

Instead of an internet superhighway I'd rather we had a few autobahns

Very true Peter, whilst I would like a fibre link to my house, I dont really need one. Yet.

And, if we could have some decent freaking roads in this city, then perhaps we all wouldnt need blisteringly fast internet because we could drive 45kms to work in 30 mins instead of the 2 HOURS it takes me now to drive on a Billion dollar 2 lane motorway from the north west.

But, that's another story (and a bigger rant)

Cheers

Chris