Demand More From Your Copper

D3 wrote in with a submission about fiber to the home, or the lack of it, and the reasons behind this, and ways to work around the Bells to provide high-speed access despite them. A pretty decent article, which actually goes beyond the Baby Bell PR-speak that deregulation is the solution to everything. Maybe at some point state and Federal regulators will realize that the Bells are the problem, not the solution.

Comments

Cost Cost Cost

[Smallpond]

Fiber may be cheap, but high-speed conversion to copper isn't.

Also, DSL cannot run over fiber, so the most common low-cost
solution is eliminated by fiber to the home.

Re:Cost Cost Cost

[swb]

Also, DSL cannot run over fiber, so the most common low-cost solution is eliminated by fiber to the home.

DSL isn't a layer 2 encoding, its a layer 1 transmission technology. Saying it doesn't work on fiber is like saying I can't use a boat in the desert. It's true, but the boat isn't needed in the desert.

At least........

[g0hare]

when it was all AT&T I didn't get 10 calls a day asking if I'd like to switch long distance companies.

Why would we want it?

[Soluxx]

Seriously, why would we want fiber in the home? I have a cable modem and I'm perfectly happy with it. I think what would drive something like that is an application that requires it. MP3's, Chatting, Games, always having a connection on, etc... That's what drove the popularity of Cable modems and DSL's. Other than a huge File Sharing Node, why would we want fiber?

Re:Why would we want it?

[stratjakt]

>> Other than a huge File Sharing Node, why would we want fiber?

Because competition for the cable monopolies is a Good Thing (tm).

Besides, this article is about copper, and how all the copper in the ground can still be utilized to do what fiber could.

Re:Why would we want it?

[mistcat]

I can tell you why I would want it. I work for the government as a contractor processing satellite data. The data files are HUGE, routinely over 250 megs a file, with 20+ files a day. A cable modem or dsl line simply doesn't have enough bandwidth for me to work from home effectively. Sure I can SSH into a box at work or whatever, but after all the tcp wrappers, ipchains, dns, etc, there is a noticeable lag when I work with things in X-windows. I don't know what minority of the tech population is also in my shoes, but for us fiber to the home would be great, and something I'd be willing to pay a premium for.

Re:Why would we want it?

[VoidEngineer]

For information on who wants it, and where it's being pioneered, check out the Chicago CivicNet project.

Imagine:

Real-time, video-on-demand services which act as video phones, and replaces the telephone as the major telecommunications medium which American society uses.

Real time autostereoscopic 3D television.

Virtual reality applications, such as the Street, the Matrix, the University, ChalkBoard, and so forth. Imagine walking into a virtual classroom or office, from home, when it's too cold and snowy out to drive to school or work.

Real time stock trading from your home to the local city's stock market or board of trade.

Real time browsing of Hubble Telescope data and Sloan data...

Imagine all of this in 1200x1600 32 bit color resolution, in stereoscopic 3D. And imagine it running 100 times faster than your current DSL connection.

That's why you want fiber in the home, and that's why people like Mayor Daley and 60+ corporations in Chicago are working to make it happen...

Re:Why would we want it?

[vadim_t]

Yeah, I've also heard that when 9600 bps modems came out some people said that they were too fast because you could download text faster than you could read it. Now I've got a 256/128K ADSL, and wouldn't mind having something faster.

Change in business model required!

[Aviancer]

The article points out that the major reason the bells (er, bell; hasn't SBC bought all the others yet?) don't want to do this is because they are required to lease out the lines to competitors.

So why not swap business models and become a service provider to the "competitors" instead of "end users." This gives you the incentive to build the infrastructure.

Re:Change in business model required!

[zobo]

The best rebuttal I've seen to this argument asks: if incumbents must sell at below their cost, why do we not see one RBOC go into another RBOC's territory and compete with the second as a CLEC since this would ostensibly be cheaper than expanding their own network?

Just a question

[stratjakt]

With all the bandwidth that can be squeezed out of copper, offered by fibre, 3G wireless, etc..

Will we ever see CD-quality (mono, but 44.1khz mono) phones?

Surely they could be introduced as a backwards-compatible upgrade.

Re:Just a question

[johnny cashed]

are you kidding? The phone system could be used to copy music.

Re:Just a question

[roderickm]

Sure, you can have a CD-quality telephone call, but you need to agree with your called party on the codec. Radio stations and audio production houses have been sending high-quality audio over ISDN for years.

More specifically, I don't expect high-quality calls to become widespread, because there's always a profit-driven compromise between call capacity and quality. The telephone company will never offer higher quality audio on a widespread basis if it cuts their overall capacity and thus, profit.

Blah...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Maybe at some point state and Federal regulators will realize that the Bells are the problem, not the solution."

Regulator: You know, the Bells might actually be the problem, it is in their best interest to make money after all. Maybe we should...ooo...lookit all that money! Thank you kind, sir!

Re:Monopolies

[airrage]

Monopolies are always a bad idea? Hmmmm, that get's me to thinking:

a) Do you have a monopoly on your wife?
b) What if the South had won the Civil War? We'd have an oligopoly of 50, instead of a monopoly of one.
c) The government has a monopoly on money, you can't create your own, and yet you continue to spend it, without cause or care.

Monopolies have a place, history has shown, as government took over industries to provide the basic infrastructure until such time as they could be privatized. I'm sure others could think of more examples you live with everyday that constitutes to your high standard of living...

UWB, WiFi...hello?

[Ars-Fartsica]

Its been obvious for years now that no one is going to rewire the neighborhoods of America. We are waiting for wireless data connections to get fast cheap and plentiful. Until then you have DSL and cable modem at best.

Fiber to the home has never been a serious consideration and in fact only would re-establish the same monopolies we have now - a wire can only have one owner.

There certainly is a problem.

[ahfoo]

Spending most of the last ten years in Taiwan, it's becoming very odd for me when I go back to the States and find even harcore nerds still using modems. Broadband has been cheaper than modem use here for almost four years now. Clearly something very ugly is going on in the US telecoms markets.
It is amusing to note that internationally if you look at where the cheap broadband is, you see very little correlation between deregulation and low rates with the US being the perfect example of where it just doesn't work. Perhaps unregulated competition isn't the panacea it's billed as. After all, what makes a mega corporate bureaucracy inherently more efficient than its government counterpart where this is at least some possibility of accountability.
I think the obvious answer in the States is what we're already beginning to see sprinkled around here and there which is broadband as a community utility like the highways or the water or the power. There are those who say that this is somehow a danger to freedoms of speech, but I don't quite follow the logic there when we have Verizon ratting out their users as it is.

Fiber's sexy, but copper is cheap and in place

[roderickm]

Let's run through the typical "last mile" options:

• Copper pairs - aging, installed almost everywhere, with metropolitan runs below fifteen thousand feet or so supporting some form of DSL. Great for switched voice (POTS), not bad for midrange bandwidth data (DSL), not a lot of lang-term future possibility, but cheap and already installed.
  
• Coax cable - Almost exclusively controlled by cable television companies, more expensive than a simple copper pair but cheap enough to deliver to all but the most rural areas. Much greater bandwidth than POTS or DSL, also with low latency well-suited to voice or video calls.
  
• Satellite - Reaches nearly everyone in North American than can see the southern sky, nearly all fixed cost structure, and low marginal cost to add a user/subscriber. High latency, but huge bandwidth well-suited to broadcasting the same material to all users.
  

This article brings to light the fact that fiber to the curb just isn't practical now. My wife works for a company that attempted a speculative fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC) build for a neighborhood in Colorado, and the project (among other factors) sent her employer into Chapter 11. FTTC is sexy, yes, but it's just not within economic reach yet.

I've said for a couple years now that cable companies truly have the broadband advantage, but they waste their bandwidth to the curb by competing for television subscriptions. The massive installed base of coax has a much greater bandwidth than your POTS copper pair, but rarely is it used to its full potential.

Owners of huge cable plants will eventually let television delivery fall to satellite deliver (high latency, high broadcast bandwidth) while your everyday coax cable will be more used for low-latency, highly interactive bandwidth like voice and data. Satellite for broadcast, cable for interactive voice/video/data services, and let the POTS pairs finish off their remaining useful life.

If more folks would get reasonable about the realistic uses for fiber (long haul, high bandwidth aggregation circuits) by reading salient articles like this one, we'd more quickly be able to enjoy true broadband in many forms of delivery. It's just going to take more people in decision-making positions that realize the appropriate use of the technologies we have at hand.

Re:Monopolies

[Mothra the III]

Thanks for these intriguing comments Mr. Gates:)

Regulation

[drinkypoo]

The important point is that once you regulate you have to keep regulating. Regulation MAY be bad for consumers; Deregulation IS bad for consumers.

The FCC has ruined DSL by requiring that the telco be responsible for quality but third parties not. In other words, if covad DSL gives you poor performance, you have nothing to fall back on but your terms of service. If pacbell DSL gives you poor performance (lower than rated, or any significant downtime) then you can call the FCC and they'll fine SBC $500.

Regulation must be undertaken carefully, deregulation moreso. They deregulated the power companies in California, where are we now?

Grumble, grumble....

[Asprin]

More justification why "The Phone Company" is at the top of my poop list.... If I ever lose my marbles and go Fight-Club-Tyler-Durden loonie, the phone companies are easily the first on my list of things to be eliminated. They go before the credit card companies, before the RIAA, before the SPAMMERS!

They peddle more (in volume AND quality) self-intoxicating raw sewage in the name of justifying their back-assed ridiculous business practices than all the other annoying people in the world combined. Anybody that's ever tried to decipher a phone bill knows what I'm talking about - FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! HAVE YOU SEEN TODAY'S DITHERATI?!?!

~~shudder~~



*DING*

Oh, time for my little blue pill again...

...(whew!) .... [drool]......

Anyway, the only reason we have to put up with these bastards is because we can't live without their stupid service and running new cables to every address in America would be prohibitively expensive. Just brainstorming here, but let's say wireless networking doesn't pan out as a alternative to replace copper and/or fiber for last-mile cable across-the-board. What would happen if congress authorized the FCC (eminent domain in the public interest) to forcibly take control of the copper from the phone companies? They do it with dirt where I live when they say, "We need to expand the airport next to your home. Here's fair market value for your house, now go away."

Sure, I got my doubts, (for one you have to assume the government can maintain that infrastructure better than the private sector) but at least the local telcos' exclusive position of control would be eliminated.
Them's a lot of hassles. Me? I'm pulling for wireless.

if this goes through

[ibbie]

then finally, everyone - plebs and lusers alike - will understand what the internet is all about.

fast, streaming porn, on a 24/7 connection. yee-haw.

Re:I was just thinking logically and I thought of

[eah]

Go to f...ing work.

Waa waa waa. You sound just like my boss.
I suppose that when I get there you'll want me to actaully _do_ work, too...

And work from there,

Yep, that's what I thought...

Re:Monopolies

[Celandro]

a) Do you have a monopoly on your wife?

No wife sorry.. But I do have 52 different time share girlfriends.. Different girl every week!

The maintenance fees sure do add up though..

Local cost to the Last Mile

[rearden]

One of the things often overlooked in the last mile debate is the effects that laying large amounts of Copper/Fiber/Etc in a local area. Not only are there cost associated with physically laying the cable but also longterm cost carried by the municipalities.

One of the biggest problems here in Atlanta is the condition of the roads and the sewer system. Now, on the surface this may seem to not correlate to the laying cable but quite the opposite is true. Recently our new Mayor/ Admin team hired several consultants to review the condidtions of the roads (which anyone here can tell you are horrible) and to find out why our sewer upgade project is so far behind. The reason... the massive amount of incorrectly laid, documented or bad road repair work done during the .Com boom from laying cable. In essence all the road paches are breaking up and roads built to last 10 to 20 years are failing after only 3-7.

The sewer and water project are held up by many problems, but a major one is the fact that as they go to lay new pipe they are find cable bundles that are unlabled and even if they do find out who owns them they dont know who controlls them any longer as many companies are bankrupt or in reorganization.

The question becomes who has to bear the burden of cost of resolving the problems and questions? Do the taxpayers of a given town have to carry the cost of Big Business run amok laying miles of Fiber and Copper all over towns with little the local goverments can do to stop them?

One of the little known provisions of the Telco Act of 1996 was that local goverments HAD TO give access/ right of way to new cable runs. For months the streets here in Atlanta were torn up and traffic was snarled- and there was nothing the City/ State could really do because each time they took action the FCC or courts would stop them. In fact several cable pull sites were left abandoned after the patron companies had long gone bankrupt, leaving the city/ taxpayers with the burden of doing road repair and close up work.

So, while there are many options out there for the last mile, and Fiber or anyother may seem good often overlooked is the cost to the local infrastructure and municipalites.

Just my 2 cents on a big topic with little results!

I've got the opposite problem

[jhouserizer]

I build a house in a new neighborhood, which was outfitted by Qwest with pure fiber to every home. At first I thought this was cool... but four years later, nobody's offering any type of service on it (other than dial-tone) and I can't get DSL because my line's not copper.

Fortunately, some local guys (about a mile away) have set up a 802.11b service, so I can get my Mbps... otherwise I'd be screwed!

Re:Monopolies

[Bisifiniti]

Actually, the examples given are rather poor. Seeing as how a) That's a business deal. The wife agreed to buy exclusively from you. b) A government is a public institution, not a private institution. c) We do not purchase money. There is no product being exchanged. Besides, it's ours, and through Congress, we have decided that it's the gov't's responsibility to manufacture and distribute money. Really, it's a stretch to say they're monopolies. If you don't live the gov't, you can easily move to another country.

Aiming a firehose at a teacup.

[zerofoo]

Lots of people are concentrating on the physical cable and its associated costs to install. What about the switching infrastrucure costs?

A typical voice conversation requires around 64k/s of bandwidth. Now consider what type of switching infrastructure would be required if everyone had 100Mbps fiber at their house. Do you think that Verizon is going to canabalize their T1 buisinesses? At $400/mo. for a local loop, I don't think so.

Recap:

1. Consumer/small business grade high-bandwidth fiber costs alot to install.

2. It requires that the telcos spend mega-bucks to upgrade their switching gear (possibly to photonic switching gear...$cha-ching$)

3. It will canabalize their high-margin T1 business. (No there really isn't a viable competitor to this if you want static IP).

4. And to top it all off, they've got to charge $40-$80/mo, or no consumers will buy it. (Some businesses will, but they are already spedning $800/mo. for T1s.)

Higher costs and lower revenue. Now, explain why Verizon would WANT to do this?

-ted

regulators are the problem.

[geekee]

"Maybe at some point state and Federal regulators will realize that the Bells are the problem, not the solution."

State and federal regulators gave ma bell the exclusive right to run phone cable in the first place. They gave the Bells their monopoly. The made the Bells what they are today. The quoted statement therefore is completely stupid. Regulators need to realize that THEY are the problem, not the solution.

The problem's not the media, it's the companies.

[Gldm]

I mean who cares if you've got fiber if they're just going to throttle you to death like they do now? At home in NY I'm lucky, I can get 1m up 10m down (real world) cable. Out at school in SF, lucky is getting better than 144k/144k IDSL for $99/month. You might get 128/1.5 of which you see about 90/400. It's not that they can't deliver the bandwidth, you can pay ridiculous amounts for "business class" DSL which uses the same line and same modem from the same providers, just without speed locking. Why do we need a faster medium when they won't even let the existing medium run at full potential?