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Flexible Optic Fiber Promises Cheaper Last Mile
bn0p writes "Ars Technica has an article on a Korean company that has developed a low-cost, flexible, plastic optical fiber that could bring cheaper 2.5 Gbps connections to homes and apartments. While not as fast as glass fiber, it is significantly faster than copper. In related news, Corning recently announced a flexible glass fiber that can be bent repeatedly without losing signal strength. The Corning fiber incorporates nanostructures in the cladding of the fiber that act as 'light guardrails' to keep the light in the fiber. The glass fiber could be as much as four times faster than plastic fiber. Neither fiber is available commercially yet, but both should help with the last mile problem when they are deployed."
Physical cabling, of any sort, is cheap if you're already digging trenches etc.
This explains why Europe is so far ahead of the U.S. in terms of broadband penetration.
CAT6a and CAT7 can work up to 10G, provided you use appropriate connectors such as Siemon's TERA, which can also be used for carrying telephone and CATV over the same wire. If you need the full 10G, you use 4 pairs. If you don't need 10G, you can use less pairs and the rest for other things (i.e: your PVR could use CATV, POTS, and still have 5Gbps for data). I know, I know, when 10G is commonplace, maybe we won't have CATV and POTS anyway.
The research group is mentioned to be in "Korea Institute of Science and Technology", which is better known as KIST here in Korea, isn't a company. It is a government research agency.
> wireless is typically far cheaper because the installation costs are zero.
Err, no. Wireless is very expensive to install. Even more expensive perhaps than mobile phone networks (mainly because you need 50-100 times more access points than you need for mobile phones (due to the very low transmission powers the standard permits).
Why do you think that there are almost no cities with city-wide wireless access, years after the technology became prevalent? Most people have problems getting WiFi working in their house - let alone trying to get it to work for a whole town without all the channels massively overlapping. Municipal WiFi won't take off until the standard (perhaps a NEW standard) allows higher transmission powers and a larger frequency band for extra channels.