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UK Lifeguards Dig Their Own 100Mbps Fiber-Optic Link
MJackson writes "The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) in Humber, a large tidal estuary situated on the east coast of Northern England, has just become one of the UK's most remote-rural locations to have a next generation 100Mbps Fibre Optic FTTH broadband link installed. The deployment is being sponsored by FibreStream and amazingly the groundworks were completed by the lifeboat crew literally digging their own fibre. We'd do the same on our road, but the government would probably object."
Lifeguards are hunky guys (and gals) in swimming costumes who save swimmers (or, rather, non-swimmers!) at beaches and swimming pools. The RNLI is the Royal National Lifeboat Institution: note "lifeboat".
You must remember that our national life boar service (RNLI) is a CHARITY and receives NO government sponsorship whatsoever. They get all there cash by collecting in the streets, collecting tins in shops and charity events... They are a truly amazing charity and save hundreds of lives . All there members are highly motivated volunteers who have ordinary jobs but when called upon drop everything and go and save lives what ever the weather. So my point is that it is not so amazing that they dug there own fiber link, they do after all maintain all there own kit and are out to save as much cash as possible because they don't have that much of it in the first place. http://www.rnli.org.uk/rnli_near_you
There are similar projects in Sweden, where companies give the option to customers to bury their own fiber (with periodic oversight of course). This eliminates the initial expense of FTTH installation for the cash-strapped small ISP, and as a by-product apparently significantly reduces churn, as people become emotionally attached to the fiber they dug into the ground. It's a win-win for everyone. Of course in America the incumbents don't actually want everyone to have fiber, as they prefer to charge hugely inflated prices for substandard internet connections that require little to no provisioning of bandwidth.
For the americans on here who are quite rightly confused about who and what the RNLI are, they're like the US Coastguard. They go out in boats in insane conditions and save people from sinking. They don't have any helicopters (our navy do that), but aside from that they're pretty much the same. With one minor exception: They receive no funding from the Government whatsoever. Insane though it sounds, they get all their funds from charity donations. Give generously.
The truth shall always be free: Boris Floricic is Tron.
Link to Google Maps, for those without Google Earth installed: 53 34'34.34"N 0 6'39.69"E.
Also, an article about location on Wikipedia -- the area is a nature reserve!
Rural Britain tends to be a little slower though, I'm lucky if I can get 2mbs where I live.
Blazing Spiders
Not so. Wider fibre is easier to lay because it is harder to damage, but requires photons to be spaced further apart because total internal reflection means that the path lengths (and, hence, transit time) of two consecutive photons (or, more likely, bursts of photons) can differ by a significant amount and cause errors if the second arrives before the first. Additionally, different fibres - and even fibres laid with different amounts of bending - can leak photons (fire a laser through a drum of fibre and see it light up) limiting the maximum throughput because you need to fire larger bursts of photons to ensure that a detectable number arrive. I doubt they're running the cable at the full speed, but fibre is no more equivalent to any other fibre than copper is equivalent to any other copper.
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Link to Google Maps, for those without Google Earth installed: 53 34'34.34"N 0 6'39.69"E.
So it's just around the corner from Scunthorpe, then.
Further details about the Humber station:
Its the only station with a fully professional crew. Other stations are either all volunteer (those with only Inshore boat), have one (Mechanic) or two (Coxswain & Mechanic) professionals with the rest of the crew being volunteers (the big All Weather boats) or a largely professional crew supplemented by volunteers (the E Class boats on the River Thames in London).
There are several advantages to using volunteers, one very important one being that its possible to justify having stations that do very few rescues but are there for the rare occasions where someone needs them.
YouTube of the installation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozoA4x5k2Dg
Humber Lifeboat Station at the RNLI website:
http://www.rnli.org.uk/rnli_near_you/north/stations/humbereastyorkshire/?page=2
Humber Lifeboat "Pride of the Humber" - around UKP 2 Million (USD 3 Million) of Fly By Wire All Weather Goodness
http://www.rnli.org.uk/who_we_are/press_centre/photos/photo_detail?articleid=344763
The crews website
http://www.spurnpoint.com/lifeboat.htm
Humber Lifeboat at work
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2WtSPcGpKw
No connection with the RNLI btw, other than they once rescued me and I donate by subscription.
Hull is a city and is not all of Humberside; much of Humberside is served by BT and Cable companies. KCOM are unlikely to be the problem here. Geography is.
You're talking about multi-mode vs. single-mode fiber. Lower speed links can get away with somewhat longer runs of multi-mode fiber, but even at 100Mbps it's not THAT long. Once you get beyond 2000m you need single-mode anyway. Once you've run the single mode fiber, you have the option to go to gigabit or 10 gigabit speeds and/or add additional channels at other wavelengths.
Poor installation (including excessively sharp turns) can be a limitation but in general, you don't have to replace the fiber to take advantage of newer or better technology at the ends.
The fragility isn't that big a problem in buried cable since they are layered and contain aramid fibers for strength with an outer waterproof cover.
Given the cost of burial compared to the cost of the fiber and the minimal added cost for more fibers in the same length cable, you generally use cables with 24 fibers in them. It just doesn't make much sense to skimp on the cable when you have fixed and expensive time effort and cost in burying the thing.
So they could have limited themselves, but most likely have plenty of headroom.