On Sunday, 11 March 2018 22:49:42 UTC, 7 wrote:
UK fibre to home to be rolled out by franchise holders
------------------------------------------------------

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/...bre-on-the-way

Which says: -

"Of course if you take the unpopular but agnostic view that a 100 Mbps connection if it delivers that speed does not matter whether [it is] a hybrid or full fibre solution"

exactly the point no-one will give a **** if they get adequate speed from what BT and Virgin offer.


SNIP - wibble

so why does any domestic user need symmetric 1Gbps fibre and what on earth would they use it for?

R. Mark Clayton wrote:
On Sunday, 11 March 2018 22:49:42 UTC, 7 wrote:
UK fibre to home to be rolled out by franchise holders
------------------------------------------------------

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/...bre-on-the-way

Which says: -

"Of course if you take the unpopular but agnostic view that a 100 Mbps
connection if it delivers that speed does not matter whether [it is] a
hybrid or full fibre solution"

exactly the point no-one will give a **** if they get adequate speed from
what BT and Virgin offer.


SNIP - wibble

so why does any domestic user need symmetric 1Gbps fibre and what on
earth would they use it for?


You would be surprised how useful a high speed connection can be. At work I
have symmetric 1 Gbit/sec to the desktop. My average speed use of the
connection is tiny, but being able to down/upload files in seconds rather
than minutes is transformative. At home I could easily see a use case for
being able to upload files to external backup quickly. But this is a
byproduct of the real reason for going to full fibre - reliability. With
xDSL you are plagued by speed loss caused by line length, water in the
joints, fairy lights, wonky home wiring etc etc. DOCIS delivered by Virgin
is better in as much as the coax local loop maintains a constant speed
regardless of length. It suffers from segment over use, ie too many users
on one shared bit of end point equipment, and this seems to be highly
variable. My area has always been excellent, but other areas are seemingly
forever bad. Uplink speeds are poor as well. I get 200 MBit down, but only
12 up. (And yes I could use a faster up speed). Once full fibre in the
ground is installed reliability goes up, and speeds can be increased by
changing end point equipment. The current xDSL roll out has been good in as
much as it has got the bulk of the UK to useably high speeds in a shorter
time period than otherwise would have been the case, but it is ultimately a
technological dead end. Those that cannot see future demand going beyond
xDSL speeds lack imagination. I still remember people at work telling me
that this Internet thing was a fad and would never catch on. This was in an
institution used to dealing with science and technology. I think ultimately
the lower maintenance costs of a fibre local loop network are what is going
to drive rollout, with increased speeds being a welcome side effect.

On Monday, 12 March 2018 12:34:40 UTC, Tweed wrote:
R. Mark Clayton wrote:
On Sunday, 11 March 2018 22:49:42 UTC, 7 wrote:
UK fibre to home to be rolled out by franchise holders
------------------------------------------------------

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/...bre-on-the-way

Which says: -

"Of course if you take the unpopular but agnostic view that a 100 Mbps
connection if it delivers that speed does not matter whether [it is] a
hybrid or full fibre solution"

exactly the point no-one will give a **** if they get adequate speed from
what BT and Virgin offer.


SNIP - wibble

so why does any domestic user need symmetric 1Gbps fibre and what on
earth would they use it for?


You would be surprised how useful a high speed connection can be. At work I
have symmetric 1 Gbit/sec to the desktop. My average speed use of the
connection is tiny, but being able to down/upload files in seconds rather
than minutes is transformative. At home I could easily see a use case for
being able to upload files to external backup quickly. But this is a
byproduct of the real reason for going to full fibre - reliability. With
xDSL you are plagued by speed loss caused by line length, water in the
joints, fairy lights, wonky home wiring etc etc. DOCIS delivered by Virgin
is better in as much as the coax local loop maintains a constant speed
regardless of length. It suffers from segment over use, ie too many users
on one shared bit of end point equipment, and this seems to be highly
variable. My area has always been excellent, but other areas are seemingly
forever bad. Uplink speeds are poor as well. I get 200 MBit down, but only
12 up. (And yes I could use a faster up speed). Once full fibre in the
ground is installed reliability goes up, and speeds can be increased by
changing end point equipment. The current xDSL roll out has been good in as
much as it has got the bulk of the UK to useably high speeds in a shorter
time period than otherwise would have been the case, but it is ultimately a
technological dead end. Those that cannot see future demand going beyond
xDSL speeds lack imagination. I still remember people at work telling me
that this Internet thing was a fad and would never catch on. This was in an
institution used to dealing with science and technology. I think ultimately
the lower maintenance costs of a fibre local loop network are what is going
to drive rollout, with increased speeds being a welcome side effect.

Of course higher speed is nice, especially for large file transfer (however backup is best done at night when you are not using your system [and changing the files you are trying to back up]. In practice Dropbox, google-drive etc. hide the slower back up from you.

OTOH how often are you going to use it? I just sold a car capable of 150mph, but don't recall ever driving it above two thirds of that speed.

Obviously new installs should probably be fibre, but upgrading all the existing ones at a cost of billions? Who will pay?


One freezing cold day a sparrow was flying over a farmyard. It was so cold that its little wings froze and it fell immobile into the yard. The poor little bird was contemplating its demise, when a cow wandered by an relieved itself over the sparrow. The warm manure quickly thawed the sparrow's frozen wings and it recovered. Relieved at its deliverance the bird started singing, but unfortunately this attracted the attention of the farmyard cat, which dug the bird out of the manure, killed and ate it.

There are three morals to this story: -

1. S/he who ****s on you is not necessarily your enemy.
2. S/he who gets you out of the **** is not necessarily your friend.
and
3. If you are warm an happy in a pile of **** - keep your bleeding mouth shut!

the third applies to Broadband in the UK.

R. Mark Clayton wrote:
On Monday, 12 March 2018 12:34:40 UTC, Tweed wrote:
R. Mark Clayton wrote:
On Sunday, 11 March 2018 22:49:42 UTC, 7 wrote:
UK fibre to home to be rolled out by franchise holders
------------------------------------------------------

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/...bre-on-the-way

Which says: -

"Of course if you take the unpopular but agnostic view that a 100 Mbps
connection if it delivers that speed does not matter whether [it is] a
hybrid or full fibre solution"

exactly the point no-one will give a **** if they get adequate speed from
what BT and Virgin offer.


SNIP - wibble

so why does any domestic user need symmetric 1Gbps fibre and what on
earth would they use it for?


You would be surprised how useful a high speed connection can be. At work I
have symmetric 1 Gbit/sec to the desktop. My average speed use of the
connection is tiny, but being able to down/upload files in seconds rather
than minutes is transformative. At home I could easily see a use case for
being able to upload files to external backup quickly. But this is a
byproduct of the real reason for going to full fibre - reliability. With
xDSL you are plagued by speed loss caused by line length, water in the
joints, fairy lights, wonky home wiring etc etc. DOCIS delivered by Virgin
is better in as much as the coax local loop maintains a constant speed
regardless of length. It suffers from segment over use, ie too many users
on one shared bit of end point equipment, and this seems to be highly
variable. My area has always been excellent, but other areas are seemingly
forever bad. Uplink speeds are poor as well. I get 200 MBit down, but only
12 up. (And yes I could use a faster up speed). Once full fibre in the
ground is installed reliability goes up, and speeds can be increased by
changing end point equipment. The current xDSL roll out has been good in as
much as it has got the bulk of the UK to useably high speeds in a shorter
time period than otherwise would have been the case, but it is ultimately a
technological dead end. Those that cannot see future demand going beyond
xDSL speeds lack imagination. I still remember people at work telling me
that this Internet thing was a fad and would never catch on. This was in an
institution used to dealing with science and technology. I think ultimately
the lower maintenance costs of a fibre local loop network are what is going
to drive rollout, with increased speeds being a welcome side effect.

Of course higher speed is nice, especially for large file transfer
(however backup is best done at night when you are not using your system
[and changing the files you are trying to back up]. In practice Dropbox,
google-drive etc. hide the slower back up from you.

OTOH how often are you going to use it? I just sold a car capable of
150mph, but don't recall ever driving it above two thirds of that speed.

Obviously new installs should probably be fibre, but upgrading all the
existing ones at a cost of billions? Who will pay?


One freezing cold day a sparrow was flying over a farmyard. It was so
cold that its little wings froze and it fell immobile into the yard. The
poor little bird was contemplating its demise, when a cow wandered by an
relieved itself over the sparrow. The warm manure quickly thawed the
sparrow's frozen wings and it recovered. Relieved at its deliverance the
bird started singing, but unfortunately this attracted the attention of
the farmyard cat, which dug the bird out of the manure, killed and ate it.

There are three morals to this story: -

1. S/he who ****s on you is not necessarily your enemy.
2. S/he who gets you out of the **** is not necessarily your friend.
and
3. If you are warm an happy in a pile of **** - keep your bleeding mouth shut!

the third applies to Broadband in the UK.


Bird life apart, you've ignored the points about reliability to concentrate
on speed. There are two main reliability issues, the inherent ones with
xDSL being an adaptive technology and it becoming ever more fault sensitive
as the line gets longer, and the reliability of the installed plant. The
latter will eventually become life expired and at that point I foresee more
fibre local loop going in. I may have this wrong, but my understanding of
FTTC cabinets was that they were eventually going to be jumping off points
for fibre local loop, the use of the existing copper being an expedient
interim solution. So some of the work is already done. To take our 1980s
estate as an example. The local loop is in underground ducting from the
cabinet to the house. It's not unrealistic to imagine that this might
pulled out one day, to be replaced with fibre. This would not require major
civil engineering work. What is does require is a major retraining of the
workforce, and in significant numbers. Mind you, the economic argument for
all of this might be changed by widespread deployment of radio local loops.
All those FTTC cabinets could instead support a local low power radio link.
With all the research going into 5G, short range high capacity radio links
may be available to all. I expect many a spreadsheet has been generated
within the major communications companies right now. So, in summary, copper
will eventually give way to fibre and/or radio. However, I wouldn't like to
hazard a guess on the timescale.

On Monday, 12 March 2018 15:13:09 UTC, Tweed wrote:
R. Mark Clayton wrote:
On Monday, 12 March 2018 12:34:40 UTC, Tweed wrote:
R. Mark Clayton wrote:
On Sunday, 11 March 2018 22:49:42 UTC, 7 wrote:
UK fibre to home to be rolled out by franchise holders
------------------------------------------------------

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/...bre-on-the-way

Which says: -

"Of course if you take the unpopular but agnostic view that a 100 Mbps
connection if it delivers that speed does not matter whether [it is] a
hybrid or full fibre solution"

exactly the point no-one will give a **** if they get adequate speed from
what BT and Virgin offer.


SNIP - wibble

so why does any domestic user need symmetric 1Gbps fibre and what on
earth would they use it for?


You would be surprised how useful a high speed connection can be. At work I
have symmetric 1 Gbit/sec to the desktop. My average speed use of the
connection is tiny, but being able to down/upload files in seconds rather
than minutes is transformative. At home I could easily see a use case for
being able to upload files to external backup quickly. But this is a
byproduct of the real reason for going to full fibre - reliability. With
xDSL you are plagued by speed loss caused by line length, water in the
joints, fairy lights, wonky home wiring etc etc. DOCIS delivered by Virgin
is better in as much as the coax local loop maintains a constant speed
regardless of length. It suffers from segment over use, ie too many users
on one shared bit of end point equipment, and this seems to be highly
variable. My area has always been excellent, but other areas are seemingly
forever bad. Uplink speeds are poor as well. I get 200 MBit down, but only
12 up. (And yes I could use a faster up speed). Once full fibre in the
ground is installed reliability goes up, and speeds can be increased by
changing end point equipment. The current xDSL roll out has been good in as
much as it has got the bulk of the UK to useably high speeds in a shorter
time period than otherwise would have been the case, but it is ultimately a
technological dead end. Those that cannot see future demand going beyond
xDSL speeds lack imagination. I still remember people at work telling me
that this Internet thing was a fad and would never catch on. This was in an
institution used to dealing with science and technology. I think ultimately
the lower maintenance costs of a fibre local loop network are what is going
to drive rollout, with increased speeds being a welcome side effect.

Of course higher speed is nice, especially for large file transfer
(however backup is best done at night when you are not using your system
[and changing the files you are trying to back up]. In practice Dropbox,
google-drive etc. hide the slower back up from you.

OTOH how often are you going to use it? I just sold a car capable of
150mph, but don't recall ever driving it above two thirds of that speed..

Obviously new installs should probably be fibre, but upgrading all the
existing ones at a cost of billions? Who will pay?


One freezing cold day a sparrow was flying over a farmyard. It was so
cold that its little wings froze and it fell immobile into the yard. The
poor little bird was contemplating its demise, when a cow wandered by an
relieved itself over the sparrow. The warm manure quickly thawed the
sparrow's frozen wings and it recovered. Relieved at its deliverance the
bird started singing, but unfortunately this attracted the attention of
the farmyard cat, which dug the bird out of the manure, killed and ate it.

There are three morals to this story: -

1. S/he who ****s on you is not necessarily your enemy.
2. S/he who gets you out of the **** is not necessarily your friend.
and
3. If you are warm an happy in a pile of **** - keep your bleeding mouth shut!

the third applies to Broadband in the UK.


Bird life apart, you've ignored the points about reliability to concentrate
on speed. There are two main reliability issues, the inherent ones with
xDSL being an adaptive technology and it becoming ever more fault sensitive
as the line gets longer, and the reliability of the installed plant. The
latter will eventually become life expired and at that point I foresee more
fibre local loop going in. I may have this wrong, but my understanding of
FTTC cabinets was that they were eventually going to be jumping off points
for fibre local loop, the use of the existing copper being an expedient
interim solution. So some of the work is already done. To take our 1980s
estate as an example. The local loop is in underground ducting from the
cabinet to the house. It's not unrealistic to imagine that this might
pulled out one day, to be replaced with fibre. This would not require major
civil engineering work. What is does require is a major retraining of the
workforce, and in significant numbers. Mind you, the economic argument for
all of this might be changed by widespread deployment of radio local loops.
All those FTTC cabinets could instead support a local low power radio link.
With all the research going into 5G, short range high capacity radio links
may be available to all. I expect many a spreadsheet has been generated
within the major communications companies right now. So, in summary, copper
will eventually give way to fibre and/or radio. However, I wouldn't like to
hazard a guess on the timescale.

Well copper takes bending stress better than fibre, (but not the Al **** BT installed in the 1970's). I also don't know how hard it is to trace faults in fibre, with copper you can use TDR to find breaks or shorts.

R. Mark Clayton wrote:
On Monday, 12 March 2018 15:13:09 UTC, Tweed wrote:
R. Mark Clayton wrote:
On Monday, 12 March 2018 12:34:40 UTC, Tweed wrote:
R. Mark Clayton wrote:
On Sunday, 11 March 2018 22:49:42 UTC, 7 wrote:
UK fibre to home to be rolled out by franchise holders
------------------------------------------------------

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/...bre-on-the-way

Which says: -

"Of course if you take the unpopular but agnostic view that a 100 Mbps
connection if it delivers that speed does not matter whether [it is] a
hybrid or full fibre solution"

exactly the point no-one will give a **** if they get adequate speed from
what BT and Virgin offer.


SNIP - wibble

so why does any domestic user need symmetric 1Gbps fibre and what on
earth would they use it for?


You would be surprised how useful a high speed connection can be. At work I
have symmetric 1 Gbit/sec to the desktop. My average speed use of the
connection is tiny, but being able to down/upload files in seconds rather
than minutes is transformative. At home I could easily see a use case for
being able to upload files to external backup quickly. But this is a
byproduct of the real reason for going to full fibre - reliability. With
xDSL you are plagued by speed loss caused by line length, water in the
joints, fairy lights, wonky home wiring etc etc. DOCIS delivered by Virgin
is better in as much as the coax local loop maintains a constant speed
regardless of length. It suffers from segment over use, ie too many users
on one shared bit of end point equipment, and this seems to be highly
variable. My area has always been excellent, but other areas are seemingly
forever bad. Uplink speeds are poor as well. I get 200 MBit down, but only
12 up. (And yes I could use a faster up speed). Once full fibre in the
ground is installed reliability goes up, and speeds can be increased by
changing end point equipment. The current xDSL roll out has been good in as
much as it has got the bulk of the UK to useably high speeds in a shorter
time period than otherwise would have been the case, but it is ultimately a
technological dead end. Those that cannot see future demand going beyond
xDSL speeds lack imagination. I still remember people at work telling me
that this Internet thing was a fad and would never catch on. This was in an
institution used to dealing with science and technology. I think ultimately
the lower maintenance costs of a fibre local loop network are what is going
to drive rollout, with increased speeds being a welcome side effect.

Of course higher speed is nice, especially for large file transfer
(however backup is best done at night when you are not using your system
[and changing the files you are trying to back up]. In practice Dropbox,
google-drive etc. hide the slower back up from you.

OTOH how often are you going to use it? I just sold a car capable of
150mph, but don't recall ever driving it above two thirds of that speed.

Obviously new installs should probably be fibre, but upgrading all the
existing ones at a cost of billions? Who will pay?


One freezing cold day a sparrow was flying over a farmyard. It was so
cold that its little wings froze and it fell immobile into the yard. The
poor little bird was contemplating its demise, when a cow wandered by an
relieved itself over the sparrow. The warm manure quickly thawed the
sparrow's frozen wings and it recovered. Relieved at its deliverance the
bird started singing, but unfortunately this attracted the attention of
the farmyard cat, which dug the bird out of the manure, killed and ate it.

There are three morals to this story: -

1. S/he who ****s on you is not necessarily your enemy.
2. S/he who gets you out of the **** is not necessarily your friend.
and
3. If you are warm an happy in a pile of **** - keep your bleeding mouth shut!

the third applies to Broadband in the UK.


Bird life apart, you've ignored the points about reliability to concentrate
on speed. There are two main reliability issues, the inherent ones with
xDSL being an adaptive technology and it becoming ever more fault sensitive
as the line gets longer, and the reliability of the installed plant. The
latter will eventually become life expired and at that point I foresee more
fibre local loop going in. I may have this wrong, but my understanding of
FTTC cabinets was that they were eventually going to be jumping off points
for fibre local loop, the use of the existing copper being an expedient
interim solution. So some of the work is already done. To take our 1980s
estate as an example. The local loop is in underground ducting from the
cabinet to the house. It's not unrealistic to imagine that this might
pulled out one day, to be replaced with fibre. This would not require major
civil engineering work. What is does require is a major retraining of the
workforce, and in significant numbers. Mind you, the economic argument for
all of this might be changed by widespread deployment of radio local loops.
All those FTTC cabinets could instead support a local low power radio link.
With all the research going into 5G, short range high capacity radio links
may be available to all. I expect many a spreadsheet has been generated
within the major communications companies right now. So, in summary, copper
will eventually give way to fibre and/or radio. However, I wouldn't like to
hazard a guess on the timescale.

Well copper takes bending stress better than fibre, (but not the Al ****
BT installed in the 1970's). I also don't know how hard it is to trace
faults in fibre, with copper you can use TDR to find breaks or shorts.


Fibre bends surprisingly well, probably better than you might imagine.
Outdoor grade stuff with “armouring� (it seems to be some sort of Kevlar
inner mesh and a plastic outer) is virtually indestructible. Took ages to
get through a length I did want to cut with a hacksaw. At work we've got
contractors pulling great drums of the stuff through existing ducts to
improve on site networking. I've deployed it at a field site in Svalbard
with the drum being attached to a helicopter and the cable pulled out as
the helicopter flew. (No ducts, just surface laid - you aren't allowed to
drive on the ground when there is no snow because it kills the few plants
that are there). Never broken any of it yet. Cable breaks can be found with
an optical TDR, using pretty much the same principles as the one you
mention but with light pulses.