Fibre? Don’t make me laugh.

Apparently some people at University College London (UCL) have achieved data transmission speeds of greater than a terabit per second to a single receiver:

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/innovation/breakthrough-enables-downloads-50000-times-faster-than-superfast-broadband-20160211-gms3bd.html

To which I say – phooey!

It’s on fibre – but copper is the future.

Copper is faster, cheaper, and can be installed more quickly. That’s why all the really top-shelf research is concentrating on getting super high speeds over copper. Apparently people are already pushing tens of gigabits over inch-long snippets; it’s just a simple matter of scaling that up. And Australia’s world-class broadband network will be ready and waiting when they do!

UCL? Fibre? What a pack of amateurs. Sheesh.

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Overhead vs Underground

Putting cables (electrical, coax, fibre – whatever) on existing poles, or even putting up new poles to carry a new service, seems like such an obviously cheaper and easier way to go. But is it really? Let’s look at some of the reasons why underground is almost always better than overhead – even though overhead looks cheaper.

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