Search This Blog

Thursday 31 July 2008

Mother of all definitions

Sussed it! If it is 'fibre outside, copper inside' you can call it next generation. Otherwise.... call it by its name. FTTC, ADSL2+, co-ax etc.

The next generation is fibre outside, copper inside, and no more BS is permitted. All telco marketers hereby take note. Us consumers are not up for being 'conned', treat us as halfway intelligent please ;o) and Ofcon, reinforce it. Tis so simple a code of practice....

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Ah, but don't forget that plastic optic fibre is well on the way to becoming a viable alternative to copper inside the home and business!

Graham said...

Or indeed wireless, which is presumably the most prevalent "inside" networking technology these days?

Unknown said...

I'd thought of wireless, but of course it hangs off the copper within the home or office, so you would still need the copper.
At the moment, if you were wanting a great home or office broadband, you would want fibre up to the premises and then cat5 or something within the premises. You may well want to hang wireless onto that.
What is interesting is that plastic fibre (POF) is becoming a viable technology within the home. It's about twice the cost at the moment - though should be around the same cost by next year. However it doesn't suffer from interference, so it can be run alongside power cables and has a number of other advantages.
The main problem at the moment is that few appliances have POF interfaces and a media converter is needed, which takes power. Once we get a few more appliances that have a POF interface, then we can get rid of copper completely!

Cybersavvy UK said...

Whatever the alternative inside the house/premises, unless it is fibre up to that wall/socket/garden path etc, it ain't NGA. Full stop!

ADSL2+, FTTC etc are intermediate measures, stopgaps, to allow further sweating of the copper asset, deprive the consumers of decent connectivity, and hindering UK Plc from socio-economic growth.

If I was vaguely anarchic, I would say that it is time to encourage the thieves to nick all the first mile copper in the country and solve the problem once and for all. ;o)