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The beginning of the end for copper wire

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Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#131

Post by fencepost »

imglorp wrote: post #124
andrewtbham wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is rural access is often unprofitable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Service_Fund

Yet we've been paying into this fund decades, which was supposed to pay for rural access. Now, Relieving the telcos of this obligation despite them not completing universal access amounts to corporate welfare for those poor starving giants. Then there's E911. Of a bigger concern in rural areas will be losing access to 911. A lot of homes still keep landlines just for the 911 capabilities. Under the old rules the carr…

The sparsely populated rural western states will lose the ability to call 911, but maybe it won't matter so much - with a big percentage of those small rural hospitals that depend on part on Medicaid money going under, anyone needing emergency medical treatment is probably going to be looking at a minimum time of 2-3 hours anyway so what's an extra hour or two?

But you can count on one thing: "Thanks, Obama!"

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#132

Post by abalashov »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #90
twunde wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can remove the red state. It applies to blue states as well for telecom and energy

This. Nobody has a monopoly on corruption and back room dealing.

Nobody said anything about a monopoly.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#133

Post by rayiner »

chiph wrote: post #125
droopybuns wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you hear telco execs talk about “the copper plant,” they are referring to all of the underground copper. This wire is laid out in sheathed bundles of excess pairs that can be used to replace a pair that has a short. When they eventually run out of pairs, the only solution is to dig trenches and replace bundles. It is filthy, expensive work for a feature that no longer generates the revenue that funded the deploy…

> Maybe we could have afforded a national deployment of fiber. Here's the fun part - you've already been paying for it. The 1996 Telecommunications Act set up a fund that every telecom user in the USA pays into which was supposed to build high-speed services in rural and disadvantaged areas. > (3) ACCESS IN RURAL AND HIGH COST AREAS- Consumers in all regions of the Nation, including low-income consumers and those in…

The USF was not intended for building broadband. It was designed to replace implicit cross subsidies for rural phone service with explicit ones. Starting in 2012, the FCC started diverting a relatively small amount of USF money for broadband, but the total amount is less than 1% of the amount of private investment since 1996.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#135

Post by nickbauman »

ztjio wrote: post #77

It seems like a lot of commenters don't understand the problem. The issue is not about whether that copper wire can be useful. It's not about whether there exist alternatives to provide in places where the copper is too expensive to maintain. The point is that regulations previously required the telco provide an alternative service that works just as well as the existing copper before they are allowed to stop maintai…

It's one step closer to a Mad Max world.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#137

Post by mrmondo »

thisrod wrote: post #102
mrmondo wrote: post #28

While the Australian right wing govt scrapped all the fibre to the home work that was underway and decided that copper from the node to the house was a great upgrade. The internet in Australia is so bad I had significantly better in New Zealand a decade ago.

Which Australian right wing government are you referring to? Australian telecoms ran off the rails in the late 90s, the moment that the Howard government privatised the state-run phone network. They either stuffed it up (thinking charitably), or pulled a dodgy related party transaction to rip off the public and enrich their mates in business who were kind enough to donate back part of the loot (thinking cynically). T…

The Abbot / Turnbull govt stopping the rollout of fibre in favour of using copper.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#138

Post by agumonkey »

ztjio wrote: post #77

It seems like a lot of commenters don't understand the problem. The issue is not about whether that copper wire can be useful. It's not about whether there exist alternatives to provide in places where the copper is too expensive to maintain. The point is that regulations previously required the telco provide an alternative service that works just as well as the existing copper before they are allowed to stop maintai…

Reading the article I dreamed of a community system were every flat / house was a wireless peer in a mesh grid.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#139

Post by mrmondo »

walshemj wrote: post #59
mrmondo wrote: post #28

While the Australian right wing govt scrapped all the fibre to the home work that was underway and decided that copper from the node to the house was a great upgrade. The internet in Australia is so bad I had significantly better in New Zealand a decade ago.

FTC Fibre to CAB and using existing coper for the drop to the house makes sense as you can get good performance with VDSL over 20MBS at a 2K yards

Yes absolutely terrible drop in speed over VDSL over distance or noise.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#140

Post by agumonkey »

buryat wrote: post #117
busterarm wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a great many businesses, even in NYC and even in the high-tech industries here that absolutely depend on copper infrastructure. The world-renowned midtown hedge fund that I used to work for had a DS1 off a copper trunk that had the payroll system (a circa-2001 Dell Optiplex running Windows 2000) on it as recently as 2008. I assume they aren't now (god, I hope so, but that system hadn't been touched in years…

it's not about big cities, it's about unprofitable rural areas. The copper wire will be kept alive as long as it brings money.

I suppose if cities copper ever get removed it would be for fiber replacement.
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