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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

#171

Post by simonh »

agumonkey wrote: post #164
Invictus0 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a completely random section of Texas that I found on Google Maps. Have fun making a mesh network out of the houses there. You might have more fun playing "I Spy", with the aim to find the houses. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Texas/@32.4826637,-98.4527...

Ok, fair point, but you know, some wifi chips have range far larger than advertised. Especially in flat non crowded area where you can have line-of-sight and less noise. Some youtube video show packets traveling a few miles on a stupid esp8266 chip. I don't know how sparse texas is, but I'm sure you can find a nice % of houses whose distance to each others is lower than 1mile.

A couple of packets barely making it, when the weather happens to be conducive, isn’t a basis for a reliable system.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#172

Post by simonh »

x0x0 wrote: post #159
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…

Kind of ironic and funny given the rural vote is what gave Trump the presidency and flipped the FCC.

They won’t even blame Trump. They’ll say his hearts in the right place, the political establishment are stitching him up and this was going to happen anyway.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#173

Post by MertsA »

alsetmusic wrote: post #111
chmaynard wrote: post #103

The FCC chairman appears to be listening only to corporate lobbyists. I consider this to be a dereliction of duty, but of course Trump thinks otherwise. As long as Trump is in power, the rules are going to keep changing in favor of corporate interests. Those of us who oppose the new regime at the FCC need to start thinking about what economic tools we can use to discourage telecoms from taking advantage of FCC rule c…

White House petition: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/we-people-call-res...

Unfortunately it seems like the Trump administration doesn't even bother responding nowadays.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#174

Post by hvidgaard »

agumonkey wrote: post #138
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.

The latency would be horrible. Fine for email, or downloading something you need in the future. But real time interaction as chat, or browsing the web would be really slow. Streaming would be out of the question as well.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#175

Post by agumonkey »

simonh wrote: post #171
agumonkey wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, fair point, but you know, some wifi chips have range far larger than advertised. Especially in flat non crowded area where you can have line-of-sight and less noise. Some youtube video show packets traveling a few miles on a stupid esp8266 chip. I don't know how sparse texas is, but I'm sure you can find a nice % of houses whose distance to each others is lower than 1mile.

A couple of packets barely making it, when the weather happens to be conducive, isn’t a basis for a reliable system.

ah right..

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#176

Post by Freestyler_3 »

x0x0 wrote: post #159
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…

Kind of ironic and funny given the rural vote is what gave Trump the presidency and flipped the FCC.

Because you pick the president on who he might put on the FCC place alone.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#177

Post by agumonkey »

hvidgaard wrote: post #174
agumonkey wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The latency would be horrible. Fine for email, or downloading something you need in the future. But real time interaction as chat, or browsing the web would be really slow. Streaming would be out of the question as well.

chat would be a problem, streaming is note that important

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#178

Post by hvidgaard »

agumonkey wrote: post #177
hvidgaard wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latency would be horrible. Fine for email, or downloading something you need in the future. But real time interaction as chat, or browsing the web would be really slow. Streaming would be out of the question as well.

chat would be a problem, streaming is note that important

Streaming obviously matters to a great many people. The success of Netflix speak for it self, so ignoring it is dooming the idea from the start. This is something that needs critical mass, otherwise it will not work.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#179

Post by gerbilly »

RyJones wrote: post #92
gerbilly wrote: post #75

Man we're getting to be so cheap. In Canada we stopped minting pennies because copper was too expensive. Also those pex pipes they install in houses are probably popular because copper is expensive. What's next, the return of aluminum wiring? We had a week long blackout here a few years ago, my wall phone running off copper twisted pair was the only electrical thing working in the house. I was glad, because I had bet…

you're right: one advantage to PEX is price of PEX itself. Other advantages: easier to install, no sweated joints, easy to color code, of no value to meth addicts. No sweating lowers the fire risk (which tbh is very low, but non zero). I suspect even if PEX cost 5x copper tubing, the TCO for PEX would still be lower over the lifetime of the plumbing. Shipping and moving around a spool of PEX is much easier than monke…

I'm not so sure about pex though. Seems like a cheap replacement to copper pipe.

There have been defects causing lots of water damage. Plus I'm not sure i want my drinking water sitting in plastic all day picking up whatever chemicals they used to make the pipe.

Copper is naturally antibacterial, and just seems safer to me, given that we've been using it for decades.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#180

Post by walshemj »

jackvalentine wrote: post #89
walshemj wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This chart suggests at 1800m you can expect below 20mbps https://www.increasebroadbandspeed.co.uk/2013/chart-bt-fttc-... Which is both slower than the fibre that had already been planned, and slower than the then incoming government's "25mbps for everyone by end of 2016" promise (which they missed). It also doesn't have a good cheap upgrade path and assumes that the copper is good and doesn't need to be replaced (it…

And does the average consumer need more than 20MBS and more to the point be willing to pay for it.

Some of the more extreme claims that we all need GB speed links don't make sense its like saying every house/flat needs a 56Kv 3 phase power supply.

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