Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The beginning of the end for copper wire

potsandpansbyccg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 193 posts

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#161

Post by abalashov »

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.

Yeah, but as POTS revenue declines in big cities, too, there's a tipping point beneath which it's not worth maintaining that infrastructure, either.

While the unit economics are better because of the density, there are also more subscribers to serve, breeding its own infrastructural complexity. It may be more efficient to do it in cities per wire distance or unit of infrastructure, but there's also just more infrastructure.

For POTS to be economical anywhere, a sizable chunk of the population has to buy it.

I don't know what those tipping points are, but you can be 370% sure the ILECs have calculated this out meticulously.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#162

Post by blaisio »

anotherjesse wrote: post #149

The point is sometimes copper connections are the only options for voice and data. And now ATT and friends can stop servicing rural / small communities. I live in a small community an hours drive from San Francisco. There is only ATT DSL. (no cable, only a couple cell services and none at all for some - including myself - due to the hills and valleys) I am lucky and have DSL (5Mbps, and most of the time really 2Mbps,…

I know it's not entirely the town's fault because sometimes people make mistakes, and hindsight is 20/20, but some of that is the fault of the local government. Houses without solid internet access are way less valuable on the market. A lot of local governments are filled with people who have no idea what they're doing and end up really hurting their community. So if this is bothering you, you should get involved.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#163

Post by byee »

mlazos wrote: post #156
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.

I read somewhere a while ago that someone was thinking of doing this with airplanes. Not sure if this made it past the drawing board though.

It's been used in the past to deliver television signals via surplus B-29 bombers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratovision

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#164

Post by agumonkey »

Invictus0 wrote: post #143
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.

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.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#165

Post by agumonkey »

mlazos wrote: post #156
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.

I read somewhere a while ago that someone was thinking of doing this with airplanes. Not sure if this made it past the drawing board though.

also, just in case, https://twitter.com/motherboard/status/931269013967130624

detroit diy wifi community network

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#166

Post by leggomylibro »

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.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes...I'm having trouble feeling much pity.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#167

Post by Gibbon1 »

anotherjesse wrote: post #149

The point is sometimes copper connections are the only options for voice and data. And now ATT and friends can stop servicing rural / small communities. I live in a small community an hours drive from San Francisco. There is only ATT DSL. (no cable, only a couple cell services and none at all for some - including myself - due to the hills and valleys) I am lucky and have DSL (5Mbps, and most of the time really 2Mbps,…

Some places companies are making point to point microwave links available. As long as there is someplace you can get direct line of sight, you're good.

Personal feeling, copper or fiber can't compete with that on price at all.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#168

Post by gjjrfcbugxbhf »

sitkack wrote: post #68
maltalex wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but there are still paying customers on the end of that infrastructure. Are they not profitable enough?

Things that are utilities need to widely available. Power, electricty, water, etc. We grant monopoly status to corporations in exchange for fixed profits and guaranteed service even where not profitable. If we didn't do this, they would have block by block pricing and wouldn't serve areas for arbitrary "reasons" Yet they still continue to shake the people down. I don't think corporations should run anything last mile…

Maybe they should compete for the service contracts - but even then cost benefit should compare with insourced provision.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#169

Post by Johnythree »

walshemj wrote: post #63
mjevans wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider that 'the option' for when a building owner refuses to re-wire with something that can be serviced by metro-Ethernet. Ethernet is, of course, ~90-100 meters (not 500) but most MDUs need to have utility closets/areas within 100 meters for other reasons anyway; so you often there can either be copper or fiber back-haul links past that first switch. The major pain point is probably neighborhoods where the exp…

There are long range versions of Ethernet

But not on phone lines (Cat1, voice-grade copper), and not without active repeaters.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#170

Post by PeterisP »

vvanders wrote: post #108
pipio21 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can put tens of thousands of copper lines communications in just a single optical cable. An optical cable is extremely small, in fact, most of the cable is just mechanical reinforcement. Tens of thousands of copper fibers does not only means lots of cables with lots of devices that could fail, with lots of interference. It means that if something goes wrong, it it very hard to identify the problem or even to have…

Yes, there's some advantages however some services don't work(alarms, etc) on fiber.

Yes, the hardware for those services needs to be updated to work through another channel. For example, in my area all the alarms are set up to connect over the cellular network.
Post reply on HN