Congratulations! After an hours-long installation, your home is now connected to Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ)'s FiOS network, and you have one of the fastest residential broadband hookups in the U.S. Say goodbye to that slow DSL connection.
Seriously, say goodbye -- because if you ever want to go back to DSL, there's a good chance you can't.
When Verizon connects the fiber line to your home during a FiOS installation, it is the company's standard practice that the technician cuts the copper connection from the street to your home. This leaves you with only a fiber line running into your house. Verizon says that customers prefer this over having a logjam of wires running through their property.
But what about those rare cases where someone only wants a cut-rate DSL connection and VOIP service. What happens when a formerly FiOS homeowner no longer wants to be a Verizon customer?
Though such a switch would probably be rare, there's a chance the copper line is gone for good. "We'd handle it on a case-by-case basis," says Mark Marchand, director of media relations at Verizon. "The goal would be that we want to keep them as a customer and we would do everything we could to reach an accord."
A customer fleeing from FiOS might not get far, as other competitive DSL providers rely on Verizon's copper infrastructure to reach customers in its territories.
Winning a former FiOS customer "would be very difficult to do, but its not impossible" said Arkady Goldinstein, CEO of AceDSL, a voice and DSL service provider in the Northeast. "You would have to ask the Verizon technician to leave the copper connection, but whether or not they do it depends on who ends up at your house."
AceDSL says there have been instances where Verizon has reconnected a copper line so that AceDSL could reach a former FiOS customer. The company says about 25 percent of all FiOS installations it sees still have copper going to the home, even though Verizon's usual procedure is to disconnect it.
With Verizon planning on passing 18 million homes with FiOS by the end of 2008, it would seem that a lot of copper lines are at risk of disappearing as more and more customers sign up. But that still isn't the death knell for the competitive carrier DSL business.
"FiOS has a negligible effect on the CLEC community," says Tom Nolle of CIMI Corp. "FiOS only extends what was already a deep fiber deployment." Nolle says companies like EarthLink and AceDSL have known for years of the movement towards fiber and that FCC regulations mandate that RBOCs are only obligated to maintain for wholesale the voice channel of any fiber access infrastructure.
For competitve DSL providers, the disappearing copper may not kill their business. But it probably won't help it either.
"The growth of Earthlink's broadband business has slowed from double digits to single digits, but I think they can maintain their current rate," says Vijay Singh, an analyst with Janco Partners Inc. Singh says Covad Communications Inc. (Amex: DVW)'s expanding ADSL2 footprint shows there are still spots in the broadband market where CLECs and ISPs can do well.
The correct way to look at the electron vs. photon is this: electrons/holes/ions/vacancies (in general, anything related to charge) are the carrier of current in conductors (regular, semi, super, nanowire, or YTBD).
OTOH, photons being neutral particles can not participate in direct conduction. IOW, you can not have a photon current in a copper wire.
True, electromagnetic waves travle in (say) copper at a speed close to c, but that is a concerted motion of the electrons that helps this transmission of energy in that medium. We can not have the same thing with photons. In a fiber or waveguide, where photons actually do transmit, it is a direct transmission of energy; quite different than conduction. Hope it is helpful.
I just did a quick LightReading message board search: "Nyquist" in the title or body of the message. Since mid-2004 there have been 17 posts (not including this one) containing that word. 11 were from Brookseven & 4 were responding to Brookseven. Only twice was Seven not responsible for invoking Nyquist's name on these boards since mid-2004.
>> I'd argue that for short distances, for the same bw and performance, fibre happens to be far more expensive than copper, overall. A 1 gig phy pair costs $4/port-pair and cable is about $1.5 per metre. These are significantly less that optics and fibre cost, without even considering splice costs and installation.
Over longer distances, this story changes dramatically, of course. Since this article is abut the last mile, I do assume we are talking short distance transmission here. <<
WRT to greenfields I would observe:
a) most new builds tend to be fiber which provides one data point b) many people have observed the impact of the rising cost of copper over the last few years on the business case for last mile cabling (especially if that copper is going to get stolen for its value).
However, I think this thread is mostly concerned with the value, or not, of existing copper in the ground (as the thread started with the assertion that copper should be ripped out, thrown away, and replaced by WiMax, "...like the rest of the planet").
On that score we can observe that the existing copper in the ground can be made to perform quite nicely, arguably better than many of the currently available wireless technologies, given:
a) FTTN architecture b) FEC/Vectoring/bonding/etc...
I have been told, but have not been able to confirm, that one of the PUCs has ordered VZ not to remove the copper. If this is true:
a) PUCs have the ability to intervene if they so wish b) there is another data point which points to some entity's perception of the value of the existing copper.
with respect to b) it is possible that some people think a CLEC might be able to pursue an alternative business model to the ILEC, one that has value to consumers, even if CLECs can not pursue the same business model as the ILEC.
While I agree with your points. I've been involved in pricing both. But the last mile is really the last mileS from the CO to the home. The exception is the FTTN model where the distance is usually less than a block (post to home).
But the line from the post to home is where things like water effects (corrodes) the connections and eventually penetrates the binding. The advantage fiber has over copper here is that wonce spliced the connection is more stable and water penetration is not as significant. But the cost of a media cut is much more significant for fiber.
So the economic cost hinges on will copper have worst long term degradations or will the line be cut by tree roots, homeowner or backhoe more often.
dwdm2: What you are forgetting is that, electron, the carrier of electricity, is NOT a part of the electromagnetic spectrum. But I have better things to do with my time... got to go. ____________________________________________________ Electrons do move in the conductor, but not at the velocity of EM waves in that medium. They move at the drift velocity, which in most cases is < 10% of speed of the wave itself in that medium.
So, unless it's a pure electron beam you're talking about, I don't see how this is especially significant to the current discussion.
Mark Seery; -symbol/signal impairments can be compensated for / avoided by various methods, on various mediums, but this often involves additional cost and/or performance impairments. ____________________________________________________ I'd argue that for short distances, for the same bw and performance, fibre happens to be far more expensive than copper, overall. A 1 gig phy pair costs $4/port-pair and cable is about $1.5 per metre. These are significantly less that optics and fibre cost, without even considering splice costs and installation.
Over longer distances, this story changes dramatically, of course. Since this article is abut the last mile, I do assume we are talking short distance transmission here.
>> Relevance is that some of us are trying to get a handle on a thing called 'optical computing', where the photons will participate in computation (currently at the dream state!). <<
thanks for clarifying what was behind the back and forth.
i am not qualified to say what is the next most promising field of research, but i am generally inclined to be glad people are doing research (and in multiple areas) because there does appear to some interesting challenges on the road ahead; though I guess Intel's hi-k transistor technology (and competing offerings) is a reminder that you never know what creative work arounds can be achieved in the short term.
i don't doubt that at some point in the future going to much faster processors means there may come a cross over between the effects of noise in an electronic environment and the effects of noise in an optical environment. would be interesting to be able to take advantage of that cross over. for now I guess it is easy on the speed pedal and hard on the materials and multicore pedals.
The problem with computing speeds is derived from at least 3 factors, not just 1.
1 - Switching Speed - the one you seem to be driving at.
2 - Power - All that switching takes power, can't wait to see what 1 million optical switches and storage devices take.
3 - Space - Remember, you have a propagation time problem. Information does not move faster than about 1 foot/nsec. So, if you want super fast computers, they have to be super small. So, make these optical switches super tiny as well.
So, perhaps there will be optical computing in the future. But first make the realistic optical gate and find out if the "modem" is your problem. I am guessing space and power will be your problems.
But remember, the same force carrier you are using is the same force carrier that exchanges force to hold a charged particle (or actually a number of them) in a DRAM or caused a Hard Disk to put a 1 on a space on a drive.
A lot of people believe a lot of things. Many of the things they believe in turn out to be untrue. You can say that about what I believe, but the same can be true about what you believe.
For example, suppose you are looking in the exact wrong direction and the next advance in computing is not in the optical domain but in the biological domain.
Mark wrote: "note for example that electricity can be produced from an optical signal"
What you are refering to is called the photoelectric effect that earned Einstein the Nobel prize. Here a photon excites an electron so much that it is impinged in to the conduction band. HTH.
"what is it about the difference between an electron and a photon that you think is relevant to this discussion?"
Relevance is that some of us are trying to get a handle on a thing called 'optical computing', where the photons will participate in computation (currently at the dream state!). With the present 'modem limited' technology as described by brookseven, one can not break the barrier of terahertz computation and information transmission. brookseven is adament to establish that what we have now is ultimate. I and many others on the other hand believe to the contrary. True that Moores curve is getting saturated. It is predicted that ultimate CPUs will reach as much 20 GHz speed at saturation. While that is a big stretch, but from transpotation point of view, copper saturates at ~ 1GHz per channel. If we have to live with brookseven's standard, then thats all we have. We OTOH, believe that utilizing light at its full potential, much higher speed communication and computing possible. The modems that are limiting today are not the ultimate.
Electrons are a particle that is part of the standard model. Perhaps you just want to invent your own physics. So, to save time and typing.
Take a look at the first chart in the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_model
Now take a look at it (probably have to click it to be able to read it).
There is a chart in the center bottom called "Property of the Interactions".
Wait....there is more....go to the column for Elctromagnetic and the row called particle mediating and there you will find the symbol for.....a photon.
Eureka! There it is! The photon is the force carrier for the electromagnetic force! So, wait a minute are you saying that the same force carrier for light is the same as for electromagnetism! Why YES! YES! YES! We have achieved unification (Okay, we did over 100 years ago).
Now to find the Electron.....Try the spot called Fermions. Now look around the chart and you will find many particles with non-zero electric charge including Protons, W Bosons, and the Kaon. Wow!
So, now why would expect to find a Fermion on the Electromagnetic spectrum until we are ready to discuss wave-particle duality?
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