On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 23:43:48 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

In article ,
Badger wrote:
And until someone comes up with a 'value add' that gets a big buy in to
finance it it will continue to be by slow copper with the accountants
wringing the last pennies of profit from it. The cost of fibre to the
home is x2 too expensive at the moment, and has been so for some time.
The buy in needs to be something BIG, but in this tin pot country I
can't see it happening....Any ideas a what might trigger it?

I can't understand why the cable boys didn't use fibre - I can't see it
would have been that much more. Rumour has it the feeds to each area are
anyway.

I've not got it, but my neighbour has. Just installed a Freeview box for
her and got a chance to play with it. Not nearly as good as off air.
Suppose their modulators are cheap and cheerful too.

I had opportunity to look at this first hand when involved in a
debacle with NTL over ISDN provisioning.

From my house, the nearest cabinet is about 50m away. That cabling
is done in CTsomething coax and several telephone pairs in a formed
bundle cable going from a box on the wall to the cabinet.

In the cabinet there is a distribution amplifier and telephone
punchdown frame.

From that point, there is a coax cable (CTbigger something) going back
about 500m along with others to a rather larger distribution cabinet.
Multipair telephone cables go between cabinets as well.
In these larger cabinets there is fibre equipment, RF headends and
larger telephone punchdown panels. I understand that the fibres are
arranged in loops between large cabinets.

So in effect, fibre is two steps away from the house.
Although it's easy to lay fibre, terminating it is a bit more
difficult, needing a trained orang utan rather than a chimpanzee.
Also, the distribution amplifiers in the cabinets nearest to homes are
quite cheap. Fibre distribution equipment is rather more expensive.
Then there would need to be fibre termination in the home....


--

..andy

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