[LINK] fibre distance issues?

[David Boxall]

At 25/10/2007 7:37 AM Richard Chirgwin wrote:
> Without trying to pick a row with the entire world... IMO we can't 
> sensibly debate "what should be" without an accurate view of how 
> things stand today. And today, the "people who thought running copper 
> to peoples' farms was out of the question" were right.
>
> Lots of farms don't have copper now. They're served by VHF / UHF radio 
> links, which are held by Telstra and can be viewed on the ACMA 
> register of radio licenses. ( I suppose this replaced, in some cases, 
> the single-wire-earth-return party line phones that used the top wire 
> of a fence to carry the calls!) I would guess that these support 
> dial-up access to the Internet and that's about it.
Some surprising places do have copper lines.  In the early 1950s, I 
holidayed on a farm outside Braidwood and at Enngonia, 100 miles back o' 
Bourke.  Both had copper phone lines, even then.  Some places don't, 
that's true, but a lot do.

My point is that there's little difference between trenching in copper 
and doing the same with fibre.  I'd say that, if we're digging a trench, 
we're wasting an opportunity by failing to put in fibre.

Shouldn't our aim be to run fibre wherever there's currently copper?  
Shouldn't all network expansion use fibre in preference to copper?


-- 
David Boxall                    |  When a distinguished but elderly
                                 |  scientist states that something is
                                 |  possible, he is almost certainly
                                 |  right. When he states that
                                 |  something is impossible, he is
                                 |  very probably wrong.
                                                   --Arthur C. Clarke