[LINK] National Broadband Network - except it's not national.

[Marghanita da Cruz]

Tom Koltai wrote:
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: link-bounces at mailman1.anu.edu.au 
>> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman1.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Stilgherrian
>> Sent: Wednesday, 12 May 2010 12:58 PM
>> To: Link list
>> Subject: Re: [LINK] National Broadband Network - except it's 
>> not national.
> <SNIP>
>> Senator Conroy is on record 
>> as saying the copper gets ripped out when the fibre goes in.
>>
> 
> 
> 
> In 2000, I listened to a speech by PACBell (cant remember the ladies
> name) at a NANOG conference where she explained tha the experience of
> PACBELL was that removing the copper was an expensive mistake and that
> they were now replacing hundreds of kilometres of copper.
> 
> Surely Australia is not going to repeat this mistake?
> 
> The copper needs to stay until 4G is 100% ubiquitious. Even then, it
> shouldn't necessarily be removed.
<snip>

Energy Australia recently replaced the electricity cables in
my street. According the bloke running the show who
replaced the fuses,  Aluminium is more robust and a better
option because of the street trees, though not more efficient
in conducting electricity.

Given the high price copper - are we seeing some kind of
asset stripping or are the benefits genuine?

> Since the early 1900s, utility companies have been using aluminium wire for transmission of electricity within their power grids. It has advantages over the older copper wire in that it is lighter, more flexible, and less expensive. Aluminium wire in power grid applications was very successful and is still used today.
> 
> The latest market to embrace aluminium is building wire due to the rapidly rising price of copper. Electrical contractors have switched from copper to aluminium alloy building wire using the new 8000 alloy as specified by the National Electrical Code (NEC). Contractors are using larger sizes of aluminium building wire for low voltage feeders where the savings over copper is significant due the higher weight. Aluminium building wire will have half the weight of copper even though the aluminium conductor must have 50% greater area than copper to carry the same current. The aluminium conductors used for building wire may be compacted in such a way that the overall diameter of the aluminium wire is approximately the same as copper.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminum_wire>

Marghanita
-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
http://ramin.com.au
Tel: 0414-869202