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Is Fiber Going to Hijack the Copper Infrastructure for Networking?

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David Willson
Is Fiber Going to Hijack the Copper Infrastructure for Networking?

In early 2020, the communication networks all over the world were put at ceasing as millions of people put themselves into quarantine provided that the COVID-19 compelled us to do so. With such a large number of people trying to work from home, students studying from home, and the general public entertaining themselves online on different streaming platforms, internet usage skyrocketed. 

Seeing through the perspective of internet service providers, it was not anything less than a massive storm. But it is remarkable how the ISPs stood the storm and kept their customers happy and connected.   

With the commencement of home internet, phone lines became popular in the beginning. The cable companies supported the internet connections for a while and started using the same cable lines to provide the Television channels. However, today the internet technology has so evolved that we are moving to the era of fiber-optic networks. The primary purpose is to meet the ever-increasing needs of internet usage. Fiber-optic as infrastructure has the ability to grow as the internet usage grows with time and circumstances.   

Advantages of Switching to an Optic-fibre technology:  

An exponential rise in bandwidth  

In addition to the upload and download speed that we usually address in Mbps, we use another term to classify the internet speed, and that is – the Bandwidth. The bandwidth of an internet connection is a measure of how much data your connection can tackle at a given time. It’s like having more routes for the traffic to pass through. To your surprise, a fiber-optic cable has ten thousand times more bandwidth than a copper cable. Thus, fiber-optic much better and resilient than copper wire.  

Better Upload Speeds  

Almost all of us need faster upload speeds – now that we are stuck in between a pandemic situation. Although upload speeds are generally lesser than the download speed, with the increasing internet usage on applications like Zoom, large uploads, gaming, etc., we need better and faster upload speeds. However, some of the ISPs ensure sufficiently high uploads speed – for example, if we consider spectrum internet prices, we will find out that they can help us manage things effectively.  

Resistance to Electromagnetic Radiations  

Radiations from different sources such as cell towers, power lines, lightning, sun, and various other home appliances interfere with the copper wires' electrical currents. On the other hand, fiber-optics do not carry electrical currents – instead, they only conduct the binary signals. Hence, we can say that fiber-optic technology is not susceptible to getting interference from these sources.  

Long Distance Information Carrier  

There is no denying the fact that the data signals undergo impairment as they travel to long distances. You won’t be surprised to know that copper wires lose up to 94% of the signals when they travel approximately 100 meters. However, fiber-optic is a potential alternative in this aspect as well – it only loses 3% of its signal over the course of 100 meters.  

Future of Communications Lie with the Fibre  

Despite the fact that regular copper wires are running out of their capacity to support our internet requirements, the ISPs have begun to integrate fiber-optic into the spine of their networks. Every provider, to some extent, has the fiber-optic to support their networking infrastructure. However, no one is ready to completely shift the structures onto the fiber-optic provided that the cost is exceptionally high, and no ISP would be able to afford it without raising the prices for the consumers.  

The Verdict  

This year is the utter depiction of how much the internet has incorporated into our lives as an integral part of whatever we do. Some internet providers are still overlooking the fact that they need fiber-optics to grow in the future. However, with the increasing utilization of the internet, we do need to upgrade. It’s a universally accepted fact that the older systems cannot handle the latest digital transformations. Although it provides the services directly through cable, Spectrum Internet is setting up fiber-optic in the backbone of their networking infrastructure. 

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David Willson
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