Flexible Optic Fiber Promises Cheaper Last Mile

bn0p writes "Ars Technica has an article on a Korean company that has developed a low-cost, flexible, plastic optical fiber that could bring cheaper 2.5 Gbps connections to homes and apartments. While not as fast as glass fiber, it is significantly faster than copper. In related news, Corning recently announced a flexible glass fiber that can be bent repeatedly without losing signal strength. The Corning fiber incorporates nanostructures in the cladding of the fiber that act as 'light guardrails' to keep the light in the fiber. The glass fiber could be as much as four times faster than plastic fiber. Neither fiber is available commercially yet, but both should help with the last mile problem when they are deployed."

Actually,

[WindBourne]

The plastic one would be great in the last 100 feet (33 meters). It would be nice to run fiber through the home, as well as a cat 5. The cat 5 can carry power (POE). But if that plastic can carry 2.5G AND is easy AND cheap to install, it will quickly make waves in the housing industry.

Last mile...

[Usquebaugh]

My understanding is that the last mile problem is all to do with the cost of laying wire not the cost of the wire itself. Also, if everybody has gigabit connections the cable provider is going to have to invest in some very serious switching and upstream connections. In short fixing the last mile will probably only expose problems up stream.

I keep wondering about god playing dice and quantum entanglement. Currently, the labs are stuck at a few miles. But if they can up the range and speed would this not be a better solution. A cable of infinite length that is also secure that you can give to any ISP. ISP would be an open market and speeds would go up as costs went down. No need for cable/wireless so zero installation costs.

So is QE going to happen or is it just my poor grasp of the subject matter?

Better idea

[ILuvRamen]

What's wrong with copper? I'd freakin love even 100 MBPS at my house! That's like a minute and a half for a good quality DVD movie instead of hours. And copper can do gigabit so geeze. They just need more of it and better network switches and routers instead of cheaping out and giving crap service to everyone to save a buck

If the last mile matters

[ThousandStars]

There's a reasonable chance wireless will eventually solve many of the last mile problems; I recently cancelled Millennium Cable in Seattle for ClearWire [clearwire.com] instead. Right now it isn't available everywhere and the service isn't particularly fast by fiber standards, as its 1.5 down /756 (I think) up. But if the technology improves faster than fiber can be rolled out we might not care by the time 2011 rolls around.

Re:Invest for the long-term

[ThousandStars]

In many ways we do invest for the long term. POTS has been around for about a century. For another example, my parents' house was built in 1996 or something like that, and they have an option for something like six phone lines if they so choose. Except they now use cell phones and have zero phone lines -- oops! All the money spent on those extra copper lines doesn't matter, but I know they'd use fiber optic lines if the builder had had the foresight to include them.

Fast forward to today. As I stated in an earlier post [slashdot.org], there's a real danger that technology might solve the last mile problem through wireless. We might not, and if Verizon offered FIOS to my apartment I'd certainly take it over Clearwire, but telecom companies can't be eager to take the very real risk that in 10 years consumers will all be using laptops and iPhones connecting via whatever the successor to EVDO is/will be.

Try the last 20 miles.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is never going to happen. I live less than 20 miles from a town of over 300000 people and they won't even lay coax out here. (ADSL is useless with its extremely limited range)

Last mile my ass. Wireless and satellite are useless for gaming. Good old fashioned analog modems connecting at 28.8 Kbps is the best internet connection that most of North America will ever see. That is the fact of the matter.

The focus needs to be on elimination of high bandwidth crap that makes the internet nearly unusable for the majority of its users. Unfortunately, few web developers can grasp this concept and are losing out on huge sections of the market.

In addition, I have been using fiber optic connections between analytical instruments with a bending radius of 5.3 cm for decades, I can't see the need for less than that. If you need to bend fiber connections more sharply than that (especially in scale of miles), then you have serious design issues. Fiber has been very flexible for ages, this is totally bogus, not to mention totally unnecessary, and totally moot, as it will never happen anyway and fiber flexibilty has nothing to do with it.

Re:Invest for the long-term

[Belial6]

Here in the US they don't do conduit at all. The reason they don't is because it is cheaper cheaper to just run the cables, and the only way you will get developers to spend an extra dime is if it mandated by the city/county. While it sounds like NZ has the problem half solved, allowing the company to own the conduit is only slightly better in practice than letting them bury their cables directly. (By the way, when we are saying conduit, we are not talking about a protective sheathing, but are talking about a large tube that new cable can be pulled through.)

Re:Cabling expense

[Ephemeriis]

wireless is typically far cheaper because the installation costs are zero.

Sure, in theory, it's cheaper because you don't have to sling cables/dig trenches/whatever... But in practice I've found it usually costs just as much as a wired installation, if not more.

Wireless if fickle. You'll have a great connection in one room and then it'll go to hell in the next. You'll be fine with five users connected and then it'll go to hell when a sixth connects. The weather affects signal strength, as do human bodies, and furniture, and anything else that gets between you and the AP. It's hard to deliver consistent wireless connectivity.

With a wired network you can install a single switch and run cables out to fairly distant locations... With wireless, you need an AP within reach of each device connecting... And then you've still got to get the APs connected back to your router - typically with a wire.