One of the less understood advantages of an optical network (optical fiber) is the fact that the best fiber does nothing but guide light.
The electro-optical equipment on either end of the fiber creates the communication path. One piece of equipment modulates a (laser) lightsource. The modulated light is guided by the fiber, received and demodulated at the other end by another piece of equipment.
Moore’s law applies also to electro-optical equipment: you get more bandwidth for the same price every year.
If you have fiber installed the only upgrade is in equipment, no digging required. Since equipment is depreciated in 3 or 5 years, you can have a fast path to higher speeds.
We have just seen the effect of Moore’s law in practice.
The presentation in Zeewolde (Netherlands) by Reggefiber and independent ISP’s, skilfully twittered by Vincent Everts (see his video of the high quality videoconference with a schoolclass) not only gave us the announcement of a 200/200 MBps symmetrical Internet access service (Euro 134,95 per month triple play).
The real news was that 1 Gbps optical ports have become so cheap that they will be the standard, replacing 100 Mbps ports.
In other words, the standard capacity available per line or per household is 1 Gbps.
It is a commercial decision to supply less, 10 Mbps and up.
In the USA Verizon recently has tested 10-GPON, supplying 10 GBps down and 2,5 Gbps up, to be shared among 32 customers (max.). The nice touch was that they added the 10-GPON to an existing GPON network while it was operational, ending up with 2 independent GPON networks in the same fiber infrastructure. In one home both networks could be used simultaneously without interference.
Spring is early….
