Why Carriers Are Transforming Copper to Fiber

Alchemists of the ancient world spent centuries searching for the philosopher’s stone. This is a legendary substance that could turn lead into gold. They never found it. Today’s network carriers may well have found a modern equivalent to the philosopher’s stone. It’s the near magic of converting copper into fiber.

Telecom service providers aren’t really after a chemical process to make them rich. They have something even more lucrative. Their version of transmutation involves the wholesale replacement of century old twisted pair copper wiring with the latest in multiple strand fiber optic cabling.

There are untold tons of copper in the ground. Not just the ore, mind you. The copper that makes money for carriers is the refined variety that is drawn into small diameter wire and coated with colored plastic for insulation. The wires are then joined into pairs so a complete circuit can be formed. They are twisted into a spiral to cancel out interfering signals from other pairs and outside influences such as AC power cabling. Collections of twisted pairs are bundled into cables called binders and then buried or flown overhead on utility poles.

The installed copper is referred to as an asset by the companies that own it. These are almost always the ILECs or Incumbent local Exchange Carriers. They are the legacy of the old Bell System that developed the technology and installed the infrastructure in the first place. Copper assets have been the basis of telecom profits for more than a century. So, why turn your back on this valuable resource?

Copper’s glory days are in the past. For more than a dozen decades, copper wires carried most voice and data signals. Data came first, in the form of the telegraph. Voice soon followed with the invention of Bell’s telephone. Even television used copper for signal transport, although using a different type of cable called coax. It’s still the most popular way to connect cable television to homes and businesses. What’s replacing copper? Fiber.

Fiber optic bundles long ago replaced copper cables as undersea cables. They also form the core of nationwide data networks and long distance telephone service. What’s left is the arduous job of abandoning or pulling out all that old copper still used locally and replacing it with the latest in high efficiency fiber optics.

Make no mistake, converting copper to fiber is an expensive process. Verizon has been a leader in FTTH (Fiber to the Home) using passive fiber optic cables to replace old telephone wires. Once installed, the fiber becomes the telecom connection to that location and the copper is decommissioned. Despite the advantages of fiber over copper, this conversion process has not spread like wildfire across the country. It costs a lot to install the new fiber and network interface boxes.

The buildout cost is becoming less of an issue all the time. This is especially true for the copper installations in business locations. Businesses are willing to spend a lot more in monthly lease fees for their bandwidth connections than consumers. They are also faced with the new reality that high bandwidth is critical for the growth of their businesses.

Business demand is one major impetus in the transformation of copper to fiber MAN and WAN connections. Bandwidth demands are skyrocketing and copper is limited in how much it can transport. T1 lines at 1.5 Mbps and DS3 connections at 45 Mbps are most popular legacy telecom services. DS3 itself depends on fiber optic transmission to the curb, where the final run into the building is accomplished with coaxial copper. T1 uses those twisted pairs originally installed for telephone service. It was specifically designed to be compatible. The good news is that T1 is almost universally available. The bad news is that it no longer has the bandwidth to support modern business processes. A couple of decades ago 1.5 Mbps was all you needed even in larger companies. Now that’s considered entry level at best.

A couple of technical advances are extending the life of the installed copper assets. One is T1 line bonding. You can connect two T1 lines so they act like one line with twice the capacity. Add more lines and multiply the bandwidth. The practical limit to this is 10 or 12 Mbps. Another technology is called Ethernet over Copper (EoC). This uses the same twisted pair copper as T1 but with a different modulation scheme that offers higher bandwidths but distance sensitivity. You can easily get 10 to 50 Mbps, but need to be fairly close to the telco CO for higher bandwidths.

What’s fiber got to offer? How about bandwidths from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps? Cloud computing, video, big data and content distribution need those higher bandwidths that only fiber can easily provide. This requirement is only going to increase in the future. This is why Verizon recently took advantage of the “opportunity” to replace their old copper with fiber in lower Manhattan following the water damage from Hurricane Sandy. It future-proofs their network while opening up a market for higher priced higher bandwidth services.

Is your business being stymied by too low bandwidth? Check availability of Ethernet over Copper and Fiber Optic services for your business location. You may be surprised by the increased availability and lower cost of higher bandwidth metro and WAN services.


Note: Photo of fiber optic conduit spools courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

DS3 Over Copper Avoids Fiber Installation

Fiber optic connections are the high bandwidth solution that every business wants. That is, until they get the bill for trenching new fiber from the carrier POP (Point of Presence) to their location. Depending on how far out you need to go, the construction costs alone can be in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Maybe more. Don't assume that you're stuck with high fiber costs or low speed lines until you look into DS3 over Copper.

But, wait a second. DS3 is a fiber optic line service. Right? Yes it is. But before that it was delivered on T3 coaxial copper lines, waveguides or microwave transmissions. DS3 or Data Service level 3 is simply a specification for a 45 Mbps TDM protocol that can ride on whatever carrier is available. The newest approach is to go back to tried and true copper wiring with new modulation schemes.

Why go back to copper after all the technology advancements that have given us Gigabit bandwidths on fiber strands? The answer gets back to price and availability. In fact, price is usually driven by availability. For all the high-tech ballyhoo and industry concerns about overbuilt and unlit fiber, just the opposite is true in most areas. Sure, the high traffic corridors between major metropolitan areas are flush with dark fiber. The undersea routes were the same way for years. Recently a lot of that fiber is being pressed into service, as video and other high bandwidth applications sop up all the packets they can get. Most smaller population and rural areas have no fiber access at all. The only glass in the ground is on its way somewhere else.

Copper, on the other hand, is everywhere you look. Thanks to over a hundred years of telephone system build-out, there is hardly a building anywhere that isn't already wired for at least a couple of pairs of copper. Most business locations already have multi-pair binders to support their telephone systems.

This copper that is so desirable is ordinary twisted pair copper wiring that you find underground or overhead. Conventional thinking was that these "phone wires" are only good for audio frequencies. But DSL services showed that it's possible to transmit multiple Mbps of data over those simple unshielded cables. T1 lines are provisioned on two pair of standard telephone line copper. T1 can be extended almost indefinitely with signal regenerators every mile or so.

But T1 lines are spec'd at 1.5 Mbps. How do you get DS3 over copper? Fractional DS3 bandwidths can be obtained by simply bonding multiple T1 lines together, which gives you the sum of their bandwidths. In other words, 4x T1 bonding gives you 6 Mbps. You can often get up to 10 - 12 Mbps with this technique. If you have a T1 line now, you can probably get bonded T1 service to increase your WAN bandwidth.

The demand for high bandwidths in areas not served by fiber optic carriers has given an impetus to developing new approaches to squeeze more Mbps from each copper pair. Aktino's AK3000 platform gives carriers the option to offer DS3 over copper using multiple pairs. The technical approach uses DMT (Discrete Multi-Tone) modulation and MIMO. If MIMO sounds familiar, its because Multiple Input Multiple Output is the antenna technology used to speed up WiFi networks in 802.11n access points. Aktino has applied a similar approach over wireline to counter the problem of interference between pairs in a binder group.

Pulse Communications, Inc. has a product called DS3 Express that will convey full rate DS3 connections over 4 pair of copper up to about a half-mile, or a mile with a repeater. A standard type 400 circuit-pack module is used at each end of the circuit to make installation easy.

DS3 over Copper and Ethernet over Copper are two high bandwidth services currently available for business locations not currently lit for fiber. Could your business benefit from an increase in dedicated Internet, high capacity telephone, or private data line bandwidth? See what high bandwidth wireless and wireline service options are available for your location. You may be pleasantly surprised by how little you'll have to spend.