The Case For Telecom Copper

There is a move afoot by some of the largest telephone companies to decommission or get rid of their copper wire assets. Some of this is an attempt to foil competition. Some is simply a technology upgrade as fiber optic cables move in to replace century-old twisted pair copper bundles. Should the FCC embrace the retirement of the copper assets already in the ground and strung on poles, or is this copper a national treasure that needs to be preserved?

It may seem odd to think of copper as a national treasure. We tend to think of gold and silver when it comes to treasure. But this copper has very high value. You might say it is worth its weight in gold. That value, above the intrinsic value of the metal, is the from the time, effort and cost of stringing the copper wire from user to provider. The telephone companies, protected by a mandated monopoly for nearly a century, are the ones that made this investment and reaped the rewards. But that government monopoly was, in a sense, an investment by all of us to get that copper installed.

Now, in the 21st century, there are copper wire telecom cables running into nearly every home and business. They range from a couple of twisted pair for residences to dozens of pairs in large binder cables running into the back rooms of businesses. The fact that all this copper is in place and all conforms to a set of standards offers the opportunity to press it into service for more than just plain old analog telephony.

Indeed, the telephone companies themselves were first to use two copper pair to deliver T1 line and ISDN PRI services. T1 is most often used to provided dedicated broadband Internet access or point to point connections between two business locations. ISDN PRI carries 23 separate telephone conversations plus Caller ID and is popular for PBX telephone systems.

In recent years, competitive service providers have entered the telecom marketplace to compete with the incumbent local phone companies. The incumbents have an advantage in that they are the legal owners of the copper that runs from their offices to the residence or building being serviced. That’s called the local loop or last mile connection. Competitors have to lease the local loop from the incumbent telco. Of course, they could choose to bring in their own copper cables, but that would be cost prohibitive.

Savvy competitors have also figured out how to just lease the copper wires themselves, with no signals at all from the phone company. They then use newer terminal equipment to send non-traditonal format digital signals down the line. The most popular of these is Ethernet over Copper service. EoC offers higher bandwidths at lower costs than traditional telco services such as T1 or DS3.

Perhaps this is what’s stuck in the incumbent telephone company’s craw. Some meet the competition head to head and offer their own Ethernet over Copper services. Others figure the way to get rid of the competition is to get rid of the copper.

That’s just plain wrong. Until the government has enough stimulus money to fund universal fiber optic service the way that universal telephone service was mandated, taking copper options off the market only hurts the business community. It’s an especially bad move during a time of economic recession when most companies need the highest bandwidth they can get at the lowest cost. In another hundred years, hopefully a fraction of that, the entire interconnection infrastructure will have been upgraded to fiber optics or perhaps something even more advanced. But until that time there is no justification for retiring perfectly good copper wiring that has already been bought and paid for. Better to list it in a register of historic technologies and make sure that it is protected from degradation until no longer needed.

Could your company benefit from lower cost copper or fiber bandwidth options? Check prices and availability for your location. You may be surprised by how much you can save.

Copper Thrives In The 21st Century

Alexander Graham Bell loved copper wire. His Bell Telephone Company and others strung it on poles and buried it in the ground until there were thousands upon thousands of miles of small gauge copper wire connecting nearly every home and business. And that’s the way it’s stayed for over 100 years. Now that we’re in the 21st century, all that copper is just another metallic element being reclaimed by nature as we move on to fiber optic cables. Isn’t that the way it is?



Nope. The fiber optic era was fantasized along with flying cars. Fiber technology has advanced farther than George Jetson’s personal vehicle, but it’s still copper that rules. Even the old stuff that’s been in the ground for decades is getting a new lease on life in the digital age.

Copper is so popular because there is so much of it. A century of standardization and build-out makes it very attractive to connect to those copper pair fastened to the plywood sheet in the telephone closet. You could insist on a more modern fiber optic termination, but there are no glass fibers on that plywood. If you want fiber, you have to pay to have it brought in. It probably costs no more than stringing new copper, but the copper’s already there. Somebody else paid to have it installed a long time ago.

But isn’t copper an old analog technology that can’t possibly keep up with today’s high speed network demands?

Well, it’s true that copper telco wiring was installed with analog signals in mind. But a flowing electron is a flowing electron regardless of whether it is part of a 48 volt battery current or a Ethernet packet. The physics of conduction doesn’t know the difference. Where we hit the wall was when we tried to send digital signals down a circuit that was still set up for analog telephony. Those were the dial-up modems that topped out at 56 Kbps. But do you know that those very same telephone wires now carry Megabit per second signals?

In fact, DSL shares the very same wires as analog telephone service. Instead of trying to mimic a phone call the way modems did, DSL sends digital signals on frequencies well above those you can hear. True, DSL signals fade out quickly over distance. But if there is a digital termination nearby you can transport as much as 100 Mbps to the home or business using DSL technology.

That distance restriction is removed if you use two pair of copper telephone wires to deliver T1 line service. The bandwidth is a solid 1.5 Mbps in both directions and is highly reliable. Where can you get T1 service? Just about anywhere you can get a regular telephone installed.

T1 is the most popular form of digital connection for business. It is used for telephone trunk lines with up to 23 phone lines carried by a T1 PRI trunk, also knows as ISDN PRI. Business broadband is provided by T1 dedicated Internet access. You can also get something called Integrated T1 that combines both telephone and Internet on the same line.

As the need for business bandwidth expands, copper remains viable. It’s easy to bond T1 lines together to multiply bandwidth by 2x, 3x, or even 10x. Bonded T1 line service allows businesses to add lines as network activity increases.

A newer and lower cost bandwidth option is EoC or Ethernet over Copper. This technology uses special termination equipment to bond multiple copper pair to deliver Ethernet Internet service at the standard 10 Mbps up to 45 Mbps. You can also order lower bandwidths if you don’t need 10 Mbps at this time.

Standard analog loops, DSL, T1 lines and Ethernet over Copper are extending the useful life for installed copper telephone wiring well into the 21st century. Eventually it will all be replaced by glass fibers, but probably not in this generation.