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.

Backhaul Upgrades For Wireless Broadband

A funny thing happened on the way to mobile broadband. We ran out of bandwidth. While everyone was thinking that wireless channels would be the limiting factor, lack of backhaul capacity is threatening to stop wireless growth in its tracks. Fortunately, this limitation is recognized and being dealt with.

Just what is backhaul and why does it stand in the way of mobile services? Backhaul, as the term is used now, means the connection from the wireless tower site back to the provider’s central office or mobile switching center.

Backhaul is something you didn’t hear much about until recently. As cellular sites were originally envisioned, they consisted of a radio transmission system with spectrum divided into multiple channels. Those channels are used to communicate with the wireless handsets to transport telephone conservations. The backhaul system consists of T1 lines that offer up to 24 individual phone lines on a digital trunk.

The beauty of T1 lines is that they are provisioned on ordinary twisted pair copper. That’s right, they use telephone line. Each T1 requires two copper pair. But instead of carrying two phone conversations, the digital line can carry 24 conversations. That’s an efficiency improvement of 12x over analog telephony. Because they use ordinary telco cabling, T1 lines can be easily provisioned to both rural and urban tower sites.

T1 lines can also be used to carry broadband Internet services. Many businesses get their broadband service over a T1 line. All cellular phone companies need do is provide a data T1 line to the tower site and use some of the available wireless channels for Internet service. That gives the user both voice and data on their mobile device.

Everything worked smoothly until newer cell phones, especially the large touch screen models, made streaming audio and video and HTLM Web browsing possible. Video chews up bandwidth like crazy. If people expect to have a television watching experience on their cell phone, the cellular transmitters are going to need bandwidth and lots of it.

This is what’s underway now. The initial response to the increase in bandwidth utilization was met by bonding multiple T1 lines to create bigger bandwidth pipes out to the tower sites. But wireless broadband speeds are increasing by leaps and bounds. AT&T’s HSPA service for 3G mobile wireless offers a max download speed of 3.6 Mbps. They are currently in an upgrade mode to double that to 7.2 Mbps. The next generation technology is 4G using LTE that will offer speeds over 10 Mbps. Sprint and Clearwire are busy building out WiMAX, another 4G technology. Verizon is running EV-DO Rev A for it’s 3G network and will implement LTE for 4G, similar to AT&T.

What this means is a big demand for backhaul service to get the voice and data signals to and from the tower sites. Carrier Ethernet can address some of this demand over multiple copper pair. WiMAX is touted as both an end-user broadband service and a backhaul technology. It just depends on where the signals go. Ultimately, fiber optic cable is the solution to the backhaul bottleneck. Fiber has nearly unlimited capacity, but it is expensive to install where there is no fiber today.

It seems like there should be some synergy between the rural broadband initiative being pushed by the Federal Government and the need for higher bandwidths to carrier-owned cellular facilities. Why not just bite the bullet and get fiber to the boonies now? It won’t be long before that massive bandwidth is going to be a necessity rather than a luxury.

In the meantime, if you have a need for voice or data bandwidth for any business application, see what bandwidth options are available for your location. You may be surprised at how much you can get at a reasonable price these days.

Fiber Optic Speeds Come to Cable

Cablevision systems Corp. is raising the bar on broadband Internet service by breaking the 100 Mbps speed limit over Cable TV service. They announced a rollout of the new high speed Internet service starting May 11. Sign up and you can get download speeds up to 101 Mbps with upload speed of up to 15 Mbps for around $100 a month.

But just a second. Isn't Cable TV still using regular old RG-6 coaxial cable? I thought you needed fiber optic cable to get those kind of speeds.

Oh, there's a lot more bandwidth capability in copper wire that you might suspect. It comes down to how efficiently you use the capability that exists. Even common twisted pair telephone wire is capable of transporting Mbps level signals up to several miles. The latest technology for last mile delivery of business grade bandwidth is EoC or Ethernet over Copper, which is able to provide up to 45 Mbps using multiple copper pair that most businesses already have installed.

The magic behind the Cablevision advance is called DOCSIS 3.0. DOCSIS is the standard for transporting broadband data on cable television systems. The acronym stands for Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification. If you have a cable modem, it's running one of the DOCSIS standards. What this standard does is define how to create data channels that fit into standard 6 MHz TV channels so that they will pass unhindered through cable equipment. The cable operator decides how many channels it needs to set aside to support the demand for cable modems.

The latest version, just coming into service now, is DOCSIS 3.0. This upgrade specifies bonding up to 10 NTSC TV channels of 6 MHz each to provide a bandwidth of 60 MHz. MHz and Mbps are not the same. With clever modulation schemes, you can get a lot more than 1 Mbps from a 1 MHz channel. The DOCSIS 3.0 standard offers cable operators 4 channel bonding for a maximum usable speed of 152 Mbps downstream and 108 Mbps upstream. The 8 channel bonded option gives a maximum usable speed of 304 Mbps downstream. That's lots of room for growth as demand increases.

What is driving the need for 100 Mbps Internet service? It's all about the video. With that amount of bandwidth, a user can download a full-length HDTV movie in less than 10 minutes. Make no mistake about it, HD video is a snowball that is starting to roll downhill. Internet service providers that get in its way with things like slow connections and bandwidth caps are going to get rolled over as the public embraces IP TV. Satellite and Cable operators would like to insist that they be the providers of all TV content on a subscription or pay per view basis. The public is having none of it. They're going to third party providers, such as Netflix, or going directly to TV network websites to get episodes of their favorite programs that they've missed. YouTube remains a popular destination for shorter video clips, but may well become a clearinghouse for full-length programs of all types.

How far will this go? Look for other cable companies to embrace DOCSIS 3.0 and match Cablevision's 100 Mbps speeds. I'd also expect the same from Verizon's FiOS, a fiber optic technology that has plenty of bandwidth available. Those silly bandwidth caps are going to disappear at least for high-end bandwidth users. Nobody is going to pay $100 or more a month for broadband and then be told they've used up their allotment by mid-month. That means cable companies sucking it up and installing faster Internet backbones and agreements with content delivery networks as well as boosting speeds to the users.

Fiber Optic Cable Gets Limber

Fiber optic and copper cable are currently vying to be the communications wiring of choice for retrofits, upgrades and greenfield construction. Actually, the long term solution is already known. It's fiber. Copper hangs on because it is already widely deployed, as are the switches and routers that connect to it.

Fiber optic cabling might have taken over infrastructure installations sooner if it wasn't for an installation restriction. You can only bend the fibers so far. It's more than just not snapping the fiber strands when the stress gets too high. There's a functional limitation with sharp corner bends that lets some of the light escape the fiber core. Attenuation goes up and signal level goes down.

That limitation has been removed by new developments from Corning. Corning's bendable fiber optic cable introduces a layer of reflective nanostructures into the cladding directly surrounding the core. The nanostructures keep the light beam from shooting out through the cladding when it encounters a sharp directional change. If you tie normal fiber in a knot or bend it ninety degrees, you might lose all of your signal. With the nanostructures guiding the wavelengths around sharp bends, the signal can handle just about anything an installation can throw at it. That includes right angle turns and stapling cable to building studs.

Where is this new single mode bendable fiber optic cable most appropriate? it's a natural for FTTx installations, especially in older buildings not designed with ease of cable installation in mind. But its also likely that this new approach to cable construction will make it the defacto standard for both business and residential wiring.

Is your business ready for an upgrade to fiber optic cabling to support data, voice and video? Or, do you simply want to expand your networks for growth or additional applications? Our network of Value Added Resellers are independent providers of equipment, installation and service. Get competitive quotes now from VARs in your area. No cost or obligation for this online service.