400 Gbps - a data transfer record

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Tim Deegan

Well I'm no cable engineer, but my understanding is that they don't dig up the cables, they pull new ones through the conduit

Wrong type of conduit.

BT would go bust if they were the costs. They could never recover the costs from their customers.

They'd recover it perfectly easily. They charge the customer the full cost.

Also are BT putting their fibre underground, or using existing telegraph poles? Because if BT are having to lay cables, then they are having to do what VM have already done for half the country. This would explain BT's high costs.

Both. The fibre runs overhead where convenient, underground where convenient.

[Tim Deegan]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Wrong type of conduit

Conduit is just a pipe or trunking that the cables are fed through, are they not?

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

They'd recover it perfectly easily. They charge the customer the full cost.

I can't see people willing to pay £1500 to have fibre optic broadband installed. So that would be business suicide for BT.

---------- Post added at 00:30 ---------- Previous post was at 00:29 ----------

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Both. The fibre runs overhead where convenient, underground where convenient.

That doesn't explain BT's high estimates then.

[TheNorm]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

That reminds me of something I read before somewhere - "You can transfer data infinitely fast if correctness is not required"

This was a "real life" experiment:

The experiment delivered a maximum 512Gbps down each channel, of which 400Gbps was usable data - the spare capacity is used to provide error correction.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Tim Deegan

Conduit is just a pipe or trunking that the cables are fed through, are they not?

Fibre has different requirements (e.g. bend radius).

I can't see people willing to pay £1500 to have fibre optic broadband installed. So that would be business suicide for BT.

People are perfectly willing to pay. Your opinion is not the same as everyone else in the country (especially not business which is what it's aimed at)

Charging for something profitable even if you sell none of it doesn't lose you any money so how is it at all suicide? It's no different to charging £150 for a phone line installation. If people don't want to pay it doesn't cost BT one penny to not install.

That doesn't explain BT's high estimates then.

Explains it fine. Old infrastructure such as 100-year-old telephone ducts often have to be dug-out or relaid because it's unsuitable or blocked. Even in a "new" town like Milton Keynes it took (IIRC) an average of 7 hours and two engineers to do one FTTP install, most of it spent unblocking the ducts and trying to get cable through that it wasn't designed for.

[Tim Deegan]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Fibre has different requirements (e.g. bend radius).

I'm sure it has. But wouldn't a company that uses fibre optic cables anyway, use the same conduit for both?

Also if you can get so much more data through fibre optic cable that is a fraction of the thickness of copper. Then it would make sense that the far thinner fibre cable would have to bend far less than copper in the same conduit.

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

People are perfectly willing to pay. Your opinion is not the same as everyone else in the country (especially not business which is what it's aimed at)

Charging for something profitable even if you sell none of it doesn't lose you any money so how is it at all suicide? It's no different to charging £150 for a phone line installation. If people don't want to pay it doesn't cost BT one penny to not install.

Most people won't pay VM's charges for 100mb. So I can't see many people paying up to £1500 for an install.

And then the £30,000 for the cable isn't going to be easy to recover.

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Explains it fine. Old infrastructure such as 100-year-old telephone ducts often have to be dug-out or relaid because it's unsuitable or blocked. Even in a "new" town like Milton Keynes it took (IIRC) an average of 7 hours and two engineers to do one FTTP install, most of it spent unblocking the ducts and trying to get cable through that it wasn't designed for.

Ok, I can understand that with old BT ducts, but not with overhead lines, or for VM to use far newer ducts.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Tim Deegan

I'm sure it has. But wouldn't a company that uses fibre optic cables anyway, use the same conduit for both?

VM don't use fibre optic cables anywhere near your home. The vast majority of their cable is shared copper coax.

Also if you can get so much more data through fibre optic cable that is a fraction of the thickness of copper. Then it would make sense that the far thinner fibre cable would have to bend far less than copper in the same conduit.

We're talking FTTP where there is fibre sent to the premises from the cab. This requires one fibre (and a seperate phone line) cable per premesis. VM cable is shared and not fibre-optic and has (depending on area) anywhere between 1 and 100 homes on one single cable. You can't fit a hundred fibre optic cables down the space made for one coax. They may be extremely thin but also extremely fragile. You won't be shoving them down any conduit without at least 10 times it's own thickness in protection.

(P.S. Try bending a glass rod by 90 degrees. Try it. I dare you)

Most people won't pay VM's charges for 100mb. So I can't see many people paying up to £1500 for an install.

As I've said before, it's primarily aimed at business who currently have to pay £5000+ for a managed fibre install.

And then the £30,000 for the cable isn't going to be easy to recover.

Who said anything about £30,000 for the cable? The £500-1500 installation charge includes the cable. Cable is cheap.

Ok, I can understand that with old BT ducts, but not with overhead lines, or for VM to use far newer ducts.

Yes, VM use newer ducts. But they also have a much longer distance to the nearest optical cab and even further to the nearest POP; BT has far more exchanges in more places than VM has CMTS, and there are other differences too. That's why my estimate was purposefully vague and on the low end. Based on £1500 per home and £30K per cab, the total cost to VM would be closer to £21 billion. Even at £4 billion it's far more than VM are willing to spend. Don't forget VM are currently refusing to do any new business installs even in existing cabled areas - despite business customers paying far more and for longer than residential for the same damn service.