Fibre versus Wireless Broadband

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Fibre versus Wireless

We are unlikely to see the widespread availability of fibre based broadband access anytime soon - but do we really need it with the prevalence of faster wireless access?
 
Well, Vodafone would say that, wouldn't they? I wonder if red wireless is also better than any other colour...

Seriously, though, comparing the peak throughput of a wireless basestation (which is many times more than what the average user ever actually sees for newer technologies) and the speed of a fibre serving one customer, gives completely the wrong impression. There are certainly similarities in the core network, where any amount of contention can be built into either a wireless or a fibre network, but, for access, there are fundamental differences in the amount of sharing, and hence the actual throughput that is possible.

Actually delivering these speeds is much more complex. In order to maintain the speeds promised by 4G technologies as networks saturate (in other words, to minimise the reduction in speed as a result of the sharing that's going on), it is necessary to build basestations closer and closer together (assuming enough spectrum and the right technology). All of these basestations need fibre backhaul. At the limit, you have a set of hotspots (picocells, to use the fancy term) that are little more than fibre terminations with a small radio on them - basically what you get with a fibre network and wifi today.

In the end, it's not a question of whether to use fibre or wireless, but how to use both of them together properly.
 
very interesting. i still puke when i have to pay R250 for 1.2Gb. Its not the pirates that took money away from the Content industry, Its the NETWORKS.
 
as in... im sorry Warner Brothers... but after paying R500 to download your movie, unfortunately i dont even have R50 left to pay for the actual content.
 
and you could say building networks cost money. well yes they do. about a 100th of what it actually costs to support shareholders, big paychecks and lavish working environments.
 
but alas... this too shall pass... and like free to air TV, in 20 years, there will be free to air broadband (maybe not the fastest but definitely still broadband)
 
so until then i shall hang up my trolling hat, and pat myself on the shoulder for hitting 801 posts. :D
 
Fibre vs Wireless

ads said:
All of these basestations need fibre backhaul. At the limit, you have a set of hotspots (picocells, to use the fancy term) that are little more than fibre terminations with a small radio on them - basically what you get with a fibre network and wifi today.

In the end, it's not a question of whether to use fibre or wireless, but how to use both of them together properly.
Click to expand...

As a South African living in Dubai I have become spoilt the past year with Fibre to the Home - even though in terms of FTTH performance, my 30MBps is quite poor (Even though I consistently for hours on end can run at 29.5Mbps download). On top of that I get my Video on Demand and 2 concurrent HD channels comes through fibre as well, most probably adding another 8Mbps overhead. But then, so does it for the other 3000 villas in my estate of 3 sqkm as well. Even if you oversubscribe 1:20 you still need almost 2Gbps/sqkm to replicate such a service wireless. There is NO way that LTE, even LTE Advanced will deliver this over a wide area. The compounding problem is that applications get developed in the 1st world where fibre and ADSL is abundant. We in 3rd world countries cannot replicate the experience wireless any longer.

With the Germans recently proving 26Tb/s, fibre is several orders of magnitude above any wireless technology out there (and this will evolve along with other OFDM etc technologies as well, to increase the speeds even further)... The offset between wireless and fibre/cable will ALWAYS exist, so by the time we can do 1-2 Gbps/sqkm on LTE Advanced or its then Big big Papa, FTTH will provide 100 times that (and people will WANT that wireless as well)...Business case killer.
 
If "wireless" access was cheaper and faster than fibre-based ADSL I would certainly go for it, but since I'm online all day, every day, I doubt it will be cheaper. So I will stick to ADSL if only it was faster!
 
I think WIFI and Fiber are both in their technological infancy really. If I had to put stock on any technology, it ultimately would be wireless, in 20 years from now, we would laugh talking about the days we had "HDMI" cables and power cables running all over the place.
 
Of course wireless is more affordable, for Vodacom, not us. Proper internet connections are cheap and fast, while with cellphone networks they can charge insane rates per MB and even more insane rates when you go outside your tiny little "bundle".

It also gives them a free pass to claim 42 or 100 or a million MBps connections, but not telling you that your actual speeds wil very rarely go above 1Mbps because you're sharing it with a few hundred/thousand people.

In fact, on a 3G dongle on my laptop I hardly ever get above 1 KB per second from about 11:00 to 16:00, when the networks are busy, from Vodacom and MTN. Frequently websites will just time out entirely.

Also there's the high latency to consider, the only thing that works (semi-) decently for playing games is a good old direct, fixed connection.
 
ads said:
Well, Vodafone would say that, wouldn't they? I wonder if red wireless is also better than any other colour...

Seriously, though, comparing the peak throughput of a wireless basestation (which is many times more than what the average user ever actually sees for newer technologies) and the speed of a fibre serving one customer, gives completely the wrong impression. There are certainly similarities in the core network, where any amount of contention can be built into either a wireless or a fibre network, but, for access, there are fundamental differences in the amount of sharing, and hence the actual throughput that is possible.

Actually delivering these speeds is much more complex. In order to maintain the speeds promised by 4G technologies as networks saturate (in other words, to minimise the reduction in speed as a result of the sharing that's going on), it is necessary to build basestations closer and closer together (assuming enough spectrum and the right technology). All of these basestations need fibre backhaul. At the limit, you have a set of hotspots (picocells, to use the fancy term) that are little more than fibre terminations with a small radio on them - basically what you get with a fibre network and wifi today.

In the end, it's not a question of whether to use fibre or wireless, but how to use both of them together properly.
Click to expand...

Second that.
 
ads said:
Well, Vodafone would say that, wouldn't they? I wonder if red wireless is also better than any other colour...

Seriously, though, comparing the peak throughput of a wireless basestation (which is many times more than what the average user ever actually sees for newer technologies) and the speed of a fibre serving one customer, gives completely the wrong impression. There are certainly similarities in the core network, where any amount of contention can be built into either a wireless or a fibre network, but, for access, there are fundamental differences in the amount of sharing, and hence the actual throughput that is possible.

Actually delivering these speeds is much more complex. In order to maintain the speeds promised by 4G technologies as networks saturate (in other words, to minimise the reduction in speed as a result of the sharing that's going on), it is necessary to build basestations closer and closer together (assuming enough spectrum and the right technology). All of these basestations need fibre backhaul. At the limit, you have a set of hotspots (picocells, to use the fancy term) that are little more than fibre terminations with a small radio on them - basically what you get with a fibre network and wifi today.

In the end, it's not a question of whether to use fibre or wireless, but how to use both of them together properly.
Click to expand...

I concur!
 
A wireless company advocating wireless as the only way to go probably carries as much integrity as a fibre company saying that fibre is the only way to go. There's space for both.

I also find the timing of this interesting with the World Health Organization due to release a report on wireless and it's link to cancer at the end of this month.
 
If you think about it, it costs R29 for a 1GB ADSL bundle on average & R300 for line rental on average making the total cost R330 on average. Vodacom's 1GB is R289 or even 2GB special at R149. My thought is that if you are going to use only 1 or 2 Gb per month max Wireless is the way to go (with benefit of mobility). If you are a torrent runner then I guess ADSL will have to do.

It comes down to the need of the consumer. I have no need for ADSL with a WUG to torrent with and my little MTN package that gives me an average of 3Mbps down is sufficient for my browsing requirements. If I was a gamer maybe it would be another story. As I said, it depends on the consumer what would be more beneficial but the fact is both has pros and cons.
 
IMWise said:
If you think about it, it costs R29 for a 1GB ADSL bundle on average & R300 for line rental on average making the total cost R330 on average. Vodacom's 1GB is R289 or even 2GB special at R149. My thought is that if you are going to use only 1 or 2 Gb per month max Wireless is the way to go (with benefit of mobility). If you are a torrent runner then I guess ADSL will have to do.

It comes down to the need of the consumer. I have no need for ADSL with a WUG to torrent with and my little MTN package that gives me an average of 3Mbps down is sufficient for my browsing requirements. If I was a gamer maybe it would be another story. As I said, it depends on the consumer what would be more beneficial but the fact is both has pros and cons.
Click to expand...

It does not come down to what the consumer needs! Damn South Africans!! WAKE UP AND HEAR THE MUSIC! You are use to your 1 GB per month because your whole entire internet life has been fed to you that you do not need more.

You have been told that "heavy" users that use 10GB plus is just download whores! WAKE UP! would you not want to watch You Tube vids on your 1080P 42" television instead of squinting and wondering why you can hardly see whats going on the video?
Would you not like to sit home decide you want to watch a movie and stream it directly off the internet instead of going to the video store get an account then next day return it before you get fined.
Would you not like to sit at home open your fridge notice there is no milk and realize... oh right my fridge ordered milk for me during the night and your new milk is waiting on the doorstep.

Reality is running away from South Africans! they are happy with the scraps the kings and queens are throwing to the floor, your little peasants happy with what you have! WAKE UP!

Wireless degrades with more users
Wireless is unstable
Wireless is slow
Wireless is expensive
Wireless is effected by weather
Wireless is effected by line of sight
Wireless to put it simple is S*IT!

If you think wireless is none of the above! WAKE UP!

I am so sick and i am so tired of people being mined F***ed that wireless is an option. It is NOT an option, it has been forced upon us!
/ rant off
 
One thing this article seems to forget... just like with copper and ADSL, multi speeds are capable of running like 384kbps, 512kbps, 4mbps+... 100mbps will be slow for fibre in no time, in fact if you look at the FTTH services offered worldwide in many countries 100mbps is the current standard... here's a list:

Finland: 1 Gbit/s service for 99€ per month.
Iceland: The FTTH connections are 100 Mbit/s, but as of March 2007 the ISP services only offered speeds of 6 Mbit/s, 8 Mbit/s, 10 Mbit/s, 20 Mbit/s and 30 Mbit/s.
South Korea: The connection speed for both downloading and uploading is set to be 100 Mbit/s.
Kenya: broadband residential and SOHO packages 1Mbps, 4Mbps and 8Mbps currently available in Nairobi’s Kileleshwa, Kilimani and Lavington suburbs.
Portugal:the triple-play packages include maximum speed of 360 Mbps/36 Mbps (down/upstream), TV offer with +150 channels is over FTTH and IPTV
Canada: Speeds are up to 170 Mbit/s
Brazil: Telefonica launched, in São Paulo, its FTTH service in 3Q 2007 with an initial speed of 30, 60 and 100 Mbit/s in downstream, and 5 Mbit/s with upstream, and also offering an IPTV on-demand service, and a convergent POTS and mobile pack
Chile: This service is available only in some sectors of the capital city Santiago. The service offered symmetrical 100 Mbit/s speed. The second provider is Surnet (another subsidiary of GrupoGTD like GTD Manquehue) that offers Triple Play Plans with speeds up to 100 Mbps.
Australia:On April, 07 2009, the Federal Government announced a $43 billion plan to deploy FTTH to 93% of Australian households under a the National Broadband Network. Construction has commenced on the network with live speeds of up to 1000 Mbit/s via fiber.

All stats from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_to_the_premises_by_country

What am I trying to say... FTTH is not limited to 100mbit/sec... many service providers in 1st and 3rd world countries are already offering 1000Mbit/s... so this analysis is skewed in favour of LTE, but unfairly so! In fact myBB reported that in scientific testing speeds of 26 Tbps have been reached, your article http://mybroadband.co.za/news/telecoms/20446-Fastest-single-laser-fibre-speeds-ever-Tbps.html. I'm amazed to see that the rest of the world is rolling out FTTH, but in SA our wireless providers seem to be able to dictate what is fact and what is fiction!

Bottom line... based on real world facts you cannot compare LTE and FTTH!
 
BGE said:
One thing this article seems to forget... just like with copper and ADSL, multi speeds are capable of running like 384kbps, 512kbps, 4mbps+... 100mbps will be slow for fibre in no time, in fact if you look at the FTTH services offered worldwide in many countries 100mbps is the current standard... here's a list:

Finland: 1 Gbit/s service for 99€ per month.
Iceland: The FTTH connections are 100 Mbit/s, but as of March 2007 the ISP services only offered speeds of 6 Mbit/s, 8 Mbit/s, 10 Mbit/s, 20 Mbit/s and 30 Mbit/s.
South Korea: The connection speed for both downloading and uploading is set to be 100 Mbit/s.
Kenya: broadband residential and SOHO packages 1Mbps, 4Mbps and 8Mbps currently available in Nairobi’s Kileleshwa, Kilimani and Lavington suburbs.
Portugal:the triple-play packages include maximum speed of 360 Mbps/36 Mbps (down/upstream), TV offer with +150 channels is over FTTH and IPTV
Canada: Speeds are up to 170 Mbit/s
Brazil: Telefonica launched, in São Paulo, its FTTH service in 3Q 2007 with an initial speed of 30, 60 and 100 Mbit/s in downstream, and 5 Mbit/s with upstream, and also offering an IPTV on-demand service, and a convergent POTS and mobile pack
Chile: This service is available only in some sectors of the capital city Santiago. The service offered symmetrical 100 Mbit/s speed. The second provider is Surnet (another subsidiary of GrupoGTD like GTD Manquehue) that offers Triple Play Plans with speeds up to 100 Mbps.
Australia:On April, 07 2009, the Federal Government announced a $43 billion plan to deploy FTTH to 93% of Australian households under a the National Broadband Network. Construction has commenced on the network with live speeds of up to 1000 Mbit/s via fiber.

All stats from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_to_the_premises_by_country

What am I trying to say... FTTH is not limited to 100mbit/sec... many service providers in 1st and 3rd world countries are already offering 1000Mbit/s... so this analysis is skewed in favour of LTE, but unfairly so! In fact myBB reported that in scientific testing speeds of 26 Tbps have been reached, your article http://mybroadband.co.za/news/telecoms/20446-Fastest-single-laser-fibre-speeds-ever-Tbps.html. I'm amazed to see that the rest of the world is rolling out FTTH, but in SA our wireless providers seem to be able to dictate what is fact and what is fiction!

Bottom line... based on real world facts you cannot compare LTE and FTTH!
Click to expand...

EX****INGSACTLY
 
The article also ignores the potential economic impacts of rolling out a large scale FTTH deployment. It's exactly large scale infrastructure projects like these that create jobs and create a platform upon which further new business can be developed.

Wireless certainly has it's place, and improving the quality and speed should not be ignored, but wireless will never be a replacement for high quality fixed line deployments.
 
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