Why do I "need" FIBRE?

Wasabee! said:
Doesn't LTE get problematic with bad weather, at least in Jhb/Dbn where there is lightning and such?
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I've never had problems with LTE during Cape Town's inclement weather. Haven't tried during a thunderstorm.

But it certainly won't fry your modem as a lightning strike of an ADSL modem might do.

Hellhound105 said:
Depends, some people believe lightning can still hit your house so LTE and Fibre can be housed under the same issue. But yes OP wanted to know why he/she/it/LGBTQABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST... needed fibre. So if OP is using ADSL my point is valid.
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Yeah lightning can strike your house, but if it by some freak manages to avoid the lightning protection that's standard on every house, then your whole house will burn and the internet is the least of your worries.
 
newby_investor said:
Yeah lightning can strike your house, but if it by some freak manages to avoid the lightning protection that's standard on every house, then your whole house will burn and the internet is the least of your worries.
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Err no.
 
I
STORMERSFAN said:
So if I unplug my tv and home theatre and just leave the fibre and the modem on during a typical gauteng lighting and thunder escapade...what are the possibilites of my modem getting struck?I ask this because we do unplug everything but then there's not a lot to do apart from reading a book:(
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i have never unplugged anything and my house has been struck 3 time, I literally have scorch marks on my roof, and all that has happened to my is that my mains trip.
 
ArtyLoop said:
That means you go ADSL in 1998... how did you manage that?
Telkom didn't even have the equipment installed at that time.
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We were running pilot project with Telkom in 1998 and had DSL equipment installed in a couple exchanges back then....
yes it was only commercially launched in 2002
 
Everyone saying fibre is lightning proof, well was struck a few weeks ago. The fibre splice box in the house was blown off the wall. The fibre yellow pigtail was black, the wall between the neighbour and I was in mini pieces. Headphones unplugged are dead. So yeah, unlikely but did happen.
Even the Open Serve tech who came to fix the fibre was yay right, turned a little pale and took his phone out to camera mode to say no one is going to believe this pigtail was black and the splice box was blown off the wall!
 
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WalkWithMe said:
Everyone saying fibre is lightning proof, well was struck a few weeks ago. The fibre splice box in the house was blown off the wall. The fibre yellow pig tale was black, the wall between the neighbour and I was in mini pieces. Headphones unplugged are dead. So yeah, unlikely but did happen.
Even the Open Serve tech who came to fix the fibre was yay right, turned a little pale and took his phone out to camera mode to say no one is going to believe this pig tale was black and the splice box was blown off the wall!
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People seem to forget lightning is static so conductivity doesn't matter.
 
Swa said:
People seem to forget lightning is static so conductivity doesn't matter.
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Static electricity isn't what you think it is. Lightning strikes are as a result of dielectric breakdown, it means that enough potential energy has built up in the space between the clouds and the ground that it can discharge through the air or whatever is in its way. Everything is a conductor if you have enough voltage. Even so, it usually happens when there's a slightly easier than average path to earth - something tall and conductive for example. That's why lightning rods work in the first place.

In @WalkWithMe's story, it was just a coincidence that lightning struck where the fibre box was. I'll bet you anything that his modem / router wasn't affected, just the connection box on the wall outside. Current won't have travelled through the fibre to his equipment the way it could easily have done with copper telephone lines.
 
supersunbird said:
TVs, gate motors, alarms, and in my case, my home network (ADSL line had been unplugged due to the storm).
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All things that typically are connected to long conductors outside, though the network puzzles me. Only time I've heard of a LAN being zapped was a friend of mine who ran a long patch lead to his upstairs neighbor though an open window.
 
Still no answer about why we need 3 sets of poles and wires in some suburbs ?
 
ArtyLoop said:
That means you go ADSL in 1998... how did you manage that?
Telkom didn't even have the equipment installed at that time.
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You are correct. I got on just after launch. I should have said I have had internet access not ADSL.

My error.
 
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