Is There a Future-Proof Option for Community Connectivity Services?
William Brady and Willy Jennet Hotwire Communications
When it comes to your community’s connectivity services, the two leading options for delivering internet, TV, home automation, security, phone, and other internet-dependent services are fi ber optics and coaxial cable, often just called fi ber or coax. Knowing the key differences between them is critical for making the most informed decision when replacing or upgrading your HOA’s telecommunications infrastructure.
Coaxial cable and fi ber optics can both offer bulk savings for residents as an alternative to the ever-increasing retail pricing and fees of individual internet and TV service packages.
Coax cable was invented in 1880 and was adopted in the late 1940s to deliver information and entertainment to U.S. homes, thus the start of today’s national coax networks. In the 1970s, a telecom company deployed a fi ber-optic system that carried the world’s fi rst live telephone traffi c. By 2004, fi ber- optic lines carried more than 80 percent of the world’s data and long-distance traffi c.
Coax cable is a shielded copper cable that trans- mits internet, TV, and home phone using radio frequency (RF). Until recently, coax had been the primary choice for large cable operators and in- ternet providers for decades.
Fiber-optic lines are made of glass or plastic and use light pulses to transmit internet data, TV, and phone signals.
An advantage of coaxial networks is that they are in many cases already in place throughout a community. However, this can also mean the cable has been in the ground and affected by nature’s forces for years or decades. The fi ber infrastructure has an estimated lifespan of 100 years compared to 20 years for coax.
Among key advantages of fi ber are its extraordinary bandwidth capacity, excellent signal strength over long distances, and resistance to harsh environments, severe weather, heat, rain and other moisture, and electromagnetic interference, including lighting. Coax uses radio frequency to carry data and TV signals, can suffer signal loss over distance, short circuits when wet, is susceptible to electromagnetic interference, and can suffer damage and service disruptions from lighting strikes and severe weather.
In October 2022, Danish
Another fi ber advantage is its ability to deliver “symmetrical” speeds. This means that internet upload and download speeds are the same. Coax cable only delivers “asymmetrical” speeds, typically presenting the faster download speeds while delivering slower upload speeds. Abundant upload speeds have become more important than ever with the explosion of working and learning from home, as well as telehealth visits over video connections.
tech researchers transmitted a record 1.84 petabits (1.84 quadrillion bits) of data per second across a 7.9km (4.91 miles) fi ber-optic
cable – enough bandwidth to download 230 million photos, and more traffi c than travels through the entire internet’s backbone network per second.
Jørgensen, A.A., Kong, D., Henriksen, M.R. et al.
Petabit-per-second data transmission using a chip-scale microcomb ring resonator source. Nat. Photon. 16, 798–802 (2022).
https://doi.org/10.1038/ s41566-022-01082-z
The construction of a fi ber net- work involves ample and collab- orative coordination between the provider and the commu- nity but is simpler and cleaner than some may think when
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