Pros of fibre:
- cheaper: much cheaper than copper or satellites.
- faster: latency is faster than copper and wireless (to satellite).
- very high bandwidth: theoretically unlimited. In practice a commercial fibre optic multicore run for domestic use at street/town level will be pushing ~800Gb/a, and this number generally doubles every few years as tech advances. The new spec being finalised is 1.6Pb/s.
- high stability: does not give a crap if it’s cloudy, foggy, or rainy, or if the trees have wet leaves, or if it’s just a very humid day, unlike all forms of outdoor wireless comms. Does not care about lightning strikes, as copper does.
- long life: 25 to 30 years life quoted for most industrial in-ground fibre, but real life span is expected to be much longer based on health checks on deployed cable in countries with large fibre rollouts. Upgradable without replacing the medium throughout that lifecycle.
- lowest power usage: fibre optic uses far less power and energy than 4G 5G and satellite infrastructure.
Cons of nationwide fibre:
- billionaires who launched thousands of satellites make less money.
- monopoly Internet Service Providers won’t be able to fleece their cable internet customers some of the highest charges for net access in the world.
- people will tell you “uhm acktually wireless internet is the speed of light also as it communicates via photons”, but will usually leave out all of the interference it experiences.
There’s nothing better than fibre optic infrastructure for general public Internet connectivity. Wireless/satellite should only be a last resort for remote users.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
Someone really needs to explain the fundamental limitations of shared medium internet connections (pretty much anything wireless) when compared to exclusive medium internet connections (one wire/fiber per end point) to politicians and other decision makers. Banning the advertising of shared medium speeds as if they were exclusively reserved for you would be a good start.
billiam0202@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Oh, I see.
You think this is a “politicians don’t understand the tech they’re supposed to regulate” issue, and not a “Elon Musk is bribing every greedy asshole in Congress to prop up his businesses at taxpayer expense” issue.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
I think one of the issues with taking bribes is that even corrupt people don’t want to completely ruin the economy because you don’t want the people trying to bribe you lack the money to do so. Or in other words, even apart from any moral issues you don’t want to kill your golden goose.
etchinghillside@reddthat.com 5 days ago
Uhhh – the politicians politicized money to companies to make tubes that we never got. Not sure if elaborating on details of tubes is going to help clear things up.