Skip to navigation | Skip to content

Is fibre optics the technology of the future?


Fibre optics - the way of the future?

Will fibre optics technology deliver super fast broadband? (Source: iStockphoto)

When my sister first discovered the Internet, she asked "What did you people do on the net before the web?" She couldn't conceive of a worthwhile online experience before browsers, with the way they display pictures, use message boards and share information. The truth is we were doing much the same things with plain text, even if it seems primitive today.

Right now I'm being asked the same question in the context of the broadband debate. People are wondering what difference ubiquitous high speed broadband might make to our Internet experience in the future.

When I look forward, the difference is clear: people will be interconnected with experts from all conceivable professions, accessing scientific and everyday equipment all over the globe, reaching communities of all shapes and sizes, using all sorts of new applications and services — all in real time.

Broadband will enable our small-scale projects in areas like tele-health, smart electricity distribution and control, distance education and tele-operations in industry to be adopted broadly across our business and social lives.

The only effective way to deliver this type of future is with a fibre optic based infrastructure.

^ to top

Long lasting and flexible

As well as a significant increase in connection speed, fibre optic networks offer a tremendous capacity to keep up with any new technological advances. Once the basic fibre optic infrastructure is in place, it can be rearranged and the end point electronics upgraded when necessary, to deliver even higher capacity. It can do this far more effectively than existing wireless or copper based systems.

In terms of its serviceable lifetime, glass (from which fibre optic cable is made) is long lasting, stronger than copper and more able to retain its transmission properties after physical stress such as weight strain, or even attack by rats and cockatoos. We install fibre differently from copper: in good quality coatings, inside ducts, or in the case of newer systems, encased entirely by electrical transmission wires.

But will our fibre optic network mean we can keep pace with other nations in the provision of good quality broadband?

^ to top

Will we finally be as fast as Korea?

The Korea Communications Commission announced earlier this year that they would be subsidising a network capable of an average one gigabit per second per user and that can support ultra high definition television. At ten times the numbers stated for our proposed network, it seems designed for higher performance.

While the technology planned for our National Broadband Network (NBN) will reportedly provide users with up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps) the actual speed will be determined by the number of users connected, the type of services being accessed, the number of users sharing access and intermediate paths (aggregation factors) at different points in the network and how much traffic is passed to external networks.

Our proposed network will probably be based on Passive Optical Network (PON) technology. Current PON equipment is capable of speeds of around two gigabits per second (i.e. 20 times faster than the best consumer broadband technology available in the world today), and that remains the same whether it is deployed in Korea, Sweden or Australia. The equipment is getting better all the time, so the youngest network is likely to be the fastest, provided the aggregation factors are the same.

Connection speed, however, isn't just due to the topology and technology of the network. While most Australians live along the eastern seaboard, we're very spread out. Even our suburban blocks are larger on average than in other countries. What this means is that signals have further to travel and take slightly longer to arrive, and the signal is dampened by the distance it travels through the medium, even if it's via optic fibre.

The real culprit behind our online sluggishness is our language. Because the national language of high speed nations like South Korea, Sweden, Finland and Norway isn't English, a lot of their content is stored locally. In Australia, we access a significant quantity of content stored overseas and it's these international links that will continue to be our greatest bottlenecks.

^ to top

Why not wireless?

So, on to the wireless question. Although there are some great wireless services available today, the difficulty with wireless technology is that, when deployed, the beams interfere with each other. Hence small 'slices' of spectrum are licensed to each network provider. With fibre, the light is contained within a cable, and therefore we can make use of the entire transmissible spectrum. What this means is that much more data can be encoded and sent with fibre optics, and the effective bandwidths are always going to be larger. That's not to say that wireless solutions are poor, rather they have a place that complements the offerings of fibre optical systems.

People living a long way from exchanges will still be best served by wireless because the cost of installing the fibre and equipment to boost the signal over the distance outweighs its advantages — and there are fewer neighbours to share the bill with! Even Korea is using wireless technology to reach remote areas.

We will still continue to see great advances in wireless. The current world record for wireless, held by CSIRO, is 6Gbps. This is indeed faster than PON, but the corresponding world record for fibre is 100Gbps. Unfortunately these record holding speeds are not yet available en masse!

^ to top

Too ambitious?

The NBN has been described as the "most ambitious infrastructure ever undertaken in Australia". Whether that's true is probably something historians will have to decide. But given the size of Australia, the proposed network is certainly exciting. Only Canada has a similar area of land and range of terrains, and there's no word of any similar projects there.

As far as comparisons with broadband leader Korea go, our land mass is some 7.6 million square kilometres, while South Korea is a mere 98,000 square km, with more than twice the population! Clearly the deployment equation is quite different.

So ambitious? Yes. Promising? Yes. The technology of the future? Definitely.

Narelle Clark is Research Director of the Network Technologies Laboratory in CSIRO's ICT Centre.

Tags: internet, computers-and-technology, wireless-technology

^ to top

Published 23 April 2009