Time Warner Cable Whining About How It's Not Allowed To Pretend It Offers Fiber To The Home Any More

from the truth-in-advertising dept

Thu, Feb 10th 2011 1:15am — Mike Masnick

A few years back, we noted that Verizon -- who has a history of misleading ads itself -- had sued Time Warner Cable for a series of ads that implied that Verizon's FiOS fiber-to-the-home offering was just "catching up" to TWC's own "fiber" offering. Of course, that was blatantly misleading. Time Warner uses fiber within its network but not to the home, which is the whole selling point of FiOS. There have been numerous disputes over this and TWC always comes out on the losing end. The latest, from the National Advertising Review Board (NARB), once again found that TWC's claims were clearly misleading. TWC's response is to petulantly claim that it can no longer accurately describe its own network and this will make it harder to "distinguish their service in areas where their competitors have indisputably inferior products."

Hogwash. TWC can still accurately describe its network and, if it actually is facing off against "indisputably inferior products," it can continue to highlight the specific differences in bandwidth or whatever other metrics that accurately portray the difference. What it cannot do -- and what it clearly had done for a while -- is pretend that its use of fiber deep within the network is, in any way, comparable to Verizon installing fiber all the way to someone's home.

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Filed Under: broadband, fiber, truth in advertising
Companies: time warner cable, verizon

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iamtheky (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 2:00am

The most interesting thing at 1:15am in Cali this is not.
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-, 10 Feb 2011 @ 3:02am

Seriously, what's the difference between copper and optic cables?
None unless one is faster than the other. So the discussion is pointless anyway.
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Chargone (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 3:03am

Re:
and yet, here you are.
clearly, you are a boring person :P
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Chargone (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 3:08am

Re:
to the best of my knowledge optic Is faster. higher bandwidth and such. the problem is that the whole thing is only as fast as the slowest part of the network you have to go through... generally the connection from your house to the street (or equivalent) is copper, at which point the entire advantage of fiber optic cables is lost completely so far as the end user is concerned (unless the entire network is choking due to bottle necks caused by insufficient bandwidth compared to users). likewise fiber from the home to a point one or two switch boxes down the line is sorta wasted the moment it hits a significant chunk of the network made of copper, if someone did it that way for some strange reason.

basically, light is faster than electricity :D (also i think fiber optic may take advantage of the fact that you can send multiple signals at once on different frequencies of light? so it's a double bonus.)
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 4:18am

Re:
Copper vs Fiber

- Copper has low bandwidth compared to fiber and it is sucetible to EMI - Electro-magnetic interference, last less time than fiber, is not as stronger as fiber and need a lot of energy to push data far away which means heat and less distance for information to go(2.5 Km or 1.5 miles).

- Fiber has a very large bandwidth compared to copper, that translates to less material needed to build, which translates to lower prices to get the same amount of data, one strand of fiber is equal to a thousand strands of copper, fiber is immune to EMI - Electro-magnetic interference and uses less energy which translates to higher distances(200 km or 62 miles) which means you probably will get the bandwidth you paid for depending on the traffic going on and not physical limitations.

More information on Wikipedia Optic Fiber article.
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Jon Hartman, 10 Feb 2011 @ 4:25am

Difference
I've lived in two different states, where I've started with cable, until FIOS was available. First time was Charter and the second was with Comcast. There are three major differences.
1) Bandwidth. I have no issues getting the 20/5 I was promised.
2) Packet loss. With cable, *any* cable, it was an average of 1%, though oftentimes worse.
3) Reliability. FIOS just works. Consistently, reliably just works. There's no modem resets necessary. For the five weeks I had Comcast, I had to call tech support three times.

FIOS availability is something people factor in to their housing choice.
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Doonk, 10 Feb 2011 @ 4:36am

Copper vs Fibre
Fiberoptic is not faster than copper because light travels faster than electricity. They effectively travel the same speed as far as this situation is concerned.

The reason fiber is faster is that you can have multiple "channels" of light travelling through an optic fibre, but only one "channel" through a pair of copper wires.

And boy am I relieved I finally got to use that information. It was sitting up there in my head all these years just taking up space.
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princefeliz (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 4:43am

Average person can't even measure the difference. Pointless Argument.
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meddle (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 4:55am

Speed of light through fiber != speed through a vacuum
In point of fact, the speed of light through a fiber is slower, about 70%, of the speed of electricity through copper. However, light through fiber offers more bandwidth with our current tech. Don't confuse latency and bandwidth. Latency is the time it take for your bit to get from point A to point B. Bandwidth is the number of bits that can travel in a specified amount of time.
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meddle (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 5:08am

But is is a silly argument. Do you care what the truck or the plane look like when you get a package delivered? All you care about is if you get the service that you paid for. Meaningful info about the networks would be the bandwidth and latency across their network, or the usage levels. But that would make for very boring commercials.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 5:10am

Re: Copper vs Fibre
Not entirely correct, copper can also be multiplexed the problem is energy, copper needs more energy to transmit information and generates more heat which limits what can be done, also noise ratio is way higher.

That is clear when you see one fiber substituting a thousand strands of copper. Copper can transmit information for a hundred calls where one strand of fiber can transmit information for tens of thousands of calls.

Also fiber is stronger, immune to EMI - Electro-magnetic interference, safer because is so hard to splice it and last longer, the disadvantage is that it is harder to fix, splicing needs microscopes and it is a precision job.
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Josh, 10 Feb 2011 @ 5:16am

Re: Speed of light through fiber != speed through a vacuum
The speed of electricity through a coaxial cable is ~66% the speed of light in a vacuum, so the speed of light through fiber vs. speed of electricity through TW's network to my house is roughly equivalent within a few percent, depending on the type of fiber and coax you compare.
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Josh, 10 Feb 2011 @ 5:16am

Re: Speed of light through fiber != speed through a vacuum
The speed of electricity through a coaxial cable is ~66% the speed of light in a vacuum, so the speed of light through fiber vs. speed of electricity through TW's network to my house is roughly equivalent within a few percent, depending on the type of fiber and coax you compare.
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PRMan, 10 Feb 2011 @ 5:19am

Re:
Copper has a limited bandwidth that it can physically handle. There is nothing you can do to exceed that.

Fiber optic is limited only in how fast they can make the little light blink. Replace the equipment on both sides and you can raise the speed of the fiber by 10, 100, 1000, 1000000 times. The cable doesn't need to be replaced.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 5:23am

Re:
Well you can put a commercial where a phreaker hooks up an alligator to a copper line and taps into the communications of a house and put the same dude trying use the alligator on fiber and failing, also you can put a commercial where your repeater is further away then your competitor and deliver crystal clear signal while on copper you will be paying more because it needs more repeaters to work the same way fiber does.

Or you could boost the durability of fiber showing a electrical storm fry the copper and showing people having to change the copper cables while the fiber guy just plug in a new board the ends.

Or you can show a commercial where you show two couples one with copper and another with fiber today and 20 years down the road where the signal on the copper will degrade and the fiber will not, so one couple is ringing the ISP to do something about the bad service while the other is surfing the internet. While a truck from the ISP is stopping by to change the copper cables and with the fade out being the shock of copper couple receiving a extra charge in their billing.

The better one show a couple having a 3D teleconference with the family on fiber and show the copper people using USENET LoL
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 5:29am

Re: Copper vs Fibre
Not a physical accurate allusion but here it is, picture 2 pipes one filled with air and another filled with sand, then try to pump water through it, copper is the sand one, it goes slow and requires a really powerful pump, the other one with air is lighter and requires less powerful pumps and can do the job faster because it can pump more water in less time.

That is the differnce between fiber and copper basically.
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Greekboy, 10 Feb 2011 @ 5:31am

Check out greekthuglife69 on YouTube see how Verizon treats their workers u already know how they treat u
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TriZz (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 5:47am

Re: Copper vs Fibre
Copper is also subject to resistance and interference.
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abc gum, 10 Feb 2011 @ 5:57am

Re: Re: Copper vs Fibre
"Not entirely correct, copper can also be multiplexed"

There is a difference between multiplexing and multi-modal.
This diff can be huge, depends upon the implementation.
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abc gum, 10 Feb 2011 @ 6:00am

Re: Re: Copper vs Fibre
Do you imply there is a lack of resistance and/or interference in fiber?

The terminology and units of measure are different, however they do exist.
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abc gum, 10 Feb 2011 @ 6:04am

Does Verizon still cut the copper when installing FIOS at a residence?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 6:04am

Re: Re:
Only one problem with your logic. My copper line was tested recently to 55meg / second, and can deliver multiple HD tv channels and still push 25meg / second on the internet. Your "copper people using USENET" would be very misleading indeed.

If you are on DSL, and a reasonable distance to the CO, you are good to go at speeds that most will never need.

You could also stack up the hundreds of dollars the company would have to spend to put fiber into each house, having it dead end at a panel with a bunch of copper in it as it gets converted to run the phones, internet, and TVs.

You could show a bird pecking at the fiber cable and poking a hole into it, rendering it useless and needing completely replacement, requiring the phone company to drive trucks over your law to pull the cable out and replace it again.

Yeah, I could see how those would be big selling points :)
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 6:24am

Re: Re: Re:
Please try passing medical images through a DSL pipeline and tell me how that goes. No chance of you receiving medical assistance from a specialist in your home at reasonable prices there.

Second I doubt your claims, theoretical is very different form reality, I used ADSL for years and it was crap.

Further the math doesn't lie, the smaller the radius the smaller the area the smaller the density so the smaller the number of people who will actually get something near fiber, besides fiber is moving to gigabits transfers which will enable next generations activities to take place and DSL has no chance in hell to catch up with that, oh wait I forgot we were talking about the U.S. the third world communications of the world.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 6:26am

Re:
Yes, but you do care if you get a truck or a plane. What TWC is doing is advertising express air mail to from LA to London, but not telling you that it goes on a truck from LA to NYC before getting on an airplane. Verizon is selling a plane all the way.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 6:49am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
Second I doubt your claims, theoretical is very different form reality, I used ADSL for years and it was crap.

I didn't keep the slip when the tech did the tests. However, I have 25meg/second (speedtest verified) down and 7+ up. There is still space beyond that for at least 3 full "cable quality" HD signals sent in IP.

I am sorry if your adsl provider was crap, or that you were living in a place with crap phone lines. Crap fiber wouldn't work at all. :)

The theoretical potential of fiber is higher. The costs to get there right now are far beyond what can be delivered residential, which is one of the reasons FiOS isn't rolling out everywhere.

oh wait I forgot we were talking about the U.S. the third world communications of the world

Americans are their own worst enemies. They all want to live in pleasant gates communities, in nice tree lined places with 1 acre lots and such, and then bitch when they can't get decent internet or cable TV service. When they do get it, they bitch about the price, even if it cost the cable and phone companies hundreds if not thousands of dollars to connect them to their networks.

They also bitch when the government wants to spend money to fix it.

When you shoot yourself in the foot, don't complain about the long walk to the emergency room.
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GhostfromTexas, 10 Feb 2011 @ 6:50am

Re:
There is a massive difference between the copper coaxial cable and the fiber optic cable.

Fiber optics use light beams to send information, copper wires use electricity over a metal wire.

Electricity does not move at the speed of light over a copper wire... Many people get that confusing...

FiOS is available in my area, Dallas-Fort Worth and it's massively faster than normal cable.
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GhostfromTexas, 10 Feb 2011 @ 6:52am

Re:
You can measure the difference when you have FiOS vs Cable. Both are available in my area and I've had both. There is 0 comparison between FiOS and Cable. FiOS is massively faster
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Gabriel Tane (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 6:55am

Re:
please please PLEASE... use the damned sarc tag when you're being sarcastic. Don't play with others who may take your post seriously and try to answer ;) It's not nice.

Thanks
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Chronno S. Trigger (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 6:57am

Re: Re: Re:
Your copper only goes up to 55MB/s? Fiber Optics are what's used in the 10Gb/s and 100Gb/s (and larger) networks.

The Internet is constantly changing, DSL speeds may work for looking at static HTML pages, but not for anything else any more. Soon, it won't be good enough for HTML once HTML5 becomes common.

Internal hardware is faster then any copper line into the home could be. So FiOS to copper is just fine as long as the copper isn't the one running to your house. That line wasn't designed with these kinds of speeds in mind so it will never be that fast.

Any wire has the same problem with wild animals, but copper hung above ground is more likely to get pecked threw by a bird. (And Fiber Optics is surprisingly strong.)

Fiber Optics is the relativity new technology. It's going to be faster and better then the old. Complaining about FiOS for stupid little things is like saying my Core i7 laptop is worse then a Teletype because the Teletype doesn't have the software issues that come with newer computers.
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Gabriel Tane (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 6:58am

Re:
I think the point is that if I choose shipping through one company because they tell me "We use PLANES!!" when they really use the same truck as everyone else, and they charge me more for it... yeah, I'd have a problem with that.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 7:11am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
Your copper only goes up to 55MB/s? Fiber Optics are what's used in the 10Gb/s and 100Gb/s (and larger) networks.

I understand that fiber CAN do that speed. However, it is unrealistic to assume that this sort of service would be made available to the home any time soon.

Remember, my "copper" speed is current, installed, and tested. The fiber optic speed at my place is zero, and will likely stay that way for the next 10 - 20 years. Just remember: How much to string fiber to each house? Maybe $300-$500 per installation (wire, time, technician, and fiber "modems"). How many houses in your town? Considering 120 million households in the US, we can look forward to spending $36,000,000,000 to $50,000,000,000 just to run fiber - only to discover that the backbone cannot handle the speed, nor does anyone really have servers capable of delivering content at those rates anyway.

HTML5 isn't really a bandwidth issue. When you some to understand that you can get HD quality video to fit easily into a 5MBPS DSL line, there isn't much more that HTML5 is going to do that is going to be that bandwidth intensive.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 7:15am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optic_fiber#Optical_fiber_communication

Lets compare the 2 shall we?

Bell Labs breaks optical transmission record, 100 Petabit per second kilometer barrier

One strand of fiber, one petabit over 7,000 Km(4,349 miles)

Maximun DSL speeds ever heard of is 400 mbits/s
http://www.genesistechsys.com/

I will tell you what I can do with petabit transmissions:

- I can send GIS information about anywhere to anyone in real time that includes the hundreds of gigabytes for the high definition maps,

- I can send GIS information along with medical scans and data that are also in the gigabytes in size at the same time.

- I can send GIS, Medical information and have multiple video conferences in HD definition at the same time.

- My wife and kids could send all that information while I'm using the internet to do business and nobody would complain about slow downs, have you ever lived in a house with four kids trying to use the internet at the same time?

Tele-education, tele-commuting and tele-medicine are things that could change how we live but they are bandwidth hungry and will not happen on DSL that I'm sure.

BTW thanks for the solidarity about the crappy DSL provider I had, it was hard but that is in the past now since I to fiber.

About prices, fiber is almost on equal foot to copper I don't see it in the future being that much pricier since all the backbone is almost all fiber for the advantages it has, the thing that is the real barrier is right of passage and digging trenches, so if you want to bring down those costs why not build the damn holes that where be needed to pass cables through it when it is being developed is not like it costs that much to do it before something is build or needs to be rebuild.

Maybe that is why telcos sue communities who want to build their own fiber networks.
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Overcast (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 7:17am

Most IT people were quite aware of this already, but I know for sure many others are not.

It's like the DSL rant about "you have a solid 1.5 mb with DSL, NOT SHARED!!" - they just fail to add that the speed is between you and the switch in their Data Center - after that point, it's shared.
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Chronno S. Trigger (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 7:32am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The Internet is constantly changing, FiOS is the new technology that will support it threw the next 10-20 years. No copper connection will be able to say that.

Your copper tops out at 55MB/s. If that's a twisted pair, your connection must suck hard. With a signal running that fast, it's going to create a lot of cross talk. I don't care if it's been tested. Dial-up was tested at 128K/s, why do you think no one created modems that ran that fast? In reality it was impossible.

Every year the US spends $14 trillion. Sounds like a lot doesn't it? Until you realize that it's not one person paying that, the cost is spread around the entire country. One person isn't going to be paying for FiOS to be run, many companies are. AT&T ran the first generation of phone lines threw the country and to homes. Multiple companies are doing it this time around.

HTML5 is suppose to replace Flash (according to Apple). If it's replacing flash, it's a bandwidth hog.

HD TV is possible over a 5MB/s connection. You just get several minutes of buffer every 20min of video or so.

Why are you arguing so hard against new technology? If people like you made the decisions we'd still be riding horses since it was good enough and we didn't need trains.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 7:37am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Actually that spending is good, you see it creates value, it creates wealth, stopping to advance is reducing wealth, that is basic economics, fiber cable manufacturers should get behind this, they will profit handsomely if monopolies are broken and they are allowed to sell fiber to anyone who wants to hook up where they live.

Now imagine telemedicine tucked in there somewhere.

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/asia/Telemedicine-Transforming-Rural-India-9483750 9.html

India is going shy about it, but they already have people being treated remotely, but they can't send those massive data medical files that would give doctors a better understanding yet like CAT scans, DNA information and other stuff.

Well they are after all a developing country with a developing communication system in place much like the U.S. will be in a few decades after Europeans, Asians and even Australians have surpassed them and are offering those things.

They are creating wealth from nothing building something that is how economies grow you build something, when you stop building you stop creating wealth.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 7:41am

I have FIOS - pay $124 a month for 35/35 internet, Verizon's extreme HD, and phone. My next door neighbor has TWC, in the evenings his super fast 20/5 internet crawls to 1/256kbps, which makes it near impossible to game, or even read email. the node is over subscribed. even watching a HD program like Mythbusters is all pixelated....
ya cable is faster, uh huh.. BS!
I have had FIOS for 5 years now and not once have I had to call Verizon, while the neighbors need to call TWC weekly for issues.. TWC sucks!!
but he's saving so much, $10 less a month then i pay
neighbor 3 doors down also has TWC... I see a TWC service vehicle on this street daily, yet only time I see a Verizon truck is when they do a new install and rip out TWC's crap!
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ThisGuy, 10 Feb 2011 @ 8:07am

availability of copper for future
Just a point. The USGS had a report out a few years ago that detailed an important point. The lack of future copper availability. Overnight, every type of copper product doubled in cost. The breakdown was that 1/3 of the world's copper is still unmined. 2/3 is mined, but 1/3 is in trash heaps. Essentially, if you want easy to access copper, start mining landfills, but I digress...

Ever heard of a lack of sand/silicate to make fiber? Not anytime soon. Also with innovations like dark fiber using multiple wavelengths of light in bidirectional communications, the future looks good for full fiber connections from backbone to house. My neighborhood is currently putting in ATT FiOS. I am looking forward to having some competition with my current ISP, a cable provider.

Competition is good, remember?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 8:31am

Re:
I can't wait until your "Cali" breaks off from the continental US. Maybe be it's own country. We can all dream...
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 8:32am

Re:
The distance. Fiber optics is better at transmitting signals over farther distances and is less prone to interference. Otherwise, you need more signal repeaters.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 9:30am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"could". Not to be confused with "can" or "are currently doing".

They can drive a rocket car past the speed of sound. It doesn't make my daily commute any faster.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 9:47am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Your copper tops out at 55MB/s. If that's a twisted pair, your connection must suck hard.

55MB is testing on current style connection, not the top the wire will do. The modem itself is currently capped at 25, and it does that all day and all night in remote testing. It isn't just a theoretical speed, it is what it actually does when connected to something.

HD TV is possible over a 5MB/s connection. You just get several minutes of buffer every 20min of video or so.

Most people would be happy to front load 5 - 10 minutes of buffer and then enjoy their entire movie in peace. Netflix recommends something like 7MBPS for good performance.

At the end of the day, with a little compression, and a little magic, you can make it fit :)
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Will, 10 Feb 2011 @ 9:59am

Re: Re:
As long as Florida does it first.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 10:00am

Re: Re:
"Fiber optics use light beams to send information, copper wires use electricity over a metal wire."

Technically they both use waves to transfer data. Waves of fun enjoyable naked entertainment.
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John Dandison (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 10:08am

Time Warner Cable Whining. You could have stopped there.

Here in NC, a small town called Wilson started a city-owned true fiber-to-the-home network. Shortly thereafter, my hometown of Salisbury started the process as well - and TWC spent years lobbying and complaining to the state about how they couldn't compete and blah blah blah.

Ultimately, they showed they could compete, by offering 50mb/5mb internet, whereas before, the highest tier wasn't even considered broadband because the upload was too slow.

In short - to hell with TWC. They cost $200/mo and I still can't watch ESPN3 on my Xbox.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 10:33am

Re: Re: Copper vs Fibre
I spent some time as an aerial lineman in my youth. I also spent my share of time w/ splicing duties. Fixing fiber really isn't a big deal unless a slack loop is positioned poorly. I could splice 320 strand in an avg of 10 hours. (10 hrs being splice. Continuity testing. Clean upand so on.) I was an amateur. Im sure the guys that have done that workfor years could complete this much faster. The real fun was termination parties.
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-, 10 Feb 2011 @ 10:37am

I only skimmed through comments, but it seems what I said before was taken wrong.
There is no difference between copper and fiber unless there are numbers to back it up. Does one provide better bandwidth or latency than the other? They are what matters, using a fiber is only a way to achieve the goal of making internet faster. Is it a good one? No, unless there are numbers to that show otherwise.
So I find all these arguments silly, I couldn't care less what's used for my internet connection, the only things that matter are speed and price.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 10:39am

Re:
Funny how idiots of the highest caliber shoot comments from the hip..

So what is the difference?

Fiber, It is not Copper. Copper a resource widely used electronics and other products, and of limited supply. The prices of copper have skyrocketed in recent years.

"Electrical uses of copper, including power transmission and generation, building wiring, telecommunication, and electrical and electronic products, account for about three quarters of total copper use."

Imported copper wire has a 3% tariff. Any copper which is not domestic you will pay a premium for.

45 percent of the world's copper was produced from the Andes Mountains; the United States produced 8 percent.
The USA imports 40% of its unrefined copper from Chili..

Fiber links offer over 1,000 times as much bandwidth over distances over 100 times further.

Copper can only reach the same bandwidths over increasingly short distances. Lets say 500meters from the node to your premise. According to the ANSI/TIA/EIA standard for category 5e cable, (TIA/EIA 568-5-A[5]) the maximum length for a cable segment is 100 meters (328 feet). If longer runs are required, the use of active hardware such as a repeater, or a switch, is necessary.

So while you the lame man may not note a speed difference in your short cat5e network, a business will note the cost of repeaters and other infrastructure to make sure their networks operational.

The Fiber Optic Association - Tech Topics
~U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries, January 2009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_5_cable#Maximum_cable_segment_length
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Chris Rhodes (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 11:46am

Re: Re:
The cable connection I have at my house is 40/10. FiOS can get faster than that, but it all depends on the package you buy.
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Gabriel Tane (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 12:02pm

Re: Re: Re:
Nah, we're just going to sink under a hurricane or the weight of stupidity coming out of Tallahassee... but then, with the old governer out, the former is more likely.
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Gabriel Tane (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 12:10pm

Re: Re:
"Funny how idiots of the highest caliber shoot comments from the hip.. "
Funny how people fail to see sarcasm.

Don't get me wrong, this is some nifty info, but I think everyone is rushing to logic away a joke.

"He can't lift the seat Focker, he doesn't have any thumbs" - Meet the Parents
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RD, 10 Feb 2011 @ 12:21pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"HD TV is possible over a 5MB/s connection. You just get several minutes of buffer every 20min of video or so."

Thats nice. Its like having commercial breaks you didnt ask for. Because, I like to be interrupted every few minutes, and then FOR a few minutes, to watch a movie. I guess I just shouldnt want things I pay for to work the way I think they should. Or something.

My 10mbit fiber streams HD with ZERO buffering (except at the start, which is even LESS time than it typically takes to get a DVD from stop to menu to play anyway), ever.

But other than that, yeah, 5mbit DSL is TOTALLY capable of handling HD.
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Forsch Hans (profile), 10 Feb 2011 @ 12:29pm

Verizon/TW
Instead if whining about how to describe their network TW should concentrate on their customer service. I used to be a TW customer but was so annoyed with their system problems (waiting a minute to get channel change response) that I called service to complain. They told me it was a Motorola problem. I asked for a $20 reduction in monthly fee until the problem was solved. They refused. I switched to Verizon (very happy) and was called by TW on several occasions with offers to provide me service for a much bigger savings than $20. Who is running the store at that place?
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Greekboy, 10 Feb 2011 @ 1:25pm

Check out greekthuglife69 on YouTube see how Verizon treats their workers u already know how they treat u
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JR, 10 Feb 2011 @ 3:43pm

For a minute I thought that this thread was from a few years ago.
People arguing that copper is equiv to fiber?
I could fill pages with reasons why fiber is superior. I can't even believe this is a point of contention. I can't believe it's not common knowledge.
There's a reason other countries are massively investing in FiO infrastructure... and a similar reason why our avg home connection speeds are pitiful compared to other tech advanced countries.
Are there a bunch of TWC/Comcast shills here? Or are people just that attached to their cable company that they are willing to not only disregard years proof in commercial & academic applications, but also to disregard scientific principles that every jr highschool kid should know.... but then again there's a reason we're at the bottom of the heap in science & math, and I have a feeling a good deal of that has to do with a few cable channels that those to the left of the IQ bell curve seem to gravitate towards.
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Anonymous Howard, 10 Feb 2011 @ 4:17pm

I can state with absolute certainty that more people are killed and injured due to cell phone use while driving than are killed/injured due to jammed calls. As a matter of fact I can state with absolute certainty that there are over 10,000 people killed/injured due to cell phone use while driving for every 1 killed/injured due to jammers.
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Anonymous Howard, 10 Feb 2011 @ 4:17pm

I can state with absolute certainty that more people are killed and injured due to cell phone use while driving than are killed/injured due to jammed calls. As a matter of fact I can state with absolute certainty that there are over 10,000 people killed/injured due to cell phone use while driving for every 1 killed/injured due to jammers.
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JR "Bob" Dobbs, 10 Feb 2011 @ 6:12pm

Re: Greekthuglife69 & Verizon
1) Your videos are how Verizon treats ONE of their workers- and how one treats their workers doesn't always translate into treatment of customers. Oh, and you got fired, so it's really how Verizon treated people it's going to fire.

2) Your intended audience has no clue what Verizon did to you. Did you start a house on fire? Did you beat a customer?
That's what the audience gets from your videos. You trying to get the tinny, unintelligeable voices on the other end of the line to say... something, while you scan web pages about things verizon techs have done with your.. are you using your cellphone for video?

3) It's really hard to get the sympathy going for someone using the handle "greekthuglife69". Next time use a handle like "techprofessional".

I'm listening to another one of youtubes in the background right now, all I can tell is that you were using the phone too much, and you were caught with a girl in the company truck. Someone called her a prostitute, and there's something about you having other girls in the truck with you before, and now your girl doesn't want to marry you. You're griping about slander & racial discrimination, asking about someone you can "whistleblow to" and how no attorneys have contacted you back...

What a farce. I don't know if you were any good at your job or not, but you certainly lack any air of professionalism.

Really, ditch the "greekthuglife69" thing. You might have been able to use this whole thing, and youtube, as an opportunity to score better employment elsewhere. No one wants to hire greekthuglife69 for anything. No one even wants him working in their house on their cable/FiOs, he could be using his day job to case houses so he live out his thug life.

4) No need to post twice. We saw it the first time and were unimpressed. Now that I see it a second time, I'm forced to let you know that I'm going to be recommending Verizon, even over my own company, because they fired (apparently WITH cause) an OPENLY self-proclaimed thug.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Feb 2011 @ 7:47pm

Re:
Actually, I think a lot of people took my comments way too far.

Very few homes have fiber connections. Almost every one has a copper wire connection. It is incredibly unlikely in the next few years that this fact will change much. They build you a new house, and typically you get two sets of copper coming in the door, phone and cable (if available). We tend to wire our houses with copper. At this point, there is almost no way possible to put your house on fiber on the inside, and few companies who are rolling fiber down your street and connecting you to it.

At this point, DSL and cable on the connectivity side (home to CO) offer very good connection speeds. My local phone company does 25mbps DSL (and my line tests possible to 55 on the current technology) and the cable company is offering 120mbps. I have tried both, and the both speed test( speedtest.net) at their rated speeds, including during prime time. I just tested my DSL with speedtest to a point 100 miles way on a different network entirely: 25.22 down, 6.95 up, and a ping of 17ms. That is real world performance, not some pamphlet.

If your cable, DSL, or fiber company over subscribes their network, it doesn't matter what your connection is, your actual real work internet speed will be slow. It doesn't matter if you have a 100gig fiber connection right to your butt, because if they next jump is a 1 gig connection with 1000 people sharing it, you are now back under the 1 meg dsl line.

In the long run, fiber will be faster than cable for all sorts of reasons, and it is the reason why it is used for high speed backbones. The places you typically see fiber to the home are high density countries, like China, Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan.

What is more common (and more likely to happen) is the Fiber to the Node / CO systems, which will bring much more bandwidth to the local CO, eliminating bandwidth bottlenecks inside the ISP network. The final mile will still be done on copper, because it is economical, easy to install, easy to repair, and for at least the next little while, continues to offer more than enough bandwidth potential for end users. As you can guess, this is the sort of system I am currently on, most of you would know it as U-verse.

Fiber is great - but still too spendy to do fiber to the home for most applications.
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JEDIDIAH, 10 Feb 2011 @ 9:36pm

Re: Copper vs Fibre
NO. This is just stupid. Electrical signals travel over copper at about one TENTH the speed of light traveling over fiber. Conflating the two is just stupid and ignorant.

This is precisely the sort of nonsense that Time Warner is whining they can't perpetrate anymore. I'm glad some industry group finally slapped them down. Their sales drones were getting annoying.

Having someone lie to your face like that after you've clearly indicated that you aren't just ignorant is beyond infuriating as is the fact that they just keep coming back.
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JEDIDIAH, 10 Feb 2011 @ 9:43pm

Re:
You know, you could run your own home network and see the difference for yourself. Coax was abandoned for networking a long time ago. It was abandoned for proper copper and fiber. It's not just that they are comparing copper to fiber but they are also comparing inferior copper to fiber.

"The real thing" can deliver 1000mbps. What TWC is willing to offer, not so much.

Calling a spade a diamond is fraud no matter how you try to spin it.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Feb 2011 @ 8:01am

Re: Re: Re:
Florida can't creak off, America wont be well hung anymore.
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To jr bob dobbs from greekthuglife69, 11 Feb 2011 @ 11:18am

To mr Verizon supervisor all cus. Know that Verizon treats them like shit u call In when ur phone lines r down Verizon tell them some1 will be their by 8-4 the next day or the day u tell u job u need off and no1 shows u waited around for nothing they cancel your jobs for nothing u call back they close the ticket when no 1 showed up then u call back at 4 pm they tell u some1 showed when they never did so u have to miss another day of work just to have your phone fixed and the cus. Know their ask them supervisor dobbs
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