Smart Home Lifestyle
March 17, 2007
Beneath the Surface of Fiber-Optic Technology
Phrases like “living below the surface,” and “dormant
for years,” remind more of a prehistoric sewer creature than fiber-optic
cabling. But, until recently, fiber optics remained a mystery, mainly
because of its hi-tech applications. Now, thanks to mainstream technologies
catching up to fiber’s capabilities, “dark” fiber
is quickly becoming live, and coming soon to a neighborhood near you.
“A fiber optic infrastructure means you’ll be ready for
any technology the future may bring,” said Steve Edelman, Hotwire
Sales Manager. “This helps accelerate the sales of homes or condos
because the resident has something that the people next door don’t
have.”
Strand of hair
Fiber-optic lines are made of pure
glass and are about the size
of a strand of hair. They reflect
light signals that can travel across the United States in the blink
of an eye. Fiber is a flexible cable that is ideal for digital information.
Fiber is thinner and less expensive to make than copper cable, with
a higher carrying capacity. This means, more can be bundled into a cable
to provide more phone lines or TV channels to your home. And unlike
copper cable, which uses electrical signals, there is no interference
between the signals for clearer phone conversations or TV reception.
Fiber also uses less power. Since signals in optical fibers degrade
less than copper, you can use lower-power transmitters to send the signals,
not the high-voltage ones. And don’t forget about safety. Since
no electricity is sent through the fibers, fire hazard is a thing of
the past.
So, what’s the best part? Less signal degradation. With fiber
you get a true signal from the satellite from start to finish thanks
to increased bandwidth.
Blink of an eye
Fiber is best known for high-speed
Internet, but companies, like
Hotwire, in Atlanta, have taken
it to the next level, providing digital TV and phone services over the
fiber to developments and condo units.
“When Hotwire goes into to a building or gated community we
put 10 gigabytes of bandwidth into each property,” said Edelman. “From
those fibers Ethernet is run throughout the individual homes, using
data specific connections for voice, video and high speed internet.
We no longer use coaxial cable.”
Hotwire gets the digital TV channels off the satellite just like a
cable company would, but to transmit the data, it uses Internet Protocol
TV (IPTV). IPTV assigns the TV channel an IP address, similar to how
webpages are assigned. Then Hotwire puts that channel onto a server
located in Miami.
“The data is continually refreshed and updated so that when
a customer clicks on a channel, they get real time TV, with very little
latency or delay,” said Edelman. “With IPTV, Hotwire can
provide up to 300 channels. Normal cable TV channels with digital and
high definition. We can even do on-demand TV and a large selection of
foreign language channels.”
A leg to stand on
So how do you get fiber to your
home?
“Fiber is everywhere throughout this country,” said Edelman. “Companies
that ran the fiber were speculating, just with any product or service.
They speculated that these fibers would be worth something someday.”
And now that technology has advanced to catch up to fiber, the “dark” fiber
in the ground is already available to be leased or sold by the owners
of the fiber to land developers and telecommunications service providers
like Hotwire.
Author: Diana Kostigen, Marketing/Public Relations Director, Comtec
