how does fiber / copper get across rivers?

[phill1978]

Oddball question.

A recent visit from a BT engineer got me thinking, he said on the exchange (town) side of the river he gets 14-16mbps on his broadband but over the river people get 1-6mbps (there are many thousands of homes across the river)

now the river in question has many swing bridges and i haven't seen any 'really' high towers to carry the wires across, the boats that come through are pretty big for a river and have very large radio masts

so I have the main junction box for my village not too far away from me and it goes straight to the exchange so i was wondering how easily will it be to get fiber there?

I know its an odd question but the river does run round and cut the whole town off for miles each way, I tried to google but didn't find anything.

I guess im trying to gauge just how easy or hard it is to get new fiber optic cables to the village junction box as my broadband is unstable and has been slow for many years. My bro has just had fiber to junction box and his speed went from 270k a sec + 40ms pings to 3.0 megabytes a sec and tiny pings!

sorry for dumby question

 

[Rozzy85]

Electrified copper cable or optics can be laid underwater, the problem is cost. It's normal for places in close proximity to the exchange to get better ADSL speeds. The connection to the other homes may take a long route to cross the river or it's simply over capacity plus the added distance penalty.

If you can't get residential fiber optic from either BT or Virgin then the only other option to get it through another private company coming in to install the infrastructure which will cost thousands or even millions depending on what needs to be done.

 

[TB1968]

3 ways they use, under water as said by rozzy, overhead (for copper only) and along bridges, either under the road or along the walls in ducting.

Underwater can suffer from damage due to river craft, overhead to natural wear and tear, under road is normally the best and along the walls of bridges leaves it a bit exposed to theft, you would be amazed how many people steal fibre optic cable, its totally useless to do anything with lol

Tony

 

[panyan]

in our communications module we learned one way they pass cables if with a machine that has a long neck that uses hydraulics to burrow the head under an obstacle, within the middle of this neck is the cable

once it has broken through the other side and the cable retrieved, it retracts its head

 

[NathanE]

The green cabinets are, generally, all nicely ducted in the pavements. Which is why FTTC is even possible at all. From the cabinets to the premises themselves things become a bit of a patchwork. Some are done underground, some overground on telegraph poles... Those terminated to the premises via underground are generally not ducted so these will never be able to get FTTH. Those terminated via telegraph poles have the possibility of FTTH in the future because BT has solutions now that let them run blown fibres on telegraph poles.

The key to understanding why ADSL is good for some people and crap for others is understanding what "local loop" means. The cabinets, essentially, form ring networks around the town. Crossing roads, bridges, rivers and other obstacles are generally very expensive to do, even in the olden days it was something BT tried to avoid. As such just because there is a nearby swing bridge doesn't mean BT is running their local loop cables across it. It might be another swing bridge though... 5 miles away!

 

[phill1978]

The key to understanding why ADSL is good for some people and crap for others is understanding what "local loop" means. The cabinets, essentially, form ring networks around the town. Crossing roads, bridges, rivers and other obstacles are generally very expensive to do, even in the olden days it was something BT tried to avoid. As such just because there is a nearby swing bridge doesn't mean BT is running their local loop cables across it. It might be another swing bridge though... 5 miles away!

thanks for your answers.

Nathan are you saying that with my being over the river i might never get fiber optic?

the next bridge down river is 5 miles away and is a swing!

 

[TB1968]

thanks for your answers.

Nathan are you saying that with my being over the river i might never get fiber optic?

the next bridge down river is 5 miles away and is a swing!

No not quite

Because you have local loop you could come off another one, or if there is already some underwater ducting then it can be run through that, though your street furnature will have to be upgraded to run FTTH/FTTC (i was working for BT when they started that program).

There is always a way and means to do something but of course cost will come into it, and it may work out cheaper to run from another exchange to your local loop than doing it from across the river.

Tony

 

[awinchurch]

3 ways they use, under water as said by rozzy, overhead (for copper only) and along bridges, either under the road or along the walls in ducting.

Underwater can suffer from damage due to river craft, overhead to natural wear and tear, under road is normally the best and along the walls of bridges leaves it a bit exposed to theft, you would be amazed how many people steal fibre optic cable, its totally useless to do anything with lol

Tony

FYI

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/software/vi...t-broadband-into-electricity-pylons-50000093/