Interference and ligning damage anyone?
I really don't understand why all the discussions never mention one of the main advantages of fibre:
It does not conduct electricity.
Two examples:
I had a surge protector on the phone line in front of the ADSL router. A lightning strike took out the surge protector, the ADSL modem, and two network cards on the connected computers. With FTTN that is going to be still a problem.
I had a faulty switching power supply in a TV. The TV was still working fine, but it took out ADSL completely every time I turned on the TV. And not only for me, but for my neighbor as well. I probably impacted the whole neighborhood. I spoke to a Telstra technician that told me about a fault where a faulty DVD player power supply that was never used and just plugged in and in standby was identified as the cause of interference - but it was not in the property that reported the fault, it was the 5th neighbour over, several hundred meters down the road. All the is going to be still a problem with FFTN.
And I am really fed up that everyone is talking about the top speeds with FFTN. Look at the reality:
http://fttn.mynbn.info/dash.php
You will see that the average line length is in the range of 500m. But there is still a significant number of customers that are further away then that. And if you are in the unlucky position to be further away, no new technology can help you. And increasing the number of nodes is not going to be viable.
And there are still customers that are so far from a node that their speed will never get better then 10MB/s.
A lot of Australians live in rural or semirural areas with block sizes of 2.5, 5 or 10 acres. In these areas the distances are going to be big.That was always the promise of fibre to the premise that everyone will get the same speed, irrespective where they happen to be physically.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
