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Fiber optics began with the invention of lasers in the 1960s. Wobbling beams of light travel at a frequency of millions of millions of times a second with each of those wobbles modulated to carry data. As Susan Crawford notes, "[t]hat data then travels at the speed of light." As scientists learned how to harness and transmit this data, laser surgery was born. Next, working with Corning, scientists used what they had learned from laser technology to transmit light signals for miles - the birth of fiber optics as we know it. The remarkable thing about these hair-thin strands of optical fiber is that a "single fiber optic cable can carry the entire weight of data on the internet." Its bandwidth potential  "is much higher than any other transmission medium."

Fiber optic is both old and new. Cables running under the ocean, connecting the communications between continents and major cities around the world, were upgraded to fiber 30 years ago. "In the United States we have fiber optic cables between cities, called 'long haul' or 'backbone' lines. And within any metro area of significant size, there are 'middle-mile' or 'business data services' fiber optic lines. These cables often connect to telephone poles or other network elements, but don't go all the way to retail customers' premises."

"Once a fiber optic cable is in the ground, it lasts for forty or fifty years; it is essentially future proof, because its information-carrying capacity can be almost infinitely upgraded without digging up the cable, merely by swapping out the electronics..."

The "last mile" refers to the fiber optic that physically runs into neighborhoods, homes and businesses.  Because of this, it is also the most expensive part of any communications network to install. As Susan Crawford observes, "[t]he problem with fiber is not capacity or longevity. It's distribution." Ms. Crawford explains that the large telecom and cable companies who are "completely deregulated"  have "systematically divided markets, avoided competition, and established monopolies in their geographic footprints." Think about the fact that we have either Comcast or Spectrum, not a choice, because they've divided up their territories so as not to compete. The results are "very expensive, yet second-rate data services, mostly from local cable monopolists, in richer neighborhoods; the vast majority of Americans are unable to buy a fiber optic subscription at any price; and many Americans, particularly in rural and poorer areas, completely left behind."

According to Susan Crawford, "[t]he large cable and telephone monopolies that dominate access have no particular incentives to upgrade to fiber. These local monopolies are largely unconstrained by either competition or oversight." The FCC defines high-speed internet access at 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload, far less than most people want or need. Nonetheless, even for this inferior speed, Ms. Crawford notes that almost 90% of Americans have at most one choice of "high-speed" provider. She further notes that this scarcity in providers is to the advantage of the "local cable monopolist." People in rural areas are unlikely to have the speed offered in urban areas and even less likely to have a choice of providers. 

Absolutely. "If the information-carrying capacity of copper wire is like a two-inch-wide pipe, fiber optic is like a river fifteen miles wide; you wouldn't even try to download a 4K movie using a copper connection, but using fiber you could download ten movies in a second - or run your own business remotely, or see your doctor or members of your family . . .One single strand of glass can carry three billion phone calls or web sessions. The submarine cable connecting China and the United States contains just eight strands."

"Fiber is a better technology than cable, both more flexible and easier to upgrade, which is why every other leg of the U.S. communications network is made of fiber. The 'middle mile,' or connections between cities, is all fiber, the 'backbones' between areas of the country are all fiber. Again, the only thing you have to do to make fiber carry more information is switch out the electronics, the lasers, at the ends of the last mile segments. Once the glass is in the ground, it will last for decades."

Internet connections for the home began in 1995 with dial-up connections over our copper phone lines. You might remember that you had a choice of being on the phone or being on the internet. By about 1997, competition from the cable TV industry began to push telephone companies into offering DSL. With DSL (also delivered over copper phone lines),  at least you could have one line which allowed both internet and voice over the same telephone line. Cable TV providers already had video capability and began providing internet services in connection with their TV services. Terms such as "coax," "DOCSIS," and "cable modems" all refer to the delivery of the internet through this cable medium. Cable wires are able to carry more data than copper wires and cable companies got an advantage over telecoms because they were able to use their existing cable lines. "To hold their own, the phone companies would have needed to dig up their last-mile copper lines and replace them with fiber optic wires." But they chose not to do this and instead, companies like AT&T and Verizon, turned to wireless technology.

Copper wires (sometimes called "twisted pair" because they are made of twisted strands of copper), also carry data and telephone signals. But signals that travel over copper lack the extraordinary frequency range that light signals (fiber) have, and are subject to interference from other signals. Additionally, copper "degrades very quickly over more than a short distance. That's why if you have a copper-wire DSL subscription you have to be very close to the phone company's 'central office' in order to get a download signal into your house . . ." By contrast, not only can light travel over a fiber optic cable for hundreds of miles with little loss of strength (impossible with copper), the signals inside the fiber optic cable "don't get interfered with by other electronic transmissions nearby (which happens all the time with copper)."

Susan Crawford explains the shortcomings of copper this way: "[c]opper's fatal flaw, its enormous shortcoming, is that a home or business has to be very close to a central switching office or other amplifying structure in order to be able to send or receive large amounts of data. Signals carried over copper are also subject to interference from other electronics nearby." To make matters worse, some carriers like AT&T are phasing out their DSL networks, leaving some in rural America with no wired options or no options at all. 

Similarly, Susan addresses the shortcomings of cable: "[i]n contrast, cable's Achilles' heel is that its last-mile connections, between neighborhood shared points ('nodes') and houses, are sent over a coaxial cable that will never be as frictionless as glass." Once fiber is installed, its signal-carrying capacity is limited only by the electronics attached to it. Signals can travel effortlessly and undiminished for many miles inside a fiber strand without needing to be amplified." Susan notes that these weaknesses will not change: "[a]s long as the cable industry relies on coaxial cable between residences and shared neighborhood nodes, it will never be able to exceed the information-carrying capacity and easy upgradability of a fiber-to-the-home connection." Additionally, because the shared node design was built with the intention of delivering entertainment (downloads), it was not designed to handle today's uploads needs. Building for the future requires symmetrical capability for downloads and uploads, something that cable, according to Crawford, cannot achieve. 

Susan Crawford explains the history of how it happened in the U.S., but the bottom line is this: "[t]oday in America, local cable or telco monopolies, unconstrained by either competition or oversight, can charge whatever they want for whatever level of service their shareholders will accept." 

"Of course it is" says Crawford. But she goes on to say "The important thing to understand is that 95% or more of a wireless connection is the wire that over-the-airwaves communications need to reach in order to get anywhere. Fiber and wireless are complementary technologies. Saying 'the future is wireless, who cares about fiber' is like saying we can have airplanes without airports - those wireless signals need a wire in order to travel any real distance."

In 2016, Verizon announced they would be deploying the next generation of wireless - 5G - but 5G is not a replacement for fiber optics. In fact, the future success of 5G hinges on the availability of fiber infrastructure. It's helpful to think of a high-speed internet network like a human body - while 5G is expected to function as the capillaries, internet traffic will travel nearly its entire journey in the veins or arteries which are served by the fiber optic infrastructure. Although wireless connections can carry significant amounts of data, wireless, and 5G in particular, can travel only short distances. Mobile wireless connections are extraordinarily useful add-ons to fiber. But they depend on fiber being installed everywhere . . . we will need more than twenty times the number of existing cell towers or cell installations - every 15,000 feet or so, deep in neighborhoods and cities." And each one of those towers will need a fiber connection. 

Because 5G can only travel short distances, a few hundred feet, and because its high frequency does not easily penetrate walls and other obstacles, Susan Crawford observes "[h]ere's the kicker: the 5G protocol will have us sending huge amounts of data from inside our homes and from our mobile devices, and in order to transmit it across any distance, we will need very-high-capacity wired connections - fiber - attached to every one of those small cells. Only fiber can do the job. It may sound paradoxical, but the future of advanced wireless services depends completely on how much fiber is in place." And that's why fiber-to-the-home remains essential in a 5G world.

When Verizon launched its 4G wireless in 2012, it needed to "turn on" 30,000 wired base stations to cover 93% of the U.S. population. According to Susan Crawford, in order to get 5G up and running, Verizon will need 10 million wired base stations. "None of the private operators are talking about 5G outside urban areas; the distances you would have to fill with closely spaced towers or base stations are too great for private carriers to contemplate. Rural places will still require fiber, but it will be fiber to the home . . ."

Christopher Ali, an Associate Professor at the University of Virginia and a former-Faculty Research Fellow at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society is a leading expert in rural broadband. He is the author of the forthcoming book: Farm Fresh Broadband: the Politics of Rural Connectivity (MIT Press). In an article by Digital Beat, called Cooperatives: The Unsung Heroes of Broadband, Ali observed the following view about 5G:  "[w]e could say the same thing about 5G. While urban areas are getting a taste of what 5G can do – like blazing-fast mobile connections and the potential to replace your home broadband network – it is still in its trial stages and the type of 5G found in urban areas, known as millimeter-wave 5G or high-band 5G, is unavailable to the rest of the country. So far, 5G has not lived up to the hype mobile providers like Verizon and T-Mobile have promised us.

"I get worried when I hear counties say that they are considering pausing their broadband plans in hopes that StarLink or 5G will arrive soon. Truth be told, these technologies are years away from being deployed in rural areas across our country. There is also uncertainty around cost, in addition to time. Communities that decide to pause will be waiting for something that may never come. In contrast, there are very real solutions available to counties today."

Christopher Ali, an Associate Professor at the University of Virginia and a former-Faculty Research Fellow at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society is a leading expert in rural broadband. He is the author of the forthcoming book: Farm Fresh Broadband: the Politics of Rural Connectivity (MIT Press). In an article by Digital Beat, called Cooperatives: The Unsung Heroes of Broadband, Ali explained the two types of wireless: fixed wireless and satellite.

With respect to fixed wireless, Ali noted that while "it's not as fast as fiber, and certainly comes with drawbacks like suffering from inclement weather and requiring line of sight, . . .many counties, particularly rural ones, are erecting a series of towers that are connected at the back end with fiber optics so that residents have meaningful connectivity. " 

With respect to satellite-delivered wireless, Ali notes:  "[o]n the wireless side is satellite, which many people don’t even consider viable because it is so problematic. Hughes and ViaSat are the two satellite internet providers in the country. Often times when I bring up satellite in rural areas, people roll their eyes at me, because it is expensive, slow, suffers from lag and inclement weather interruptions, and comes with tiny data caps. Still, the FCC considers satellite a viable complement to wireline broadband. It is available to almost everyone in the country, perhaps 99% or so. That said, I know of many residents who have to augment their satellite connections with mobile hotspots to ensure they are always connected, but at tremendous expense – sometimes $300 a month."

Christopher Ali, an Associate Professor at the University of Virginia and a former-Faculty Research Fellow at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society is a leading expert in rural broadband. He is the author of the forthcoming book: Farm Fresh Broadband: the Politics of Rural Connectivity (MIT Press). In an article by Digital Beat, called Cooperatives: The Unsung Heroes of Broadband, Ali expressed his opinion regarding Starlink: 

"Many of you may have also heard about Starlink – Elon Musk’s SpaceX broadband service. StarLink is a type of satellite broadband called LEO or “Low Earth Orbital,” where the satellite sits closer to the Earth than traditional geosynchronous satellites like from Hughes or ViaSat. Theoretically, this proximity allows LEOs to provide faster and stronger service. Trials suggest StarLink is providing faster service, upwards of 100/20 in certain communities, but this pales in comparison to the original hype around LEOs, which promised speeds of gigabits per second. StarLink and others like it are just getting going, and the technology is still unproven at scale. A recent study, for instance, suggested that StarLink will reach capacity in only 8 short years. There’s still so much we don’t know about these networks. Despite this, the FCC recently awarded StarLink almost $900 million in funding. Starlink's competitors are challenging this award, claiming that it over-exaggerated its capabilities to the FCC.

"I get worried when I hear counties say that they are considering pausing their broadband plans in hopes that StarLink or 5G will arrive soon. Truth be told, these technologies are years away from being deployed in rural areas across our country. There is also uncertainty around cost, in addition to time. Communities that decide to pause will be waiting for something that may never come. In contrast, there are very real solutions available to counties today."