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> DSL (copper) will not get you the speeds people are looking for these days for broadband service The German Telekom (same company running T-Mobile, coinciden
by solarkraft 5y ago
> DSL (copper) will not get you the speeds people are looking for these days for broadband service
The German Telekom (same company running T-Mobile, coincidentally) has been surprisingly good at milking their existing crappy copper lines using vectoring. They run fiber up to the distribution boxes on the side of the road (up to a few hundred meters away from houses) and vector their way from there with speeds of up to 250 Mbit/s (which is great for German standards and honestly I'm okay with less).
Maybe they'll be able to increase the rates with 5G or save on distribution cost, but I'm not so sure about either. The distribution boxes are quite large and power hungry with serious cooling nowadays, but they're probably still below the complexity and cost of a 5G tower.
- vladvasiliu 5y agoIs that rural areas? My parents live in a rural-ish town, and have FTTH. The connection from the distribution box up the road is made on an ad-hoc basis. The technician pulls the fiber on the posts used for electricity delivery. It's only been available for less than two years, though. Sure, if you have no posts and have to dig up the sidewalk or something, it would be different. But the major advantage of this approach is that distribution boxes are passive, just connectors, so they should be pretty cheap to install and operate.