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Unless there is some major advancement in physics, it is going to remain the fact that fiber in the ground is going to offer massively more capacity than wirele

Unless there is some major advancement in physics, it is going to remain the fact that fiber in the ground is going to offer massively more capacity than wireless. I'm not an expert in physics but if cell phones use radio waves and radio waves travel at the speed of light it seems like at some point technology will allow for very fast over the air data transfers without breaking any laws of physics. I have LTE on my AT&T phone and it seems pretty good, but I am definitely apprehensive about switching all my data to it in my house. I'll probably wait a few years, but if Comcast does anything to really infuriate me, I am likely to switch. [Added] I got a few downvotes on this one, while I don't care about the karma, I do want to say that I didn't mean to say "I'm not an expert" in a sarcastic way. My intention was to point out that I don't know what I am talking about.

EwanToo 14y ago
All those radio waves need to be shared between every phone connected to that cell, and between all the other radio based services out there (e.g. Television). For a direct fibre link, all the available bandwidth is dedicated to you.
quink 14y ago
Case in point, I'm Australian and just looking at Verizon's website and 50 GB is $375 on a small business plan. That's the wireless telco way of managing contention. Price any significant usage out of possibility.
bcbrown 14y ago
Both wireless and fiber optics act by transmitting information through electromagnetic waves. The speed of light isn't the interesting constraint here, because they're both bound by it. Fiber-optics will have slightly higher latency for the transmission component, because the speed of light is slower in a fiber than through the atmosphere. The real constraint comes in bits per second. With wireless, the ability to improve that comes about by increasing the frequency spectrum in use. You can overlay a signal at, say 1GHz with one at, say, 1.5GHz, and the two signals won't interfere with each other. So the eventual capacity ceiling with wireless transmission is the size of suitable frequency spectrum that is budgeted to it. There is a physical ceiling (can't use 1Khz, for example, or 1PHz) to the amount of spectrum, and therefore, the total wireless bandwidth has a ceiling. With fiber optics, to double bandwidth, you can simply drop a second cable next to the first. So the bandwidth is capped by the number of cables you can lay. This has a much higher ceiling than for wireless.
josephlord 14y ago
Look up Shannon limit. Fundamental limit on bandwidth is directly related to signal to noise ratio and available bandwidth. Then you need to think who you are sharing the bandwidth with. Basically all transmitters and those overlapping (either they are noise or impose bandwidth limits).

EwanToo 14y ago

All those radio waves need to be shared between every phone connected to that cell, and between all the other radio based services out there (e.g. Television). For a direct fibre link, all the available bandwidth is dedicated to you.

quink 14y ago

Case in point, I'm Australian and just looking at Verizon's website and 50 GB is $375 on a small business plan. That's the wireless telco way of managing contention. Price any significant usage out of possibility.

bcbrown 14y ago

Both wireless and fiber optics act by transmitting information through electromagnetic waves. The speed of light isn't the interesting constraint here, because they're both bound by it. Fiber-optics will have slightly higher latency for the transmission component, because the speed of light is slower in a fiber than through the atmosphere. The real constraint comes in bits per second. With wireless, the ability to improve that comes about by increasing the frequency spectrum in use. You can overlay a signal at, say 1GHz with one at, say, 1.5GHz, and the two signals won't interfere with each other. So the eventual capacity ceiling with wireless transmission is the size of suitable frequency spectrum that is budgeted to it. There is a physical ceiling (can't use 1Khz, for example, or 1PHz) to the amount of spectrum, and therefore, the total wireless bandwidth has a ceiling. With fiber optics, to double bandwidth, you can simply drop a second cable next to the first. So the bandwidth is capped by the number of cables you can lay. This has a much higher ceiling than for wireless.

josephlord 14y ago

Look up Shannon limit. Fundamental limit on bandwidth is directly related to signal to noise ratio and available bandwidth. Then you need to think who you are sharing the bandwidth with. Basically all transmitters and those overlapping (either they are noise or impose bandwidth limits).