A funny thing is happening to the world of fibre-optics. With governments around the globe talking up the benefits of a digital economy — regardless of whether they’re prepared to put their money where their mouth is — fibre has suddenly become a hot topic. Municipal broadband projects, fibre for rural areas and digital inclusion are now hitting the mainstream news headlines on a weekly basis.
The internet is changing society in ways we barely imagined even 10 years ago, let alone 20. In the words of the Digital Britain report, “…We are at a tipping point in relation to the online world. It is moving from conferring advantage on those who are in it to conferring active disadvantage on those who are without.”
But while the internet gives, it also takes away. The online world has wrought big changes in advertising, the upshot of which is that many print publications are struggling. One of the recent casualties was FibreSystems Europe, a business magazine about the fibre-optics industry in Europe, where I worked in my first job as a trainee journalist, returning in January 2008 to be its editor.
So now it’s time to invent the next phase of my life. I’m writing this blog to a) keep my hand in while I build up my freelance work and b) provide comment on some of the issues around fibre-optics where I feel that I can make a contribution to the debate. I plan to write about optical components and systems as well as fibre-to-the-home. Older posts contain recent work published on other websites.
I hope my ramblings will be of interest to a few people out there. Let me know when you like something, we all need a little encouragement sometimes. Equally, please let me know if I get it wrong, I’m always willing to learn.
I think the main thing we have to do is educate government, so any posts you could make which they might read would be great! They seem to think that a 2meg USC is enough for the UK to compete with the rest of the world in the digital revolution. I was reading today that over £30 billion would be generated if fibre was ubiquitous in the UK, and that was just a small portion of the ROI of the estimated £27billion required to upgrade to fibre to the home.
Have you any figures for providing ftth for the UK? I don’t think it will cost as much as they say, because every home already has a wire for a phone, it is just a case of replacing an expensive copper one with a cheap fibre one. The ducts, access, poles and wayleaves are already there…
…but any info would be great.