[Asterisk-Users] Where's the Fiber

[Steve Underwood]

dthurn at tstt.net.tt wrote:

> Where's the Fiber?
> I was reading about T1 lines and came across this statement.. It 
> basically said T1's are made up of copper...Wasn't T1 made up of 
> Fiber? Is the new trend to move T1 away from fiber and use copper?

Commerical T1 systems were introduced in about 1960. Commercial fibre 
communications systems were introduced in about 1980. So, is T1 tied to 
fibre? :-)

If you want to send a T1 connection over a large distance reliably, 
translating the signal from copper to fibre for the bulk of the distance 
is a good thing. If you are only sending the signals a couple of 
kilometres from the exchange to the customer premises, fibre is overkill 
and rarely used. T1 is often carried over some form of DSL these days, 
adding to the options the telco may choose from. The DSL approach has 
higher latency (bad), but its cheap (good). This option is pretty recent 
compared to the others, though.

Steve