After my registering for this site I was greeted with a message that contained the following quotation by Samuel Jackson:
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome."
I thought to myself, How apropos of the subject at hand.
Needless to say, I agree with the premise of the original blog message concerning the inevitability of fiber's entry at the desktop level, particularly for large installations where the size of floor plates and building heights warrant it, and where wireless alternatives do not suffice.
However, the legacy reasoning behind transitioning from copper to fiber, some of which were stated or implied by the author, alone, have not, and probably will not be sufficient anytime soon to overcome the embedded mindset surrounding the practices of the building construction trades and MEPs, including enterprise IT & Department Design and Construction Departments whose collective predilections have, to this date, at least, preserved the hegemony of copper.
It's not merely about the first cost economics alone at this point, as anyone with a four-function calculator can now figure out on their own. It goes far deeper than that. And it's not even about the type of wire, itself. With no malice intended towards anyone who may be reading this, it is high time that we recognized, or became educated to the fact, that:
It's not the wire. It's the architecture, Stupid!
I believe that several new and inter-dependent drivers have arrived on the scene that may soon begin to change all of this. The main thrust behind this new argument has to do with reducing or eliminating carbon footprints (and all the trading of carbon credits tha go along with it) and the costs associated with electric power, since fiber, due to its ability to eliminate distance concerns, easily facilitates the backhaul and physical relocation of processes and power-consuming systems hardware that would otherwise continue to be situated locally in order to meet the obligatory 90+10 meter constraint.
As I type this I'm reminded of the new IT direction that points increasingly towards cloud computing, SaaS, remote server farms, and, in short, virtualizing just about everything possible, which further advances the argument for back-hauling applications and systems hardware over fiber. If one accepts the latter as a macroeconomic argument, then FTTD and FTTE (enclosure) becomes its lesser, or microeconomic, equivalent.
Ironically, while using a fiber-based, hence, distance-neutral, approach may contribute significantly to ameliorating environmental concerns by reducing carbon footprints, they are also responsible for the same level, perhaps even more so now due to advancements in photonics, of cost savings that they always have in the past (adjusted for inflation and energy price indexing, of course) when these types of architecture are used. Under such a cross-disciplinary regime, some of the same network topologies that were proposed and summarily rejected twenty years ago are now being viewed far more favorably and beginning to see acceptance.
The economies implied above hold especially true for LAN hardware and administration, real estate and, very significantly, the costs associated with electric power and associated environmental provisions required to sustain equipment enclosures, which, today, must still be within 90 meters of desktops in situations where copper is still used.
Think about it. How many technology equipment rooms, i.e., LAN rooms and "telco closets", in a sixty-story building with a 30k sq ft floor area (anywhere from two to six per floor) could be turned into small meeting areas, lounge spaces or kiosk areas, or in newer structures yet to be built, made part of the building's open floor areas?
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