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WHY FIBRE HAS US
SO EXCITED - AN APOLOGY AND AN EXPLANATION
Time for me to apologise, I just Tweeted this
I wasn't trying to be rude but I did think tHat
everybody understood what "Fibre" was and what it was all about. From
some correspondence received recently it seems that I was wrong. So
just a very few lines to explain what it's all about and why some
villagers are getting so excited about these new green cabinets.
When I first connected to another computer outside
my home I uses a system called PRESTEL. This downloaded teletext type
pages at the unbelievably low speed of 1200 bit a second. A bit is the
tiniest piece of code that a computer can understand and put simply
you could see each page slooowly build up on the screen. So a page
exactly like a BBC CEEFAX page took up to 30 seconds to display! The
requests that I sent for the page went at an even slower 75 bits a
second. Then after something called along cane the internet and we
used to connect with dial up modems which worked at 32,000. Remember
the dialling, the "don't pick up the phone, I am on the internet", the
beeping and the not connecting? Eventually though you got your email
or your weather forecast or whatever but it was expensive and too slow
for video for example. Next came adsl broadband and some of us could
really use the internet for the first time. Ours started at 1million
bits but it has improved recently although I know of one family who
still run a business with a connection like that. At last we could
download large files and a lucky few could even watch tv on YouTube
without it breaking up every few seconds.
Now we have fibre which connects at
two and a half thousand times the
speed of that old dial up modem. Not only downwards but even upwards
is a thousand times faster. This means that you can very easily copy
all the pictures, videos and files from your computer to the cloud.
The cloud is great as it doesn't go wrong or get lost, if you lose
your computer you have lost everything, with the cloud you haven't.
You can access and edit your files or your pictures or video on any
computer anywhere in the world. You can have high quality video calls
with relatives in Australia - all for free! On top of this fibre is
generally cheaper than the technology that it replaces!
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