By Yin Nwe Ko
I STARTED using internet access in 2012. One of my friends introduced me to how to use Facebook via internet access. His introduction made me greatly interested as one could write freely on Facebook without being edited by an editor. At that moment, the speed of the internet connection was rather slow, and the charges for using the internet were conducted according to the time duration of the users. Later, 3 G and 4 G internet appeared one after another, and the charges of using it were conducted by the volume of data of a user.
In March 2022, I had a chance to install the fibre internet at home. I have heard the speed of internet connection on fibre internet, which possesses very swift access without hesitation. In practical use, it was quite right. I installed the speed rate with 20 Mb/s which cost the company’s lowest charges, but the connection ability was satisfactorily accepted. Its speed was much swifter than the others I have already used. In fact, I was outdated because there were many fibre internets used in the large cities in Myanmar. Then, I wanted to be curious why this fibre internet was much better than any other connections. It was associated with modern technology that was out of my reach. Therefore, I asked a technician who was my cousin and was once one of the staff of MRTV.
He explained to me about the fibre-optic internet in detail interestingly. The followings are the advantages of using fibre internet for those who need internet access as an essential one.
Fibre-optic internet is a data connection carried by a cable filled with thin glass or plastic fibres. Data travels through them as beams of light pulsed in a pattern. Fibre-optic internet speeds are about 20 times faster than regular cable at 1 Gb/s. Why is fibre-optic cable internet so much better than cable internet? Because there’s no copper wire to gum up the works. Cable internet sends its signals down metal wires. The metal heats up, weakening the signal and picking up interference. That’s why cable and DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) internet are so much slower and clumsier than fibre optics.
Fibre-optic internet works by splitting files like movies and games into data packets of zeroes and ones. A laser flashes this Morse code-type signal into one end of a plastic or glass filament. The “wire” is about as thick as one strand of human hair. A special sheath called a cladding keeps the beam of light inside the filament. It bounces off the walls for as far as 60 miles and pops out the other end where a modem decodes the light into a form your computer can use.
There are three types of fibre-optic cable internet:
• FTTH or FTTP: “Fibre To The Home” or “Premises.” This is the fastest, most reliable fibre-optic connection because the fibres come straight to your door.
• FTTC: “Fibre to the Curb.” This gets the fibre to the utility pole outside your house but uses a coaxial cable from there. The short length of copper wire is a bottleneck.
• FTTN: “Fibre To The Node” or “Neighborhood.” The fibre optics get to within one mile of your house.
A longer trip through metal wires makes this the slowest of the three options
Is fibre-optic internet service better? In a word, ‘Yes’. It’s much faster and more reliable than cable internet or DSL. But it has other major advantages like no throttling and better TV picture quality. Let’s take a quick stroll through some ways fibre-optic cable internet beats standard cable.
Fibre-optic internet speed is 1 Gbps. That’s 10 to 20 times speedier than the 50 to 100 Mb/s cable most of us know now. For a concrete fibre-optic vs cable internet speed comparison, see the list below. It shows how long it takes to download a 2-hour movie on fibre-optic vs cable internet.
Time to download a 2-hour HD movie:
Fiber optic internet speed 1 Gb/s: 40 seconds
Cable internet speed 100 Mb/s: 7 minutes
DSL speed 25 Mb/s: 30 minutes
4G LTE speed 35 Mb/s: 25 minutes
5G internet speed 10 Gb/s: 4 seconds
The truth is that the cable connection should be fast enough to stream video without interruption, but peak traffic overloads the wires. That is where fibre-optic internet vs cable speed differences get obvious. Fibre optics can handle more users and more data at consistently higher speeds. Another bonus? Fibre-optic cable internet does not need energized lines, so it is not as prone to outages as cable internet. As long as the fibre-optic cable stays intact, it can keep delivering your bits and bytes even when the lights are out.
Have you ever noticed the power goes out just when you need it most? On a hot summer Sunday, for instance, when you really, really want your air conditioner to work? That is because those hot days overload our powerlines. Everyone is maxing out their A/C at the same time. The same thing happens with our cable internet systems. Internet providers use “throttling” to prevent those outages. At peak times, your ISP (Internet Service Provider) may lower your cable speed from 100 Mb/s to 20 or lower to ration their service. Fibre-optic internet speed does not throttle because it’s less susceptible to overload.
Cable internet has different speeds for download and upload, and upload speeds are a lot slower. That is based on how people use the internet. Most of us do a lot more downloading than uploading, so internet providers give most of their bandwidth to downloads. With fibre-optic internet speed, that slow upload time goes out the window. Because there is no worry of overloading the system, fibre-optic internet providers can give equal shrift to uploads and downloads alike. That makes it easier to share files and work from home with fibre-optic cable internet service.
4K TVs pack four times more pixels into the same real estate, which makes for much crisper pictures. But it also sucks a lot more bandwidth from your internet connection. With speeds of 100 Mb/s or less, cable internet may struggle at times to deliver 4K internet streaming. Fibre-optic internet service won’t even bat an eye at it. A fibre-optic connection running at even a sub-optimal 500 Mbps should have no trouble streaming high-quality 4K TV and movies.
His long and patient explanation made me understand because he only used a few terminological words. However, the last part of his explanation made me amazed due to his peculiar word “Telemedicine.”
He said that no one loves going to the doctor. One misses hours of work while he or she languishes in waiting rooms. He or she answers the same questions over and over about street addresses and medication allergies. But can fibre optic internet providers really help with that? Yes, they can. Telemedicine lets health care professionals evaluate, diagnose, and even treat patients remotely. Thanks to higher resolution video chats, much faster fibre-optic internet speeds make telemedicine more reliable. It can help the elderly, and those with disabilities live more independently as well.
I have known just the quickness of fibre internet before. To be frank, I never knew the facts he explained. Just now, I have heard them. I thanked him, I said. At the same time, I would like to urge you, my esteemed readers, that if you are the ones who need internet access as an essential requirement, you should choose the fibre-optic internet.
