The Reality of Wiring A Big City.

Online technology magazine, Ars Technica has a big, detailed article on what it took to install a municipal, open-access fiber optic network of the sort Google is proposing. If you think wiring an American city is a challenge, think about old, crowded European cities. No room for wiring cabinets in the streets, gobs of historical architecture not allowed to run cable in the air on poles (they don’t exist and aren’t allowed) and so on.

The article is kind of tech-heavy but its still a good read to get a handle on the organizational challenges. One of the biggest ones is, what to do when you get the fiber to the house? That’s actually the start of a whole nest of different problems.

The investigations regarding the position of the modem showed how people wrestle with their in-house network. FTTH is not the cause of the problem, but the availability of a lot of capacity brings visibility to the issue.

The architects who designed the buildings never considered the demand for broadband and HDTV, did not consider the required wiring, and still don’t. It’s up to the people who live there to try to find a solution to string wires and connect all their gear.

Why not without wires? All “free band” wireless solutions like TV-over-wireless or Wifi are great inventions, but in a densely populated MDU, the limitations become apparent. Reinforced concrete walls or plasterboard with metal insulation sheeting block radio signals. If everybody around you uses the same solution, chances are you disturb each other’s connections. Wideband N-type Wifi is fast but uses more spectrum.

In fact, one of the most popular items sold in Amsterdam are range extenders for Wifi—not to connect over a longer distance, but to drown out your neighbors’ access points. High speed Homeplug adapters (data over power lines) are not cheap but are a last resort when everything else fails.

Most likely, the next innovation will be a fiber for an in-house network that can be drawn alongside electrical wires in their ducts to all the rooms in the house. Ultra high speed wireless links will most likely be the preferred choice for short distances, i.e. within the room itself.