Plastic LEDs Break Telecommunications Barrier

5arah writes: "Science Daily has a mirror of an article about the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and Hebrew University in Jerusalem discovering a way to get polymers to emit near-IR radiation. Once commercialized, such polymers could potentially cut the costs of the hundreds of millions of telecommunications terminals needed to bring fiber optic communications to individual homes, opening the family doors to global networks."

Neat, kind of

[Starship Trooper]

As I understand it, this is for the short-reach side of fiberoptics, not the long haul (100km +) or even metro (sub 50km) markets, but for very short reach, i.e. C.O. to home (sub 4,000 feet). Instead of running glass fiber, you can actually use plastic fiber in some very short reach applications. Bringing the cost of the transcievers required in the actual customer prem would be very cool indeed.

But let's not kid ourselves. Fiberoptic Ethernet Cards [siig.com] sell for under $100. Reducing this cost would help, but it won't solve the problem that there's no fiber in the ground to 99% of houses in America.

Neat science project, though.

Exactly. Even glass fiber is only paid for once.

[Bob_Robertson]

Yes, another anti-government scree from Bob.

Every metro area that does not have a "cable TV" local utility monopoly has lower consumer cable bills, and many times competing cable providers.

So what's so hard about fiber to the home? Nothing but getting local governments out of the way.

When the demand/supply lines cross, and providers can charge what it costs to put fiber in the ground (or overhead, who cares?) they will do so.

ADSL provides the same functionality as this short-run plastic fiber, on existing copper. Why waste money with plastic fiber?

Community fiber projects exist, providing mini-metro distribution over fiber. A "gated community" is a perfect candidate for this sort of service, so is a small town, development or an apartment building. All it takes is personal initiative. And how about one 802.11 hub feeding multiple "homes" as an ad-hoc co-op to one ADSL or cable-modem link? Cheaper still, and nothing to run in or above ground.

If one answer is shoved down everyones throat by the local governments, however, it will just cost more and not give the service anyone wants.

As mentioned, it's not the cost of the end points, it's the fiber itself that needs to be run before it can be used. My personal opinion is that the vast majority of users have no use for that kind of speed and they are not served by paying the overhead for optical repeaters, multiplexors, and high-speed routers.

So I fully expect that the power of government will be used by the service providers to provide them with a shortcut to profits anywhere they can be convinced to do so.

Personally, I like the community co-op fiber distribution answer.

Bob-

Re:Exactly. Even glass fiber is only paid for once

[gnovos]

My personal opinion is that the vast majority of users have no use for that kind of speed and they are not served by paying the overhead for optical repeaters, multiplexors, and high-speed routers.

Rule number one about anything that has a capacity, be it bandwidth, HD space, memory, CPU caches, local busses, anything: The Demand for capacity will always be greater than Supply+1. Always.

When people have to pay for it, Supply=Demand.

[Bob_Robertson]

Supply meets demand, always. Supply only depends on what you're willing to pay for.

If you want OC-192 to your home, you can get it. Anywhere. The "price" includes the time it will take to run the fiber to your home, and ship in the optical hardware.

Or did you really mean that the demand for *cheap* things always exceeds supply? Then you're comparing three variables, not two.

Price is the point at which demand and supply meet. That's all. You pay less for something because you do the work yourself? Your labor is part of the price you pay. For you, your labor is worth less than the money you saved.

That is why supply always meets demand, because there is always a crossing point. Everything has its price. That is why there is no shortage of drugs in the US, regardless of legality.

If you want to say that I cannot buy antimatter at any price, that is merely a technological issue where the "price" includes development costs.

If you want to talk politics, there is never enough supply of "free" services to meet demand. Thus the cost to supply welfare is always more than the costs of comparable private efforts.

I suggest Ludiwg von Mises' book "Human Action" [mises.org], available online, for a discussion of supply and demand.

The same site, http://www.mises.org/ also has seminal works by such luminaries as Fredric Hayak and Murry Rothbard, for anyone curious about the actual workings of "free markets" and the market forces which make Microsoft's efforts to promote their products no surprise at all.

Even, expected.

Bob-

Re:Neat, kind of

[Perdo]

You are certainly right that the primary cost of fiber to the home being putting the fiber in the ground. A $100 Nic card or even $2000 for a full PC with Gigabit Ethernet over fiber is nothing compared to holes that have to be dug to put fiber in the ground. Think of the additional expense of splicing for every house. Every house must have its own connection. If you run a 100 pair bundle up a street, you must make a splice for every house or put a piece of splitting equipment at every house. Phenomenally impractical even if it is absolutely necessary.

99% of houses not having fiber means that 1% do, or 700,000 houses already wired for fiber. A better way to say it might be 7,000 houses in a test community and about 3% of all $3,000,000 homes have fiber run to them.

I have fiber to the desktop, but I run fiber to desktops for a living. Terminating fiber is cheap when you do it yourself. My last mile is certainly not fiber though, it's Hi Cap DSL.

Interesting, but...

[cp99]

...it's a long way from something that works in the lab to a technology which can been used on a commercial scale.

This sounds all good and cool

[Tim_F]

But how readilly accessible will this be for the average family? Most families do not have geeks in them, and thus would not be aware of something like this. Until technology like this becomes as accessible as cable tv (and by accessible, I mean cheap and needing no effort to get set up) it will not be embraced by the average person.

oh boy, more "empowerment!"

[b-side.org]

opening the family doors to global networks.

.. of government sponsored baby bell monopoly power! gotta love it.

Read before commenting...

[linuxator]

They talk about LED's, not fibre. Talk is about IR-emiting plastics.. Fibre cable will still be same glassfibre...