The death of fibre

It turns out that all Netflix streaming peak on Saturday night can fit inside a single fiber optic, which is the size of one human hair.”
Reed Hastings
.

Whilst futurists talk about advances in wireless technology being the death of fibre, higher volumes of wireless traffic equals a larger number of fibre backhaul points… for the foreseeable future at least. As we go to microcells, nanocells, picocells, femtocells covering smaller areas to satiate the demand for wireless bandwidth, all that traffic still needs to get back to the service providers distribution/core networks. As cell sizes get smaller, more optical fibre cables are likely to be rolled out.

Similarly, as mobile technology improves (ie GSM to 3G to 4G, etc), the cells are capable of carry larger network bandwidths, necessitating higher bandwidth backhaul pipes, which again implies more fibre.

Reductions in truck rolls are also flagged as being a benefit of Network virtualisation, which is probably safe to claim, but the touchpoint explosion is likely to mean bigger-bandwidth pipes (yes, you guessed it, more fibre).

Whilst the access / edge parts of the fixed network might be being overrun by wireless, clearly fibre networks are still being rolled out.

How does this relate to OSS? Well, it’s just one more reason why wireless and network virtualisation are less likely to disrupt geospatial / physical infrastructure OSS tools than all other segments of the OSS market.

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