Is fiber really faster than regular broadband? Actually, at the same speed rating, fiber and broadband are no different. For example, say you currently have a 2M/56K broadband connection, and you ask Chunghwa Telecom to upgrade you to a 2M/56K fiber connection. You might think it’s faster, but it’s actually the same as before.

But you might ask: if upgrading to fiber doesn’t make things faster, why does everyone say fiber is better? The truth is that fiber really is better than the networks most people use today, just not in speed. Here are the three most obvious advantages of fiber!

  1. Stable and not easily interfered with
  2. Can carry signals farther (low loss rate)
  3. Hard to eavesdrop on
After listing the three advantages, I bet many people still don't understand why. Actually, all three come down to one reason: the networks commonly used today send signals as electricity, while fiber sends information as light. What's the difference? First, electrical signals are very easy to interfere with. You can try this experiment: wrap an electric wire around the network cable in your home, turn it into an electromagnet on the cable, and switch it on. You'll see the modem's signal light become unstable. But if you do the same experiment on a fiber network, nothing is disturbed. Also, if you know a bit about electricity, you know that power sent from a power plant along wires to your home loses energy along the way. Today's common networks are the same, because they also send data as electrical signals, so they suffer signal attenuation too. Fiber, on the other hand, almost never loses signal, which is why most undersea cables are laid with fiber. Now for the third advantage, that it is hard to eavesdrop on. This also comes back to the nature of electrical signals! You've made an electromagnet, right? You know it just passes current through a wire to make it magnetic. That means when current flows through a wire, it creates magnetism. A network cable is essentially several wires inside, and the signal is just electricity. So when data flows through a network, certain devices can pick up the magnetic signal from inside the cable. And, as I always say, light does not create magnetism, so it is hard to monitor.

So with these three advantages, you might ask me: Big Brother Tingfeng, should I actually switch to fiber? That depends on your needs. If you run an internet café, or your computer will act as a network server, then fiber is really better. I also came across an article online claiming that Chunghwa Telecom’s 光世代 (its fiber service) only uses fiber for part of the line (the part inside the exchange), while the long stretch from the exchange to your home is ordinary wiring. If that’s really the case, it feels like misleading advertising. You can check reference 2 below for that article.

References:

  1. Wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/光纖通訊
  2. The 光世代 myth; http://jehuen.blogspot.com/2007/08/blog-post_21.html