Telecom Networks and Cables
sounds like static - before it's sent over the
DISCLAIMER
The global telephone network is formed from a
vast, interconnected mesh of cables, from
huge undersea trunks to high-capacity, high-
speed inter-city links, to the more humble
twisted pair copper wiring which constitutes
what is known as the local loop – the pair of
wires which connect each subscriber’s
premises to the local Public Switched
Telephone Network (PSTN).
For most of its lifetime, the PSTN has relied on
copper wiring to carry voice signals to and
from the local exchange and the customer’s
telephone. But while it’s estimated that around
60% of all telecommunications traffic still
travels over copper, cabling based on glass
fibres – fibre optic cable – is making rapid
inroads, thanks to its ability to support faster
bit-rates, its robust nature and its huge
bandwidth. Fibre can already carry 26,000
times more traffic than a standard copper line,
but if that’s not enough, new multiplexing
technology known as Wave Division
Multiplexing (WDM) is now boosting capacity
fibre optic cables by as much as 100 times.
Home Truths
Throughout the world, most homes are
connected to the telecommunications
operators’ Central Office (effectively, the local
phone exchange) via an analogue twisted pair
line. Disconnect the wire from the back of your
home phone and you’ll probably find a
configuration telecoms engineers call ‘quad’ –
four wires held in place by a plastic RJ-11
connector. The inner pair of wires corresponds
to Line One and the outer pair to Line Two.
Each wire in the pair has a name (tip and ring),
and the two together provide a complete
connection to the local exchange – the reason
why this connection is known as the Local
Loop.
Each pair of local loop wires transmits voice,
tones and power. The tones consist of the
Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF) tones
generated by pressing the buttons on a touch-
tone keypad, as well as information tones
which are generated at the exchange. The
power is used to ring your phone and to keep it
working even when the domestic electricity
supply fails (otherwise, how could you call the
power company to complain?). On an ordinary
phone line, even data from a fax machine or a
modem is translated into voice energy - which
line.
Fair Exchange
The connection between telecommunications
exchanges in industrialised nations has long
since been converted from analogue
technology to digital, which is much better
suited to processing the large amounts of
mixed information now travelling over the
PSTN. Carrying data comes naturally to digital
systems, since the information is already
coded into a language the system
understands. To move voice across the
network, digital systems sample the voice
signal, convert it into binary – that is, to a
series of 1s and 0s – and send the signal as
data using a protocol called Signalling System
7 (SS7). When the data reaches the exchange
at the other end of the connection, the data is
turned back into voice and sent as analogue
signal down the so-called ‘last mile’ to the
subscriber’s home.
Despite widespread deployment of fibre optic
cable in the PSTN, almost all local loop
connections remain copper-based. While the
dream of an all-fibre network – often called
‘fibre-to-the-home’ – will probably one day
become a reality, for the moment carriers’
huge investments in their copper
infrastructure, the high price of fibre, the
relatively low traffic levels generated by
residential users, and the lack of ‘killer’
applications to drive consumer demand for
costly higher-speed home connections are all
conspiring to keep the local loop a copper-
based affair, at least for the next few years.
Fibre Links
The advent of commercial fibre optics in the
mid-1970s revolutionised the way telecoms
traffic was carried. For the first time, mainline
trunks could carry not just thousands of
simultaneous calls, but hundreds of
thousands. In addition, carrying signals as
photonic energy – pulses of light – down hair-
thin strands of pure glass cuts signal
attenuation dramatically, allowing signals to be
carried as far as 2,000km without the need for
a repeater station.
Optical fibre based networks can move
information much more quickly than
conventional copper wire networks, supporting
data rates of up to 10Gbps in contrast to the
64kbps over a standard residential telephone
connection. Although fibre remains relatively
expensive compared to standard copper
wiring, it has a long lifespan and requires very
little maintenance. At the same time it’s easier
to manage, being free of problems like
crosstalk and interference, and much more
secure, since unlike metal-based links fibre
cables do not emit radiation which outsiders
can tap to decode the signals on the line.
For these reasons, fibre-based infrastructure is
certain to play a key role in the high-capacity
broadband networks of the future which will be
used to deliver fast Internet access and fast
data transfer, as well as a wide range of new
multimedia applications such as full-motion
video, audio clips and real-time
videoconferencing.
The widespread use of fibre in undersea
cables, inter-city trunks and increasingly in
metropolitan area networks and fibre-to-the-
kerb schemes has dramatically cut the cost of
carrying telecoms traffic. Once the cost of
installing large trunks has been amortised,
operators can carry calls for tiny fractions of a
cent on major routes, a factor which is now
helping to drive down the cost of international
calls.
Undersea Trunks
The last ten years has seen tremendous
growth in high-capacity submarine fibre optic
trunks, which have boosted capacity on
international routes to an unprecedented level
and made the cost of carrying international
traffic almost negligible. With many more high
profile projects now underway, including
Project Oxygen, Global Crossing, and FLAG
(Fibre-optic Link Around the Globe) analysts
predict that by 2003 more than US$ 56 billion
will be invested in the fibre optic undersea
market with close to a million route kilometres
in place.
Because of their lower cost and longer
lifespan, undersea fibre optic cables have now
largely taken over from satellites as the
principal means of delivering international
traffic.
New Copper Technologies
While fibre wins hands down when it comes to
absolute bandwidth, copper still comes up
trumps on cost and – most importantly –
installed base. With copper lines still servicing
almost every home on the world-wide
telephone network (there were 834 million
fixed lines world wide by the end of 1998),
carriers have a big incentive to find new ways
to take advantage of this sprawling, costly
asset. It has been estimated that the value of
all the copper currently installed in the US
phone network comes to around US$100
billion, while a 1994 estimate on the cost of
replacing BT’s copper network came in at
close to US$18 billion.
To date, the most promising of all the
technologies developed to enhance the
performance of existing copper networks is so-
called xDSL. DSL stands for Digital Subscriber
Line, with the ‘x’ referring to the fact that there
are several flavours of the technology (HDSL,
ADSL, VDSL – see Cabling Terminology,
below), suited to different applications and
network configurations.
For the moment, Asymmetric DSL (ADSL)
seems to have taken the running, with many
large operators now in the process of
launching services which have the potential to
expand network access capacity by a factor of
as much as 50. As its name suggests, ADSL
supports asymmetrical traffic flows down
copper wires – that is, fast bit-streams of up to
8Mbps in the downstream (telephone
exchange to customer) direction, and slower
rates of up to 1Mbps in the upstream
(customer to exchange direction). High
downstream capacity makes ADSL well–suited
for new technologies like high-speed Internet
connection and near-video-on-demand, where
the bulk of the traffic flow is to the customer, in
the form of Web pages, movies or interactive
games.
New Fibre Technologies
The most important new development in fibre
optic cabling is undoubtedly a complex
technology known as Wave Division
Multiplexing (WDM). WDM systems effectively
split a single beam of white light travelling
along a fibre optic cable into its component
optical wavelengths, and then allocate a
separate data channel to each ‘colour’ of light.
Using advanced narrow and constant
wavelength lasers, very precise optical filtering
and switching, and complex, software-
controlled monitoring systems, Wave Division
Multiplexers can greatly increase the
bandwidth of a fibre optic cable by allocating
the total capacity of the fibre’s original traffic-
carrying capability onto each individual
wavelength. Dense Wave Division Multiplexing
(DWDM) is an advanced mechanism for even
further increasing the total number of separate
optical wavelengths per fibre (by as much as
32 times) using present-day technology.
To date, the high cost of WDM and DWDM
systems has largely limited their use to point-
to-point high capacity long-haul
telecommunications backbones, such as the
30,000km-plus SEA-ME-WE 3 (South East
Asia-Middle-East-Western Europe) undersea
cable project, MCI WorldCom’s pan European
network, and Sprint’s US long distance
network.
Increasingly, however, new developments are
making WDM and DWDM technology more
cost-effective on shorter routes like regional
and inter-city networks, where there is a high
volume of traffic and a demand for optimum
service quality.
Other Cabling Options
Cable television operators are increasingly
getting into the business of offering mixed
telecommunications and entertainment
packages over their high-speed direct-to-home
coaxial cable networks, which can deliver up to
80 times the capacity of standard copper
twisted pair.
To provide optimum-grade voice telephony,
most favour so-called hybrid fibre/coax
networks, using fibre to carry voice signals and
the coax to deliver TV and Internet
connectivity. With fast cable modems expected
to be widely available as early as next year,
supporting always-on Internet connectivity at
speeds of up to 2Mbps and the crucial two-
way capabilities needed to support future
online services like interactive TV and online
games, cable TV networks could pose a
serious threat to telcos’ copper networks in the
early years of the next decade.
For the moment, however, most cable
operators need to pull a lot more fibre in order
to upgrade existing broadcasting-oriented
networks to carry a mix of traffic – an
expensive proposition which could yet delay
the widespread and affordable launch of
bundled communications offerings from the
cable operators.
Some Cabling Terminology
Attenuation | Copper Twisted Pair | Crosstalk |
Coaxial Cable | Dial-up Line | Fibre Optic
Cable | HFC | Leased Line | Photonics | Pulse-
code Modulation (PCM) | Quad | RJ-11 | xDSL
Attenuation - the decrease in power of a
signal transmitted over a wire, measured in
decibels. As attenuation increases, the signal
decreases. To counter attenuation,
telecommunications carriers use repeater
stations which boost and regenerate the signal
along the cable at regular intervals.
Copper Twisted Pair -The mainstay of the
world’s telecommunication networks, copper
twisted pair comprises two copper wires
twisted together to reduce the electrical
coupling between them and the amount of
electrical noise they pick up. Standard copper
twisted pair supports data rates of up to
64kbps.
Crosstalk - on cabling, the spillover of a signal
from one channel to another, causing
interference
Coaxial Cable - Coaxial cable consists of a
core of copper wire – either solid or stranded –
which is surrounded by an external shield of
woven copper braid or metallic foil. The braid
and the central conductor share the same axis
– hence the name coaxial. Plastic insulation is
used to separate the inner and outer
conductors, while another layer of insulation
covers the outer braiding. In coaxial cable, the
outer conductor shields the inner conductor
from outside electrical signals while also
reducing the radiation of interior signals.
Although coaxial cabling is difficult to install, it
is highly resistant to signal interference. In
addition, it can support greater cable lengths
between equipment than twisted pair cable.
The two types of coaxial cabling are: thick
coaxial and thin coaxial. Coaxial cable is used
for the delivery of cable television, and is also
a popular type of cabling for computer
networks.
Dial-up Line - A communications circuit
established by dialling a destination over the
PSTN.
Fibre Optic Cable - Fibre optic cable consists
of strands of glass fibre surrounded by a
coating of Teflon. Kevlar or stainless steel
fibres are often incorporated into the cable to
provide added strength. Signals are
transmitted along the cable as pulses of light,
rather than electricity. Fibre optic cable has
several advantages over copper wiring,
including complete freedom from electrical
interference, a small, compact diameter, and
the potential for carrying very large amounts of
data at very high speeds. Although signals on
copper cabling and fibre optic cable travel at
around the same speed, light meets less
resistance as it moves along the cable,
allowing signals to travel much further without
attenuation.

HFC - Hybrid Fibre/Coaxial systems, often

used by cable TV operators who are beginning
to use this very high-capacity combination to
offer a mix of voice, online services and
television.

Leased Line - A communications circuit

reserved for the exclusive use of the
subscriber. Frequently used by businesses on
a point-to-point basis to connect remote
offices, since the subscriber pays a flat rate for
the line rental, rather than charges for the
individual calls travelling over the connection.
Also called Leased Circuit and Private Line.

Photonics - the science relating to optical

fibre-based switching, multiplexing and
amplification equipment such as Wave
Division Multiplexing and Dense Wave Division
Multiplexing. It lies at the heart of all-optical
networks, which have the potential to
transport, route and deliver much greater
amounts of bandwidth more cost-effectively
than existing electro-optical systems.

Pulse-code Modulation (PCM) - a common

method of digitising voice signals. The
bandwidth required for a single digitised voice
channel is 64kbps.

Quad - Quad is the telephone wiring which

comes into your home. It comprises four
parallel twisted pair wires bunched into a
single cable.

RJ-11 - The small, usually transparent, 4-pin

plastic connector commonly used to connect
voice telephony equipment to the network.

xDSL - Digital Subscriber Line. There are

many kinds of DSL technology, including
ADSL (Asymmetric DSL - up to 8Mbps), HDSL
(High Bit-Rate DSL - up to 64kbps) and VDSL
(Very High Data Rate DSL - up to 52Mbps
over very short distances).