4M: Copper Broadband "Ceiling"

In March of this year, Beijing Unicom's broadband network speed-up phase was basically completed, and the Internet access rate of 3.4 million broadband customers in the city's suburbs was improved.

So, what measures did Beijing Unicom use to make the network speed upgrade significantly in the past two months? According to Cheng Jiwei, deputy general manager of Beijing Unicom's plan management department, the transformation of more than two months was mainly the transformation of telephone office equipment, and did not involve users. "Including the replacement of some old equipment, the updating of copper wires, and more importantly, modifying parameters for users who meet the standards to improve network speed."

Since some optimization and transformation of the original line can achieve speed increase, isn't fiber optic transformation superfluous? The reporter has experienced that the reconstruction on copper cables can be upgraded to 4M at most. This Internet speed is not enough to support watching HD programs very smoothly. Cheng Jiwei said that using copper cables can reach 20M in the laboratory. In practical applications, if the user is within 500 meters of the telephone office, the maximum can reach 8M. But this distance is not reached by the average user. 4M is close to the limit of copper cable use.

Obviously, it is difficult to achieve broadband speed-up and price reduction by continuing to use copper broadband as the main deployment method. In order to obtain the high-speed generally satisfied by broadband users, fiber-optic transformation must be performed in the "last mile" of broadband access. But in a mixed fiber and copper network, higher bandwidth means more end offices and more complex network structures. Speeding up by such a "repairing" method is not only complicated in engineering, but also has low cost performance. It is difficult for telecommunications companies in many places to recover their investment in 10 years. There is only one way to clear the obstacles-"returning copper into the light", promoting technology replacement and breaking the "technical ceiling."

Why should we carry out fiber-optic transformation on the plot? The scale determines the cost. The wider the optical fiber network coverage and the more users, the lower the unit bandwidth selling price will be. In the final analysis, we hope to reduce the user's broadband payment fees.

At present, China is at the early stage of the promotion of fiber optic broadband, and the actual installation rate of broadband in many places is less than 10%. That is to say, fewer than 100 users who have the conditions to install fiber broadband choose to install fiber broadband. In the process of deploying all-optical networks and retrofitting old community facilities on a large scale, telecommunications companies face many difficulties, such as difficulty in coordination, difficulty in entering, difficulty in entering homes, and difficulty in supervision.

It is difficult to achieve substantial speedups and price reductions of broadband networks in the short term by relying solely on the strength of telecommunications companies. Therefore, the large-scale speedup of broadband requires not only the efforts of enterprises, but also the support of national strategies. In this way, we can promote the popularization of optical fiber broadband at an early date.