Nynex Corp, New York is testing a new method of wiring residential properties with fibre optic cable that is claimed to reduce the cost to that of copper cable. The New York and New England phone company is keen to get fibre optic cable into its subscribers’ homes, believing that there are many new services it could deliver; the trick with the new system is to lay a fibre cable along the kerb of the road and install an optical-to electric converter at intervals of 30 yards or so, and linking that to the copper cables already installed. The system is called Fiber-to-the-Curb (that’s how they spell it over there), and its developer, the Raynet Corp unit of Raychem Corp, claims that the cost will fall to that of installing pure copper cable: Nynex puts that at about $1,000 per home, against from $2,000 to $4,000 for each home with fibre.
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