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Technology Stocks : AT&T -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: chalu2 who wrote (2789)	8/22/1999 6:34:00 AM
From: Guy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4298

RE:Help the ignorant: what is the difference between fiber, cable and DSL? I would be glad to enlighten your ignorance Chalu: With fiber data is transferred by means of photons through thin "glass wires". You can think of a photon as light. Fiber are not susceptible to many of the disturbances traditional copper wire lines are, such as magnetic fields and electricity. Fiber communications travel at the speed of light. The only thing keeping fiber from being quicker is that communication devices on the ends of the fiber can only process the data so fast. In other words, fiber could get even faster with time. The disadvantage of fiber is that it would be very expensive to rewire millions of homes. With Cable data are transferred by elections through copper wires. Electrons are susceptible to all kinds of the disturbances mentioned above. In order to reduce disturbances, cable wires are insulated with a thick shield. This helps make cable pretty fast, and it is already wired to most homes in the US. I'm not as knowledgeable about DSL but I believe that it works by cramming a digital signal into the existing phone lines which home now have. However, this solution is not cheap, as it would require an expensive upgrade of the current phone system. In addition, it is still sending data over copper wires, which are still susceptible to electronic disturbances. Guy