[ILUG] [OT] Genesis Europe, dirt cheap Internet access..

[Nick Hilliard]

> Number of places, including Eircom themeselves. Basically, in the
> 70s/80s, when they were replacing the phone network, they had the option
> to buy copper, or thinner, cheaper nickle coated copper cables. Then, the
> only disadvantage with nickle coated copper was that signal degradation
> above 8000khz was quite high, once you started getting over 100m from the
> telephone exchange - but people didn't mind.

Ah, that particular problem.  This is something which is going to affect not
only Eircom but many, if not most of the "established" telco's around the
world.  The problem was that the price of copper skyrocketed sometime near
the end of the 60's, and as these lines were only going to be used for
phones after all, there was little point in spending a large amount more for
little noticeable improvement.  Remember that 300 baud was fast for users in
1980: who could have foretold that people were going to want 2 megs into
their own homes less than 20 years later.

It's not as simple as "ADSL can't be used in Ireland".  It can, and will be
used, but there will be problems with people who live in the sticks, and we
may not get the standard 18000 feet for 24awg wire business that people crow
on about.

I confess to being pleased that my house is sufficiently old to have really
thick copper right the way to the exchange.  Yummy.

> and do something like the 'We don't support anything faster than 9600 baud
> anyway' thing they do at the moment.

You mean 2400 baud, right?

Nick