the Price of Fiber Optic Telephone Service

As with other Fiber Optic services, such as internet and television, the explanation behind Fiber Optic telephone service is more capacity, greater clarity, easier installation and, ultimately, faster. Fiber optic cables are glass or plastic fibers capable of transmitting light. Telephone, television and internet have previously relied mostly on copper wiring, which carries the signal through conductivity. Human beings are slow creatures, so the difference in speed between two mediums can be difficult to notice over a short-to-medium distance. If you have ever made a call to Europe, you may have noticed an echo effect. This is due to the usage of communication satellites as part of the overall relay. However, if the phone service provider makes use of transatlantic fiber optic cables, there will be no echo and no delay.

Signal clarity, which audibly degrades over longer distances due to signal loss in copper, will be preserved by the presence of fiber optic. However, in America, such delays and echoes happen far less often and are mostly due to cellular service, which uses neither copper or fiber optic. Providers of fiber optic telephone service note that their signal strength is superior across the board, with crisp, clear telephone calls made over their emerging fiber optic networks.

That being said, seldom do any of the providers replace the copper wiring inside your house. Instead, they usually lead fiber optic cable up to your house and relying on your pre-existing copper wiring. To the uninitiated, this may sound like cutting corners, but over a few dozen feet of wiring, the difference between the speed of electricity over copper and the speed of light is impossible for a person to notice. As part of the installation of fiber optic telephone service, one is generally outfitted with a battery back-up, in case of power outage. Considered a sizable drawback, one requires power to use Fiber Optic, as the light that comprises the signal does not carry its own power. However, fiber optic networks cannot cause a fire as copper wiring can, and fiber optic allows for much smaller cables, increasing the ability for their installation, throughout. The customer does not, we are assured, see the resultant cost of the greater amount of power that fiber optic requires.

Parceled with several other services as part of a fiber optic "Full Package Deal", the telephone service was the least noticeable feature of the package our local fiber optic guys provided. While I applaud the science behind fiber optic networks, there is obviously some dings that need to be hammered out. Landline to landline, while I wouldn't say that their clarity is any worse, I certainly can't see any improvement. Additionally, in the first months of activated service, there was a periodic tapping sound during phone calls that several of my friends with fiber optics also noticed. Landline to cellular phone seems worse on the fiber optic network. I have no idea how that would work, but it is definitely not my imagination. Many people noticed a degradation of quality when they called me from their cellphones.

Landline to landline, the quality is certainly just as clear no matter where the other end of the call seems to be within the United States. Even Hawaii and Alaska were far clearer than past attempts to call them. Calling London was deceptively clear: I easily could've forgotten I was calling another country entirely. However, I didn't do that very often, as the provider's overseas rates were hardly ideal.

Overall, while I would readily recommend fiber optic internet and even television, my fiber optic telephone service does not manage to stand on its own. Were it not for its bundled price, I likely wouldn't have selected it at all. I am confident, however, that with advances in telecommunications, soon fiber optic will be an obvious choice over copper wiring. I think that the rest of the telephone's technologies have to catch up, presently not taking advantage of the speed of light vs electricity.

It's not a bad thing to have. No interference or tapping, per say, for some time now. I wouldn't recommend this service on its own, but in a bundle, it would be silly not to take advantage of a superior product, however small its actual superiority may be. Remember that, in most cases, the installation of fiber optic service will require a good deal of digging and laying wires if your neighborhood doesn't have the service box already.