Despite the outgoing NBN boss Bill Morrow blaming copper for a lot of the NBN’s ongoing problems, the red metal has never been so popular for building technology and cabling.
In fact a new snapshot says the global structured cabling market size is projected to reach US $14.3B by 2025, growing around 8% each year.
Structured cabling is high speed, data driven wiring that’s largely copper focused though it also comes in fibre. Fibre in the latest scenario however, will only represent roughly a quarter of demand.
The need for advanced technologies has increased the generation of vast amounts of Internet of Things data, which often causes delays and latency. Structured cabling systems help enhance data transfer speed, which further aids in avoiding delays.
While homes are one growing market for structured cabling, so too is the boom in data centres to support new technologies like voice recognition. Ironically the increase in usage of mobile Internet with high-speed connectivity is also expected to drive market growth.
That’s also why another recent study showed that cable is “dominating the global broadband market, with the technologies now servicing 77% of fixed subscriptions”. By technologies they mean full-fibre, fibre-fed copper or cable.
The study by The Broadband Forum Group showed that copper backed technologies like VDSL and Gfast are “together largely responsible for the growth that fibre has seen, with more than 30 operators across all continents deploying or trialling Gfast”.
In other words people want much faster broadband and operators are getting fibre much closer to where we live and work, but they’re often turning to copper add on technologies like Gfast to get them deep in to the home for less cost.
That’s the sort of “mixed tech” model Australia’s NBN is now following too.
Sadly what’s less advanced here is the use of the new copper technologies to get fibre from the node in the street to the home without losing any performance. And that, Mr Morrow, is where you should be directing your energies before you leave.