Fiber vs Copper Cable – The Ultimate Showdown

The copper cable and fiber optics have different benefits and characteristics. Copper cable known as the coaxial cable is already present in many places as it has been in the market for a long time now. Moreover, copper cable is cheap. Though, the cost of fiber optics has also started decreasing; hence, its deployment has been increased in recent years.

In this article, we have provided a comparison between two types of cables i.e., copper cable and fiber optics.

1. COST

A few years back, the price of fiber optics was double than that of copper cable, but now there is a narrow difference between the prices of two cables as the price of fiber optics has decreased a lot over the years.

Most of the people say that fiber optics is very expensive than the copper cable as in copper cable the electrical power transmission is cheaper than laser power transmission used fiber optics. But they overlook the fact that the cost of wiring closet is not less in the case of copper cables. Such as a standard wiring closet includes the costs of conditioned UPS (Uninterruptible Power Source) power, data ground, HAVC (Hybrid Automatic Voltage Control) and floor space.

Hence, the copper-based networking is not as much economical as an all-fiber LAN (Local Area Network). Moreover, it is also space-efficient.

2. BANDWIDTH

The bandwidth of copper is very limited whereas the fiber optics has the capability of sending the data up to 10 Gbps and beyond.

Hence, the fiber optics can provide 1000 times more bandwidth than the copper cable. Moreover, the signal loss in fiber optics is very less over larger distances as compared to the copper cable.

3. TRANSMISSION SPEED AND DISTANCE

As fiber optics is based on photons and copper cable consists of electrons; hence, we can compare the speed of electrons and photons in this case. Photons use to travel at the speed of light, whereas the speed of electrons is one percent less than the speed of light. Hence, there is a speed difference between copper cable and fiber optics. Furthermore, the copper cable has a 100 meters distance limitation without a booster or coax amplifier but fiber optics distance can range from 550 meters for 10 Gbps multi-mode and up to 40 kilometers for single-mode cable.

4. RELIABILITY

Copper cable is more susceptible to environmental conditions such as temperature and electrical fluctuations as compared to fiber optics. Such as the signal gets distorted over two kilometers by using copper cables. But in case of fiber optic cable, you can get a reliable communication over the same distance.

5. SECURITY

The fiber optics cable cannot be tapped easily as it does not transmit electricity which can radiate signals. As the copper cables use electrical signals, so it can be tapped easily. Therefore, fiber optics is much more secure than the copper cable.

So, it is clear from the article that optical fiber is the best cable choice as it can provide ever-reducing cost, increased bandwidth, extremely high speed and long transmission distance, excellent reliability, and good security. For more information related to cabling, keep visiting our website.