Fiber for your Home Technology

Now don't go stuffing bran muffins into your disk drives, that's not what I'm talking about here! Fiber Optics is where it's at apparently.

When I think about fiber optics I conjure up an image something like this:

Are you thinking something along the same lines? Way back in the 80s fiber optic flowers set in a rotating case were all the rage, well at least they were with my parents and all their friends, and really that's about my experience with it.

After coming across a Re-Tweet on Twitter mentioning FiberForAll (and yeah my first thought was the bran type, that's what made me click!), I was met with this not so new idea that really is the future of our home technology. Yet the idea of it is so George Jetson.

Light speed fast (okay maybe not quite that fast, but faster than my cable!), fiber optics is the choice of the future for the home.

No more choppy video reminiscent of first year video students or garbled discussions. (If you've ever watched a streaming webcast, you understand the frustration of it!) Imagine being able to make video calls with crystal images as if the person on the other side of Earth is truly sitting at the desk across from you.

This can be done because of the major amount of data that these glass cables can provide. As a homeschool parent, the possibility of such clear transmissions via an internet connection would be almost priceless. Correspondence courses with a professor or lecturer, being broadcasted live to computers to teach subjects to students around the globe is a reality waiting to happen.

I often call my sister long-distance, our phone calls are wracked with static and the line cuts out at least once per call. I'm not calling the mountains in Tibet here, just Canada! I'd like to introduce fiber optics to both my cable company and my sisters phone company. It would be great to have a conversation that doesn't sound like my 2 year old nephew is on the phone the whole time (although, I'll have to look into that, perhaps my sister is pawning the handset off to him whenever I call....).

For us as a family, most of our time is spent together, either playing massive mulitplayer games online or watching movies. I imagine this won't change much in the future. However, hopefully our experiences while we engage in these activities will.

If you happen to play online multi-player games you know full well it is almost an impossibility to do it on a dial-up connection, but even with a dsl or cable connection one can lag often, especially at peak playing times on a full server. These are the times that as a family we covet a fiber optic connection. The thought of being able to buy goods and repair, visit the major places in the game, and raid with 40 other people, without lagging, getting a choppy screen or crashing is blissful.

Likewise I conjure the thought of being able in the future to watch the newest Hollywood Blockbusters on demand, in the comfort of my living room, in the coldest days of January with the clarity of (or possibly better than!) HD never having to leave my home (which is a huge deal in South Dakota in January). Movie theaters might become obsolete, but truthfully the only thing I'd miss about that is the popcorn, but for the comfort level, microwave popcorn would be a compromise I'd gladly make.

Yet for now while few can enjoy such intense technological wonders, most of us throughout the country don't have access to the wonders of fiber optics for our homes. If you are interested in learning more about fiber optics, who in your area might provide it, perhaps to even find out how you can be a part of bringing it to your city and the chance to win a FiOS Triple Play Prize Bundle, head over to Fiber For All (because everyone should have the freedom and speed of fiber optics).

Photo credit to http://www.flickr.com/photos/jon_a_ross/