The high-speed competition

• Introduction

• ISDN

• Cable Modems

• Satellite Dishes

• The xDSLs

Some non-competitors

• Fiber Optic

• WebTV

Fiber-optic

Fiber-optic is simply a type of cable, an alternative to copper cable. Fiber-optic can potentially carry more data, and with fewer errors, but it is not an access technology in and of itself.

To make that point clearer, the cabling is not the issue. The phone lines in your house are almost certainly twisted, two-pair copper cable. Over that cable, you can use protocols as diverse as POTS (plain old telephone service), ISDN, and ADSL, assuming that you have the right hardware. Even if you had fiber-optic lines running to your house, you would still need some type of protocol and hardware.