La Fibre arrive!!

 

A strange glow in the Office

Yesterday a friend wrote this about "La Fibre"....
"Will our internet speed be noticeably faster? Stay tuned"...
because they are about to be connected....
"Noticeably faster" is an understatement of the 20th Order....
we were connected last Saturday....

Fast?
Not 'alf!!

Firstly..... using the Cloud now makes sense.... files transfer like lightning.... and putting photos on Flickr or Photocrowd is superb... I can upload the full sized picture, not one that is 2048px on the longest side [the FaceMangler required size if you want to avoid their alogrithms ruining your hard work

Secondly..... we have had to buy a new TV.
Our Sony of 25 years isn't Smart and communicates using Scart/Peritel.... that meant finding a TV that was HDMI and could communicate with our combined VHS/CD video player/recorder.... fortunately that is kitted with Red/White/Yellow AV output and we found an 80cm TV that had all sorts of inputs [except Scart] including RWY AV!
The new TV is 73cm wide and borderless, the old 23" Sony is 63cm wide with a 9cm border around the screen.... so a much larger picture.... the old one has always been like trying to watch a laptop from the opposite side of a rugby pitch!
I think we are going to be watching TV a bit more.

Thirdly.... the increase in speed is really quite amazing... we had Cable in the UK which was Fibre to a box at the end of the street then internet RJ45 copper to the house and was fast.... I've missed that since moving to rural France and ADSL.... missed it a lot.... but now, with "La Fibre" actually coming into the house to a box on the wall.... from what I can remember, we must now be at a fourfold or more improvement on Cable.... files travel like greased lightning and things like U-Bend allow video watching without spinning arrows.

Yeeehaw!!

The source of the glow....
our technician had a laser that plugged to the end of the fibre.
This allowed him to check the "connections" he'd just made....
and identify the correct fibre back at the centre!

And the light passes down the fibre, across the road to the pole and
down to the....

... hub on the pole.
The top wires are our mains power, which also crosses the road...
The thin, third black line is La Fibre de la Forge....
the second and fourth are the main power line that continues to Bezuard....
and the main line of all knowledge that continues to Petit-Pressigny.
For some unexplained reason, they went above ground between
us and Bezuard, then underground on our side of the road to le P-P.

What happens if something breaks that optical fibre....
they just replace it. The engineer described it as "assez court"!