FTTH and FTTB fiber optic Internet, what is the difference?

Currently, fiber optic services in our country are getting cheaper and more popular, providing opportunities to access this high-speed Internet cable for more people. Large carriers like Viettel, FPT, SPT or VNPT all have very suitable packages for households but fiber optic cable is no longer too expensive and only for businesses like before. But in the packages that the network offers, there are two concepts, FTTH, FTTB, and FTTC, but not popular, so what is the difference between these types of fiber cables?

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What is FTTH?

Fiber to the Home (FTTH) is a pure fiber connection that goes directly from the ISP (ISP) to the household or business. If you do not know, this fiber optic cable is made of multiple optical fibers, each thread is only about a centimeter of your hair. It is designed to transmit light signals from one end to the other by the principle of reflection, and this is also our Internet signal. At the two ends there will be optical signal transmitters into digital signals. But in this article we do not focus on fiber optic technology but different types.

A piece of fiber optic cable that the network will pull some of your home if you use FTTH

To identify with the naked eye, the easiest way to know if an apartment uses FTTH or not, just look at the house where the router is located. There will be two long fiber cables like the one above, connected to a receiver and then through a converter (Converter, or Optical Converter or Media Converter) before going into the user's router.

Optical converter set to connect to the router

What is FTTB (Fiber to the Building) and FTTC (Fiber to the Cabinet)?

These are also two types of fiber optic services popular in the world, but it is not a pure fiber cable but a blend of optical cable with traditional copper cable. FTTB and FTTC use fiber optic cable to connect from the network to a signal box, and from this box to each apartment, use copper cable. The reason that carriers offer FTTB and FTTC because the cost is cheaper than FTTH, thereby lowering the price of packages.

FTTB and FTTC have a technology called DLM - dynamic line management . This is an automated system to ensure that your connection is stable and error-free and that the speed is fast enough. DLM will continuously monitor the connection and when there is a problem, such as reduced speed or poor signal, the system will try to fix the error or if not, reduce your Internet speed to ensure ensure stability. But that is only when there is an error, but normally, DLM does not "act" at all.

But what is the difference between FTTB and FTTC? It is at the length of the copper cable used. Looking at the image below, you can see that the FTTB uses only a short piece of copper cable, usually from the bin at the foot of the building building to the inner apartments. FTTC uses longer copper cable (but only 300m maximum), while FTTN uses copper cable up to more than 300m (this type is not provided by Vietnamese carriers).

How are the speeds of FTTH, FTTB, FTTC different?

It is because of the length of the copper cable that affects the signal transmission rate, which is also the speed of our Internet signal transmission. Since the longer the cable, the greater the resistance, the more difficult the electrons move, so the signal goes slower. Meanwhile, with fiber optic cable, the signal attenuation is negligible because the light is simply reflected continuously from one end of the cable to the other. In other words, the speed of FTTH> FTTB> FTTC> FTTN.

It should be added that all of the above types of fiber optic cable are much faster than traditional ADSL cables, which use copper cable completely. However, only FTTH is taking advantage of optical fiber when the upload and download speeds will be equal. Meanwhile, due to using a piece of copper cable, FTTB and FTTC will have faster download speeds (like ADSL), and often the difference will be quite large.

For example, with Viettel, the FTTB Eco package has a maximum download speed of 12Mbps and an upload of 640Kbps. Meanwhile, the company's FTTH Eco package has both download and upload speeds of 12Mbps. Some countries have reached speeds of up to 330Mbps for FTTH, while FTTB or FTTC are about 70-90Mbps for a single connection.

Of course, the operator may also provide the same FTTH or FTTB but the maximum speed. For example, FPT's FTTH package for households has 10Mbps, 15Mbps and 20Mbps. The monthly fee will then be different.

The level of presence of three types of fiber optic cables

Another point that you should keep in mind is that the level of presence of the three types of fiber optic cables will vary. Often, separate apartments, private houses will be towed FTTH fiber optic cables first, while in apartments, high-rise buildings, FTTB will appear first due to low cost, simpler installation.

What are the benefits and limitations of each fiber optic cable?

As mentioned above, the biggest advantage is speed.FTTH is the fastest and it offers broadband connection for both home and business . Not only that, FTTH is also designed for the future, ie if you later need to upgrade to a faster package, it will not have to change much about the device, even without changing.

But in return, installing FTTH is much more expensive than FTTB or FTTC on both the network and user side. Get the price of Viettel as a reference, to install FTTH you will have to spend 2 million, while FTTB is only 200,000, which is 10 times cheaper! Of course, the carrier will have different promotion packages, then they can free or reduce the installation price, depending on the situation. Monthly rates are usually the same for both FTTH and FTTB, at least with Viettel network.

In short, which cable should you choose? First, call the operator of the network you want to install the cable, or if you are using ADSL already, contact your network to see if your home area has FTTH, FTTB or both. . Assuming an area with only FTTH or only FTTB, you don't have many options, but if both are available:

1. Choose FTTH when you need the fastest possible speed, both for downloading and uploading. If you often watch HD movies online, or download movies, often upload large files to the network (like yourself), or need to sit in the remote to your company computer, FTTH is something you should choose. If the installation costs you can afford, you should go to FTTH because it is good for the future as well. If you open a company, you should also choose FTTH.
2. Choose FTTB when you only need fast download speeds, and uploading is not very important. It is suitable for watching movies, browsing the web in general, downloading large files from the Internet to your computer, playing games, . but it will not be suitable when you regularly upload. In addition, if funding is limited, you should also choose FTTB due to cheaper initial installation costs.