EO> I thought Optus's pay tv and new telephone service used fibre optics-?

RS> Not with fibre optic into the home itself. They have coax into the
RS> home. Essentially because the cost of the fibre optic to normal
RS> conversion is too expensive to have one in each home at the moment.

TL> Could you please explain this again?  At the moment the
TL> majority of phone lines are copper or coaxial, is that correct?

Yes, into the home itself. Fibre optic is extensively used between the
phone exchanges for example, and even out to converters out in the field
which are usually called fibre to the pillar, but not into the home.

TL> (btw, is copper and coaxial the same?

Thats the usual rather slack use of technical terms which pervades
so much of electronics. Strictly speaking coax is normally copper,
but when people talk about copper phone lines they actually mean
copper pairs, the original traditional phone line wiring.

--- PQWK202