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back to article Behold, your next billion dollar market: The humble Ethernet cable

Global spending on Ethernet cables will soon cross the $1bn threshold, say analysts. A forecast report from Allied Market Research projects that by 2022, businesses will be shelling out more than a billion dollars annually on copper and fiber cables to transmit data and power. The figures include the spend on fiber and copper …

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  1. TReko
    Happy

    Non-sense!

    The boom has to do with Audiophiles buying these $7000 :"directional" ethernet cables:

    https://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Discontinued-Manufacturer/dp/B000I1X6PM

    The reviews are worth a look for the giggles, too

    13 0 Reply
    1. paulf
      Reply Icon
      Coat

      Re: Non-sense!

      I don't know what's worse - charging $7000 for some snake oil a directional Ethernet cable, or whacking on an extra five bucks for delivery. I suppose extra for delivery makes sense since it's also directional...

      0 0 Reply
    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Non-sense!

      "The reviews are worth a look for the giggles, too"

      The "Customers also viewed..." is pretty scary too! Uranium Ore, JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank to name but two :-)

      0 0 Reply
  2. Ole Juul

    cables rulz

    A dedicated and protected connection between point A and point B is worth its weight in copper.

    12 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: cables rulz

      With the way the copper price is going, a fence around it will soon no longer be a luxury either.

      0 0 Reply
  3. Duncan Macdonald

    Only 1 billion ?

    With all the cabling in computer centers and connections to desktops/printers/etc I am surprised that the annual cost of the cables is that low. (As always however the cost of the cables is tiny compared to the cost of installing them - routing cables is labor intensive.)

    2 0 Reply
  4. Lord Elpuss Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Pidgeon, Sean? Really?

    2 1 Reply
    1. Warm Braw
      Reply Icon

      They're waiting for the day shift to Walter it...

      0 0 Reply
    2. JetSetJim
      Reply Icon
      Joke

      Re: Pigeons

      Memory density on flash drives is sufficiently good to actually be able to get good overall throughput on a homing pigeon. The birds can average over 90 mph, and rack up 700 miles in a day source. A 45g terabyte memory stick shouldn't be a problem. The RFCs [1] [2] might need a bit of updating, though.

      Latency is a bit of a bugger, and "packet" loss can be catastrophic.

      8 0 Reply
      1. Charles 9
        Reply Icon

        Re: Pigeons

        Not to mention there are plenty of unsafe routes. I wouldn't trust a pigeon through an area known to house falcons or hawks.

        0 0 Reply
      2. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        Thumb Up

        Re: Pigeons

        @JetSetJim

        QED - a story from 2009 - let's hope things have improved since then

        "SA pigeon outpaces broadband"

        http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/10/pigeon_v_broadband/

        http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8248056.stm

        A Durban IT company pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country's biggest web firm, Telkom.

        Winston the pigeon took two hours to carry the data 60 miles - in the same time the ADSL had sent 4% of the data.

        Telkom said it was not responsible for the firm's slow internet speeds.

        The idea for the race came when a member of staff at Unlimited IT complained about the speed of data transmission on ADSL.

        He said it would be faster by carrier pigeon.

        2 0 Reply
        1. Charles 9
          Reply Icon

          Re: Pigeons

          They're lucky one of the competition didn't own a trained falcon, though, and didn't have to pass a shooting range.

          0 0 Reply
        2. PNGuinn
          Reply Icon
          Facepalm

          Re: Pigeons @ Fruit and Nutcase

          ISIR that when I were a lad in't 60s / 70s someone had the bright idea of sending a dispatch rider from London to paris via the ferry in competition to attempting to put a phone call through to the french capital from London.

          The dispatch rider won.

          1 0 Reply
      3. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Pigeons

        I think that 90 MPH is peak transmission speed, not average throughput.

        2 0 Reply
        1. JetSetJim
          Reply Icon

          Re: Pigeons @Lost All Faith

          > I think that 90 MPH is peak transmission speed, not average throughput.

          The source I linked to in my post states:

          Racing Homing Pigeons have been clocked flying 92.5 mph average speed on a 400 mile race.

          0 0 Reply
    3. phuzz Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Joke

      Not to be confused with 'carrier pidgin', which is when you're trying to buy more bandwidth, but you have to talk to a sales person who only uses a few English words surrounded by dense sales-speak.

      11 0 Reply
  5. 0laf

    Copper

    I like copper, copper works. Copper doesn't decide to stop working because the wind changes from east to west.

    Be like copper.

    2 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Copper

      If that were true, telephone cables (ALSO usually copper) would still be the same quality they were in the past, but a funny thing called corrosion tends to factor in. So in the long run, copper CAN get more fickle. Not to mention copper is relatively valuable so is prone to getting stripped out of the ground.

      0 1 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Copper

      I've swapped out plenty of copper in my time.

      Wireless doesn't get shut in doors or ran over by office chairs.

      0 0 Reply
  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Much of the growth is slated to take place in China,"

    Great...because copper wire prices haven't already shot through the roof because of China's growth (and demand for copper) over the past 15 years...

    0 0 Reply
  7. Uberseehandel

    There is fibre in everybody's future

    Europe was also tabbed as a strong market, particularly in the industrial sector where growing connectivity of appliances means larger networks and the need for cables

    The industrial sector needs fibre, rather than copper. I ordered fibre 35 years ago, those sites are still running fibre, in really hostile conditions. The price of fibre to copper converters with PoE injection is dropping all the time.

    Even a small switch needs 10/40 GB uplinks, and "campus" deployments should not link buildings using copper, if only to keep the insurance company happy.

    I expect lots of disasters in China (not gangnam ( OK Seoul), but, Lightning Style).

    0 0 Reply
  8. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

    Are we really surprised...

    ....that there is localised growth in many parts of this planet as more counties industrialise/modernise and up the tech requirements?

    0 0 Reply

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