Fiber Internet is Not a Panacea

 Today, I don't know of any fiber internet service without significant EMF issues. Period. The main problem is the amount of EMI, that stands for electromagnetic interference, radiated by the technology. EMI may also be conducted into your home and yard, perhaps even if you didn't sign up for the service. There are also other issues, just as bad as the first caused by some implementations of fiber and not others. 

From an EMF perspective, today, there are bad implementations of fiber and worse implementations. In the future if there is a will to do a proper job of implementing fiber internet respecting biological level EMI it really could be the magic unicorn, but not yet. It’s fundamentally flawed and not appropriate for use near living things affected by nnEMF. That’s my opinion Winter 2024.

Massively effective, dirt cheap way to quickly identify dirty electricity sources in your home today.

History of EMF Harm with Arthur Firstenberg:  https://www.buzzsprout.com/2075097/14460171

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Fiberoptic internet access is good, right. Any kind of fiber access, all kinds of fiber access represent the magical unicorn which makes internet access safe, not only for mankind but for all living things. Right, no need to worry anymore about harmful man-made electromagnetic radiation exposure, at least not from choosing the wrong fiber internet solution for your community, for your home, right? No, no, emphatically no, not right. In my opinion, there is only one type of optical fiber infrastructure that is best coming up.

Speaker 2: 1:07

EMF Remedy is dedicated to helping you understand which electromagnetic threats are present in your home and whether, in the context of your current home, when you're considering for purchase or building a new home with comprehensive protection designed in, emf Remedy can help you reduce your family's exposure to harmful man-made electromagnetic radiation.

Speaker 1: 1:52

Maybe be better just to take a precautionary approach to reducing you and your family's exposure to harmful man-made electromagnetic radiation. Or maybe you're someone like me who, unfortunately, as a life priority, must understand the EMF levels that I'm being subjected to and remediate them within my home so that I've achieved the lowest possible non-native EMF exposure, and you may have to do that ongoing, maybe forever. Either case, you are in the right place. We're about two things here the accurate measurement of all types of non-native EMF in the home and secondly, measurable reduction of each of those phenomenon. We're talking about electric fields, magnetic fields, radio frequency radiation and something called dirty electricity. Achieving measurable reductions within your home in all four of those.

Speaker 1: 3:20

That is our bottom line, that is our function, and today we're going to be talking about cable, not cable. We're going to be talking about fiber internet, Fiber optic internet, fiber internet or simply fiber. All these refer to internet access over optical fibers. But there are details, always details that need to be considered, and it is terribly important to get this right If you want the most natural EMF environment in your home. In fact, I've seen people driven from their homes for a variety of EMF related reasons reading our topic today Fiber, optic based home internet.

Speaker 2: 4:09

Service.

Speaker 1: 4:11

There's that word again, service, and if you've been with me for any amount of time, you know, that that equates exposure to non-native EMF in the modern vernacular.

Speaker 1: 4:24

In the 21st century, service often means you're being exposed to a completely unnatural EMF environment. Yep, everything was great one day and the next an uninhabitable home from an EMF perspective for that client. Not that anyone comes along and says your house is now uninhabitable, no, that's not the way it works. Like a cell phone tower, that's a more obvious electromagnetic threat. Right, it's baked into our consciousness at least on some level, even reflected by a drop in real estate value. A lot less so with the way you access the Internet. And of course, everything depends on you. Are you just trying to take a precautionary approach to personal or family exposure to non-native EMF, or is it a life priority? Can you feel it? What constitutes an uninhabitable home is up to you to decide always. Today I'd like to give you my opinion and rationale for what makes the best implementation for fiber and why Fiber seems like a no-brainer. Of course you want fiber. It's fast, the data transmitted using beams of light, so no problem. But like everything else EMF related, it is complicated. I'm hoping today to uncomplicate it for you. What's the best end-to-end service for home Internet? Three homes in three different communities served by three different types of fiber-based home Internet may present three very different EMF environments. I'll give you the bottom line first. Unless you have the misfortune to live near infrastructure elements supporting fiber, the only real concern for the consumer is the last mile. What happens in that last mile, when, where and how the fiber becomes copper? I'm going to repeat that again Unless you have the misfortune to live near infrastructure elements supporting fiber, the only real concern for the consumer is the last mile. What happens in that last mile, when, where and how the fiber becomes copper? So there is industry nomenclature here, like everywhere else. So there's something called FTTP, which stands for fiber to the premises, is better than FTTN, which is fiber to the node, or FTTC, fiber to the curb, since the optical to electrical and electrical to optical conversion is under your local control. This means that poor choices made by others are less of a factor to your home environment. All right, so that's the bottom line. Let's get into the details.

Speaker 1: 7:53

First we need a brief discussion on EMI electromagnetic interference from an electrical engineering perspective. All right, emi electromagnetic interference from an engineering perspective is disruption caused by electromagnetic radiation on electronic or electrical devices, signals or systems. There are various sources, including power lines, electrical equipment, radio frequency interference, lightning and environmental factors. Emi can manifest as noise, signal distortion or complete loss of signal integrity, affecting the performance and reliability of electrical or electronic systems. Mitigation strategies for EMI include shielding, filtering and grounding in proper equipment design I would emphasize the last to minimize susceptibility to interference. So this is how engineers think about EMI.

Speaker 1: 9:05

I care less about that. My primary focus is on EMI for living things. If you have not already listened, you owe yourself one or two or three listens, whatever it takes to familiarize yourself with the history of EMAF harm with Arthur Furstenberg, a recent interview that I conducted with Arthur. It is all about the effects of electromagnetic interference on living things over a long span in history. So that's my focus EMI's effect on living things. And I'll just mention that devices can be hardened In order to reject EMI. People can't be hardened. Device tolerance of EMI is much higher than biological tolerance. These are my views. It takes additional engineering investment to reach biologically tolerable EMI levels, if indeed there is a low enough level of EMI possible. Paraphrasing Dr Neal Cherry, the only known safe level of exposure is zero.

Speaker 1: 10:35

All right, so next we need a basic understanding of how fiber optic based home internet works. It's really important to understand how this technology actually works. So we start with the transmission of data. You know, there's this internet backbone that's discussed. From there, data is converted into optical signals. It may already be an optical signal, by the way. Anyway, optical signals using an optical transmitter. These signals are then transmitted through fiber optic cables that are either made of glass or plastic fibers. Well then, along the way, there's signal amplification and routing. Optical amplifiers or repeaters may be used to boost the signal periodically along the fiber optic cable to maintain its strength and integrity by the way, I wouldn't want to live near one of those facilities due to potential EMI issues. And then fiber optic nodes may be utilized to manage and route the signal as it travels through the network. I wouldn't want to live near one of those either. That's what I mean by infrastructure elements.

Speaker 1: 11:53

Well then there's the reception of the data. Upon reaching its destination, the optical signal is converted back into electrical signals using an optical receiver. Oh, this sounds like where the problems might begin. The device detects the incoming light pulses and decodes them into digital data, generating some amount of EMI in the process. It also works in reverse, by the way, of course, you've got data coming from the internet, but it goes back the other way, right, that's your inputs, you're typing, your mouse, movements, whatever Also works in reverse to turn the electrical impulses into light again, generating, by the way, some amount of EMI. So there are.

Speaker 1: 12:47

There is network equipment, various things like switches, routers, multiplexers, maybe used to manage and route data to its intended destination. These devices ensure efficient transmission and distribution of the data across the fiber network. Then we get to termination points. Fiber internet connections typically terminate at what are called network interface devices, nids Every industry has to have abbreviations, right NIDs or optical network terminals, onts. Later we're going to call these optical modems, and those are at customer premises. Sometimes these devices convert the optical signals back into electrical signals suitable for use by consumer devices like computers and routers.

Speaker 1: 13:48

So the EMI considerations are they can potentially arise from various sources within the fiber internet system. While the fiber optic technology itself is less susceptible to EMI compared to traditional copper based systems, components such as electrical equipment, power lines and environmental factors can introduce EMI. Measures to minimize EMI include proper shielding of cables and equipment maintaining adequate distance between fiber optic cables. However, the metallic cable sometimes used as shielding itself may become really problematic because it may carry, actually, apart from the optical impulses, it may carry the EMI a large, different, a large distance, potentially a huge issue. Grounding and bonding techniques are also important to ensure the stability reliability of fiber optic system in the presence of electromagnetic interference. What this really means to you and I is the potential to pollute home grounding systems, causing nuisance, current and dirty electricity, as I've mentioned many times before. Another name for dirty electricity, if you prefer something more with an engineering belt, would bent, would be conducted electromagnetic interference.

Speaker 1: 15:23

So most of this discussion so far has been about access from the internet backbone network, which consists of high capacity fiber optic cables, routers other than networking equipment that form the core infrastructure, the internet. It serves as the primary pathway for data to travel between networks, including internet service providers and content delivery networks. We have acronyms, by the way ISPs and CDN, content delivery networks and other interconnected systems. Proximity is key to minimizing all forms of non-native EMF exposure, right Inverse, square law and all that. The really critical part, then, is nearest to your home how and where the fiber converts to the copper wiring.

Speaker 1: 16:19

This conversion of light pulses to electrical impulses and back again is, in my opinion, everything. It's potentially a very dirty conversion, one which takes only the sensitivities of non-living devices into consideration. This is the big issue, and we've seen it from the time of the telegraph, through the telephone, to wireless radio, to radar, to satellites, to all smart tech cell phones, smart meters, everything else. The bottom line is that we have only ever taken into account the sensitivities of non-living electrical devices and not the sensitivities of living electrical devices. Electricity and life are inseparable. Electromagnetic interference affects living things, and at levels far less than we'd like to imagine.

Speaker 1: 17:32

Okay, so we're in the home stretch. We need to look at the last mile. This is where all the action is. Again, assuming you're not burdened with living near the infrastructure elements, it's the last mile that will be concerned, of most concern to you. There are really only two choices. All right, and you have a fiber optic cable supplied to your home and within your home you convert the light impulses to and from electrical impulses and back again. Or the other choice is you have a copper cable entering your house, in which case you do have fiber-based internet, but not the last little bit In that conversion.

Speaker 1: 18:34

Someone else is converting the light impulses to and from electrical impulses. The first can be good. The second is potentially bad, depending on how clean the translation process is from a biological EMI perspective. If someone else is doing the translation, it's not under your control and the someone else likely has no concern or even knowledge of biological EMI levels. Since it well, it takes more skill. It takes more engineering, finesse, more investment to do a really good job of reducing EMI to biologically acceptable levels, if it's even possible.

Speaker 1: 19:32

When we first started this discussion I said unless you have the misfortune to live near infrastructure elements supporting fiber, the only real concern for the consumer is the last mile. What happens in that last mile, when, where and how the fiber becomes copper? Let's deal with the losers first. There's something called FTTN fiber to the node and FTTC fiber to the curb. The first has a central node or cabinet located within a neighborhood or a community where all the dirty work happens. I wouldn't like to live electrically near that cabinet and, by the way, electrically near may be not the kind of near that we perceive with our eyes. It can be really bad news for the entire neighborhood or the community if biological level EMI is not respected.

Speaker 1: 20:37

The latter that's the FTTC does the dirty work at the curb or a distribution point closer to homes. Obviously, this one too can be really bad news for the entire neighborhood or community if, again, biological level EMI is not respected. Either of these may create uninhabitable communities. Depending on your needs, FTTP fiber to the premises is the best candidate, since the optical to electrical and electrical to optical conversion is under your local control. This means that poor choices made by others are less of a factor in your home environment. If you have FTTP service fiber to the premises, service fiber optic cable actually to your home, that is the one you want.

Speaker 1: 21:47

But there are three important things left to consider. First, you may have to deal with the lack of a home environment. You may have to deal with any metallic shielding issues if present on your fiber cable, as the shielding may present significant dirty electricity and nuisance current issues. Second, you need to choose a fiber optic modem, or ONT as we called it before, or tolerable to you. If the one provided by the service provider is not tolerable to you, I will put a link in the description for an exceptional fiber modem some others have found acceptable. Note that not all providers allow you to choose a fiber modem acceptable to you. If they insist, you use their fiber modem and it spews copious EMI into your home. Now you have a new problem Containing that EMI which is now, by definition, close to you, so the threat is maximized. This is the inverse square law in action. Now you have a danger close source of EMI. So you may need professional help to try and contain the mess, if in fact it can be contained. And if it can't be contained and you've tried all the techniques, your local resource can help you with. You may be better off with a different internet solution Now.

Speaker 1: 23:45

Third, obviously right, wireless is unacceptable in the home. Radio frequency radiation is, you know, the 800 pound gorilla. That's the one everyone knows about. You've got to control the RF sources in your home. Wireless is unacceptable, so you need to ensure that Wi-Fi can be disabled and then you need to continuously verify, as part of your regular what I call RF hygiene practices, that the Wi-Fi is really off. Why? Because providers sometimes have the bad habit of switching it back on without your knowledge or consent. Strange world we live in.

Speaker 1: 24:40

Okay, so you probably came into this thinking fiber was fiber and yeah, that's the best, and hey, it's just light, it's harmless. And hopefully now you have an understanding of the intricacies of this and that what you're really looking for is a provider that will allow you to have your own optical modem, and you want to have optical fiber right to your home. That is the desired solution. Then it's just a matter of getting a optical modem that's comfortable for you and making sure that the wireless is disabled. So, like everything else with regard to minimizing personal exposure to harmful man made electromagnetic radiation, there's a great deal consider and to get right. If you need help, I'm available for consultation. If you are within the majestic inland Northwest, I can help you on site, otherwise over the phone. I hope this episode has been a blessing to you.

Speaker 1: 25:57

I've been dealing with electromagnetic poisoning for almost almost four decades 39 years now so I feel compelled to share what I have learned and I spend hundreds of hours per year in producing free content. I could use some help Please. If you have a heart to help us in continuing to produce and distribute this type of content, consider becoming a financial supporter of the show. The link is in the description, or emfremedycom slash donate. Writing a review, especially on Apple podcast, is a help, but most important, please pray that our efforts here would be a blessing to many. Keith Cutter emfremedycom. See you next time.

Speaker 2: 27:06

The EMF Remedy podcast is a project of EMF Remedy LLC. We'd like to be your trusted guide for achieving a better EMF environment in your home. The contents on this podcast are provided for informational purposes only and are not intended to substitute for the advice provided by your doctor or other healthcare professional. It is not intended to be, nor does it constitute, healthcare or medical advice. Opinions of guests on this podcast do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the EMF Remedy podcast.