Me too John, and having 4 lanes just seems to confuse them further.

The main danger is a breakdown or an accident, plus an hugely increased risk of a breakdown causing an accident. Emergency vehicles not able to get to the scene either.

But we aren't really in the right place for this discussion. I was merely trying initially to point out that decisions made about solving capacity problems by using and thereby removing the deliberately engineered in safety margin are rarely wise.

It is incredibly difficult to sit in the middle lane of a 4 lane motorway - there must be drivers that have a mental breakdown when confronted with such an issue...

That was my take too. Though the number of premises that are two far from the OLT to get GPON must be very low. I would suspect well less that 1% are going to be those tricky deep rural properties several miles up a glen somewhere in Scotland. There was some talk earlier that using lower split ratios (as low as 1:4) gets a longer distance from the OLT to begin with anyway.

That said for this small number of premises involved I would be tempted either to go fully PtP because standard 1Gbps BiDi optics can be had at 120km for under £100 a pair and gives you a fully symmetric connection.

The other option would be to go with the emerging CWDM-PON standard which only requires split rations of 1:9 or less and for which 120km SFP's can be had for even less, though you would need CWDM-PON splitters and again this is a fully symmetric system.

Both of these alternative options are also good for symmetric speeds of 10Gbps and 25Gbps today so very future proof.

Nah, they just believe that the centre lane has been widened to a dual carriageway.

In reply to a post by Taras:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Like hard shoulders on the now far more dangerous �smart� motorways.

the idea of smart motorways isn't a bad one, but joe public having to guess what it all means. Smart motorways can create hard shoulders ad-hoc and also on the right hand side too.

Doesn't that rely on people actually reading and complying with the gantry signs? Something that rarely happens in my experience until people actually see the obstruction and try to rapidly change lanes.

Sorry, way off topic now.