Mr. Pat Kidney:

Yes, it is. We generally divide networks, however. If we want to build a network that will cover homes around a particular exchange then we start at the exchange. We build out along a road, probably starting underground and moving on to a row of poles along that road at the edge of the town and then we continue out into the countryside. The network will be split as other roads are encountered, and that is why I suggest we visualise this network as a tree. The backhaul fibre is in the same cable as the cable that is used to drop connections to homes. For illustration purposes, let us say we end up with 36 fibres in a cable. Some 12 of those fibres might be going all the way back and be connected to the exchange while another 12 of those fibres would be continuously reused to bring to connections to splitters. Those splitters would then drop down onto the connections. It would be better if we had a diagram.