Home network Fibre optic vs Ethernet

Jeffery, I guess you have not dealt with fiber yourself. I have. 

Do you have a cleave anvil? Polishing machine? Inspection microscope? Curing oven?   Have you looked into the specs for bend radius?   OK, LC connectors are cheaper than ST and mass production of fixed length patch cables cables has come down some. That does not change all the other parameters. 

Now, in MD. I had FIOS to the house. Professionally installed and the MODEM was hard mounted fixed to the wall unlike a Coax running to a stand alone MODEM/Router.  They did have to re-terminate one fiber as the polishing was not correct. A fiber network, overhead or underground, is immune from proximity strikes so a lower long tern support cost. 

Version put it in to replace the old Scripps- Howard twin-coax system. FIOS, and I assume the GOOGLE fiber being run close by, has way wider potential BW  ( short range 25G for multi-mode, 100G for single mode or 10G up to 6 miles.  So one can have full cable TV with hundreds of simultaneous channels, and several HD gamers on one node. A WAN network on fiber takes less power and fewer repeaters than copper which is most likely the driving force for neighborhood install.

Inside the house was RG-6 coax from MODEM to the router, CAT-5 distribution only because I ran out of CAT-3.  I can terminate Ethernet with a $12 crimper. 

A copper NIC for a PC is about $5 if you don't have one. Fiber about $150.  I am not aware of any streamer, AVR, or TV with a fiber NIC, so adapters. $$$$$  Oh, you need a fiber router?  Starting at about $6000.  Cisco makes good ones. OOPS, most cable systems probably don't support it. 

Of course, WI-FI and BT are in-house options. They work pretty well. But I am of the school like Bill Gates.  If it does not move, cable it. If it does, RF it.  Conserve the limited RF BW to where we need it. I had to reconfigure my WI-FI a couple of time to avoid surrounding houses and we are pretty spread out on multi-acre lots. 

Summary: Fiber to the house makes sense from a long term maintenance and future services needing insane BW.  Fiber in the house does not.  That may change in the future, but for now, it is what it is. 

If I was going to rewire my house, I would go with cat6/7 cable for future needs. We don’t know what bandwidth will be needed in 5 or more years. How about streaming 4K/8k for example. 
Fibre has many advantages and some hurdles. Fibre is hard for an end user to terminate, so the end user will buy premade fibre cables which are expensive or the connectors for self termination are expensive. Hardware to use fibre is expensive and I don’t know any dac that features a fibre input.

Benefits to fibre: no noise, less jitter, no/reduced latency, speed. 

@mitch2 : +1 Agreed. Keep it simple. Good listening. Jeff

Massive thanks to everyone involved on this topic. There is a lot to get through. 
 

I will be keeping things as simple and within budget. Even looking beyond any potential sonic improvements, this will be interesting experiment and build…

thanks again. 
 

For short runs Quality Ethernet cables Are around $1k x 2  sonically better then fiber optic I have tried the best fiber optic and plug in modules 

fiber loses its naturalness compared ,I am referring to a quality setup 

and a good LPS power supply to the morer-router, if you have older separate units 

get rid of them I bought a Motorola 8702 superior in every way 1 less power cord ,1 less Ethernet cable . The Linear Tube Audio 12v  up to 8 amp  at our audio get together compared up to $1200 Paul Hines units ,the Linear tube audio at $750 is by far the best best internally as well as sonically with a excellent DC cable to the router that the competition charge $150 extra , I also put in a synergistic purple fuse, and use a decent Pangea awg14 sig mk2 power cord , and a much better switch Jays audio and Alvin at Denafrips teamed up with their SW-8 Ethernet switch which has a Tumora LPS ,low noise regulators and a over controlled clock ,for around $600 an excellent value and another step for very good streaming . Everything counts in the audio chain ,being a dedicated Audiophile doesnot come cheap around $4+k just to get here the next upgrade the T+A 200 dac which is a bargain at $7200 retail price we have compared pretty much everything up to $15k, the T+A is very balanced. Myself have to save for my 🎅 🎄 Xmas present my pockets are not that deep.