Difference between twisted pair cables and fibre optic cables?

1. Unless you go to proprietory fibre, both can go to 1000Mb/s, so neither has a great speed advantate.

2. Wired is much cheaper. It's not the fibre that's expensive, but the terminations and the adapters.

3. Fibre can do much longer distances. Basic multimode 500 m. Monomode many kilometres. In theory wired is limited to 100 m. In practice you can get reliable connection at 100 Mb/s with up to 200 m. For 1000 MB/s, about 150m is the norm.

4. Fibre requires no electrical connection. So there are no problems about the earth potential being different in different buildings. In many practical situations, this isn't a major problem.

5. Lightening strikes on the ground can, in theory, damage switches connected with cables. In practice, over 8 years of plenty of lightening storms connecting separated buildings in a school site of 5 acres we have had no lightening problems.