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Um... mind my asking a question: Where is fiber not fast?

It's certainly not the only way for high speeds, but I've yet to see fiber where bandwidth is an issue.

All in all, I'm expecting the US to dump wired internet altogether, and just go with 5G and its successors. The incumbent wired providers have the laws set so they can effectively prevent competitors from running new infrastructure, and have been rent seeking their current networks for decades.

With 5G providing 2-3 Gbps service (and room for 10Gbps in the future), their whole model just ended. They're soiling their collective underwear, and rebranding their antiquated networks as "10G".

Sure for a couple percent of people.

See the National Cable Television Association, top 25 [Cable/Satellite companies] by subscribers.

The one at the top there, Comcast, has 22.2E6 paying cable TV subscribers. Netflix passed that number over a year ago. As of the end of Q2 2012 Netflix subscribers amount to more than 25% of the sum (97.5E6) of all US cable TV and satellite subscribers.

We're waaay past a couple percent. Never mind Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc.

Cable TV is losing customers across the board. Comcast has been losing cable TV subscribers for over 40 consecutive months. Netflix predicts a total of 7 million new subscribers in 2012, and they're on track to hit that. Do the math. Inside about 48 months Netflix will have a subscriber base equal to half of the all cable TV subscriptions. That is assuming no acceleration in Netflix subscriber growth and no acceleration in cable decline, both of which may be bad assumptions.

Only 44% of the residences which can get cable TV actually buy it. In comparison, 68% of US households have broadband access. (3% are still on dialup.) That's impressive reach for an industry that barely existed a decade ago.

Bear in mind that a significant fraction of the US population barely reads. 14% of the US adult population has "below basic literacy skills." They are not likely to find a computer very useful. Another 15% of Internet penetration and everyone who can read will be connected.

Measured by a different study, the most connected major countries are at 80%, +- 2%. The US and Japan are at 78%, Germany is at 80%, Korea is at 81%, and the UK is at 82%.

Yes, US cable TV sales are flat. In fact, they peaked in 2001. That's before video over the Internet was popular, but when digital over-the-air HDTV was ramping up.

We'll know that cable TV is in trouble when the sports networks start expressing concern over declining viewing. So far, that hasn't happened. What has happened is fragmentation. Network and per-channel market share is declining.

Meanwhile, Univision just passed The CW in market share, and is about to move into the #3 position. Univision has little competition in the US Spanish-language sector, so it's become the main network for a big chunk of the population. The original author has no clue. SF has a minor market share. The action is in telenovelas.

From this site: http://www.ncta.com/Statistic/Statistic/Statistics.aspx

US Television Households (September 2007) 112,275,000

Basic Cable Subscribers (December 2007) 64,800,000

That leaves 47475000 using broadcast.

They have 1340000000 dollars in funding.
1340000000 / 40 per unit = 33500000 units.

They are short by at least 13975000 units. Or, 559000000 dollars, assuming no overhead.

It appears all they're doing is not hosting in their local NNTP cache the listed newsgroups

That's what I've gathered also. Cuomo's (D., NY State AG) people have lists of groups and sites they've identified according to some criteria and those groups and sites will be blocked and dehosted.

You have to click through link in this Slashdot story and the link in the first TechDirt story to another TechDirt story before you discover that specific usenet groups are being targetted. Characterizing this as "turn off Usenet access" is a lie and the referrers, including Slashdot, are lying.

The related story linked earlier today by Slashdot makes it clear that the websites being targetted (as opposed to newsgroups) are those actually hosted by the ISPs involved; no "firewall for the children". They are dehosting sites they host, not filtering. Right or wrong this is an enforcement of their existing "acceptable use policies", which Cuomo claims they have neglected.

The ISPs are being browbeat by a politician that is threatening fines. Don't like it? Vote the Fuck out of office. ISPs aren't at fault here.

Slashdot editors: I decline to assume the intended level of apoplexy based on your lies. Sorry to disappoint.

your describing a wealthy suburbia. You're describing you, not the average american.

As an actual representative of the NCTA, I wanted to offer a few corrections/clarifications to the discussion above.

As for the seemingly conflicting numbers of cable homes that are listed on our website, the answer lies in how you count households. One set of numbers comes from a company called SNL Kagan and another set of numbers comes from A.C. Nielsen Media Research. Total households is something between 126-127 million, but includes seasonal homes, vacations properties and so on. Kagan also has a figure for occupied households. Nielsen is only interested in counting homes with TVs and people in those homes who are watching. Therefore, the larger figure is homes passed, while the smaller figure in homes with people in them. It's a difference of counting homes that could buy service or counting homes with TV viewers in them.

As for the accusation by Orange Crush that Comcast (and presumably other cable operators) built their infrastructure "with a lot of government subsidies," this is not so. The cable industry has invested more than $110 billion over the last 10 years in its hybrid fiber-coaxial infrastructure and used their own capital and private capital. Cable is in a different position from the phone companies and broadcasters.

Finally, there appears to be some confusion over what the "70/70" test means. Someone thought it meant 70 % of 70%, or 49%. While Bob of Dole is correct that it could be this low, that doesn't account for current market conditions. The denominator in the fraction is 70% of households passed by service of 36+ channels. The numbers of homes passed today actually happens to be around 98%. After homes passed, the next part is homes that actually buy cable service. Most estimates put cable penetration below 65 percent, and the FCC's last estimate was well below 60 percent. See Adelstein's remarks on this point.

Actually, according to the cable industry, 58% of TV households have basic cable.

http://www.ncta.com/ContentView.aspx?contentId=54

Those statistics also say that there are 122,500,000 homes "passed by cable" out of 112,00,000 homes with television... so apparently cable is available to 109% of households, which I'd say is pretty impressive.

Try convincing 99.9% of the population that over-the-air HDTV is actually /superior/ in quality to what they pay $200/month for over their highly reprocessed overly compressed digital cable. This I think is the entire reason for this annoying marketing and lobbying campaign. "Competition works?" Right, which is why they're trying desperately to ensure most people don't even know they can get HDTV over frakking rabbit ears and they certainly don't want them to know that 80% of the HD content they'll get over paid subscription is available for free, without having the contrast and color saturation bumped to cover the horrible compression artifacts.

This is about right. Cable TV hit about 60% market penetration by household in the US years ago, and has been stuck there since. That's probably about where Internet penetration will end up.

US broadband penetration is up to 80% of US Internet users. Some other countries are higher, but they're mostly countries which are either very crowded or very cold.

Most isn't all. In fact it is under 60%, at least for cable. Remove 16 million and 12 Million for satellite subscribers, and that still leaves you with around 20 million households that are just doing over the air. I would venture that the bulk of these are people who do not have the means to get a new digital TV.

While I have the means to buy a digital TV, I am not about to say that it is fair we cut people who don't have the means off. I would call it a problem, and big or small this should be solved.

RonB

I pulled it out of my...um...

No. Someone else here quoted 30%. I guessed based solely on my personal experience.

A little googling got me:

Here you go:

27% satellite penetration as of 8/2005 - http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/jdpower _satellite.html
59% cable penetration as of 12/2006 - http://www.ncta.com/ContentView.aspx?contentId=54

So that's 86% penetration of satellite and cable, leaving 14% either without TV entirely or relying on OTA.

I'd say my ass was pretty accurate today ;-)

Remember, these are the same companies that are running ads claiming that network neutrality is somehow bad for the consumer.

Perhaps this is the video you speak of?

http://www.ncta.com/ContentView.aspx?ContentID=352 6

transcript: Are you google-eyed with confusion over net neutrality? No wonder, it's all just clever mumbo jumbo. Net neutrality is nothing more than a scheme by the multi-billion dollar silicon valley tech companies, to get you, the consumer to pay more for their services. Forget all their mumbo jumbo, net neutrality simple means, you pay.

Paid for by The National Cable & Telecom Assn.

Biggest crock of s**t I've ever heard. http://www.ncta.com/ContentView.aspx?ContentID=352 6

Perhaps this is the video you speak of?

http://www.ncta.com/ContentView.aspx?ContentID=352 6

transcript: Are you google-eyed with confusion over net neutrality? No wonder, it's all just clever mumbo jumbo. Net neutrality is nothing more than a scheme by the multi-billion dollar silicon valley tech companies, to get you, the consumer to pay more for their services. Forget all their mumbo jumbo, net neutrality simple means, you pay.

Paid for by The National Cable & Telecom Assn.

Biggest crock of s**t I've ever heard. http://www.ncta.com/ContentView.aspx?ContentID=352 6

For those that just want the video...

http://i.ncta.com/ncta_com/video/808.swf

This honestly seems too stupid to actually be real. Anyone know for sure?

This honestly seems too stupid to actually be real. Anyone know for sure?

What does "network neutrality" mean?
That answer is difficult because each stakeholder assigns it a different meaning. Cable's viewpoint is that network neutrality means that consumers should be allowed to access any lawful content, application or services available over the public Internet as well as attach devices that do not cause harm to the network.

What does "network neutrality" mean?
That answer is difficult because each stakeholder assigns it a different meaning. Cable's viewpoint is that network neutrality means that consumers should be allowed to access any lawful content, application or services available over the public Internet as well as attach devices that do not cause harm to the network.

People here might be forced to buy new TVs when the FCC forces broadcasters to transmit in high definition only (Thanks FCC. I had some money saved up, and I was feeling guilty about it.)

• ncta.com "ESPN HD is delivered in the 720p format
• MNF: "All of ABC's HDTV programs use 720 Progressive (720P), ABC's selected HDTV format."
• Home Theater MagazineLike ABC, ESPN's high-def format is 720P

Could very well be horseshit, hence my "if you believe the 90%" comment. But a variety of sources point to a number pretty close to that:

In 2003, this site showed 87%: http://www.parksassociates.com/press/articles/2003 /converge_mg.htm
This site shows cable alone at 66.8% as of Feb 2005: http://www.ncta.com/Docs/PageContent.cfm?pageID=86
This site shows satellite TV over 22% in 2003 http://www.ce.org/publications/books_references/di gital_america/video/satellite_tv.asp

As for cable networks switching to OTA, not very likely. Give the relatively short range of OTA broadcasts, not to mention all the licensing issues, they're much better off selling "wholesale" to cable and satellite providers and let them deal with the end users. Especially if at the moment OTA only gets you 10% of the users. The demographics of people who won't pay for TV is likely to overlap somewhat with people who won't pay for useless crap the advertisers want to see either.

For one thing, a fully regulated entity wouldn't have much incentive to upgrade the lines. Plus, while this might work for some industries, take into consideration all the carriers. No one (taxpayers or otherwise) should have to pay for nationwide WiFi service, for example.

Statistics remembered off the top of your head are almost as bad as made up ones. The current cable penetration of US homes is 67.4%. Source: National Cable and Telecomm Assoc

You might have been thinking of the study in '99 which said that 80% of households with yearly income over $50k had cable.

Googling takes only 15 seconds. Who was it who said "only fools argue the facts"? I couldn't find ~that~ in 15 seconds on Google, but I did find this gem:
"Only fools argue over the internet" - Rory, Bahamas Security

Maybe someday we'll see a switch, but if this idea carries any merit at all it is as a long-term prediction. At present, only about 67% of homes pipe in cable television; the growing use of mini-dish systems may add a percentage to that (I couldn't find any statistics on this) but most dish systems seem to just capitalize on anti-cable-company sentiments. Even if we account for the minority of people who don't watch TV at all, there are easily 30 million Americans who rely on broadcast television--many of which, for reasons mentioned above (poverty, unwillingness to pay, etc.) are not switching any time soon. If that number seems small, consider viewer statistics--the most watched shows in America are all on commonly broadcast stations.

This story is compleletly full of "informative" amateur dipshits telling people what's legal and illegal. God forbid anyone takes you people's advice.


Here's the law, don't listen to these guys and figure it out for yourself.

While the arguments of "people have satellite or cable" are valid, there is a VERY larger percentage of people that do not have either.

Let's do some math here:

from the Article:

525 caught out of 900,000 subscribers = .058% of subscribers are stealing cable.

There are 105,444,330 US households with cable ( source
)

If the actual theft is 10 times the number caught here, the number of households stealing cable in the US is:

105,444,330 X .58% = 611,577 households

$6B divided / 611,577 = $9810 per household per year in lost money.

$9810 / 12 months = $817.50

I know cable is expensive, but that seems little high.

Also note that this isn't based off of number of cable subscribers, but all households with TV's.

So either this "sting" was ridiculously ineffective in catching cable thieves, or
they're not losing anywhere near $6B a year in cable theft.

There are several problems that will prevent set top boxes from being sold in retail any time soon, regardless of that law.

The retailers say they can't make enough money selling only the boxes, and they deserve some money from the cable companies as well. (This is the cell phone model, Best Buy is getting kickbacks when they sell you that handset for 1 cent.)

They're also rightly concerned about the stability and ubiquity of the standards. Look at cable modems, which have become mostly a success story for retail sales. It only made sense for them to start selling DOCSIS cable modems when all the cable companies had deployed standards-compliant systems and the standards had shaken out. That has yet to happen with digital TV, it's probably a few years off.

Finally, they're afraid of having the content rug pulled out from under them with the down-res issue, and be stuck with stuff that the public is too smart to be suckered into buying. Here's an interesting letter from the NCTA to the FCC (PDF format) where the NCTA's weak response to that is "...without some affirmative action by the cable operator...those content restrictions will not be applied." Well, duh! So do you think Disney's contract with Time Warner will let them carry the Disney Channel and not turn on those restrictions?

Game Over, slashbot.

Actually, there is little reason to doubt the NCTA data. Although it's called a "survey," their findings are better thought of as sales reports. The NCTA is an industry association, and will certainly try to put a spin on their findings (e.g., "Consumers' strong response to digital cable services, in spite of difficult times, confirms the excellent value of these new services"), but they'll still report accurate sales figures.

The RIAA (boo) would LOVE it if album sales plummeted at the same time that Napster was taking off. Yet, that wasn't the case (although CD singles did suffer a drop last year, the increased sales of full albums was significantly greater), and the RIAA reported the numbers correctly. Although they put their spin on it, ("Look at the drop in Singles sales"), they reported valid sales figures.

It looks like the first article was a guy trying to create a news story when there really wasn't one. Sure, people will switch from high bandwidth to low bandwidth, but if the general trend overshadows it, we end up with a very different story.

The newer story, which is just a rehash of an NCTA press release says nothing about the people who are installing (or uninstalling) cable modems. It talks about sales trends. This doesn't negate the other story, it just indicates that it isn't all that big a trend.

It's the equivalent of C|Net reporting that I just bought an AMD processor, so Intel had better watch out. Who cares about me? If there are 50,000 people like me, then you notice.

So, yes there are people switching. But no, it doesn't seem to be affecting the industry. Two separate stories, no conflict.

this [survey] is backed up by an actual survey by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.

-Slashback

Goes to show, in a large group of people you can probably find at least some who fit nearly any premise. As always, question the source ;)

-Timothy

Well, OK, let's question the source. the National Cable & Telecommmunications Assosciation is "is the principal trade association of the cable television industry in the United States". So basically, they're the RIAA of the cable industry. And they just published a survey that says that consumers are subscribing to broadband in mass quantitites.

Ok, I question the source. This is like Shell Oil publishing a study that concludes that burning gasoline provides valuable fertilizer for wetlands. Why give PR machines free press?