Posted by
Hemos
on from the cool-new-approach dept.
dlkf writes "CNNreports that Hartwell, Georgia is the test site for a new technology developed at the Georgia Tech Research Institute used to transmit TV signals over the phone line. With the addition of a set top box, users get 60 channels along with their DSL and phone line."
Re:Cable and DSL and Phone services oh my!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2
RCN too. I live in the Boston area, and get my telephone, cable TV, and broadband ISP through RCN. In the town I live in, I can chose between Verizon (nee Bell Atlantic, nee Nynex) for telephone and DSL, and MediaOne and RCN for telephone/cable TV/cable modem. That's three providers of local telephone service: my "local telephone area" is the entire state of Massachusetts except for the area code in the far west end of the state. The long distance rate is so cheap it's not even worth bothering to look at those internet telephone solutions, given that I don't use long distance much anyway.
This is the kind of choice and competition that deregulation was supposed to bring; too bad that it is taking so long for the new infrastructure to be rolled out in most parts of the country. But this new tech should help speed things up: perhaps the existing DSL providers could expand into TV service as well, and really stir things up. Can't wait: more competition means more choice and lower prices.
...So I can wait even longer to get cable installed, eh? The cable guy already missed his three-hour window for installation today... --
Re:Information Age Barriers
by
Don+Negro
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· Score: 2
Sadly, all you have to do here is follow the dollar.
DSL was invented at Bell Labs in the '80s, and promptly put on the shelf because they saw no practical application for the technology. And difficult as it is to imagine, they were right.
Why? Because when there are very few home PCs (compared to today) and those PCs don't store or push a whole lot of information, then you won't have people willing to pay for fat pipes. When most of your information is text, an 80MB hard drive is an unspeakable luxury for a desktop box, and a 14.4 modem will do just fine. If you have a lot of people who want to connect to you simultaneously, and you can afford it, ISDN was available, and didn't have the 12,000 foot line limit.
Now, we have a need, and that need is being filled. I wish I lived in a world in which technology was available because it ought to be rather than because people would pay to satisfy a need.
As for me, I like my DSL just fine, and had it transfering packets within two weeks of my order. (Not that SBC actually sent me the necessary software or anything, but there are ways around that for the resourceful...)
Don Negro
--
Don Negro Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Re:why waste bandwidth on 60 tv channels????
by
stripes
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· Score: 2
IIRC, DirecTv or The Dish Network don't allow you to hook up more than 4 TVs per dish
DISH has a switch, I think the SW64 that can be used to hook up 6 recievers to the two dish's (two LNB's per dish, one dish per satalite, or the DISH500 which is actually two dishes, four LNBs...).
Or you can skip four recievers, and hook up another SW64 and six recievers to the second SW64...or another SW64 and....
That was a bit over a year and a half ago. There was talk about a bigger multi-switch. A house two doors down has this setup and a lot of recievers for it's local population (I only have one reciever).
The real problem is each dish gets an even and odd polairity signal, and can feed out one but not both. The reciever asks for whichever one has the channel it needs. There are two LNBs on some of the recievers so it can can serve two recievers. A switch can take in both LNBs, and set on to even and one to odd forever, and give the recievers whichever they ask for.
That is then compounded by having more then one satalite. DISH does this by having either two dish'es, and a switch, or one slightly eliptical dish that gets both signals and acts as the switch as well. I beleve that DirecTv does the same thing, but I'm not sure.
The external multi-switches are a bit of a kludge, but they work. I don't know if DirecTv has them.
P.S. I think the mPhase stuff doesn't send 60 video channels down the phone line, just one selected channel (or two or so). The limit of 60 is probbably in the head end, and not that hard to change. But that is a total total total guess. It would work that way if I had to design around the current constraints...:-)
IDSL may be "better" in terms of how far from the central office it can go, but it's typically not "better" in terms of how much bandwidth you can get - it's just running, as I understand it, a raw bit stream over an ISDN line, i.e., instead of splitting a basic rate 144K bits/second ISDN line into 2 64K bits/second B channels and 1 16K bits/second D channel, they just give you one 144K bits/second channel (or maybe you only get 128K bits/second).
You do get the 144Kbits/sec. Around here it is even a fair bit cheeper then ISDN.
It may be VDSL (others in this thread have spoken of VDSL in this context), which is higher speed than typical ADSL.
Never heard of it, but that doesn't mean anything. There are more xDSLs then you can shake a stick at. I know there is an HDSL which is 1.5Mbps/sec both ways, and an SDSL that I think is symetric, but no specific speed, and quite a few others. There is also a lot of variation in supported speeds and distances depending on the equiptment at each end.
Sometimes you can get a faster speed from one provider or the other even though they all use the same wires from the RBOC.
The must be using a better DSL than the standard ADSL the most providers use. Maybe the ISDN DSL (IDSL or what ever it's called).
IDSL may be "better" in terms of how far from the central office it can go, but it's typically not "better" in terms of how much bandwidth you can get - it's just running, as I understand it, a raw bit stream over an ISDN line, i.e., instead of splitting a basic rate 144K bits/second ISDN line into 2 64K bits/second B channels and 1 16K bits/second D channel, they just give you one 144K bits/second channel (or maybe you only get 128K bits/second). ADSL often goes up to 384K bits/second to the subscriber, or better, and 128K bits/second from the subscriber (my service is "at least" 384K/128K, but my downloads are typically around 1.1Mb/sec).
It may be VDSL (others in this thread have spoken of VDSL in this context), which is higher speed than typical ADSL.
...who would prefer 58 more channels of broadcast crap (I'm acknowledging two good channels for the Simpsons and Babylon 5 reruns to be generous) to the tens (or hundreds, with anything but the best digital compression) of megabits/second of data bandwidth that those channels require? If there's enough unused capacity in a DSL connection to piggyback 60 full motion video channels, how come anyone not next door to the telco gets told they can't be guaranteed more than a couple hundred kbps?
Re:I've got a way of upping the number of channels
by
Jeffrey+Baker
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· Score: 2
God DAMN you are FUCKING BRILLIANT. Read the article and note that this is exactly what they are ALREADY DOING. There might still be time for you to GET A PATENT, though.
Re:Movin' on up to a monopoly?
by
blaine
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· Score: 2
"Only" 60 channels?
What kind of crack are you smoking? Tell me, when was the last time you strayed from the 5-10 channels you generally watch? I mean, christ, 90% of the channels out there suck so bad I can hardly believe they exist. And even the good channels generally have 1 or 2 good shows at most.
If "only" 60 channels is an issue for you, you have WAY too much free time on your hands.
--
-[Blaine]-
"'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
I live in the suburbs of Chicago, a major city (ok, it's no New York much less San Francisco), and can't get a cable modem or DSL. To hear about Connie Corncrib getting DSL, voice and cable television is almost too much to bear!
But seriously. I don't see how telephone lines can scale to the same level as coax. Why should I believe this is anything but a niche tech.
Oops, I took so long typing that someone answered my question.
It isn't 60 channels, it's 60 in that particular installation. Since the video is coming down the DSL on demand it could be 500 channels of choice.
Though I guess I still wonder what happens if you have three or four TV's and everyone wants to watch different stuff.
--
Not the only people doing this
by
Azog
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· Score: 2
Myrio (www.myrio.com) has been doing something like this for a while. In Livingston, Texas, there are now paying customers who have TV over DSL. The Myrio system also provides video on demand, which is like having a virtual DVD player - you can rent movies over the DSL, and get full capability to pause, fast forward, rewind, and play it over again for the length of the rental period. The movie content is streamed off big NCube servers at the telco head end.
A little more info: Myrio's system is based on streaming MPEG-2 through full rate DSL. That's typically about 8 Mbps, and is enough bandwidth for two set top boxes to watch two different TV channels (or movies) simultaneously. There's no real limit to the number of TV channels the system can handle. The video quality is very high - movies are very close to DVD, and TV is better than regular cable.
Full disclosure - I work for Myrio. I don't know anything about MPhase.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
-- Torrey Hoffman (Azog) "HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
why waste bandwidth on 60 tv channels????
by
jilles
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· Score: 3
I can only watch one channel at the time. Why waste all this bandwidth on stuff you cannot possibly watch anyway. Put the tuner on the other side of the cable and switch channels remotely. All the extra bandwidth can be used for regular internet usage. As a matter of fact, why not stream that remaining channel over TCP/IP anyway?
I don't see the problem, the bandwidth exists (i.e. your phone line), there's hardware (mpeg encoding and decoding chips). What's holding things back??
And by the way, 60 channels is not enough.
--
Jilles
Re:why waste bandwidth on 60 tv channels????
by
Smitty825
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· Score: 2
I can only watch one channel at the time. Why waste all this bandwidth on stuff you cannot possibly watch anyway.
I understand your point, but the only way that cable has competed against satallite is that the cable companies allow you to hook up as many TVs as you like for the same amount of money (and no extra equipment, except for speciality channels)
It's really important to some people that they can watch whatever program they want, while their spouse watches another, and each of their 1+ kids watches seperate programs in their own rooms. (IIRC, DirecTv or The Dish Network don't allow you to hook up more than 4 TVs per dish)
--
Doh!
Re:How about 60,000 in Phoenix
by
slickwillie
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· Score: 2
Qwest (formerly USWest) offers VDSL service in Phoenix to about 60k homes, and I think they plan to expand to other states.
Re:Movin' on up to a monopoly?
by
costas
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· Score: 2
It's not 60 channels, it's UNLIMITED channels. mPhase basically uses an 1.2-1.4 DSL link to pipe ONE channel of video down your phone line into their set-top box. The number of channels is limited by how much bandwidth they have going into the ELEC's central office. Basically, their set-top "dials in" into a video stream. What I'd like to find out is how (and if) you can do time-shifts (i.e. TiVo or VCR-like services).
At least that's my understanding of the technology --the bitrate was back-of-the-envelope bitrate of an MPEG2/4 video, I am sure others can do better.
Well, one thing that you might want to consider is that as per FCC regs, phone lines have strict QoS (Quality of Service) rules, mainly for 911-lifeline services. In other words if your phone line goes down, the phone company (probably your local Bell) *has* to fix it ASAP. As long as the network routing part of the deal (the DSL provider's job) is also decent (i.e. 99+% uptime) your DSL Video service *should* be way more reliable than Cable.
Europe. Most of Southern Europe has no cable network whatsoever, and CATV penetration in the north is pretty bad (~50% I think). VoDSL needs no extra infrastructure, just 'clean' copper. mPhase could make *loads* of money.
Yeah - I heard about this a while back, and my GF's friend's daughter ('s barber's cousin's brother...) has it. That is the only install of it I have seen in the entire valley. The picture is good (same as COX Digital), but the menuing options and other things aren't as refined.
There is no advertisement that I have found anywhere in the valley for this service. I am not even sure why they offer it...
Yeah, it's been around for 2-3 years, actually!
by
xtal
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· Score: 5
Disclaimer: I work for iMagicTV, and we've been developing this stuff for some time, and have a bunch of major customers. If you're interested in how this stuff works, not just from the customer perspective but the backend stuff that the telco is running too.
This is nothing new, and has been available in middle-of-nowhere Atlantic Canada for some time, but since we're not part of the USA (yet), it must not count.
It WOULD be a feat if they got 60 channels simultaneously multicast over DSL, but that's just not possible. They have a bunch of seperate streams that you can tune into.
This is just great. Now with the snip of your wires at the demarc, you will now:
1. won't have internet access
2. won't have telephone access
3. won't be able to watch tv.
Might as well just go outside at that point.
Re:My (former) telco is doing this.
by
TheTomcat
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· Score: 2
I've pulled 250K/sec from [menace] (side note: being unb, you likely know what menace is, and since when is it unb.edu, not unb.ca ?), over my vibe line in Moncton.
But yes, anything over 200K/sec is very impressive. I'm sitting on crappy Bell Sympatico High Speed here, and it truly sucks the nut. 120K/sec downstream, 15K/sec upstream. Pathetic.
My (former) telco is doing this.
by
TheTomcat
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· Score: 4
My (former) telephone company was doing this before I left the province (last October).
It doesn't translate directly to the standard coax that we're used to coming out of our walls, but a special connection that plugs into a 'tuner' box, and 'tunes' one channel at a time, much the same way small-dish sattelite 'tuners' work.
Anyone I've asked has said that it hasn't hurt ADSL performance (same network as the VibeTV stuff) too much.
NBTel's supposed to be worldclass in telecommunications (or something). After all, one of my hometown's main industries is hosting callcenters. That's right. You call AOL customer service, you get Moncton(Riverview), NB, Canada. Same with Equifax.
Oops, drifting offtopic. Anyway, my point was that this is being done, and it's similar quality to small-dish sattelite TV (Bell Expressview, or Starchoice in Canada).
Before the cable company in NB got bought by Shaw/Rogers, they were talking about providing telephone service. Stange how things get twisted around.
Before anyone gets too excited
by
asianflu
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· Score: 2
Mphase, stock ticker XDSL.BB, is a company fast running out of friends and money. Hart Telephone is owned by one of the directors of Mphase, and they've been hawking this box around the telcos for over a year, nobody is interested. Its too expensive, its completely non standard, needs the content to be fed to the CO (head-end), but has no idea how to get it there, and the company that produces it, and its affiliates, has a certain air of, well, lets say it doesnt smell right.. they've been sucking up small investors with a promise of IPO, now a promise of just a nasdaq listing, and spending the money on, if I read the accounts correctly, mainly management renumeration..
CNNFN, I think, got suckered by this story.
You can read all the dirty laundry on ragingbull.com, any searches with terms such as confict of interest, fraud, investigation and so on will find old posts that reveal more.. of course, this is just my humble opinion. The people that stuck their money into that stock at $20 (now at $2) are pretty anxious to get their head back above water.
I've really had a very good experience with AT&T Cable internet. The price is reasonable, the speed is quite fast (I downloaded some disk images last month at over 200KB/s, note: KB not Kb) they were quite prompt about getting the installation done. If I remember correctly, I called in on a Thursday and they came the following Wednesday, and it was a holiday weekend. Two working days later is a very good turn around time. Since getting service in July I've only had one network outage that I've noticed, and it lasted less than 2 hours. The only thing that I can complain about is that their mail and news servers are kind of slow and go down sometimes. I'd recommend not using the e-mail address you get from them for anything other than billing information. _____________
-- I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Re:Movin' on up to a monopoly?
by
dbarclay10
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· Score: 5
I live in Canada, and I'll adress a few of your points from a Canadian perspective:
1) Very few people trust their local telco. I certainly don't trust them even with DSL, let alone with cable access.
I trust my local telephone company. In my life, I've never been without telephone service. I'm serious. There was a tornado nearby once, and the power(and cable access) was out for nearly a day - but we still had our phones.
I've witnessed dozens of cable outages. While generally short(usually around an hour), a few have lasted upwards of a day or two.
2) When was the last time a cable system in a big city (where the rollout would probably start, as it usually does) was economically viable with only 60 channels?
In most parts of Canada, you need to pay an extra 10-15 dollars(Canadian) to get 60 channels. Regular service has about 30-40. I think the most you can actually get(no matter how much money you have), short of getting a satellite dish, is about 75 or a hundred.
3) Think about the cable signal over copper lines. If you're in an area with fibre optics, great. But if not, your cable reception could be evil.
I'll agree that I think this is a backwards step. We should be moving away from old telephone lines to something approaching TV cable, or ideally, fibre. However, most of my region(I live in a town of 10,000 people) have fibre optics. In fact, I have fibre going right up to across the street(where there's a big telephone company box of some sort). Mind you, my impression is that Canada(and especially Ontario) is rather well-connected.
4) 95% (at least) of all municipalities that have cable available for residents have a long term contract in place. To switch to a telco for this would require some nifty sidestepping of issues.
I don't know anyone who has a long-term cable contract. It's always monthly.
5) Imagine cable support through your telco.
I was recently chatting with someone about this:) They were from Texas, I think, and had problems because of the local telephone company monopoly. They moved to an area with more competition, and things got better.
Well, I've got news:) Up until about five years ago, there was only ONE telephone carrier available in my area. And they were just fine:) No serious problems, technicians always made it out when they said they would(although, sometimes[if it wasn't a serious problem], you'd have to wait a few days). Perfectly well-behaved.
The point? Don't bash the technology because the people who are initially using it arn't the nicest people in the world. If this makes it into my city before cable broadband access does, I'll sign up for it.
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
--
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
...you're playing Quake, and your roommate turns on the TV...
It's all well and good to say that you won't notice latency in your TV signal because it's coming in on a controlled network, but do you want your TV eating up your bandwidth?
They're already doing this in Canada as well.
Re:If they can do this why only 100Mbps over Cat5?
by
shivas
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· Score: 2
You are assuming that they are simulataneously broadcasting all 60 channels over the DSL. I think only the compressed stream for the channel that you have selected on your SETTOP box will be sent on the DSL.
Siva
Re:Another way to look at this...
by
jbridge21
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· Score: 2
The difference between copper and fiber is, they're already using fiber quite efficiently.
With the copper wires running to your house, they were only using about 8 KHz of bandwidth before, whereas the cable could carry much more. Adding stuff like DSL and TV just uses more of the bandwidth.
With fiber, you're already using a large part of the optical spectrum in large installations, and the glass will not transmit efficiently past certain wavelength boundaries. -----
Re:Movin' on up to a monopoly?
by
Zaphod+B
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· Score: 2
I trust my local telephone company. In my life, I've never been without telephone service. I'm serious. There was a tornado nearby once, and the power(and cable access) was out for nearly a day - but we still had our phones.
Point conceded. Phones tend to be more reliable during disasters (though this does vary based on your location.
I've witnessed dozens of cable outages. While generally short(usually around an hour), a few have lasted upwards of a day or two.
Perhaps I'm lucky, but I have had no cable outages since I got cable in 1986, save for when power was out to the distribution centre, which didn't matter because it was out for me as well. Phones, however, I have seen be out for extended periods due to emergency maintenance (this was before they were buried underground).
In most parts of Canada, you need to pay an extra 10-15 dollars(Canadian) to get 60 channels. Regular service has about 30-40. I think the most you can actually get(no matter how much money you have), short of getting a satellite dish, is about 75 or a hundred.
Here in the U.S. (specifically metropolitan Southern California), you pay an extra $5 for the extra channels, and then (if available) an extra $5 for the digital tier (which, if you have premium channels, greatly increases the number of available channels).
I don't know anyone who has a long-term cable contract. It's always monthly.
Municipalities generally contract out with one cable provider to provide cable for the residents of the city. Residents pay monthly; the contract length between the municipality and the cable provider varies but averages around 3-5 years. When the contract is up, the cable provider and and of their competitors may petition for consideration for the new contract.
Well, I've got news:) Up until about five years ago, there was only ONE telephone carrier available in my area. And they were just fine:) No serious problems, technicians always made it out when they said they would(although, sometimes[if it wasn't a serious problem], you'd have to wait a few days). Perfectly well-behaved.
The point? Don't bash the technology because the people who are initially using it arn't the nicest people in the world. If this makes it into my city before cable broadband access does, I'll sign up for it.
You've been very lucky, then, and it seems like Ontario would be a good place to be if you wanted good phone service. Here, unfortunately, you have your choice between the unwilling ("I hate my job"), the incapable ("Um. I can't fix this right now even though you waited six hours for me. My supervisor can come out a week from Tuesday"), or the simply missing ("WHERE IS MY PHONE TECH?"). Mostly it's simple cluelessness and an amazing lack of initiative that would make any geek blanch with horror.
As for bashing the technology, it seems like the bandwidth used to provide this should be put toward the improvement of the signals already carried on the line, i.e., DSL and voice. I agree that any development which results in a choice improves the market, but support is an integral part of that choice, and Joe Shmo who isn't a geek needs to have at least reasonable support.
Thanks for your examples and the courteous reply.
-- Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have/bin/cp
Movin' on up to a monopoly?
by
Zaphod+B
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· Score: 4
Well, surprise, surprise. After the cable companies found out that they could carry Net access over their lines, I'm not surprised at this retaliation. But let's look at it:
1) Very few people trust their local telco. I certainly don't trust them even with DSL, let alone with cable access.
2) When was the last time a cable system in a big city (where the rollout would probably start, as it usually does) was economically viable with only 60 channels?
3) Think about the cable signal over copper lines. If you're in an area with fibre optics, great. But if not, your cable reception could be evil.
4) 95% (at least) of all municipalities that have cable available for residents have a long term contract in place. To switch to a telco for this would require some nifty sidestepping of issues.
5) Imagine cable support through your telco. Not to pick on my unnamed local telco which starts with V and ends in N and has a giant gaping intelligence gap between, but they can't even support DSL, and they're just barely able to offer what might be considered reasonable service for their phone lines.
I don't see a great amount of competition for $CABLE_PROVIDER in the near future.
-- Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have/bin/cp
Re:Movin' on up to a monopoly?
by
softsign
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· Score: 2
I trust my local telephone company. In my life, I've never been without telephone service. I'm serious. There was a tornado nearby once, and the power(and cable access) was out for nearly a day - but we still had our phones.
Heh, where were you during the Great BBQ of '99? When one of Bell's COs caught fire in downtown Toronto, knocking out phone and internet service for a good-sized chunk of Canada? That lasted a few days until they could get everything back up again, IIRC. =)
I suppose what I want to know is: Why weren't these barriers knocked down before?
Negroponte makes it clear in BEING DIGITAL that he thought a long time ago that this sort of thing was possible and practical. I've been largely of the belief that if this was somehow thwarted by the pre-1996 competitive marketplace, that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 should have solved it. Still, we wait for the market in these services to change, and it doesn't.
Finally, someone takes an interest in doing this (and only on a small scale). This is a test reaching some 60 customers. 1) Why wasn't it done before? 2) Even if it is made to work, how many decades will it take to reach me because nobody wants to really compete and shake things up out there? I can't believe that this is such a fundamental technical breakthrough, and the real barrier has been "business" decision makers who can't confront changed business models.
#undef RANT
Re:Information Age Barriers
by
Auckerman
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· Score: 4
"I suppose what I want to know is: Why weren't these barriers knocked down before?"
Where there is already a govt sanctioned monolopy that offeres a comparable service that is proven to work and is affordable, why would any competitor come to YOUR town and set up shop. No guaranteed customers. Which is probabally why it's first appearing in a "small town" where in the article it mentions that the cable company wouldn't hookup a line to his business for just one subscriber....
Before being taken over by AT&T, TCI Cable rebuilt the cable system in the Des Moines, Iowa area. They put in a fiber backbone, but there seems to be no battery backups for their equipment, nor does there seem to be any real redudancy. Power outages in certain areas have left entire cities without their cable or cable internet service, simply because the single fiber route had a power interruption.
Also, despite the fiber backbone, some areas still have crappy reception of analog channels. A friend of mine lives less then a mile from the head end, and has this problem.
--
--
-- Intelligence is definitely a recessive trait.
Re:If they can do this why only 100Mbps over Cat5?
by
Wesley+Felter
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· Score: 2
If you are lucky, you can get ~ 6 Mbps downstream on ADSL, so I guess you could watch 3 different channels. Better watch out if you have 4 TVs, though.
Think it depends greatly on what region/market you are talking about. Here, AT&T took over from MediaOne and the service has been superb. I've heard that if you are in a former TCI area, it isn't always as great.
Remember, it hasn't been AT&T doing cable for 50 years suddenly doing broadband internet. AT&T bought their way into this market in the last few years and they bought different companies with varying degrees of competence. It takes a _long_ time for a company to get its acquired workers assimilated into the 'borg'. Hell, I should know... my company was bought out 14 years ago and we _still_ refer to them as the 'evil empire'.
--
There is much cruelty in the universe, John. Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Yeah, I had TCI in the last place I lived before I moved into my house where MediaOne served. They certainly were the worst I've ever seen. They would cut out 2-3 times a week and forget about talking to anyone in customer service. I know AT&T has spent big-bucks to lay a lot of hybrid fiber/coax in the areas it acquired in buying out TCI.
--
There is much cruelty in the universe, John. Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
While this may be possible, the question one has to really ask is...why do it? The people in the article seem to be happier about the fast internet service than the tv stations, and I would be too. Seems like a useless technology to me, for the most part.
To sqeeze 60 channels into a DSL line is quite a feat (since you can STILL use DSL at the same time)
A Google search for 'mPhase Traverser' gives a lot of sources for info on this technology, but I don't see anything that says that it's actually streaming 60 channels simultaneously over DSL. You're only watching one channel at a time, maybe it's only receiving one at a time? Sean
"Georgia is the test site for a new technology developed at the Georgia Tech Research Institute... "
I laughed when I read this little piece of "breaking news"... This kinda technology has been in use for over a year in Moncton, New Brunswick CANADA... yeah that's right... Canada...
I lived there while they were rolling it out last year, never got to test it myself since it wasnt available on my street, but I hear it was comparable with cable. Check it out if you want http://www.nbtel.nb.ca , click on Vibevision for more info.
Hmmm, cable TV, DSL and my phone service all on one set of lines? No thanks, I'll keep my phone service separate(cellphone), so that when the rolling blackouts hit my area, I won't be completely cutoff from civilization!
-- Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
Another way to look at this...
by
b0z
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· Score: 2
If they can find ways to make the copper phone lines this efficient, imagine what they could do with the fiber optic lines they are putting all over the place.
I think financial limitations, and limits on the resources available help creativity. DSL and this are a good sign of that in my opinion. I think it's a great idea and if they can do all this with simple telephone lines I look forward to what they can do with tv cable and fiber optic connections.
-- Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
I've got a way of upping the number of channels...
by
human+bean
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· Score: 2
You would think after all of these years that folks would figure this out. Since you know on which wire you are sending the video stream, simply have the set-top box communicate with the central office and select the channel for that particular wire, and do the switching at the central office.
You would think that phone guys would have thought of this...
--
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
Re:I've got a way of upping the number of channels
by
human+bean
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· Score: 2
Actually, the article that was linked didn't have any reference to switching. Other backgrounds made references to servers, but still didn't give a good shot at what was being delivered down the final wire.
Even so, one wonders what the rediculously low number of channels is about.
"With the addition of a set top box, users get 60 channels along with their DSL and phone line."
While it is ALWAYS nice to have alternative ways of getting subscriber based TV (read: Cable), this really doesn't impress me as a comsumer. In my area, we have digital cable. I have 180 channels including 10 HBO channels and 10 Showtime channels. Also, built right into the cable box is a cable modem. Granted DSL has guarantted speed while cable is shared speed, it's as fast (if not faster)as normal home DSL connections most of the time.
What I want to know is what compression they are using? To sqeeze 60 channels into a DSL line is quite a feat (since you can STILL use DSL at the same time), but feasible (you should watch Quicktime streams on a 100BaseT connection sitting on Internet2, which lets you cheat your way through parts of the internet).
It'll always cut out at the important bits of the story!
Why not upgrade to our plus service - we'll automatically download programme schedules for you, to make sure the VerizonBox(TM) always cuts out at the right moment!
Sorry. Sarcasm overload here. Although quite how far into the realms of fantasy I am I'm not sure...
If it takes 3 months to install like my DSL did, I don't want it.
Cable and DSL and Phone services oh my!
by
CoBoLwArRiOr
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· Score: 3
I wonder what kind of competition will open up in the cable TV market, especially if the phone companies decide to provide their own channels rather than teaming with a local cable company. Or, what if the local cable companies embrace this technology and begin to offer up phone services? The possibilities are mind boggling. (and yes, I know Time Warner is already in the telecom and cable business).
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The COBOL Warrior
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The COBOL Warrior
"COBOL's Not dead, it's just underground"
Slashdot Mirror
This is the kind of choice and competition that deregulation was supposed to bring; too bad that it is taking so long for the new infrastructure to be rolled out in most parts of the country. But this new tech should help speed things up: perhaps the existing DSL providers could expand into TV service as well, and really stir things up. Can't wait: more competition means more choice and lower prices.
...So I can wait even longer to get cable installed, eh? The cable guy already missed his three-hour window for installation today...
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DSL was invented at Bell Labs in the '80s, and promptly put on the shelf because they saw no practical application for the technology. And difficult as it is to imagine, they were right.
Why? Because when there are very few home PCs (compared to today) and those PCs don't store or push a whole lot of information, then you won't have people willing to pay for fat pipes. When most of your information is text, an 80MB hard drive is an unspeakable luxury for a desktop box, and a 14.4 modem will do just fine. If you have a lot of people who want to connect to you simultaneously, and you can afford it, ISDN was available, and didn't have the 12,000 foot line limit.
Now, we have a need, and that need is being filled. I wish I lived in a world in which technology was available because it ought to be rather than because people would pay to satisfy a need.
As for me, I like my DSL just fine, and had it transfering packets within two weeks of my order. (Not that SBC actually sent me the necessary software or anything, but there are ways around that for the resourceful...)
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
DISH has a switch, I think the SW64 that can be used to hook up 6 recievers to the two dish's (two LNB's per dish, one dish per satalite, or the DISH500 which is actually two dishes, four LNBs...).
Or you can skip four recievers, and hook up another SW64 and six recievers to the second SW64...or another SW64 and....
That was a bit over a year and a half ago. There was talk about a bigger multi-switch. A house two doors down has this setup and a lot of recievers for it's local population (I only have one reciever).
The real problem is each dish gets an even and odd polairity signal, and can feed out one but not both. The reciever asks for whichever one has the channel it needs. There are two LNBs on some of the recievers so it can can serve two recievers. A switch can take in both LNBs, and set on to even and one to odd forever, and give the recievers whichever they ask for.
That is then compounded by having more then one satalite. DISH does this by having either two dish'es, and a switch, or one slightly eliptical dish that gets both signals and acts as the switch as well. I beleve that DirecTv does the same thing, but I'm not sure.
The external multi-switches are a bit of a kludge, but they work. I don't know if DirecTv has them.
P.S. I think the mPhase stuff doesn't send 60 video channels down the phone line, just one selected channel (or two or so). The limit of 60 is probbably in the head end, and not that hard to change. But that is a total total total guess. It would work that way if I had to design around the current constraints... :-)
You do get the 144Kbits/sec. Around here it is even a fair bit cheeper then ISDN.
Never heard of it, but that doesn't mean anything. There are more xDSLs then you can shake a stick at. I know there is an HDSL which is 1.5Mbps/sec both ways, and an SDSL that I think is symetric, but no specific speed, and quite a few others. There is also a lot of variation in supported speeds and distances depending on the equiptment at each end.
Sometimes you can get a faster speed from one provider or the other even though they all use the same wires from the RBOC.
IDSL may be "better" in terms of how far from the central office it can go, but it's typically not "better" in terms of how much bandwidth you can get - it's just running, as I understand it, a raw bit stream over an ISDN line, i.e., instead of splitting a basic rate 144K bits/second ISDN line into 2 64K bits/second B channels and 1 16K bits/second D channel, they just give you one 144K bits/second channel (or maybe you only get 128K bits/second). ADSL often goes up to 384K bits/second to the subscriber, or better, and 128K bits/second from the subscriber (my service is "at least" 384K/128K, but my downloads are typically around 1.1Mb/sec).
It may be VDSL (others in this thread have spoken of VDSL in this context), which is higher speed than typical ADSL.
...who would prefer 58 more channels of broadcast crap (I'm acknowledging two good channels for the Simpsons and Babylon 5 reruns to be generous) to the tens (or hundreds, with anything but the best digital compression) of megabits/second of data bandwidth that those channels require? If there's enough unused capacity in a DSL connection to piggyback 60 full motion video channels, how come anyone not next door to the telco gets told they can't be guaranteed more than a couple hundred kbps?
God DAMN you are FUCKING BRILLIANT. Read the article and note that this is exactly what they are ALREADY DOING. There might still be time for you to GET A PATENT, though.
"Only" 60 channels?
What kind of crack are you smoking? Tell me, when was the last time you strayed from the 5-10 channels you generally watch? I mean, christ, 90% of the channels out there suck so bad I can hardly believe they exist. And even the good channels generally have 1 or 2 good shows at most.
If "only" 60 channels is an issue for you, you have WAY too much free time on your hands.
-[Blaine]- "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
But seriously. I don't see how telephone lines can scale to the same level as coax. Why should I believe this is anything but a niche tech.
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Myrio (www.myrio.com) has been doing something like this for a while. In Livingston, Texas, there are now paying customers who have TV over DSL. The Myrio system also provides video on demand, which is like having a virtual DVD player - you can rent movies over the DSL, and get full capability to pause, fast forward, rewind, and play it over again for the length of the rental period. The movie content is streamed off big NCube servers at the telco head end.
Check the old press release at Myrio's web site.
A little more info: Myrio's system is based on streaming MPEG-2 through full rate DSL. That's typically about 8 Mbps, and is enough bandwidth for two set top boxes to watch two different TV channels (or movies) simultaneously. There's no real limit to the number of TV channels the system can handle. The video quality is very high - movies are very close to DVD, and TV is better than regular cable.
Full disclosure - I work for Myrio. I don't know anything about MPhase.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
I can only watch one channel at the time. Why waste all this bandwidth on stuff you cannot possibly watch anyway. Put the tuner on the other side of the cable and switch channels remotely. All the extra bandwidth can be used for regular internet usage. As a matter of fact, why not stream that remaining channel over TCP/IP anyway?
I don't see the problem, the bandwidth exists (i.e. your phone line), there's hardware (mpeg encoding and decoding chips). What's holding things back??
And by the way, 60 channels is not enough.
Jilles
Qwest (formerly USWest) offers VDSL service in Phoenix to about 60k homes, and I think they plan to expand to other states.
It's not 60 channels, it's UNLIMITED channels. mPhase basically uses an 1.2-1.4 DSL link to pipe ONE channel of video down your phone line into their set-top box. The number of channels is limited by how much bandwidth they have going into the ELEC's central office. Basically, their set-top "dials in" into a video stream. What I'd like to find out is how (and if) you can do time-shifts (i.e. TiVo or VCR-like services).
At least that's my understanding of the technology --the bitrate was back-of-the-envelope bitrate of an MPEG2/4 video, I am sure others can do better.
Well, one thing that you might want to consider is that as per FCC regs, phone lines have strict QoS (Quality of Service) rules, mainly for 911-lifeline services. In other words if your phone line goes down, the phone company (probably your local Bell) *has* to fix it ASAP. As long as the network routing part of the deal (the DSL provider's job) is also decent (i.e. 99+% uptime) your DSL Video service *should* be way more reliable than Cable.
:-)...
Of course, usual disclaimers apply
Europe. Most of Southern Europe has no cable network whatsoever, and CATV penetration in the north is pretty bad (~50% I think). VoDSL needs no extra infrastructure, just 'clean' copper. mPhase could make *loads* of money.
Yeah - I heard about this a while back, and my GF's friend's daughter ('s barber's cousin's brother...) has it. That is the only install of it I have seen in the entire valley. The picture is good (same as COX Digital), but the menuing options and other things aren't as refined.
There is no advertisement that I have found anywhere in the valley for this service. I am not even sure why they offer it...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Disclaimer: I work for iMagicTV, and we've been developing this stuff for some time, and have a bunch of major customers. If you're interested in how this stuff works, not just from the customer perspective but the backend stuff that the telco is running too.
This is nothing new, and has been available in middle-of-nowhere Atlantic Canada for some time, but since we're not part of the USA (yet), it must not count.
It WOULD be a feat if they got 60 channels simultaneously multicast over DSL, but that's just not possible. They have a bunch of seperate streams that you can tune into.
..don't panic
This is just great. Now with the snip of your wires at the demarc, you will now:
1. won't have internet access
2. won't have telephone access
3. won't be able to watch tv.
Might as well just go outside at that point.
I've pulled 250K/sec from [menace] (side note: being unb, you likely know what menace is, and since when is it unb.edu, not unb.ca ?), over my vibe line in Moncton.
But yes, anything over 200K/sec is very impressive. I'm sitting on crappy Bell Sympatico High Speed here, and it truly sucks the nut. 120K/sec downstream, 15K/sec upstream. Pathetic.
My (former) telephone company was doing this before I left the province (last October).
It doesn't translate directly to the standard coax that we're used to coming out of our walls, but a special connection that plugs into a 'tuner' box, and 'tunes' one channel at a time, much the same way small-dish sattelite 'tuners' work.
Anyone I've asked has said that it hasn't hurt ADSL performance (same network as the VibeTV stuff) too much.
NBTel's supposed to be worldclass in telecommunications (or something). After all, one of my hometown's main industries is hosting callcenters. That's right. You call AOL customer service, you get Moncton(Riverview), NB, Canada. Same with Equifax.
Oops, drifting offtopic. Anyway, my point was that this is being done, and it's similar quality to small-dish sattelite TV (Bell Expressview, or Starchoice in Canada).
Before the cable company in NB got bought by Shaw/Rogers, they were talking about providing telephone service. Stange how things get twisted around.
Mphase, stock ticker XDSL.BB, is a company fast running out of friends and money. Hart Telephone is owned by one of the directors of Mphase, and they've been hawking this box around the telcos for over a year, nobody is interested. Its too expensive, its completely non standard, needs the content to be fed to the CO (head-end), but has no idea how to get it there, and the company that produces it, and its affiliates, has a certain air of, well, lets say it doesnt smell right.. they've been sucking up small investors with a promise of IPO, now a promise of just a nasdaq listing, and spending the money on, if I read the accounts correctly, mainly management renumeration..
CNNFN, I think, got suckered by this story.
You can read all the dirty laundry on ragingbull.com, any searches with terms such as confict of interest, fraud, investigation and so on will find old posts that reveal more.. of course, this is just my humble opinion. The people that stuck their money into that stock at $20 (now at $2) are pretty anxious to get their head back above water.
I've really had a very good experience with AT&T Cable internet. The price is reasonable, the speed is quite fast (I downloaded some disk images last month at over 200KB/s, note: KB not Kb) they were quite prompt about getting the installation done. If I remember correctly, I called in on a Thursday and they came the following Wednesday, and it was a holiday weekend. Two working days later is a very good turn around time. Since getting service in July I've only had one network outage that I've noticed, and it lasted less than 2 hours. The only thing that I can complain about is that their mail and news servers are kind of slow and go down sometimes. I'd recommend not using the e-mail address you get from them for anything other than billing information.
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I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
I live in Canada, and I'll adress a few of your points from a Canadian perspective:
:) They were from Texas, I think, and had problems because of the local telephone company monopoly. They moved to an area with more competition, and things got better.
:) Up until about five years ago, there was only ONE telephone carrier available in my area. And they were just fine :) No serious problems, technicians always made it out when they said they would(although, sometimes[if it wasn't a serious problem], you'd have to wait a few days). Perfectly well-behaved.
1) Very few people trust their local telco. I certainly don't trust them even with DSL, let alone with cable access.
I trust my local telephone company. In my life, I've never been without telephone service. I'm serious. There was a tornado nearby once, and the power(and cable access) was out for nearly a day - but we still had our phones.
I've witnessed dozens of cable outages. While generally short(usually around an hour), a few have lasted upwards of a day or two.
2) When was the last time a cable system in a big city (where the rollout would probably start, as it usually does) was economically viable with only 60 channels?
In most parts of Canada, you need to pay an extra 10-15 dollars(Canadian) to get 60 channels. Regular service has about 30-40. I think the most you can actually get(no matter how much money you have), short of getting a satellite dish, is about 75 or a hundred.
3) Think about the cable signal over copper lines. If you're in an area with fibre optics, great. But if not, your cable reception could be evil.
I'll agree that I think this is a backwards step. We should be moving away from old telephone lines to something approaching TV cable, or ideally, fibre. However, most of my region(I live in a town of 10,000 people) have fibre optics. In fact, I have fibre going right up to across the street(where there's a big telephone company box of some sort). Mind you, my impression is that Canada(and especially Ontario) is rather well-connected.
4) 95% (at least) of all municipalities that have cable available for residents have a long term contract in place. To switch to a telco for this would require some nifty sidestepping of issues.
I don't know anyone who has a long-term cable contract. It's always monthly.
5) Imagine cable support through your telco.
I was recently chatting with someone about this
Well, I've got news
The point? Don't bash the technology because the people who are initially using it arn't the nicest people in the world. If this makes it into my city before cable broadband access does, I'll sign up for it.
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
...you're playing Quake, and your roommate turns on the TV...
It's all well and good to say that you won't notice latency in your TV signal because it's coming in on a controlled network, but do you want your TV eating up your bandwidth?
They're already doing this in Canada as well.
You are assuming that they are simulataneously broadcasting all 60 channels over the DSL. I think only the compressed stream for the channel that you have selected on your SETTOP box will be sent on the DSL.
Siva
The difference between copper and fiber is, they're already using fiber quite efficiently.
With the copper wires running to your house, they were only using about 8 KHz of bandwidth before, whereas the cable could carry much more. Adding stuff like DSL and TV just uses more of the bandwidth.
With fiber, you're already using a large part of the optical spectrum in large installations, and the glass will not transmit efficiently past certain wavelength boundaries.
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I trust my local telephone company. In my life, I've never been without telephone service. I'm serious. There was a tornado nearby once, and the power(and cable access) was out for nearly a day - but we still had our phones.
Point conceded. Phones tend to be more reliable during disasters (though this does vary based on your location.
I've witnessed dozens of cable outages. While generally short(usually around an hour), a few have lasted upwards of a day or two.
Perhaps I'm lucky, but I have had no cable outages since I got cable in 1986, save for when power was out to the distribution centre, which didn't matter because it was out for me as well. Phones, however, I have seen be out for extended periods due to emergency maintenance (this was before they were buried underground).
In most parts of Canada, you need to pay an extra 10-15 dollars(Canadian) to get 60 channels. Regular service has about 30-40. I think the most you can actually get(no matter how much money you have), short of getting a satellite dish, is about 75 or a hundred.
Here in the U.S. (specifically metropolitan Southern California), you pay an extra $5 for the extra channels, and then (if available) an extra $5 for the digital tier (which, if you have premium channels, greatly increases the number of available channels).
I don't know anyone who has a long-term cable contract. It's always monthly.
Municipalities generally contract out with one cable provider to provide cable for the residents of the city. Residents pay monthly; the contract length between the municipality and the cable provider varies but averages around 3-5 years. When the contract is up, the cable provider and and of their competitors may petition for consideration for the new contract.
Well, I've got news :) Up until about five years ago, there was only ONE telephone carrier available in my area. And they were just fine :) No serious problems, technicians always made it out when they said they would(although, sometimes[if it wasn't a serious problem], you'd have to wait a few days). Perfectly well-behaved.
The point? Don't bash the technology because the people who are initially using it arn't the nicest people in the world. If this makes it into my city before cable broadband access does, I'll sign up for it.
You've been very lucky, then, and it seems like Ontario would be a good place to be if you wanted good phone service. Here, unfortunately, you have your choice between the unwilling ("I hate my job"), the incapable ("Um. I can't fix this right now even though you waited six hours for me. My supervisor can come out a week from Tuesday"), or the simply missing ("WHERE IS MY PHONE TECH?"). Mostly it's simple cluelessness and an amazing lack of initiative that would make any geek blanch with horror.
As for bashing the technology, it seems like the bandwidth used to provide this should be put toward the improvement of the signals already carried on the line, i.e., DSL and voice. I agree that any development which results in a choice improves the market, but support is an integral part of that choice, and Joe Shmo who isn't a geek needs to have at least reasonable support.
Thanks for your examples and the courteous reply.
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
Well, surprise, surprise. After the cable companies found out that they could carry Net access over their lines, I'm not surprised at this retaliation. But let's look at it: 1) Very few people trust their local telco. I certainly don't trust them even with DSL, let alone with cable access. 2) When was the last time a cable system in a big city (where the rollout would probably start, as it usually does) was economically viable with only 60 channels? 3) Think about the cable signal over copper lines. If you're in an area with fibre optics, great. But if not, your cable reception could be evil. 4) 95% (at least) of all municipalities that have cable available for residents have a long term contract in place. To switch to a telco for this would require some nifty sidestepping of issues. 5) Imagine cable support through your telco. Not to pick on my unnamed local telco which starts with V and ends in N and has a giant gaping intelligence gap between, but they can't even support DSL, and they're just barely able to offer what might be considered reasonable service for their phone lines. I don't see a great amount of competition for $CABLE_PROVIDER in the near future.
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
#define RANT
I suppose what I want to know is: Why weren't these barriers knocked down before?
Negroponte makes it clear in BEING DIGITAL that he thought a long time ago that this sort of thing was possible and practical. I've been largely of the belief that if this was somehow thwarted by the pre-1996 competitive marketplace, that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 should have solved it. Still, we wait for the market in these services to change, and it doesn't.
Finally, someone takes an interest in doing this (and only on a small scale). This is a test reaching some 60 customers. 1) Why wasn't it done before? 2) Even if it is made to work, how many decades will it take to reach me because nobody wants to really compete and shake things up out there? I can't believe that this is such a fundamental technical breakthrough, and the real barrier has been "business" decision makers who can't confront changed business models.
#undef RANT
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Intelligence is definitely a recessive trait.
If you are lucky, you can get ~ 6 Mbps downstream on ADSL, so I guess you could watch 3 different channels. Better watch out if you have 4 TVs, though.
Think it depends greatly on what region/market you are talking about. Here, AT&T took over from MediaOne and the service has been superb. I've heard that if you are in a former TCI area, it isn't always as great.
Remember, it hasn't been AT&T doing cable for 50 years suddenly doing broadband internet. AT&T bought their way into this market in the last few years and they bought different companies with varying degrees of competence. It takes a _long_ time for a company to get its acquired workers assimilated into the 'borg'. Hell, I should know... my company was bought out 14 years ago and we _still_ refer to them as the 'evil empire'.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Yeah, I had TCI in the last place I lived before I moved into my house where MediaOne served. They certainly were the worst I've ever seen. They would cut out 2-3 times a week and forget about talking to anyone in customer service. I know AT&T has spent big-bucks to lay a lot of hybrid fiber/coax in the areas it acquired in buying out TCI.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
While this may be possible, the question one has to really ask is...why do it? The people in the article seem to be happier about the fast internet service than the tv stations, and I would be too. Seems like a useless technology to me, for the most part.
A Google search for 'mPhase Traverser' gives a lot of sources for info on this technology, but I don't see anything that says that it's actually streaming 60 channels simultaneously over DSL. You're only watching one channel at a time, maybe it's only receiving one at a time?
Sean
I laughed when I read this little piece of "breaking news"... This kinda technology has been in use for over a year in Moncton, New Brunswick CANADA... yeah that's right... Canada...
I lived there while they were rolling it out last year, never got to test it myself since it wasnt available on my street, but I hear it was comparable with cable. Check it out if you want http://www.nbtel.nb.ca , click on Vibevision for more info.
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
I think financial limitations, and limits on the resources available help creativity. DSL and this are a good sign of that in my opinion. I think it's a great idea and if they can do all this with simple telephone lines I look forward to what they can do with tv cable and fiber optic connections.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
You would think that phone guys would have thought of this...
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
Even so, one wonders what the rediculously low number of channels is about.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
While it is ALWAYS nice to have alternative ways of getting subscriber based TV (read: Cable), this really doesn't impress me as a comsumer. In my area, we have digital cable. I have 180 channels including 10 HBO channels and 10 Showtime channels. Also, built right into the cable box is a cable modem. Granted DSL has guarantted speed while cable is shared speed, it's as fast (if not faster)as normal home DSL connections most of the time.
What I want to know is what compression they are using? To sqeeze 60 channels into a DSL line is quite a feat (since you can STILL use DSL at the same time), but feasible (you should watch Quicktime streams on a 100BaseT connection sitting on Internet2, which lets you cheat your way through parts of the internet).
Burn Hollywood Burn
Until they tell you that you are too far away from the CO.
Pffft!
Introducing...
The Verizon TV Service!
Sorry. Sarcasm overload here. Although quite how far into the realms of fantasy I am I'm not sure...
If it takes 3 months to install like my DSL did, I don't want it.
I wonder what kind of competition will open up in the cable TV market, especially if the phone companies decide to provide their own channels rather than teaming with a local cable company. Or, what if the local cable companies embrace this technology and begin to offer up phone services? The possibilities are mind boggling. (and yes, I know Time Warner is already in the telecom and cable business).
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The COBOL Warrior
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The COBOL Warrior
"COBOL's Not dead, it's just underground"