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Sprint ION's $100/mo, 8Mbps Home Service Tanks
Dr. Zowie writes: "In the current gloomy high speed connection market, a ray of light was Sprint's ION service. For $100/month, they would provide local phone service, long distance service, and 8mbps down, 1mbps up DSL-like digital connection. I've been waiting for the service to turn on to write a review about it -- but the service has been discontinued and all orders are being cancelled. Too bad -- ION was like a geek dream come true." ION was only available to a relative handful of people, but it sure sounded good. Anyone have suggestions for this sort of combination service?
geez, I pay over $100 and only get 512mbps.. Qwest Bites
I don't see it.
Having everything on one line is a technical utopia...
but I'd rather see everything over one network.
You see.. even if everything comes in over one line for $100/mo.. how is that different from $30/mo for a phone line, and $50/mo for DSL?
Also.. what do you mean 'long distance'. Long distance service is not relveant... you get that with any phone line.
8 millibits per second? No wonder it tanked. :-P
Was the fact that your voice lines were trunked over the circuit. Also, bear in mind that ION wasn't a DSL service per se, but rather an ATM service - business customers got it over high-speed lines.
I'm still looking for a VOIP telco that will let me use my existing connection.
I get 8Mbps down/1Mbps up with their new cable modem service in Brooklyn, NY. Why would I want to pay almost 3 times that for Sprint's service?
Home phone service worth ~$20 a month.
Long distance worth ~$20 a month. (Currently free with many cell-phone plans)
Broadband access worth ~$40 a month.
Total = $80 a month.
I just don't see 100 bucks a month being a particularly good deal. It would be convenient to have everything under one package, but not worth paying a premium.
I wonder if Sprint's "compensation for installation" includes sending a Sprint worker out to your house to tear down and confiscate your hardware. It'd be pretty sad if they did. I'm sure some pissed off ION users could probably hack together a Neighborhood-Area Network with it...That'd be really sweet.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
Offers phone (local), digital cable, and cable modem. For the digital cable and cable modem (which gets at least 8Mbps on a good day) I pay $114/mo. Their phone service is comparable to the phone company's or cheaper, ~25/mo?
they might have succeeded. I remember hearing sprint ION ads non-stop on the radio about 2 or 3 months ago. I guess it must have been available in my area (Houston, TX). Unfortunately, the ads made no mention of this 8mbps down/1mbps up. This was the first time I had heard of the speeds associated with this service. All the radio ads ever said were "faster than dial-up", which is an advertising phrase I tend to ignore as easily as "we'll pay off your old car!".
$100 sounds like a bargain for this sort of thing, and I would probably have snagged that service if I had known about the speed!
Of course I realize that none of the broadband services cites specific speeds, but even saying "up to 8mbps" would have immediately attracted my attention.
Didn't the 8Mbit service have something like 2 or 4 phone lines... what the hell would i use them for!?
Since moving to the USA i've had a cellphone for 3 months and still haven't had anyone call me.
FutureWay is a Canadian provider that is setting up a service like this. My brother just bought a new house (in Richmond Hill, for any Toronto locals), and the neighborhood is pre-wired with fibre to every house, and it will eventually provide digital phone, television, and data. Unfortunately, their website is a little lacking on hard facts (example from the faq: "Q. How fast is the Internet Access? A. Futureway's Internet service is the fastest available" derrr, does that mean it's petabit?), and his house isn't quite built yet, so I can't comment on quality or speed.
Carpe Cerevisi - Seize the Beer
hmm.. i think my m and k keys are switched.. damn qwerty hehe
512kbps
Sprint promised delivery over three years ago. I'm not sure I would characterize it as a "ray of light", maybe a "burst of steam". This article was written in 1999:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-341445.html
-- Sherman Boyd www.twocell.com www.shermanboyd.com
"Push" sure didn't get consumer broadband to the tipping point; neither did e-commerce, voice over IP or Joe Cartoon's not-ready-for-TV rich media.
But here's the thing: Short of Intel declaring that all machines using its chips need a broadband connection, about the broadest way to encourage Bubba PC User into broadband is to tweak the OS in such a way that it forces involuntary connections -- connections for things like product activation, Passport use, etc.
There's a mountain of DSL research that says Bubba was buying DSL (when he bought it at all) primarily for the always-on feature, not for the speed. Folks don't like the dial-up process. Well, Microsoft is heading down a path that will force a lot more dialing up, so it's a safe bet there might be a lot more interest in always-on connections.
Yeah, I know: A chicken-and-egg scenario -- is Microsoft betting that pervasive Internet connectivity means less consumer fussing over the forced connections or are they assuming that people will find easier ways to make connections if they're forced to do it more often? Not sure the answer matters, really... but it's safe to assume XP (or, more likely, the sure-to-be-more-invasive successor to XP) will send more consumers down the broadband path.
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
Okay, under my current set up I pay:
$89/month for 1.5/384 DSL
$30/month or so for phone service
$5-10/month for long distance service
So for $100/month I could get:
8Mb/1Mb data
local calling
500 minutes long distance included (and rest being at like 7-10 cents/minute)
For a power user it was definitely a deal because you get more bandwidth and a consolidated bill.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
for those interested in what ion was offering, check out: http://www.sprintbiz.com/business/ion.html
geek friendly VPS's and free API enabled DNS : zerigo.com
I don't want this to sound like an obituary, but ION really was a great idea. Though it never came to my area, it was just like some of the other FTTH services that we saw earlier in the 90's - voice, data, and eventually video all on one line, through one provider. Admittedly, ION had issues, but overall, the service was good, with plenty of bandwidth, and you got everything from one provider. Plus, as I recall, their TOS/AUP was not as bad as most DSL providers - that is, you could run servers, and add routers/home networks.
In short, it was spectacular service with high prices and low demand. So, it died. Oh well.
The base service was only 1 line I believe, but it was cheap to get up to 4 lines and the 4 line package came with an extra static IP.
:). A linux box, a couple modems, and you can have your own BBS/ISP. Why? Because you can :)
But anyhow, what do you do with all those phone lines? Become a micro ISP of course
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
From the sounds of most of the U.S prices, you still have it a lot better than most of us in the UK.
We've got 1Mbps down / 256Kbps up in our house, which currently costs around £200 a month. (U.S $280 give or take?). It's with one of the better providers, and I understand there's been some decrease in the rates recently, but satan'll be shovelling the snow off his drive before we have anything containing the words "8 Mbit" for less than 5 kerjillion pounds a year.
www.onlinescam.com - May contain nuts
Never saw better then 1024/768. The line was done more then it was up. Ended up having to program SprintION's Tech Support number into my cell phone. The bill was a joke. Got the first bill for $212. Called said and had it corrected, payed $196, then for then for the next 4 months had a credit. Called them and explained the problem. Was told it would be fixed.. NOT.. Finally after six months I moved and disconetced the service. Was told since I broke the 2 year contract I would have to pay $400.00 for the equitment and install. Gave them my new address and waited for the next bill.. It came, still showing a credit.. Never thought I would have a hard time trying to get a company to take my money.. No wonder there going belly up..
_______________________________ Anyone want to lend me a sig???
Most publicly available DSL service is ATM, it's converted to ethernet at the "modem".
ION was only available to a relative handful of people
Nice play with semantics.
Now, seriously.. Not many people really need this 'service'. Sure, it's nice to have less-than-zero ping times for Q3A (or whatever massively multiplayer game thou hast the time to waste playing), or for *loading kernels, but outisde Silicon Valley in the more 'traditional business' areas, not too many people would really need it.
The worst part is that those bandwidth would have to be peak bandwidths, as that much pipe costs an awful lot of money. (Have you priced T3's and OC's lately?)
The dot-bomb implosion, the fall of Nasdaq, the recessionary economy, and the 11-9 aftermath killed 'em. People with the money to spend started to cut their personal costs, and this sort of service went poof.
I believe that the only way to get reliable fat pipe for the forseeable future is from the established telcos, and it's going to be a little more expensive.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
Our Sprint ION setup gives us:
4 phone lines with the goodies (ID, voicemail, yada, yada)
8mbps/1mbps data line
800 mins of long distance included
It was the perfect deal for a house with 6ppl. Besides how many other services could handle 3 ppl playing q3 at the same time with no ping degredation at all?
It's too bad that fell through. I would've surely paid $100 to cover my phone service (local and LD) and 8M/1M of internet. I know a lot of people that would be willing to pay this.
Between this and the whole @Home and other Broadband services going belly up, I hope us geeks can still keep a constant high speed interent connection. I don't know what I'd do without one.
US ahead? You should try Canada! I get a 1mbs connection for USD$25/mo. For the same price, cable offers 3mbs/320kbs (I don't get that much throughput in my area though). For USD$65, you can get 3mbs/800kbs DSL from IStop.com. For USD$130 you can get 6mbs/1mbs or for slightly more, 2.3mbs/2.3mbs on a business line (costs double a residential line). We've got it good up here.
This is my third provider in 1 FING year!!!!!!!!!! I love my ion. fast, nice newsfeed, no qwerst...... guess I am gonna drop another 200$ for broadband........
We were getting the business plan for data-only purposes. That was $256 a month for ~1 mbps upstream and ~5 mbps downstream at our location (zone 2 out of 10 in terms of distance to the switch).
Does anyone know of any competitive alternatives (that hopefully won't die in the next couple of years!) here in the SoCal area? The closest I've seen is wireless T1 (1.5 mbps fully symmetrical) for about $600/month.
Sheesh, how disappointing!
299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Now we just have to hope fiber to the home is successful enough to become wide spread. Geek dream? It's 7Mbps down and 4.5Mbps up....don't know that considered fast enough to make it a dream but...
There's never enough when you have too little
Yeah, but what are you getting for $40? 512kbps? 1MBps? Surely the extra $20 would be worth 8MBps!! I think it would... I pay $55 for 1MBps in Wisconsin.
I don't know what technology ION was (planning on) using, but a company in Denmark, DixaNet, recently folded, after trying to offer the same kinds of service, phone, DSL, fax and various monitoring services.
In Denmark all (including local) calls are metered, and they were trying to offer DSL and non-international calls at a flat-rate, along the tune of $60/mo. - something like half price, even when not making a lot of phone calls.
Apparently they went the dot-bomb way and failed to get second round financing, but it would have been sweet.
Almost everybody could see the fall coming though, it just didn't seem to be a concept that would be able to make ends meet.
Don't make fun of my speling, english is my 2nd language...
My boss has the Sprint ION service here in Austin Texas and he loves it. One of the main problems that I saw with the service, after talking to him about it, is that only homeowners could get the it. No apartments. There goes more than half the market right there.
Warning! Keep Out of Eyes! Wash Out with Water! Don't Drink Soap! Dilute! Dilute!
It wasn't dsl-like, it was dsl. They wanted you to think it wasn't because of all the negative attention dsl has gotten lately, with all the dsl companies around drying up.
It was an interesting concept, but poorly implemented. It used Lucent (Ascend) Stinger DSLAMs, which are not a good choice. It seems the Stinger has one que for all traffic on the access (DSL) side, which meant that your voice data had to wait in line behind your data traffic. I was waiting to get it here to see if you ran into problems with moving tons of data and trying to be on the phone at the same time. Too bad that won't happen.
The service was never meant to be a home service, it was meant for businesses. When that didn't take off so well they switched gears to try to get customers, which is why service areas were lacking for the home market. I know that in Denver for example, if you are not downtown you can forget about it.
This is terrible not just because it was an opportunity to get a lot of bandwidth for cheap that is now gone, but because this is a BIG nail in the coffin for other DSL companies. No one was funding these projects and they have yet another big excuse with this news. Something along the lines of "If Sprint couldn't do it, why do you think you can?" comes to mind.
ft
I don't think the service really worked the way Sprint said it would. A friend of mine got it installed in his apartment (a special case apparently) and he had nothing but trouble from the start. Sprint told him that they tested to his apartment and that he would have the full 8Mbps speed on his connection. After it was installed, he was getting about 1 Mbps but it was bumped to 4 because we have a very good friend who worked in the ION division (I guess not anymore) in their network monitoring area. The voice service was crappy quality and he wasn't happy from the beginning. After two months he got DSL and never looked back. ION looked a lot better on paper than it worked out.
I keep saying (how many posts now... ???) that it is costs/profit that are finally causing companies to sanely get out of the business. Currently there are more than enough contenders selling broadband services at under the cost to provide the service (How many have filled for bankrupcy recently, or come close @Home, Rhythm, Northpoint ???)
They know they can't sell the service for more than $100 because no one would buy it. They know that they can't make money at a 100 dollar price point. Wisely they decide to leave the business alone until profit margins get better
299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Is 'kerjillion' what you British call 1,000,000,000? ;^} (That's one billion for you US blockheads.) Or perhaps 1,000,000,000,000,000?
...is that they aren't widely available. It's the same with traditional DSL. There is a certain percentage of people who want it, but they're scattered over the whole country, many in small towns and rural areas. The buildout costs are high enough that it's expensive to reach these people, but without a sufficient subscriber base, your service will fail. I've dealt with people in areas where getting anything over 33.6 kbps is damn near impossible. For them, ISDN is still high-speed access, and many can't even get that. Satellite? Yeah, it's there, but it's still too costly, and the latency is a huge drawback. Cable? Yeah, when it works, and assuming you have a local staff competent enough to maintain it properly. Wireless? Possibly, but the cost of the radios is way too high for consumers.
There's been talk here about public-access 802.11b networks in cities. That's fine, but small towns could benefit more, assuming you could find a way to get the data out to the Net affordably. These people may not see broadband for a long time unless someone gets really creative.
And as for ION, I would have gotten it if it was available, and I know other folks who would have as well. Perhaps they just couldn't afford to have expanded the service, but expanding into new areas is the only way to succeed. And where was their marketing? I haven't seen an ION ad in years.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
As a (soon former) ION customer, it is/was a good deal:
On my setup known as the XT-2 plan
2 Voice lines - originally VoDSL but now VoIP over DSL
250 Minutes LD included $0.07 after
2 static IP addresses
Data connection with 40msec pings throughout the Sprint backbone (not so good for gaming but it was ALWAYS 40msec!)
1Megbit/sec down guaranteed - I was getting around 2.5Mbps
128Kbps upload guaranteed - 600-900Kbps for me
and I was @ 14278ft
The closer to the C.O. you were the faster it was.
I called my local telco today to start preparing for the shutdown;
DSL $69.95 for 384Kbps-1.5Mbps down and capped at 128Kbps up.
ONE voice line for $34.98 with no calling features other than "standard" Call-waiting and call-forwarding.
So that means for $104.93 I won't have half the capability that I had under ION.
I just wish Sprint had done a better marketing job in few cities they were in, but 4000 customers is a lot with virtually no marketing.
But $4 BILLION is a lot of money over 5 years, so I can't blame them for cutting their loses.
I had read press releases and seen advertising mentioning Sprint "ION" as early as 1999, but I always got the impression that "ION" was Sprint's new corporate philsophy. Little did I know it was a real, useful service that I would have liked to purchase.
One lesson among many to draw from this company's closure is that advertising needs to be blunt. If you are a new business trying to gain customers, there is no room for touchy-feely ads that claim to make life better. If one company says "We sell innovative wireless communication solutions!" and the other says "We sell phone and Internet access to residences for one low price," which would you pick?
Actually, I guess we know which one the VC would pick.
Translation: we made an investment in infrastructure, which should be long-term, but we are unwilling/unable to wait around long enough to start profitting from it.
I don't understand why all of these companies invested in the IT equivalent of water pipes and electrical lines without having the forethought to plan for years before profitability and the patience to wait for that to happen. And no, I am not trolling (well, not intentionally at least).
http://www.ftthcouncil.com/
This is in early field test now in Palo Alto,
also I think in a couple of countries in Europe.
Subscription prices being mooted are in the
$40/mo range. A shakedown test rig simulating
live TV feeds through it is running in a lab here.
Getting the content providers on board is the
biggest if at the moment...
But I refuse to do business with Sprint because they screwed us up once, and caused a lot of damage to my credit history.
Two years ago, we moved to a new house, and thought that we had notified our long distance carrier. But after a month, we figured that Sprint long distance jumped in to take our account, without our consent, and charged us $2.71/min to call NYC. The total charge was about $70. After 6 months of phone calls and tons of frustrations, Sprint even dare to give that to a collection company. And that put a nasty spot on my credit history. Eventually, we tried to get over it and paid the god-damned amount.
However, we swear not to give any business to Sprint anymore. We immediately cancelled all our PCS accounts (two of them, and at an average fee of $180/mo, as we were always over the limit) which we had for more than 2 years.
And we discover Sprint did this to a lot of people, including their long-time customers.
So, even if Sprint can provide any high-speed access at a low cost, and even if I don't have any other alternative, I'll give shit to Sprint.
This ION thingy is born dead, and good for them.
SwitchPointNetworks is rolling out ethernet based internet access in conjunction with local ISP's like WideOpenWest to provide access speeds upto 100Mbps with the possibility of gigabit access. WideOpenWest is bundling internet, cable TV, video-on-demand, and local and long distance telephone service. For $125/month you get 3Mbps bi-directional internet. The problem is availibility. It's taking forever to get to my area.
"Kerjillion", according to the Collins Dictionary [Really Big Numbers Edition] is defined as:
:) I haven't heard that since the last time I picked up a Charlie Brown book.
1. Lots and lots and lots
2. The number 1, followed by a hojillion zeroes
3. Crazy talk, fool.
And thanks for 'blockhead'
www.onlinescam.com - May contain nuts
FuckedCompany post Sprint is going to lay off 6000 people. In the forum it seems a lot of it has to deal with ION.
For me, I will still get on the net with my 56k modem to check e-mail until I got some cash to burn in this tough economy to get DSL...
Yep, I have optimum online also in CT (woodbridge)... they really kickass, VERY fast... one of the best services in the country I believe...
1Mbps up all the time... and I've seen speeds down as much as 10Mbps... rarely though...
He had the same reason for getting ION as I would have if it were available in my area -- not having to pay a single cent to Qwest for their consistenly crappy service. That alone would have made it worthwhile for me.
Hopefully, somebody new will come along and offer the same type of service that ION was providing.
My phone bill averages $60 to $80 a month, depending on how many calls to Europe we make each month.
My broadband internet access is $45/month with nearly defunct @Home. Running any sort of server through my broadband connection, like a mail server to make up for their incredibly unreliable email, is a violation their draconian AUP.
The alternate choice is DSL with PacBell/DSL. The service that allows me to run a server was about $70 a month, the minimum download speed guaranteed is 384k (it could be as high as 1.5M). The upload speed is a paltry 128k (same as @Home). I refuse to sign up for a service that has such a slow minimum guaranteed speed and they won't come to my house and measure it for me before I commit to at least a year of service.
The next higher package from PacBell had very nice upload and download speed, but was priced way out of my budget at about $170/month.
Oh, well. I can keep hoping something will come along that is affordable and unrestricted. Hell, it's not like they need to do anything other than provide a data pipe. I'll handle everthing else.
-- Will program for bandwidth
They are my DSL provider, and I have 8mbit down and 3mbit up FOR ONLY $69 a month. With 3 static ips even :)
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
The few people I know who had it were happy with it. I like the idea of integrating it all. Sprint could do it, you could have one long distance, wireless, local and broadband solution, they should have thrown wireless in. I'd love to have one bill in the $100-$150 range that covered all of my communication needs; if they were smart they'd ink a deal with DirecTV or Echostar to provide DBS as part of the one bill package.. I think the cost issues people are raising are a little beside the point. I think that to get a comprehensive package like that it is going to cost on the order of $100 or more a month. Part of the reasons all these broadband companies are biting the dust is because they were selling something for nothing. In most places, good DSL really costs more than $40 or $50, it jsut can't be that cheap to build out and run and if a few companies chanrge those kinds of prices for it then all the others have to follow suit.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
Working for an ISP, Sprint actual confronted our company and asked if we would provide the data services. This is basically a T1 split into 6-8 voice lines and the rest data (emphasis on basically). It is so damn cheap that they wouldn't make money. It would have been nice for consumers but the last thing we need is Sprint to go under ;)!
that would never happen right????
Get paid to code OSS
I pay about $20/month for 10Mbit full duplex. The ISP uses DHCP and you can connect up to five computers in one apartment.
... ripped off, who's the providerI live in the Uk and get 1Mps down 512 Up for GBP 80 (install was GBP 250), loads of places are doing it.
Don't you mean MB/s
-Scott scott@surrealistic.org
It wasn't only the time it would take to make ION profitable, Sprint, like most other DSL providers, had to work with the Local phone companies to provide service. Those CLECs (?) are not very organized and like any bloated corporation are a nightmare to deal with.
MMDS is a superior wireless technology that has been around for over 30 years. It's currently used mostly for wireless analog CATV service, but all sorts of manufacturers (ie Cisco) are making gear that uses this spectrum. It sits right above that unlicensed 2.4Ghz stuff at 2.5Ghz. MMDS BTA's are generally include a 35-mile radius from a central POP.
We're a small rural ISP in New Mexico and we're looking at teaming up with an MMDS CATV provider to combine our services to provide digital cable along with digital wireless internet at speeds up to 45mbits/s. There is also gear to do VoIP, so we can eventually team up with a CLEC or become one and provide dialtone as well. All over the same pipe. Neat eh?
Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
--Ambrose Bierce
Well, I'm in Kansas City (Sprint's world headquarters), and my understanding is that IONs biggest hurdle was the local telco (Southwestern Bell), which resulted in very limited access.
Also, Sprint is laying off 6000 works and 1500 contract workers, most in KC, looks like crunch time for Sprint.
Re:No wonder it tanked (Score:0, Troll)
by ENOENT on 06:37 PM October 18th, 2001 (#2449452)
(User #25325 Info)
Yup, 8 millibits per second. This counts as the first implementation of IP over humpback whale song, with ones encoded as "AHOOOOOOOOHHHhhh..." and zeroes encoded as "EEEEEEeeeeEEEEEeeEEEEE..."
Not only do you get phenomenal 8mbps download speeds, but also this development brings e-commerce and pr0n to the cetacean community.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I used to work at Sprint, and I recall when they first announced this system -- two years after all the other major players had entered the market. I said it then that it was a day late and a dollar short. Sadly, I turned out to be correct. Poor bastards.
"Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
the 11-9 aftermath
WHAT'S HAPPENNING ON NOVEMBER 9TH!!!!!!
In return I get, local, caller Id, long distance at 9 cents a minute anytime, broadband and 5 STATIC IPS!. The bandwidth I signed up for is 768 kbps (which because it's a MVL line turns out to be around 60 -70 KBps.) AND they don't block any ports and have no problem with you running servers!
The only problem they DO have, is with you competing with them (I read their TOS and they do have a 'no compete' clause.)
So, in short, check w/ you local CLECs and see what type of super deals they might have. And research the company to see if they'll be sticking around for a while too!
For those of you who don't know. CLEC = Competitive local exchange carriers (i.e. The other white meat!)
LFS. Have you built your system today?
At my last place I ordered ION. 9 months later, they started billing us, never having actually installed it. During an unrelated conversation with a corporate sales guy at Sprint, I asked about residential ION and he appologized; sounded really embarassed.
well, that's exactly what's happening. Sprint is tearing down the installations and taking back the hardware.
ION was doomed from the start. "Too little, too late". It's demise carrys right along with the fallout of all the other broadband service providers.
(and don't worry, it was moderated with another account).
This is a job for metamod
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Kickass connection rate - $100/mo Telephone service - included Block of long distance minutes - included The company pulling out and leaving you high and dry - Worthless
If it won't boot, Fsck it!
Well, seeing as the death of anything (Including Sprint's IOS) is a difficult thing to reverse, the bese advice I can give is to give ION 2 aspirin and call me in the morning.
Remember, I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV.
And they couldn't make it work...??? retards...
Damn, there was an article about this that I saw as a yahoo headline a while back; don't remember what news source it came from.
But it was mentioned Sprint Ion and how it was millions/billions overbudget and not making any progress because they vastly underestimated the problem of the last mile, getting from the CO's to the actual peoples' homes.
They'd planned to build this awesome infrastructure to route phone/fax/data over "whatever" it was that they were going to use for the last mile, but when it came to acutally finding a last mile solution, everything blew up on them.
It's sorta sad, since this problem is what plagues the entire country (perhaps the much of the world as well) in getting decent high-speed connectivity into the home. When I'd first lookup up Sprint Ion, I thought "wow, cool. I wonder how they get this level of consistent quality to the home" since for stuff like multiple lines of telephone, you'd need to have some guarantee of line quality since dropped landline calls are pretty unacceptable.
But it turned out to be a big disappointment when there was no great revelation in the solution to the last mile. They couldn't defeat it, it defeated them.
What are some real, commercially viable solutions to the last mile issue? How can we get real decent broadband to the home over long distances?
NBTel in New Brunswick Canada offers a pretty sweet deal. A few years back we had full 10Mbps top the home (Vibe). But that rather costly HFC network is now being deactivated in favour of DSL which has been quite reliable compared to the USA. I get approx 300K/s down and 80K/s up. You can also get digital TV (VibeVision) over your DSL ... so for $115 month I can get telco ($30) and DSL ($40) and long distance ($25) and digital TV ($20).
As much as I know alot of NBTel DSL users do bitch about the DSL service, it actually is HIGHLY reliable when compared to a USA ISP. Want DSL - Move to Canada.
Yes.. there have been a few problems with it every now and then... But other than that, the service has been VERY kick ass.
I get two lines with voice mail and everything on each of them. I also get 750 min a month of free long distance.
Because of the line between me and the CO I only get around 6 meg down, and 700K up.
Their not taking any new customers, but should be letting the current ones stay on it. I don't want to go back to SWBell for phone service.
My uptime is probably (voice and data) around 99% for the last few months. I get the same service that I would expect from a Frac-DS3 that someone pays several K a month for.
A lot of people say that it's a bad idea to have everything bound in one line, but what's the issue with it? It's worked great for over a year with me. I haven't had to give anything up, and even though my voice is VoIP, I can dial out with a normal modem and connect to another modem at 33.6K speeds. That's gotta say something for the voice quality.
And I like grabing my ISO images at 800K/Sec, and the two static IP addy's that I have!
When they launched service in Kansas City, which is Sprint's hometown, there were very very few (like double-digit) folks who could get service. It was basically resold-DSL, and it had to be the highest rate DSL that the local telco could sell, so you basically have to live next door to the switching office. Plus, they were selling local and long distance service in addition to high speed net access, so it wasn't exactly in the best interest of Southwestern Bell to make sure that they could sell the service. SWB, which isn't exactly jumping through hoops to get DSL online either, is quickly being eclipsed by the cable modem service here in Kansas City, which is actually very good.
The biggest suck factor to the service was the marketing. It's been "coming soon" here in KC for at least 4 years. It'll be "available any day now". Crap. It wasn't just ION, it was actual vapor. They had sales people at every Sprint PCS store here, and they couldn't answer any questions about anything. My favorite, though, was the FAQ list posted at their site, which didn't answer the number one question: When are you going to take my money and give me service?
Oh, well. That whole Darwin thing. Sprint couldn't deliver anything, so TimeWarner and ComCast came in and started dominating the market. I kept hearing from folks that worked on ION that they'd be launching a wireless no-SWB service, but it never materialized, just like anything else with ION.
You know Sprint is one of the largest Long distance companies in the world?
You know they have their own INTERNATIONAL backbone?
You know they own local exchanges?
You ever hear of the TAT-14 cable? 640 GIG/Sec dude.. https://www.tat-14.com/
It's a STM-64 cable.. that'll make your OC-12 look piss poor...
Sprint had more bandwidth available that just about any other backbone. You want a OC-48 from London to smalltown, Kansas... Sprint's probably the ONLY carrier that can do it without using anyone else at any part..
There's a big difference between a megabit and a megabyte, a difference which unfortunately only gets abbreviated as "Mb" vs "MB" When someone doesn't seem to know the similar difference between abbreviations of "milli" vs. "mega", you have to wonder whether they've got the bit/byte dichotomy entirely figured out either.
I signed up for their service and waited four months for installation. Two days before the install they sent me a URL to the TOS. When I read the TOS (which had changed since I signed up) I discovered that I had to consent to Sprint's monitoring and selling of my internet usage data. Naturally I canceled my order.
A Broad-Band offering from a company go under?
Man.
I never would've thought that could ever happen...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Sprint's horrid wireless broadband service says the same thing...
We are suspending our effort to acquire new residential and commercial Sprint Broadband Direct customers.
I guess Sprint internet is not doing well right now.
I have a $40 cable modem connection and a $10 digital phone connection from Cox Communications in San Diego county, US. I've seen up to 420kBps (~3.4Mbps) down and about 256kbps up (advertised maximum). My friend has never seen his ION connection go over 4Mbps.
Sure, if I had no choice, I'd buy ION in a second. But with my cable company (occasionally) overdelivering on their promise of 3Mbps and Sprint's service never really going near 8Mbps IMHO ION doesn't have much of a chance against its competition. Sure, cable has its downsides (no static IP, strict "no hosting" policies, etc.) but it still seems like a better deal than ION to me.
www.clarke.ca
ION died because Sprint built a next generation network on your daddy's hardware. Any next generation network uses MPLS and Ethernet these days. Its cheap, scalable, low learning curve and easy to support. ION died because it deserved to. It was built by old ATM heads that shafted you on your ABR. By the way, I have been following ION for awhile and I was just overthere the other day commiserating with the fallen.
Well folks, another Internet/Phone service terminates. Why the surprise? A geek's dream? No, it was a profit nightmare. In fact, the plummeting prices of Internet, long distance and other network services over the past five years have been well beyond what any company anticipated.
.. "adjust" ... their prices to recover full costs.
The reason why these services are being cancelled and so many "CLEC" companies are going bankrupt is because of pure economics - there were too many entrants to the competitive environment.
According to economic reality, there are only a certain number of competitors that the telecom/access market could bear. When the Internet came along, the whole industrialized world went into a frenzy. Suddenly venture capital was affordable. Suddenly the Internet was the "new economy" infrastructure. Suddenly profitable business plans went out the window for excuses like "the Internet is one big land grab" and such statements were enough to get insane ideas money.
Along for the ride were network companies, who were supposedly the infrastructure creators for the new economy. They got money, they started up voice and data services, and the entire network industry became swamped by service providers, and equipment manufacturers.
Now we're facing the hangover of that big Internet party - bankruptcies, cutbacks on service, incredible profit drops, layoffs, and those "ideal, too good to be true" type services like Sprint ION 8mbps were dropped.
Don't be disappointed - learn economics, and think in economic terms, because economics is the science of money, and money is the lifeblood of companies and their ability to offer 8mbps service, plus phone service and LD access.
I see big price increases coming for us in the near future. Cell phone prices will continue to drop, but every time an access provider goes bankrupt, there will be one less competitor in the market and a little less pressure on the incumbent RBOC/ILEC companies, allowing them to
I think we are going to see a return to prices of at least two years ago, if not more, in the next couple of years.
the ION name sounds like microsofts .NET... it means whatever ya want it to.
I had ordered SprintION, and although the sales drone said that they could test the line with my existing DSL, but that was wrong, my line did not qualify and the return call from SprintION claimed it was due to my existing DSL. At that point I just said forget it.
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
What the fuck is wrong with the telcos? I pay almost 120 bux a month for my idsl, thats 12K! both directions. Thats some damn good profit margin on that.
.bomb times. Covad is making LOTS of money, they filled chapter 11 because they borrowed a shitload of money. Rhythems is gone, Northpoint is gone (My apartments highspeed provider, and only high speed access around!)
Why cant the damn telcos understand there are people out there willing to pay over 100 dollars for high speed access and bundle of options?
All the good ISP's are dying out because they leveraged too damn high during the
I'm rather sick of this, I want to pay good money and cause im 16000 feet from the co, I cant get dsl.
-Dsless in Seattle.
It SUCKED.
Anyway, I'm paying 45/month for cable modem, and 30/month for 250/250 nationwide no-roam cell.
And I can walk to Sprint and back during the next set of commercials, and couldn't get ION. Nobody I know in Sprint's hometown could either.
Hmmmm
$100?
Nobody could get it?
I wonder why it's gone.
8Mbps will trash a $50 dsl connection. And 1mbps uplink is like a T1... they cost at least $400, though more like $1200 where I am.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
We already have that in Halifax, from either the telephone or cable provider, for less than US $100.
The telephone provider has local phone, long distance, highspeed Internet (Mpoweredpc) and television (VibeVision).
The cable provider has local phone, long distance, highspeed Internet (EastLink) and (obviously) cable television (including digital channels).
ADSL is capable of 50Mbps down,
SDSL is capable of about 80Mpbs both ways.
Last time I saw a technical limit of Cable, it was 30Mbps, though Cable is a "Shared" service so there's no way you can get that kind of actual speed.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Man, I never realized we had it so good up here in Nova Scotia. The local telco, MTT, has a service called MPowered that piggybacks DSL over existing phone lines. Comparable up and down speeds (~4 or 5 mbps down, 1 up), comes on the same bill as my phone and long distance, all for less that $100 CDN monthly ($35 for phone service, $40 for DSL, ~$20 for long-distance), which I think is like $65US. You can even do the install yourself; they send you a box with some instructions, an SMC USB ethernet device (freebie!), and the DSL modem, and it's pretty much painless. Quite reliable, too, pretty consistent speeds. I pity you poor buggers overseas paying 200 pounds (close to $400CDN) for broadband.
ION is a great service. For a few more weeks at least.
My cost is $150 a month here's what I get:
8Mbps/1Mbps DSL (mine actually clocked out at 6M/800K)
2 static IP addresses
4 phone lines (on one pair wires)
Voice mail
750 minutes of US long distance
1-800 number (well 1-888 number)
In addition, the DSL does NOT use PPOE. The service agreement was very lienient, allowing me to run my own web/mail/etc... services. I couldn't resell any of those services (couldn't become my own ISP) and they had a lot of CYA notes for copyright infringement.
During code red/nimda inbound port 80 was never blocked.
Initial install was a typical DSLHell story, and the whole system for about 4 months. I went through 4 ION boxes before the system stablized. Its been rock solid for the last year and half.
I'm going to miss my ION. It was worth every penny.
Just last week, he told me it was nearing how the business plan expected it to be in early-99.
And no, he couldn't get it, either, because we live more than 100 feet from the switch. We're both on cable/802.11b/Linksys.
Fuck you, Sprint.
i live in seattle and I use sprint ION. my service costs $140 a month and includes 8 megs down 1 meg up + 4 digital phone lines which my dad uses for his company. i must say that the latency on sprints network blows and that my packets go to georgia before they go out onto the internet. even if i go to west coast sites my packets go to the east and back. WTF?!? very frustrating.
-opel
Its not as cheap, but for around $150 / month I get
-2 phone lines
-Cable modem (don't know exact speed, it maxes around 200KBps)
-Cable TV
Since they consider this their premium package, the CaTV includes all channels, and the phone lines have all the extra junk like call waiting, caller id, free intrastate calls, etc...
It all runs over their fiber network, so in a sense its all the same...just not as cool with all VoIP stuff.
~Adam
SPAM
Someone mentioned MS wanting to take over broadband through Windows. I agree to come extent and I think that Teledesic is how they plan on doing it.
.net to work well he needs a fast way to put lots of data into the home. If, and when, this makes it to market it will make a huge splash.
Though MS isn't driectly involved look at the investers: Craig McCaw, Bill Gates, Motorola, Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, the Abu Dhabi Investment Company and Boeing.
What will they offer? 64mbps downlink and 2 mbps uplink for home service. More for business.
I am sure that billg realizes that for
I worked on the Sprint ION project for over a year as a software engineer, and I got to know the system pretty well.
The reasons it ran into such massive monetary and technical problems are involved, and many I don't even know about. But I do know a little, and the ION project is still a fascinating system regardless.
(please forgive the acronyms and jargon, some of this may be a bit obscure if you are not familiar with ATM or switched networks)
Integrated On-demand Network
ION was one of the first projects to bring converged digital services to the consumer/small business. This meant digital phone service in addition to high speed broadband service.
Sprint decided to implement all of these services over an ATM network. ATM AAL2 rt-vbr (realtime variable bit rate) was great for carrying compressed voice traffic over switched digital networks. AAL5 was used for IP transport (ala classical IPoATM). And for management of the end point devices, the RISH's as they called them (Residential Integrated Services Hub) there was an ATM AAL2 cbr (constant bit rate) connection.
So, you had a DSL line rated at 8Mbps downstream and 1.5Mbps up. Over this DSL connection was an ATM layer, which in turn supported the three PVC's mentioned above for voice,data and signalling/mgmt.
At the time, the speed itself was a big plus. 8Mbps/1.5Mbps was way more than most DSL providers offered. In addition, you also got four phone lines that shared the voice pvc. Four phone lines and data over a single copper pair!
The voice channels were configured for VBR ATM traffic, which meant that you only used part of your 8/1.5Mbps bandwidth for voice traffic when you were actually making calls. For every call in progress you ate about 64kbps of bandwidth. As soon as the call was released, the bandwidth was again available for data communications.
The business oriented ION service allowed you to plug in as many voice lines as you wanted (up to about 32 max, simply plug in more voice cards) and could use T1 or HDSL connectivity depending on your configuration. And again, you only ate into the data bandwidth when calls were actually in progress.
Those are all the well known features, but there was also a lot of possibilities that Sprint had dreamed up for ION.
Since everything from Sprint's internal backbone out all the way to the customer's RISH was ATM, you could configure ATM SVC's with true Quality of Service. Were arent talking IP URGENT flags, this is true, real time quality of service. Things like video conferencing between ION customers was possible, with no jitter, no degraded voice quality. it was perfect. And only ION had the capability to provide such high quality of service features directly into the home (you need ATM for this level of QoS)
Video on demand was another popular topic. Internet video suffers from all kinds of congestion and low bandwidth. ION promised high speed DSL service with ATM QoS that would provide seemless, high quality video transmission.
In short, ION had a number of strong technical features in the architecture itself, which could provide a number of services which could never be supported over traditional internet broadband.
"On the bleeding edge, you simply bleed..."
That was a favorite quote made by a fellow developer. ION was ambitious. And everything about ION seemed to call for bleeding edge technogloy, from networking equipment to development tools, to provisioning and managment.
The network layer, HDSL, ATM AAL2/5 PVCs to the home was technically challenging. The switches required to take multiple OC3 connections from the DSLAM's that all the RISH's connected to had to support ATM AAL2 vbr, AAL5, and IP over ATM. These were incredibly expensive switches to handle the SVC soft switching and IP ATM routing/switching. Every regional location had to have one of these bad boys and at a price of roughly 2.5 million each, they racked up a steep cost very quickly.
ATM is also a switched networking protocol. For every customer, there were three PVC's which had to be manually provisioned into the various ATM switches and DSLAMs. On top of that, every voice connection (phone line) required an SVC to be setup, and connected to the desired location. Soft switching telephone networking was and is a relatively new system, and it was both expensive and difficult to maintain.
The software developed in house to support ION was also complex. Everything from order entry to configuration to network provisioning was supposed to be automated. This required a lot of diverse groups within Sprint to coordinate and interoperate using CORBA and other messaging / middle ware. Getting such a system operational and stable proved to be a very difficult and costly affair. The number of steps between an operator entering an ION customer order, to a network technician installing the device, to servers providing the RISH firmware and configuration data was high. There were a lot of points of failure, and getting this massive set of software systems to work was a major source of time and money drain.
"Timing is everything..."
In short, ION was a bit ahead of its time, and due to various delays, it didn't become available it its truly usefull form until it was already too late. The economic slowdown and broadband crunch started towards the end of 2000, and ION really didnt reach a viable point for widespread deployment until mid 2001. The timing was bad, and the ambitious and challenging nature of ION proved to be too costly in both time and money.
I am really sad to see it go. I put a lot of time and effory to write code that was supposed to be part of a new kind of communication infrastructure. I worked with a lot of really smart people there who also put a lot of effort into it, and most of them (actually, almost all of them) have been laid off as of last week.
ION itself had a lot of promise. High speed internet access and phone service was just the beginning of what it could provide.
I'm impressed that ION even managed to become something you could write a specific description about. A friend of mine who worked on ION for a while initially described it as "sales tracking software, already in version 4.0, without customers, and not ready for release." It morphed endlessly as different peoples' egos got hold of it. A recent VP said of it "All I can say is this: we will sell it, people will buy it, and it will be called ION."
Entropy gets everyone.
The only local service that doesn't pay for itself are some rural lines. SBC been feeding you kool aid?
Am I spoiled, or does net access in the States suck just that much?
$40CDN gets me 6Mbit down, 1MBit up cable access.
$30CDN gets me my phone service.
I pay as I go for long distance. I don't use it a whole lot.
So, that's a grand total of $70CDN a month. Factor in that it's Canadian money, and that's a mere $45US.
You're the people pioneering this technology. Don't take it sitting down. It's pretty pathetic that your telcos are bullying you into those prices.
We had high hopes for this service but, even in the e-mail, it was pointed out that the "last-mile" problem was one that even Sprint couldn't overcome.
I can't pretend to speak for all of Sprint (nor can I legally) but we really do want to provide good service to our customers (especially in the division I work for) and, moreover, I was hoping to personally play a part in building the first Wireless Internet Backbone from the ground up. Maybe I'm too ambitious, I realize, but I had a personal stake in it...after Covad went Chapter 11. I'll give you 10 guesses as to who provides my DSL service...
[Raging against the heavens] Dammit! If WE don't provide wireless service then who will?? AT&Fee? AOHell? Specific Hell and all the Baby Hells? Not a pretty thought, pricewise...AT&T just upped their long-distance prices. Heh...take a look at the prices per minute for long distance on a PCS service (yes, even on Cingular or one of the others) and you'll see that it costs LESS to call long-distance from a PCS phone than from a landline!!
It wasn't good news for any of us...
I've got roughly 3-4 mbps downstream and upstream from Cablevision in NJ. It goes down about once a month, but boy is it fast.
Oh, and it costs $29.99/mo in addition to my regular cable bill.
-ted
10MBs no limits on up or down...and you get phone data and tv for $100
I had (have!) this service. The only problem I had is that whole area codes could not be reached directly from my phone (I live in Denver and could not call anywhere in Colorado Springs, for example).
The other phone issue was that for as long as I've had it, Caller ID has worked about three times out of hundreds of calls.
I never did bother to get either issue resolved (who uses phones anymore?), but I'll miss the service - I found the speed a lot better than other solutions (I used to have Qwest DSL).
Slashdot was the first I'd heard of this - Oh well, back to the Broadband drawing board!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We use Sprint for our leased lines connecting 5 different corporate locations together, for our long distance voice communications, and for our Internet T1. Over the last year, I've literally logged pages and pages of trouble tickets, both proactive and initiated by us, for problems on their circuits. Despite paying for a 99.9% guaranteed uptime, we've had circuits down for close to 24 hours at a time.
Often, the problem gets forwarded to the local telco, who comes out to the site, swaps out the "smartjack", and declares it "all fixed" - only to have the line start going up and down a few minutes after they leave.
The telco typically points the finger at Sprint, and their people point it back at the telco's lines and/or hardware - until eventually someone fixes it. (Then, you never really get a complete or straight answer about what the problem was.)
I really don't know if other communications companies do a better job or not. We had MCI in the past and they gave us similar headaches. That's why we mass-switched everything to Sprint. But then, MCI and Sprint announced the merger and things went downhill again.
Since this is how they treat a corporate customer with a service-level agreement, I don't expect anything decent out of them at all at the consumer level.
In fact, when I used Sprint for my L.D. service, I had all sorts of billing mistakes. They'd bill me for calls I never made and I had to argue repeatedly to get credits for them.
I don't know about now. But as Cox was putting the fibre optic network together in the Hampton roads are. They were offering the same with the @Home service. Not sure about how much the monthly pay was though. I think I remember ed it at around $100 myself, or really close in the neighborhood. If anyone is from the area they couls always check.
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Check-out the rates at:
http://www.istop.com/residential.html
I'm paying $35.95CDN = $22.78US (including modem rental) for 1.2Meg DSL from some other provider (BTW, mine is non MDU unlike the ones above).
... don't know, but lots gets rejected...
especially difficult when you really have absolutely no idea wh the criterias are on acceptance and rejection. There are some pretty moronic postings that gets accepted now and then...
*2001-10-18 05:09:07 Anthrax Island in the Ural Sea (articles,news) (rejected)
I'm anonymous for a reason. This is good, helpful info.
"Call Sprint IBO NOC tomorrow at 1-800-232-6895 option 3. Request to speak to an NTAC III or a lead tech [preferably Frank Edwards]. Have Frank check the loop the nearest DCS [out in telco land] back towards your equipment. Clear the counters on your serial interface and ping through that loop. I can almost guarantee that you will see errors. If you do see errors, have Frank move the loop to the Smartjack, again facing your equipment. Run a ping test to that loop. If you see errors, begin suspecting either telco equipment or your own.
It is cheaper to test your equipment first. If Sprint dispatches a CPE tech to your premises and discovers the problem to be with your equipment, you will get billed. A lot.
Have Frank wait while you put a loopback plug outside your CSU, and run the ping test again. If you don't get errors, it's almost definitely a faulty Smartjack that telco did not catch. If you get errors, you need to contact your CSU or router vendor for a replacement.
If this still doesn't fix your problems, rather than complaining on /. where you will get nothing accomplished, contact your Sprint Account Team. Tell them you request a CPE dispatch to prove Sprint connectivity: the CPE tech must bring a TBerd test-set to leave at your premises overnight, connected between your Smartjack and your CSU. If the TBerd counters show errors coming from 'network', it's a Sprint problem. If the counters show errors coming from local, your equipment is undisputably at fault. "
I would just like to pay one low fee for the services - phone service (2lines), cell, broadband & dialup (for away from home), digital TV. And give me unique features like forwarding home phone to cell, caller id, voicemail - package it all up so I get more and more discount the more services I souce from a single company.
Anyone ever read the TOS?
They owned the data passing through the network. Yes, your info, or your company info. Viewing porn was a TOS violation as was hosting a website, mail server etc.
Pretty ugly TOS and one that I would never sign off on.
I have that service here in Korea... 8Mbps down/1.5Mbps up ADSL. Very nice, very cheap. About $45 a month... Pure joy.
I don't know about you but I've been hearing the same thing for over 25 years on everything from new residential services to ISDN to ADSL and everything in between.
Here's a generic news blurb. Cut and paste it into your next announcement about the death of a phone company's attempt to do something:
"(company name) announced today they were discontinuing their (service name) service. After much hoopla (company name) discovered several severe technical and financial problems associated with the rollout. (Company name) over estimated customer demand and did not anticipate customer backlash from poor service quality, unreliability, longer than anticipated provisioning times, poor customer service and recurring billing problems. (CEO's name), (company name's) CEO announced that no new customers would be accepted, existing customers would be discontinued immediately and those customers should receive partial billing credits in the next 3 months. In a related note (company name) announced 1,500 layoffs associated with the closing of their (service name) service subsidiary. Financial markets responded by hiking the stock price 3%. (Company name) also announced they have filed for a rate increase with the FCC.
So when my ISP goes down, how do you call someone to get it fixed? Joking somewhat, but there are advantages to having different services over different lines.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Hello all, ;-) Anyway, we all used to hear how advanced we would be in the 21st century, and how we would look back at the 80s and think of how primative we were. Well, except for mullets, I don't think we've really hit that techno-evolutionary stage yet. Sure, we have GHz processors, and terrabit networks, but we don't make use of them, and therein lies the problem.
;-)
I have been thinking of this problem for quite some time. Pondering what consumers would pay for, while also pondering what is feasible. I don't know of any answer for the right now, but maybe for the future.
Here we are, in the 21st century, and where's Duck Dodger? He's only got 50 years till show-time.
I look at the Apple Macintosh. Great piece of hardware. I personally use PCs, simply because I'm a super-nerd, and I like it that way. If I had the money, I'd own one of each. Now, look at how Apple has evolved over the years. Their processor architecture, their software, everything. Every time Apple comes out with something new, it _replaces_ the technology that came before it. They don't spend all their time with backward compatability all the way back the the Lisa. Now, compare that to Intel/MS. They spend a tremendous ammount of time and resources doing just that. The latest p4 can still run apps from the original 8086 chips. This has stopped them from making an efficient and high-performance chip architecture for years, and will continue to do so until they give up the effort.
Now, you're probably wondering what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks this has to do with the topic at hand. Well, quite a bit actually. You see, the telco companies are trying to build tomorrows networks with hardware that has been in place since the sixties, and possibly even earlier. Yes, they have made some changes (i.e. electronic switches), but for the most part, things are the same. You pick up the phone, and hear a dial tone. So, what do they need to do? Surely they can't just stop using the current system. That would leave many outer-limits towns without service. Enter data networks.
Data networks have been around for decades. Nearly as long as the telephone system. The difference is, in thet networking industry, there have been _major_ revolutions. We have come from coupler-type modulators/demodulators (modems for those that don't know their heritage) to terra-bit fibre networks at the bottom of the English channel. Quite a difference, let me tell you. We have gone from transfering a few bytes ber second to transfering the library of congress in a few seconds. That's what I call revolution.
So, what I feel the phone companies need to do is get together, define a standard, easily upgradable, fault tollerant network that they can all share the cost of operation, implementation, and repairs. Kinda sounds like the U.S. Power pool, doesn't it?
Fibre Optic networks make for high speed, and expandability, and they're getting cheaper by the minute, leaving little doubt that an initiative such as this would breathe new life ino the industry.
Additionally, this would mean fewer switches required to keep low latency, and fewer "lines" for the same number of customers. What's more is the fault tollerance. Most OC-x networks have a sort of loop-back, which is the way the internet was supposed to work. This allows for an entire segment to dissappear from the network and not interrupt service on either "side" of the anomolie.
Fibre optic networks would also mean more services to the home. For instance, one "wire" truly could serve video, data, and voice to a home wothout even flinching, which is a far cry to the pairs that run telephone to homes these days. Additionally, bandwidth is limited only to the light spectrum, which fibre optic lines can carry, so as advancements are made, only the physical hardware needs to be replaced, allowing for an extended life span for the lines on the poles.
I plan on writing a paper on this matter, which will look at several technical and financial challenges, not that I have any "industry say", but I do have consumer push. So, keep an eye out for it if this topic interests you. Anyway, that's just my $0.02US.
Right now, I'm gettting a long distance plan and 3.2mb/s down wireless internet for $35.00 a month. Anywhere in Salt Lake City Utah (and even as far north as Layton) where someone is in direct line of site with the west mountains can get this connection. It has kind of a high latency, and only .14 mb/s up, but 400 Kilabytes a second download is nice.
Time Warner (now part of AOL yuk!), still doing alright in the broadband/cable delivery market, is coming out with a new all-in-one service that is over the truly versitile medium, RG6. The only overcomming that must be made with RG6 (or commonly known as coxial cable) is segregation of RF transmission on the line itself -- once that can be done efficiently (which Time Warner excells at) -- you can get truly amazing speeds (~ +/- 14 Mbps). The question is, do they (or anyone else) have the upstream to support it?
The all-in-one system, which I can't talk too much about due to an impeding NDA, is scheduled for first-quarter next year, but you know how technology is. I am currently testing one that has a beautiful Cisco RG6ethernet/telephone (propritery protocol)/digital cable (encrypted stream)/VOD(video on demand)/VoXip (voice over IP) - routing/bridge (brouter).
They even have plans to have fibre to your house within several years.
Derek Alfonso, Host
The Power of Information
http://powerofinformation.net
National Tech Talk Radio
But as an ION user for > 1 year, it's obvious why the business failed.
I was talking with a customer today and he stated that there are two packages, the $100 package has 2 phone lines. The $140 package gives you 4 telephone lines and a 800 number. seems like an ok deal. It also comes with a certain amount of long distance minutes.
Just got my notice from Sprint. I've had ION xt2 :(
service since February. They're giving me two weeks to get other service.
Unfortunately, until they showed up, there was nothing, not even cable (AT&T) and that's not yet ready to roll, either.
I had some troubles with them, but most (3) were Qwest fucking up by highjacking my line since "it wasn't in their database" so they though it was dark copper.
Nice and fast, it was. I shall miss it. And I shall be in pain, since now I'll have to get a phone line from Qwest again, and dealing with them is a study in masochism.
It was nice having all one bill too. Hell, I'll just sum up the deal:
3500kbit down (advertised 8000kbit, but that's if your house is next door to the CO)
800kbit up
local phone
long distance phone w/ 400 free minutes/month
Earthlink ISP (never had problems with them, but I never dealt with them much - just their gateway IP and DNS IP)
all for ~$145/month after taxes and the usual telco charges.