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Fiber-to-the-Home Internet, TV, Phone in One Box

Brian Stretch writes "This looks like a really neat toy. Internet (PPPoE), CATV, DBS, telephone over one fiber optic cable to the converter box that breaks it down into 10BaseT Ethernet, coax, coax, and three POTS lines. I'd prefer more Internet bandwidth, and DBS and HDTV (from over-the-air broadcast) instead of DBS and CATV... but hey, these things could whack both Ameritech and Comcast in one shot. Is anyone familiar with these or any competing devices?"

4 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Oh well,... by aralin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    .... this is the technology, but well, where is the service provider? And how much they are going to charge? Honestly, if this really gives you satelite+cable TV, 3 phone lines and 10BaseT, I'm willing to pay up to $300 a month for it.
    Of course, if I get the 10BaseT dedicated up to some reasonable backbone *inno*

    Well, way to go...

    --
    If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
  2. Re:Acronym-tastic! by carm$y$ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Can you also spell "HUGE single point-of-failure"?
    After all, I'd like to be able to call (as in phone-call) if the CATV or internet access goes down...

    --
    -- No sig today
  3. Re: The tech's here, the roll-out SUCKS. by Raetsel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Let's see... prices would be (including taxes...)
    • $30 for the first phone line
    • $40 for the additional lines ($20 each)
    • $60 for premium cable

      Total: $130

    That leaves $170 to pay for the 'net access. It'll certainly get you a nice connection... but it'll be a while before that buys you 10-Mbit.

    My ISP charges $1200/month for 7.1-Mbit (down) & 768-Kbit (up), unmetered transfer DSL. Those speeds are only offered to 'business' class service, and thus include the right to run servers & host a couple domains. What it doesn't include is what our local ILEC (Verizon) will charge you for the circuit. Still, we can probably not consider that, as the cable company owns the 'circuit' anyway. Quite an eye-opening bandwidth bill.

    Take a look at the Cisco uBR 925. It includes two RJ-11 POTS ports. Okay, so it's not three but I don't have teenagers. This device is capable of 10 Mbit/sec (limited because they installed 10-base instead of 100-base). Why aren't more of them installed? Why aren't we getting phone service over cable?

    (I'm not going to address pay-TV service, since you're already plugging this thing into it!)

    ...

    Ya got me. I'd say it's because the cable companies are in bed with the phone companies, and they both are milking things for all their worth. Just because something is available, possible, (both physically and financially!), and desirable doesn't mean it's going to happen.

    Heck, look what happened to the XFL -- and they had Jesse "The Mind" Ventura!

    But I'm cynical. I've pointed that out before. And it probably clouds my judgement.

    --

    "...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
  4. only 10baseT data? lame! by sommerfeld · · Score: 2, Insightful

    hard to see why they wouldn't put 100baseT in the box -- they can always soft-limit folks to 10mbit/s or 1 mbit/s but keep the option of selling bigger pipes to those who have the ca$h..

    someone's pinching pennies and that will hurt them in the long run.