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Phonelines: Not Just For POTS And High-Speed Internet?
EEGeek writes "With the advent of DSL a couple years back (1996 I believe), the capacity of simple twisted pair has gone from just POTS/Analog modems to high-speed internet, and now beyond. Recently the local phone company here released a new service, where you get television over the phoneline. They give you a set-top box, and a dsl modem, and you can surf the web, and watch tv on your television. you can also connect a computer or two for high speed internet. My question is, has anyone heard of any phone companies that have done this already? Have you heard of other interesting technologies over twisted pair, for example VoIP? This new service works really well, I'm extremely impressed with it." I remember being pitched movies-by-phoneline when I ordered DSL a few years ago, but have heard nothing since. Anyone with good or bad things to say about such service?
AT&T was planning on doing this in a big way, building huge amounts of infrastructure for the task. POTS really doesn't have the bandwidth to carry the same number of channels as coax; instead, the line would only be used to carry a few channels, which would be switched at the central office. It would have been a massive video-on-demand service with TiVo-like capabilities.
If I remember correctly, AT&T dropped their plans or put them on ice when the FCC decided cable companies had to allow other ISPs to sell their service over the cable lines. A similar ruling against the new POTS-carrier service would have made the investment unprofitable, and AT&T was waiting to see what would happen.