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200mbps DSL On Its Way?

An anonymous reader writes "I came upon a news story about Texas Instruments developing a new DSL technology which will allow ISP's to boost their bandwidth to 200mbps (Yes, mega bits per second). The UDSL service, as it is dubbed, is backwards compatible with current DSL technologies such as VDSL and ADSL. This should get many cable internet users, like myself, a second look at DSL." Update: 06/15 01:26 GMT by T : "mps" and "mbs" both de-mangled.

28 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. Problems with this by DarkHelmet · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I can imagine hordes of "geek apartment buildings" sprouting up next to central offices.

    They never mention what kind of distance you have to be from a node in order for this to work. I imagine all these "geek apartment buildings" are next to the C/O ;)

    Also, will the telecos even have the bandwidth from the node, onward to really sustain that kind of bandwidth? I mean, we're looking at OC-3 speeds, right? I can imagine their pip getting saturated.

    Finally, what good is this if ISP's shut down anyone who use "too much bandwidth" anyway? We're already at that scenario with 1.5 meg/sec constantly. What about 200? Egh.

    --
    /^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
    1. Re:Problems with this by Oculus+Habent · · Score: 5, Insightful

      will the telecos even have the bandwidth

      This was my immediate thought. Sure, it's a great concept, but there's no practical application for home use. You might see this in very large business or site-to-site communication - both in place of OC-3 lines.

      Don't expect 200Mbps for general home use any time soon. The costs to provide that much bandwidth, even ridiculously oversold, are too high.

      --
      That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
    2. Re:Problems with this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful
      You guys arent thinking at all....

      The Telcos will use the b/w to provide streaming movies, holographic video conferencing, or whatever the next gen services are from their own networks. As you say, providing 200Mbps to the Net for every customer is likely to be costly.

    3. Re:Problems with this by Amiga+Lover · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Sure, it's a great concept, but there's no practical application for home use. You might see this in very large business or site-to-site communication

      I remember hearing almost the exact same thing said when rumors of 56k modems started to filter down to newsgroups.

    4. Re:Problems with this by JamieF · · Score: 3, Insightful

      >Imagine a HD TiVo, recording and watching 3 different shows/movies at the same time, pumped through your DSL line.

      Or imagine broadcast TV or cable, doing the exact same thing but with DRM'd content just the way that the owners of the content like it. You want ShareReactor + eMule over a T3 and they want DirecTV. They have lawyers and lobbyists and you have...?

      Imagine all the cease and desist orders you could get over that much bandwidth.

      Let's face it, folks, the last mile is NOT the problem. What exactly would you use it for? There are some very rich, powerful people damming a river, and dredging the river downstream isn't going to make the water flow much faster. For everyone to have ultra broadband would be the ??AA's worst fucking nightmare.

    5. Re:Problems with this by sethstorm · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, it's not "not ready for home use", it's "still viable for overcharging". Given that Sweden's had 10mbit for a long while for less cost (and similar equipment) means that the US ISP's will only give it to the home user when it is at the cusp of being no longer viable in meaningful use to anyone else. If anything, that even says that a lot of overcharging from the core to the edges is occurring and that includes everyone from the equipment providers (Cisco being one of the prominent examples) to pipe providers, secondary services and the ISPs that serve "home users" (such as Comcast, the ISP that screws their customers). This is where being a bit greedy starts to bite back at innovation in the States, but thankfully there are intelligent ISPs that know this problem. However, they are quite limited in their solutions given that virtually everyone around them has decided to screw over the customer. When companies start thinking about the customer over the money that comes from them including everyone down the line, we might be able to see the newest stuff reach us faster.

      --
      Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
  2. I think.... by Digitus1337 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That we've all learned the disappointing lesson that lab results don't tend to display the same capacity in the real world.

  3. Perhaps now by Tokerat · · Score: 4, Insightful


    They'll actually let us use the bandwidth they provide to us without restricting/overcharging us?

    Nah.

    --
    CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
  4. How much bandwidth will actually go through? by ThisNukes4u · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The only question now is how much of this theoreticial bandwidth will actually be passed along to subscribers. There is only so much bandwidth on a fiber line that most isp's are using to feed current cable and dsl lines, and current cable and dsl are able to transfer at higher speeds than most are being used at. Seems to me more like a formality.

    --
    thisnukes4u.net
  5. Units by jsweval · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I wasn't aware that Mps or Mbs were units of transfer speed.

  6. isp's by flacco · · Score: 5, Insightful

    and your isp will still cap your drooling consumer connection at 256k upstream.

    --
    pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
  7. RTFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is not going to be consistently faster than ADSL or VDSL... They said most of the time the speed will be like ADSL or VDSL depending how far you are.

  8. Re:Go Little Bells! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... and they'll still complain bitterly if you actually act as if you have some right to use that capacity.

  9. Spam spam SPAM! by mcrbids · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I remember reading not too long ago that 80% of SPAM is relayed through virus-laden open relays.

    Can you imagine the amount of SPAM a 24x7 200 Mb connection can generate? /Shudders

    --
    I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
    1. Re:Spam spam SPAM! by mrhaleon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actually, most spam these days is relayed through worm-created open proxies. Open Relays have their part too, but are far less numerous and thus far less often the source of the spam. Stop spam, apply your patches and remind others to do the same.

  10. They should concentrate..... by dcigary · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...on their current technology first.

    I still can't get DSL at my house, one that was built 7 years ago in a new neighborhood. The cable company had no problem getting it out here though.

    Sorry, but availability rules over bandwidth. The bandwidth of a non-existant connection is 0mps.

    --
    ...my Karma ran over your Dogma...
  11. Re:That’s assuming... by bizitch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You forget what the "killer app" for this is...

    HDTV

    The telcos are sick of getting there asses kicked by Cable in the broadband/tv/telco arena.

    Right now they are trying to have a go at it with bundleing DSL with DirectTV - but that aint flying so well.

    If they can pump out bits this fast it would make them quite a formidible player in the "Convergence" field.

    They've already cranked their infrastucture everywhere with DSL repeaters to get around the CO distance issue - Rolling this out shouldn't be a big deal.

    Amazing to contemplate it though - 200mps Internet, Telco, HDTV - all on a single pair of CAT3 - wow!

    --
    ---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
  12. Re:Well...cable still rules since by squidinkcalligraphy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    RTFA - at that speed they can offer HDTV and other video and voice services over DSL.

    --
    "I think it would be a good idea" Gandhi, on Western Civilisation
  13. Yes, but... by callipygian-showsyst · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...if you download more than 1G/month, the ISP will pull the plug on you for excessive bandwith use!

  14. Two questions... by John+Seminal · · Score: 3, Insightful
    On Monday, the chipmaker announced Uni-DSL, or UDSL, which raises the bandwidth of digital subscriber line technology to the level necessary to deliver high-definition television (HDTV) signals and other advanced video services

    This raises the question of how much bandwith is required for HDTV? I thought cable already was delivering this content. Does that mean a cable line can deliver more than the 200-300kbs I am getting now (on a good day).

    The second question I would have is how fair will this be? When cable modems came out, they were available in the richest communities first. Then it spread to the middle class communities. I have a freind who lives south of chicago who wanted a cable modem 2 years ago (for his mom, who refuses to move out of her childhood home which is in a deprived neighborhood), and AT&T at the time was not offering broadband in his neighborhood. Yet I got mine a year before he asked for his. And what is worse is when the cable modem came out, a friend of mine who lives less than a mile away from me got his 18 months before I got mine, and he got a better deal. The cable company has raised the price twice since then. So for those who would say the first people pay for making the technology available to all, I would question that assumption.

    --

    Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."

  15. Re:Well...cable still rules since by Billobob · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The speed may be great and all, but I still HATE the cable company. Price hikes rapidly exceeded the rate of inflation, a price hike when you have cable internet and not TV, whats not to like? *cough*

    --
    If you have to ask, you'll never know.
  16. Re:Go Little Bells! by Fooby · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Huh? You are seriously getting screwed over if your phone company is oversubscribing their DSL service. DSL is point-to-point, straight from your house to the CO, there is no "segment" like you have with cable service. I've always gotten the advertised 1.5 Mbps or better from Verizon, cheap too by American standards. Unfortunately the 128Kbps uplink still blows, and they block port 80 so no running webservers on standard ports--though of course any servers are technically against the contract.

  17. But it's from the phone company so forget it by gelfling · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Seriously - you will never get it since it's from the phone company. All that will happen is that the phone companies will offer large businesses the same bandwidth they've had before for the same rate except that it will cost the phone company much less to deliver.

  18. It would be nice if they just gave us ADSL by RhettLivingston · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We would have had 7Mbaud almost a decade ago if the phone companies hadn't sabotaged ADSL. They reduced the power so that they wouldn't have to do home visits, then found out after deployment that there was still too much interference and filters were necessary anyway. Thus, they knocked us from the original specification to 1.5Mbaud for no real reason.

    At least that's the party line. My feeling is that they aren't ready for true competition and are doing everything they can to keep the rate low enough to delay the onset of VOIP.

    I see no incentive for them to give us a generation that skips several though that is certainly the right thing to do. Putting the infrastructure in their hands has reduced it to a new tech every 6 years or so. At that rate, they should be shooting for at least a 16 times increase with every rollout. And the ADSL generation was rolled out years later and 4 times slower than what it should have been. So, at this point, we're so far off the curve it seems hopeless.

  19. Re:That’s assuming... by Trejkaz · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's also assuming that they actually deliver on the 200Mbps to any mere mortal. Because as noted in the article:

    According to the DSL Forum, there are roughly 73.4 million DSL subscribers worldwide. Most of them use ADSL services, which typically offer 8mbps of downstream bandwidth at distances of up to 5 or 6 kilometers.

    ADSL at 8Mbps? I wish!

    --
    Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
  20. Re:Death for home use of wireless by PierceLabs · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm not sure how you equate this with death. It just means that the wireless providers will rachet things up to provide faster speeds.

  21. Coverage by Wild+Bill+TX · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wish more time was spent making broadband more widely available. I am stuck on dialup (2KB/s at that!) due to my geographical location. I'm sure that many people, myself included, would be happy just to have typical DSL speeds where they live.

  22. Re:Well...cable still rules since by lidocaineus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Who cares about faster? I want a steady, low latency connection with decent upload. Sorry, but cable, while good at times, can frequently and easily fall into overpopulation on a segment, much moreso than any other data delivery method. I know, I've been there; I've had a few good years with AT&T, so good in fact that I didn't mind the bleh upload. When Comcast came around, they oversubscribed, didn't do anything about it, and suddenly not only were my downloads hovering around 200k/sec, latency started TOPPING 1000ms and routers were dropping packets left and right.

    Most of us want the low latency connections and a decent upload, especially if you run a server at home. Good DSL providers (SBC, Verizon, and Earthlink do not fall into *good*) do not use PPPoE, offer (multiple) static IPs, and don't care if you run as many servers as you want as long you are not abusive. I may be lucky in that I only pay $60 a month for 1.5 down and 1000 up with 5 static ips, but I'd gladly pay over $100 for that compared to the gee-whiz-I've-got-3mbps-down-but-256k-up glorified dialup line, which is almost useless to me (and anyone that makes good use of a home server).