Slashdot Mirror
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.
With what? There is only so much you can download and only so much you can upload. Unless someone is going to put slashdot or even better, fileplanet on one of these, then the phone company will not get saturated.
Furthermore, the ISP can monitor bandwidth usage. They don't have to shut anyone down, just follow a nice formula. Full speed up to X bandwidth used in a month. 10% speed for next X bandwidth used in a month. 10% of that speed for X more bandwidth used in a month... etc. etc.. Speed gets reset for next billing cycle. If they stagger billing cycles (not all on the same day), then their pipes will be free :)
It mentions "at distances greater than 1 kilometer" it's comparable to current ADSL offerings. Whoopty doo. ADSL has a range of about 3 miles from the central office or nearest remote station. For the metric impaired, 1 kilometer is about 0.62 miles.
A circle with a radius of 0.62 miles centered on a C/O (thanks to handy Google calculator) covers an area of about 1.2 square miles. Similar math has standard ADSL covering an area just over *28 square miles*.
So we're looking at a technology that meets current VDSL speeds in a coverage area less than 5% of the size offered by standard ADSL. How much freaking smaller do you have to go to offer UDSL?
If we have to go 5% again (and that's being generous), we're looking at having to be closer than 0.14 miles to the C/O (225 meters).
Right now I live close enough to my C/O to get a 7Mb connection. I only have a 1.5. With this technology I'd probably be one of the few to benefit and maybe see that top range peak out at 10 or 20Mb. But seriously, this tech means jack to the average DSL customer who's usually using it because a.) they can't get cable or b.) has a grudge against cable or is c.) stealing cable.
Imagine a HD TiVo, recording and watching 3 different shows/movies at the same time, pumped through your DSL line.
Exactly. And, imagine the Telco hosting that data. That's the whole point of technologies like this; minimize the peering requirement, but maximize the data that the end-user wants to get.
is that the telcos will allow people to use the bandwidth but charge for the throughput. I mean-- if the pipe is saturated, then people will still get a reasonable speed. However, we are still dealing with USDL in short distances, then VSDL, the ADSL on the same equipment, just varying the distances.
Personally, I think that twisted pair might be endangered in the long run. Where I am (rural central Washington), the new trend is to run fiber to peoples' houses at least in the small towns (a few small towns are going wifi, but that is another matter). My telephone and 2mb/s internet shares the same fiber at a rate if $51/month.... (Geeks should move here), and I recently upgraded to their $100 offering and bought 2mb/s *symetric* so I can host customers' web sites here.
Note that this is their *residential* offerings. Business offerings can start out at 5mb/s down at least for $9.95 plus telephone lines!
How do the ISP's and telcos make money at this rate? Easy. I am allowed to transfer up to 10GB of data per month. Each additional 10GB incures additional (reasonable) charges.
There are ways of limiting bandwidth without shutting down "abusers." Just find out what it is costing you and pass that cost plus a markup on. This turns a hostile situation into a very good oportunity.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP