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SBC Planning 15-25Mbps DSL Networks

Tuxedo Jack writes "The Register reports that SBC has begun planning a massive network upgrade which will push fiber connections deeper into subdivisions and neighborhoods than before, resulting in incredibly fast DSL speeds for home users. Their current estimate for down/up speeds are 15-25mb/s down and 1-3mb/s up (mega_bits_, not bytes). SBC's press release goes into depth about this."

20 of 387 comments (clear)

  1. 15-25mbps... by __aambat2633 · · Score: 4, Informative

    15-25mbps...
    Here in Sweden we have had 24mbps dsl network for quite some time now... both vdsl and adsl2+

    1. Re:15-25mbps... by Paulrothrock · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yes, but Sweden is a very small country compared to the US. I doubt I'll ever see a 25Mbps DSL line in my neighborhood, being 17,000 feet from the CO.

      --
      I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
  2. Re:Pedantic by b1t+r0t · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't know what conventions you've been going to, but a small "b" means bits, and a big "B" means bytes.

    --

    --
    "Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
    "Open source is evil." - Microsoft
  3. About fsking time, but don't hold your breath by HotNeedleOfInquiry · · Score: 3, Informative

    Anyone remember Pacbell's (aka SBC) 80's statement that "Fibre to the Curb" was just around the corner. Well, I'd say it's just about time.

    --
    "Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
  4. Re:Pedantic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    M = mega
    m = milli
    B = byte
    b = bit

    mkay?

  5. heh by TheHawke · · Score: 4, Informative

    We'll see this in about 5 years or so once sbc get's done with the litigation with the ILECS and CLECS regarding the so-called "free" useage of sbc's equipment. By that time, the last mile may be owned by either cable, ElectricDSL or wireless. Here in the rural areas, it maybe ten years before we even get to see the entire community sees full coverage by the CLEC, particulary how sbc is dealing with their repair crews and logistics.

    They baited my company with their sales pitch, saying that DSL was available at the new office we were moving into, then a week later, the day before opening day, the tech comes in and shoots us down, saying that we were 19,753 feet from the CO.. I turned to cheater (Charter) cable and they bent some corporate rules getting us a business account forged and a line put in the next day. The reserved IP was assigned that same day, just needed to feed them the MAC address of our router to make it formal. We opened our doors a day late.

    The day I trust a telco to do their job properly will be the day I die.

    --
    First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
  6. Re:Gonna be tough to utilize by LincolnQ · · Score: 3, Informative

    /agree for the most part. When I am downloading a file from random website, the bottleneck is usually them, not me, on my 3mbit cable. But a lot of stuff I do crushes my 256kbit upload. For example, the World of Warcraft beta was distributed via Bittorrent, and most of us can't get decent speed downloads because 90% of the peers are stuck at 16 or 32kb/sec. If people had more upload bandwidth across the line then we would have a much easier time. I like to host files for my friends to download off my home server, but it's unpleasant to move anything of significant size at 32 kb/sec.

  7. Re:Locations? by lurker412 · · Score: 3, Informative

    According to an article published in the San Francisco Chronicle, the first trials will be in Wisconsin and Michigan.

  8. Re:Service woes by silas_moeckel · · Score: 2, Informative

    SBC is CT is pretty bad for corperate and home customers. Tech support is in Flordia and dosent have a clue whats going on and they have a ho hum additude about fixing even corperate leased lines. I'm a network guy that had been working in the CT area for 15 years or so. SNET was the same before them.

    Personaly I changed over to cable and while there were piles of issues to start (leaving rg59 access cable in did not help) but since then it's been rock solid. This is compared to DSl with an outage generaly state wide once every few months.

    --
    No sir I dont like it.
  9. Re:Deregulation is working by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Informative
    Comcast sells cable modem without cable tv. They do charge $10/mo more though.

    The reason they're taking stuff away from analog cable is that every analog channel they free up lets them air several more digital channels, or support hundreds more cable modem subscribers on the same segment.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  10. Big deal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I have SBC DSL, and most every night, from 7pm to 10pm, the speed drops to something like 300bps.

    My firewall still gets probed by jerks, and ping sometimes works, but most anything else doesn't work. Browsers behave like there's no connection at all.

    Sometimes, when GUI browsers are timing out, curl will be able to download a bit of a page, but it stops in the first few hundred bytes, and then hangs.

    Feh. Now I can have more unusable bandwidth? Oh joy.

  11. Re:Deregulation is working by DoctorDeath · · Score: 2, Informative

    I agree whole heartedly about Adelphia! But Verizon lies, cheats and steals too. Their internet lookup for DSL availability said it was available for my phone number. After 5 postponements pushing my start date back, they finally cancelled my order with no explanation or anything. When I called to find out why, they tell me it isn't available. After talking to a dozen different people and departments, some of them promising to call me back with a reason (never did) all I could get was I was to far from their central hub. No explanation as to why the internet service said it was available. So now I am stuck with Adelphia and their outrageous rates and increases.

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    Sig temporarily out of service.
  12. Re:Deregulation is working by rmayes100 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I've had Comcast cable and internet for years and I finally cancelled the cable and got a dish but kept my cable modem about a year ago. They never started charging me the +$10/month I should be paying for not being a cable subscriber. You can also sometimes call and threaten to cancel your cable modem (I'm getting DSL!) and they'll give you 6 months for $20 or some such.

  13. Re:Deregulation is working by nelsonal · · Score: 2, Informative

    Deregulation works if the transition is accomplished properly. The electricty markets were never deregulated. If they were powerplants would call you regularly to get you to switch to their power. A new different set of regulations was swapped for an older set and it was termed deregulation. It has worked very well in long distance (when I was a kid LD phone calls were pretty rare and costly) when my parents were kids they were a luxury. Now they are free, sure your local line is still expensive, but overall per minute costs have pretty steadily declined since the monoply was broken up and the industry was deregulated.
    Airlines are another success story, while some people whine that the riff raff now rides the airplanes and service has crapped out, they were usually travel agents or exceedingly wealthy. Both arguements are true. Airlines were regulated with a minimum selling price, that was set just after the barnstorming days. As costs fell, prices couldn't (due the the restrictions) so airlines offered all sorts of services to compete. Tickets were hideously expensive, and service was wonderful. Just one problem, most people didn't value the services at anything near what they cost (look at how many airlines continue to offer the same level of white glove customer service they did in the 70s). Now lots more people can fly and people pay for the services they want (even food and movies appear to be pretty marginal valued services--how much more could a ticket cost to include a meal and movie?).
    In a deregulated electricity market, you would rent your line from the power company figure likely for something between $10-$40/mo and then you would buy power from any power plant that was connected to your grid regardless of location and you could change your supplier as easily as you change your long distance company. If you don't have that you continue to have some level of regulation, don't blame deregulation for high power prices. Your prices would fluctuate with market prices for electricity but the line price would remain constant.

    --
    Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
  14. Re:Deregulation is working by IvyKing · · Score: 3, Informative
    That same FCC decision, IIRC, also allowed the local baby-Bells to charge whatever they want for access to their networks by other carriers. That effectively *destroys* competition for last-mile service.

    A little clarification - the FCC decision affects UNE-P access, but not UNE-L access. The difference is that UNE-L is just the twisted pair from the CO to the premises, UNE-P is where the CLEC would be using the ILEC's DSLAM or switch. Unfortunately the FTTP and FTTN would be covered by the UNE-P rules.

  15. SBC distracting its customers.... by NeoSkandranon · · Score: 2, Informative

    SBC is basically providing an "OOOoh shiny!" to its customers to cover for its absolutely pathetic service. I have friends in kansas city and texas who have SBC DSL, and I'd be willing to wager it goes out at least once a day if not more so, for often enough to disrupt downloads and instant messaging, if not for hours at a time

    --
    If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
  16. WHATEVER..... by 4ginandtonics · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yeah, WHATEVER, SBC...

    I'm still waiting for SBC's Project Pronto.

    Where'd that go? Well, it went nowhere fast

    Sometimes I wonder if SBC says these things just to scare away their competition.

  17. Re:Deregulation is working by IvyKing · · Score: 2, Informative
    Some definitions.

    ILEC: Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier, i.e. "The Phone Company", be it SBC, Verizon, etc.

    CLEC: Competitive Local Exchange Carrier would be upstarts such as Covad, or long distance companies such as AT&T.

    UNE-P: Unbundled Network Element - Platform, which is the twisted pair from the Central Office (CO) to the premises plus the switch, DSLAM or whatever to make it a live connection rpovided by the ILEC. Fiber To The Premises (FTTP) and Fiber To The Node (FTTN) would be covered under UNE-P rules - thus pretty much locking out outfits such as Covad from the very high speed DSL market.

    UNE-L: Unbundled Network Element - Line, this is just the twisted pair from the CO to the premises, with the switch, DSLAM or whatever provided by the CLEC. Northpoint (RIP) typically used UNE-L's to avoid problems with line filters.

  18. Re:Deregulation is working by AhBeeDoi · · Score: 2, Informative
    Just look what deregulation did for California's electricity customers...
    California didn't deregulate utilities, it just removed consumer protections. It reaped what it sowed.
  19. Re:Deregulation is working by letxa2000 · · Score: 2, Informative
    That's besides the point, anyway. We're talking about competition on the last-mile copper pair that terminates in consumer households.

    True, but I'd say there are limits to what the Baby Bells can charge for the last mile when other delivery forms (cable, satellite) are there too. They can price themselves out of the market even if the alternative providers don't use their last mile of copper.

    We can go 'round and 'round with opinions, though. I'm going to wait to see how the price is affected. My prediction is that the consumer will be adversely affected.

    I agree, we can go round and round. We'll have to see what prices do.