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SBC and Microsoft to Provide HDTV Over IP
Chroniton writes "SBC Communications (The #1 DSL provider in the US) is announcing new plans for broadband deployment, including internet, HDTV, and VOIP service: "With today's announcement, SBC will significantly accelerate its previously planned deployment pace and now plans to reach 18 million homes by year-end 2007. Through Project Lightspeed, the company will deploy 38,800 miles of fiber - double the amount used to build out the company's DSL network - at a cost of $4 billion to $6 billion."
This comes in response to an FCC ruling which shields IP-based networks from traditional telecom regulation. Speeds are expected to reach 15-25 Mbps, enough for HDTV: "To take advantage of this new network, SBC companies and Microsoft have begun testing an IP-based switched television service based on the Microsoft TV IPTV platform. This infrastructure would enable features such as standard and high-definition programming, customizable channel lineups, video on demand, digital video recording, multimedia interactive program guides and event notifications. IP-based television services will also allow TVs to interact with other devices in the home, including computers and PDAs." More details available here and here"
Yes, it's called ADSL2 and I have it at my house in St. Louis, MO right now. Granted I'm on SBC's trial program for the next 3 months, but the speeds can reach as high as 24Mb/s which is enough for HDTV. They just installed the new DSL modem last week and are going to be ramping up speed over the next few weeks. Currently I'm at about 5Mb/s.
Celebrate the finer things in life
And they announced it back in 2003 "We plan to hit about one million lines by the end of 2003".
And they announced it back in 2002.
Stay tuned for another announcement in 2005.
This time they're paying back the Bush adminstration for the FCC deal that permits them to keep third-party ISPs from using their lines. The telcos have been lobbying for this for years, so that consumers don't have a choice of ISPs. It's an election year move, not a new development.
SBC has talked up a few fibre-to-the home trials, but even the small scale trials never seem to happen.
As someone who lives in Korea (and enjoys the fine speeds u talk about ;) I think you will find that the reason you have lower speeds there is because of the geography of the states. I know that the reason why BB is so crap in Australia... there simply isnt enough ppl per square Km to justify lighting billions in fibre. Here i live in the pockets of another 5000 people, so its a bit more viable to have the 100+Mbit connections.
-- Fuck the grammar police.
HDTVoIP with its far bigger hunger for hbandwidth.
(disclaimer : I spent 3 years as the dev lead/manager for a large streaming media company)
The bandwidth for streaming is never as high as people think. Once you start to control the whole network it gets a lot easier. If you can place caching servers in each major subscriber area and most importantly enable multi-case (which you can finaly do because you control all the routing and switches) it will drop a lot. Sure movies that are truely "on-demand" will have to be served on an individual basis, but again, local caching servers would reduce bandwidth requirements to just the last 1-2 hops.