TV Over Phone Lines To Arrive In 2005

prostoalex writes "Associated Press says that telecoms have always considered expanding into digital television since the broadband infrastructure is already in place. But now they are putting billions of dollars into actually building such systems. "If everything goes as planned, the telephone industry will be all about television in 2005. TV over your home phone line. TV on your cell phone. Few topics have been as popular this past year among phone companies and their technology partners.""

Comments

I smell FIOS...

[sH4RD]

My friend has FIOS, and they have indeed told him it will be avalible in his area next year. Although, that is television over fiber, but it's provided by the Telco (Verizon).

Re:I smell FIOS...

[Anonymous Coward]

This has been in the making for a long time. I am a headend technician at a large Canadian Cable company. Telcos have been interested in video over twisted pair for a long time. Fortunately (unfortunately) the physical limitations are going to be too restrictive for most home consumers. Many homes will require a complete rewire, and each outlet has to be trapped. Traditional analog telephone lines have a maximum bandwidth of 3000hz, so that doesn't offer much in the way of channel space. Compare that to telephony services that are coming soon from your local cable carrier. A much higher bandwidth, using the existing lines in your house. I hate to say it, but this is old news.

History of DSL

[lousyd]

This is what Digital Subscriber Line technology was orignally developed for. TV and such, deliveredd over phone lines.

See here.

Re:History of DSL

[Scurra UK]

That's certainly what it's used for in parts of London - check out HomeChoice.

TV over the phone line existed for a long time

[MoonChildCY]

In the small island of Cyprus, in the Eastern Mediterranean sea, the local telecommunications company was offering TV services over the phone for more than a year.

Here is their website http://www.mivision.cyta.com.cy/english/what_mivis ion.php

France has TV over phone lines since *long*

[Anonymous Coward]

I have TV over adsl2+
15mbit down while I live country side, really.
Phone too.
All for $30.
I've TV since 1.5 years and phone since 2 this way.

Oh yeah, but I live in FRANCE not USA.
Our technologies. ^.^

We have that in HK already

[yehim1]

In HK, BroadbandTV services has been launched for over a year already. For a fee above your existing ADSL subscription, you get an extra decoder which connects to your phone line and decodes programmes to your TV.

You can also subscribe to broadbandtv as a separate package.

In my opinion, way to take advantage of the existing telephone infrastructure (just like ADSL).

Link -> Here! . Remember to click on the "English" !

Verizon FIOS

[$exyNerdie]

Verizon is working frantically to lay the optic fiber door-to-door. They already offer superfast internet speeds 15Mbps/2Mbps for $49.95 in some markets. The service is called FIOS (http://www.verizon.net/fios) and I strongly believe that Verizon is working hard to get into Cable TV business. They already offer DIRECTV® deals with their unlimited Freedom long distance package.

Re:Big deal

[Scurra UK]

I think you'll find the phrase is "couldn't care less". Saying you could care less implies that you do care about it.

TV thru phone line

[DJArekTripleSL]

ya.. we already have this here too.. its called MAX TV.. comes through with your DSL, it also allows you to browse internet on your TV.. im not really that impressed with it..

Re:Already have it in France

[Anonymous Coward]

ADSL stands for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. It is a form of DSL. Also, I believe it is called this everywhere, not just France. Oh, and sorry - DSL was developed by Bell Labs in the United States. The French, arrogant? Nah. Just misinformed...

Nice to see the US is catching up...

[Anonymous Coward]

TV on phone lines has been reality for over a year in France. Check out the offering of Free.fr: http://adsl.free.fr/

For 29 euros/month (about 40 dollars) they offer:

• high speed Internet access: up to 15Mbps
  I'm two miles away from the central so I get around 5Mbps (that's based on actual mesurements), the closer you are the faster.
  
• 30+ TV channels
  As I understand it, while you watch TV Free reallocates 3Mbps for the MPEG2 video stream (though that should be checked as I never really noticed a difference).
  
• free phone calls all over France, calls to the US for 3 eurocents/minute
  They also offer services like Caller Id for free, services which you have to pay for with the legacy monopoly phone company.
  

And for a one time payment of 27 euros (about 35 dollars), you can convert their FreeBox (the modem that handles it all) into a wireless 54Mbps router.
http://adsl.free.fr/admin/wifi.html

MTS TV

[Jiilik Oiolosse]

I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada where we have a governtment endorsed monopoly for our local telephone service. This provider (MTS) is among the cheapest costing telephone service in North America, and yet they still had time to develop MTS TV, which is pushing (based on inside information from their techs) 14Mbps video signal down the twisted pair for their TV service which has been around for several years now. It can feed three TV's signal concurrently (more if the different TV's are tuned to the same channel), plus PPPoE at 3Mbit plus voice on the same line.

Here is their Website

Basicly, this technology is in no way new, and AP should get some sources first before making such claims.

Disclaimer, I do not work for, or endorse this company. I'm simply aware of it's products, and make reference to them solely for informational purposes. I personally use Shaw Cable, their main competitor.

Come visit the Great White North

[freeweed]

Here in Manitoba, Canada, we've had this for many many months now. The local (formerly government) telco monopoly rolled out their digital television over phone line service with great fanfare.

I must say I'm less than impressed. It's basically the identical channels/packages as cable and satellite, for the same cost - however, the quality is VERY poor. Posts in this thread talk about bandwidth issues over POTS, and that has to be it.

Know when you're watching digital satellite and the screen suddenly pixelates like mad, like a really nasty MPEG artifact? Especially noticable during storms? TV over the phone lines looks like this pretty much all the time. Now just imagine an action sequence, with lots of frame changes. It's downright unwatchable.

Re:Big deal

[isdnip]

But here's the $64 question. Why do you want fiber to the home?

Oh, I know what you expect: Lightning-fast Internet access, right? But you forget that you're dealing with the Bell companies, under the Powell regime at the FCC.

The Bells have a bad case of cable envy. They want to sell you TV channels, sure, because they see TV as the next big thing. (Not TV over fiber, but TV in general. The Bells are still stuck in a 1950 mindset.) And while it is possible to do TV over ADSL, it's not as good as cable. Fiber optics can be as good as cable -- cable companies, after all, bring it to the neighborhood already, converting to coax for the final run (Hybrid Fiber-Coax). FIOS does the optical conversion on a per-house basis. SBC might do that too, but I'm not sure. BellSouth plans to run fiber "to the curb", and tie in to the old twisted-pair drop wire, up to 500 feet of it, which should be able to deliver 20+ Mbps, enough for switched (tell them what channel you want and they'll connect you to it, keeping track of your viewing like a phone call) TV.

But what about Internet? First off, if you have fiber to the home, an alternative DSL provider like Covad is usually cut off, period. (They might be allowed to salvage the old wire. "Green field" developments are closed to competitors tighter than a drum though.)

Second, BellSouth has petitioned the FCC to "forbear" from enforcing the well-established rules of Common Carriage, as well as Computer II obligations, which require a telco-owned competitive service (ISP) to buy the underlying communications service on the same basis as a competitive provider (independent ISP). In other words, BellSouth wants to be allowed to deny access to its network to any other ISP. It's BellSouth Internet or nothing. If you don't like their backbone speed, their mail blocks, their pr0n filters, their no-server-at-home policies, whatever, tough noogies. And with no competitors save cable (and maybe wireless, in a few places, but that'll usually be slower), how do you think their service quality will evolve? (Remember Lily Tomlin as Geraldine the Operator?)

And while it's BellSouth's petition at the FCC now, if it's granted, it'll be precedent for all of the other telcos. Verizon, SBC, Qwest and even that godwaful CenturyTel will get the same treatment. So your choice of ISP will be the telco-owned ISP or the cable-owned ISP.

The FCC just closed out its Comment period on this abomination, but Reply Comments are being taken until Jan. 28 or so. Go to the FCC web site -> e-filing -> ECFS -> search for filed comments -> enter "04-405" as the docket number.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. You may end up missing your creaky old copper DSL.

Re:A little out of place?

[Fudge.Org]

Actually, it depends on what you view as "rural". The majority of the rural telephone companies I know of all offer video over DSL. To do this, many of them own and operate a video head end then take it to the subscribers via multiservice access platforms (so-called IP DSLAM's) from Allied Telesyn, Calix, Ciena, Occam, etc... vs. HFC solutions that most urban areas are used to having the cable guy come out and monkey around with coax....

So, you have the head end, the telephone (appearance) transport, a DSL modem, a set top box to decode the video stream... and bingo -- you've got lots and lots of channels. You can get what you would expect to see (if not better) from coax depending on your area.

Another method is to take fiber to the home via companies like Motorola's latest acquisitions then break out POTS, Ethernet, and Coax cable from there. It's just another way to transport really.

Where it gets really interesting is that you can build applications based on the subscriber preferences in a way most traditional cable companies cannot fathom or take to their markets very quickly. By the nature of the rural telephone companies (and I don't mean BellSouth in the wrong parts of NC) you get an incredibly capable service --- with the understanding it isn't designed to serve a market of many... it's just designed to serve the market well.

Also, you can do HDTV this way as well, but there is the understanding you would need to be served by a telephone company that has upgraded their plant recently to accomodate the increased bandwidth required.

Re:Or you could just move to Saskatchewan

[RockHammer]

They have. It's been rolled out by a subsidiary called Navigata under the name WebCall. Currently I haven't found anyone that will offer phone numbers with a Saskatchewan area code. Basically because the market is so small. Everyone wants to go after the big markets. SaskTel will begin roll out of a local (Saskatchewan) service in the near future.

Re:I used to work on that

[TummyX]

I'm sure you mean Mb (megabits) not MB (megabytes) :)

Re:Already have it in France

[wolruf]

I believe you meant to say ATM (not DSL) was invented in France:
http://www.rennestelecom.com/telecom2_net .htm

And the UK

[gman99]

HomeChoice have been offering this service for a good few years in London.

As well as normal TV, they also give you movies on demand and the ability to watch any TV program that was on in the past week (only on a select few channels, though). If you subscibe to the music channels they even let you set-up a playlist of the videos that you want. All this and they even throw in a 512kB broadband package and free phone calls with the service too.

Slick user interface and minimal (almost zero?) wait times make suprnova/TiVo's (to catch that program you missed) a thing of the past...

If you live in London, I'd definitely recommend you to get it.

Re:Running TV over phone lines

[olahaye74]

No No, it is realy standard phone lines...

You connect a reciever (look like a satellite reciever but it is connected on you phone line)

then at the back of the reciever you have 3 connectors:
- a RJ45 10/100Mb/s connector for LAN
- a SCART connector for TV
- a phone connector (RJ11) for standard phone

And of course a connector for the phone line.
- a ADSL connector (also RJ11) to connect to the phone line.

See example page 12 on the following user guide (sorry only French, but picture is ok).
http://support.free.fr/maj/freebox_V3-V4_dgp .pdf

Old version launched in 2000 if my memory is correct: http://mfilter.free.fr/fr/im/pop_freebox.jpg
New version twice smaller http://www.iliad.fr/im/FreeboxV3.jpg