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).

History of DSL

[lousyd]

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

See here.

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.

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.