Next-Gen Broadband Primer

Aaron writes "Broadband Reports has a good read on the real deal behind next generation broadband deployments. In four years: half all Verizon DSL users should have fiber, half of all SBC subscribers should have 10-20Mbps DSL, and one tenth of all BellSouth customers should have 50Mbps DSL. At the same time cable companies should begin deploying DOCSIS 3.0 technology in 2006, eventually bringing 100Mbps speeds to end users."

Comments

I'll believe when I see it...

[garcia]

BBR: While we're only starting to see DOCSIS 2.0 deployment, and the higher speeds it can bring (Adelphia & Cox 15Mbps), DOCSIS 3.0 should only be a few years behind. Do you see the cable industry having any trouble keeping up with these bell plans?

DB: The "15 meg" speeds Cox is offering where they compete with Verizon fiber are mostly advertising. It's really 38 meg shared among 100 or so users, the same speed as the current services advertised at as 3 and 7 meg. That's too much oversubscription to deliver 15 meg most of the time, if even 5 or 10 people are downloading on the node. To regularly get past today's 5 meg or so, you need to bond more channels, which is what DOCSIS 3.0 offers.

DOCSIS 3.0 is real, mostly agreed, and the key vendors have the details and are making equipment for 2006. It's a shared 160/120 or higher, easily expandable to a shared gigabit. Real speeds to users will often be 20-50 megabits. It was developed to compete with higher speed DSL in Asia. Early in 2005, the U.S. cable companies realized Verizon was serious about
fiber, and pushed CableLabs and suppliers (Cisco, Motorola, Arris, Broadcom) to get DOCSIS 3.0 ready for the U.S. ASAP, and 2006 is realistic
with some pricey gear.

I will believe it when I see it. Depending on your home area, overselling of bandwidth can be a real problem. I have seen both DSL and Cable
providers routinely claiming speeds "up to". 5mpbs but real speeds are usually in the 3mbps range. Of course, the cable/DSL providers claim that "few sites allow you to take full advantage of your maximum bandwidth", which is a pile of horseshit, plain and simple. 92% of their userbase will believe that while the 8% that don't the broadband companies don't
want on their networks anyway.

While highspeed connections are great, I want to know where this backend bandwidth is coming from and who's paying for it? T3+ downstream speeds for only a tiny fraction of the real cost? I will be that 30+ megabits is nothing more than a pipe dream/marketing ploy. The real speeds we will be seeing are in the 10 to 15 range for "premium" members and will likely come with heavy "unadvertised". monthly caps. They want you to see webpages come up lightning fast (which happens at 1mbit) but they don't want you to actually see 10GB of torrents come in a day. They will still be catering to the 92% of their userbase that is the "mom and pop e-mail
and CNN checkers". The people who would really be excited about paying higher fees and getting the advantages of the massive bandwidth will end up with ToS violation warnings and slower than expected speeds.

I think I'll be ok

[Hachey]

Google loads fast enough for me as it is. Make my internet cheaper in 4 years, then i'll be happy! ;)


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100Mbps

[drgonzo59]

What are ordinary people going to do with 100Mpbs next year that they have such a difficulty doing now?

I am not talking about Slashdotters who will put spinners on their Cable Modems and will overclock the cpu to the limit, but about ordinary people who still only use their computer to look at web pages and write email. Will 100Mbps provide 50x better experience than 2Mbps? I would rather them lower the cost by at least by 50% that would be much better.

Older computers that run Windows 98 that a lot of people still use, probably can't even handle a consistent 100Mbps stream.

Re:100Mbps

[Alex P Keaton in da]

I believe that ordinary people will be downloading a lot more content- How long before we can get all of out tv shows etc "on demand" from our computer?
There is a chicken and egg thing going on- With more out there, people want higher speeds, but with higher speeds, more will be created out there---
Real world example- I used to work for a newspaper website, a big one, and in late 90's early 00s our big problem was that with slow load times and dialing in (5-10% of people had broadband) it didnt make sense for people to read the paper online from home as it took too long. With broadband, it does. Once everyone has the capacity, it will make sense to oofer more video on demand etc. The real money is in the 99% of users that don't know much tech, just from a #s standpoint.

Re:100Mbps

[John Miles]

What are ordinary people going to do with 100Mpbs next year that they have such a difficulty doing now?

Actually, ubiquitous speeds on the order of 100 Mbps will change everything.

Right now, with a one-megabit DSL connection, it's possible for me to use a Terminal Services client at home to run basic apps like Outlook and Perforce on my machine at the office. It's slow, clunky, and not especially pleasant, but it works, and it beats the hell out of juggling multiple email clients (and .PST files). Even things like streaming video almost work.

At 10 megabits/second, this process will still be slow, but not all that clunky, and a lot less unpleasant. More apps will live on my machine at work, without having to be duplicated at home.

At 100 megabits/second and up, the distinction between remote computing and local computing will disappear entirely for most users. Software and services subscription models for commercial applications will actually make sense for PC users for the first time. The client operating system -- be it Windows, Linux, MacOS, what-have-you -- will shrink to almost zero-importance.

And Microsoft will either be bankrupt or they'll own the inner planets, depending on whether the entire company goes down with the sinking Windows/Office ship.

Since the entire Internet will be one huge client-server network at that point, worms, viruses, and malware won't be a concern for most users. Monopolization will be. Whose machine is going to run and maintain 99% of your applications? If you think you're married to your software vendor now, you haven't even met her daddy yet.

This just in...

[nrlightfoot]

And the cable companies will still only give you 32kb of upstream.