What's Next in Telecommunications?

CNet is reporting that with the telecommunication industry's annual powwow coming up the hot button seems to be television rather than phones. From the article: "Judging from the diverse list of keynote speakers, it's easy to see that the phone business is readying itself for cataclysmic change. The traditional telecommunications market has already begun consolidating in anticipation. [...] Putting itself back together two decades after being broken apart, the new AT&T faces an entirely different competitive environment. Phone companies and cable companies will soon be competing directly with each other not just for broadband customers, but also for TV and phone customers."

Comments

Destruction of "standards"

[dada21]

I think we'll start seeing more convergence between the various standards -- today I watch more "television" on my PDA than I do on my actual television screen. I probably watch more on my t809 Samsung cell phone than on my TV, too.

AT&T re-merging means nothing to me as AT&T (and Comcast and T-Mobile and the Chicago Tribune and WGN radio) mean nothing to me at all -- they're all dated mechanisms that came about because of the FCC allowing them what no individual had a right to anymore: the airwaves. The local communities were colluding with the cartels as well, giving right of way to only a few select companies in exchange for a nice chunk of change over the decades. I constantly bring grief to my village council meetings when I decry the few dollars Comcast continues to pay the village for every bill they collect.

I see such a great waste in available bandwidth due to excessive (and in my mind unconstitutional) FCC regulation of frequencies. For me, data is data and I just want to get at it faster and in more areas. To think that we're still going to send data over the UHF and VHS frequencies 50,000 watts at a time in a "one size fits all" broadcast is unthinkable. Those same frequencies could be better used to let people get what they want, when they want, in the form they want, at the price they want. Imagine how much more bandwidth would be available if the frequencies were available for the NEXT wireless standards.

The typical replies to a proposal such as this are "someone will broadcast on every frequency so no one can communicate" or "without regulation we'd get interference all over the place." I can not see someone broadcasting 50,000 watts on every frequency as the power needed to run a transmittor at that power on every frequency would quickly bankrupt the transmitter. A brigand could send random bursts on random frequencies, but a good software radio can frequency hop fast enough to not make this a problem. The idea of interference is also reduced by the software radio idea -- plus the fact that transmitters want to get the signal out more than they want to block the signal gives me the belief that we won't see these problems. An advertiser in today's market COULD by every advertisement spot on every media format, but no one has. Why is that?

We have to stop thinking in terms of television, radio, cell phone, WiFi, narrowband, broadband, etc. Those terms can be filed next to telegraph. For me, I want real convergence: manufacturers finding ways to frequency hop faster, incorporating software radios that can adjust to what the receiver and the sender need rather than be shoehorned into a narrow band of frequencies and amplifier power.

Yet we all know -- or should know -- that the frequencies aren't regulated for the people, they're regulated to keep control of the system in the hands of the elite -- the distribution cartels. Nothing will change over time, in fact I believe we'll see our beloved Internet regulated "to protect the people" but in reality it'll be regulated to protect the content cartels. The RIAAs, the MPAAs, the publisher's associations and all the various collusive elements that controlled information yesterday are looking to control information tomorrow, and most people will not mind.

I mind because I see the power of data -- a small packet of information that isn't important until it is used. To think that we have gigahertz of bandwidth being used to try to give everyone the same thing is beyond me, and part of the reason I hate the FCC and want to see it disbanded completely so that society has a chance to meet our own needs in the future -- one IP connection at at time.

Re:Destruction of "standards"

[MindStalker]

I constantly bring grief to my village council meetings when I decry the few dollars Comcast continues to pay the village for every bill they collect. Thats nothing, my local city gave a grant intended to help a small buisness with tech training to the local comcast to train their employees in installing their new digital services.......

Re:Destruction of "standards"

[dada21]

Thats nothing, my local city gave a grant intended to help a small buisness with tech training to the local comcast to train their employees in installing their new digital services.......

Or, better put, "My local city stole money from current and future taxpayers in order to give the money to someone else."

Very sad.

Re:Destruction of "standards"

[interiot]

Also along those lines... Just because it's possible for one person to park in the middle of a road, and tie up traffic for 20 minutes, doesn't mean we dedicate roads to individual organizations. If a person tries to disrupt physical traffic, soon enough a police officer comes along, identifies the individual, and eventually an appropriate penalty is handed out.

With radio signals, it's a bit harder to identify someone who's trying to be disruptive, but it's also easier to jump to another "road" that's not busy. And if a perpetrator really disrupting a large number of channels, that makes it all the easier to identify them.

Perhaps not too far from the truth

[MoonFog]

Here in Norway we've seen a rise of companies offering "triple play", i.e. phone, broadband and cable all over fiberoptics. Affordable prices as well, especially the phone is a lot cheaper than what regular phone providers offer.

Re:Perhaps not too far from the truth

[BewireNomali]

i subscribe to such a service here in NY. About $120 US a month for all three, where I was paying about $80 US for a DSL/phone line (with no long distance) before.

Upside: obvious. Speed, etc. Downside, I find myself watching more television and I hate that. I didn't have cable before.

Obligatory content-free prognistication

[sreekotay]

VOIP + WiMax (or some such) will up end destroying core Cel and Hardline businesses, unless they are successful in tiering Internet access (i.e. charging or prioritzing certain content-providers/websites) - which would be a BAD thing.

Barring that, it'll become about triple or quadruple pay (voice, IP, cable, etc.) bundles of access, as it has in Europe.

I think the latter scenario is good for consumers, the former, well not so much.

What's not clear to me is how, even with open web services (ala Web 2.0 hype) how any company but the big players profit. Unless, I guess, "getting bought" maybe counts?
--
graphicallyspeaking

Destruction of Common Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think we'll start seeing more convergence between the various standards -- today I watch more "television" on my PDA than I do on my actual television screen. I probably watch more on my t809 Samsung cell phone than on my TV, too."

I'm sure the eye doctor likes having you as a customer.

"I see such a great waste in available bandwidth due to excessive (and in my mind unconstitutional) FCC regulation of frequencies. For me, data is data and I just want to get at it faster and in more areas. To think that we're still going to send data over the UHF and VHS frequencies 50,000 watts at a time in a "one size fits all" broadcast is unthinkable. Those same frequencies could be better used to let people get what they want, when they want, in the form they want, at the price they want. Imagine how much more bandwidth would be available if the frequencies were available for the NEXT wireless standards."

*sigh* If only the world could afford to keep up with me.

"Why is that?"

Physics and economics.

"I mind because I see the power of data -- a small packet of information that isn't important until it is used. To think that we have gigahertz of bandwidth being used to try to give everyone the same thing is beyond me, and part of the reason I hate the FCC and want to see it disbanded completely so that society has a chance to meet our own needs in the future -- one IP connection at at time."

Save me, "invisible hand", save me!

Re:Old fogeys...

[Forbman]

Why the hostility? I don't like SUVs, or jacked-up 4x4 pickup trucks, or things that imply some sense of "utility" but in practice have about zero.

At least you don't live in Oregon, where "fairness" in road usage will soon be that, at least for cars, road taxes are calculated by miles driven on them, because there are "too many" Priuses and other more fuel-efficient cars on the roads, and revenues from fuel taxes in Oregon are "going down".

Which is odd, really. Most of Oregon's road miles are in very rural areas, except for perhaps the I-5 corridor between Portland and Eugene (but you don't have to go very far off of I-5 to find dirt roads...). Even driving in Portland, there are still relatively few Priuses and other hybrids. Lots of cars, trucks, minivans and SUVs.

What it really indicates is that most people in Oregon are pretty averse to taxes. Hell, I moved here rather than Washington so as to not pay god-damned sales tax. Given the choice, I'd much rather pay Oregon's personal income tax than Washington's sales tax, or both, like in California or many states in the midwest, like Wisconsin and Illinois.

So what will happen is that the Legislature will increase the gas tax (which they should, because larger vehicles eat up the roads more than smaller vehicles at a slightly geometric rate, not linear) which should encourage less unnecessary driving of unnecessary large vehicles. That, or get rid of the flat-rate car registration fee, and go to vehicle weight or something. Yeah, I have a big pickup truck (which I would register then as a farm vehicle), a Honda Odyseey and a Saturn wagon, so I'm promoting something that would bite me in the ass a little bit, because it would be simpler to implement, not require me to install (and probably buy...) GPS systems in my cars, etc.

While it's nice living in Oregon, state affairs in Oregon are pretty screwed up. At least in Illinois (and California), things were corrupt, but most stuff still got taken care of, even if you knew someone was getting rather rich at the state's expense. In Oregon? No, there is as much bureaucratic fighting amongst state offices as there is in the Legislature, and all the while, shit just stays broken and dysfunctional, and people argue and worry about red herrings to no end, and various tails do their damnest to wag the dog to pieces.

One of the local sports talking heads was blathering on about the Columbia River and the dams on it on Saturday. "Drop the dams, save the salmon!" and essentially arguing that agriculture does nothing for the economies of Washington and Oregon (and Idaho), that the state should do nothing to protect ag. Hmm... running fishing tours brings how much into these states' economies per year? Sorry, saving sports fishing should be one of the lesser worries for this region, because it's not suddenly going to blossom into a billion-dollar chunk of the region's economies, ever.

Re:who needs a provider for wireless?

[troll -1]

Can you really imagine google's traffic all coming into their datacenter wirelessly?

With all due respect, and though you raise a very valid point as to practicality, I think all we're asking is for the FCC to give us the resources that will allow us the freedom to experiment and solve our own problems.

These problems cannot be overcome today. But in the future who knows, what with multiplexing and models of data distribution, what ingeneous solutions someone may come up up with tomorrow? All we're saying is give us the tools and (maybe) we'll finish the job. At least let us try by assigning the bandwidth that will allow us to make an attempt at a solution.

A completely wireless Internet is feasible.

Triple play and ADSL2+

[anticypher]

Triple play DSL installations are now the norm in both Europe and parts of Asia. They are mostly based on the G.992.5 ADSL2+ standard, the DSLAMs and CPE boxes have been available since 2002, with a big uptake seen about 2 years ago.

Technically, there is 24 Mbps of downstream bandwidth available (with no voice band splitters, it can use the whole bandwidth of the copper pair). G.992 also allows for multiple ATM pipes, so a service provider can reserve 16kbps for VOIP, 1-3 Mbps for a single MPEG-4 video stream, and the rest for internet. There is also the concept of separate interleave delays for each ATM circuit, so a voice channel can have a low delay, video a high delay, and internet can have either a high delay with higer bandwidth or low delay with lower bandwidth (for the gamerz oh-so-important ping times). Even customers out at the far limits of DSL still have a few hundred Kbps of internet left after the VOIP and TV feeds.

Video channel switching is done via a reserved communications channel between the set-top CPE box and the DSLAM, as you zap through the channels, the DSLAM chooses the video stream. The major downside is that there needs to be a fibre feed with all the channels going through every DSLAM, a couple of Gbit/sec worth of streaming video for the companies who have 300+ channels available. The video quality I've seen on every system is pretty poor, MPEG artifacts everywhere, skips and delays, and no synchro between audio and video streams.

I've just returned from a working vacation in the U.S., and I was stunned at the primitiveness of the DSL infrastructure. The big 3 monopolies own the copper, Local Loop Unbundling (or naked DSL) is almost non-existant, download caps as bad as Australia, AUPs forbid all kinds of things like leaving an SSH server on your home machine for remote access. I'm glad to be back in the first world, internet-wise.

At CeBIT last week, everyone was talking VDSL2. European providers with large ADSL2+ networks are upgrading to 50Mbps VDSL2. All the chinese manufacturers were showing off working VDSL2 systems based on conexant and broadcom chipsets.

the AC