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

This word 'competing'...

[Telastyn]

you keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:This word 'competing'...

[boldtbanan]

Taken from the Telecom dictionary:

compete
intr. v. competed, competing, competes

To strive against another or others to attain a goal, such as an advantage or a victory, usually with the help of other large companies who can force laws through Congress in order to protect corporate interests

use: That telecom company competed it's customers to death with a sledgehammer

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.

Buy Recommendation

[Quirk]

tinfoil

buy tinfoil

who needs a provider for wireless?

[troll -1]

And then there's wireless, with companies such as Ruckus Wireless adapting Wi-Fi for broadband video.

I wish the FCC would assign more useful shortwave parts of the spectrum to the ISM band for 802.x so we could start experimenting with meshing and maybe be like amateur radio where you buy your equiment and get online using an open standard with no company involded.

Who needs a provider when the airways are a zero cost medium?

Duopoloy on the pipes...

[PornMaster]

We're headed to a duopoly on the pipes to the home, cable and ILEC. Of course, with FiOS, Verizon's figured out the way to block out alternate DSL providers... once the phone companies don't have to share IP access, and the cable companies don't (see NCTA v. Brand X), they'll have control of both pipes into the home.

WiMax might have a place out in the burbs, but in New York, I can't see how it can possibly serve the populace without interfering with its competition.

With QoS, Vonage is going to slowly go down the tubes, as Time Warner, Cablevision, Comcast, AT&T, et al provide themselves better IP service than their competitors. (We know what Ed Whitacre, AT&T CEO thinks about this... http://www.businessweek.com/@@n34h*IUQu7KtOwgA/mag azine/content/05_45/b3958092.htm

Oh, well. Squeeze your buttcheeks together.

Re:Old fogeys...

[pandrijeczko]

If you're handing out memberships to an "old fogeys" club, you can count me in!

I'm pretty happy with standard DVDs on my non-HDTV TV at home connected to a reasonable hifi amp with a nice pair of speakers (one for each ear, works at my knowledge level of mathematics)...

I'm in the UK and just have terrestrial TV, when I watch it. I can't justify paying for a cable/satellite service that has adverts on it - I'd pay for no ads or have it free with ads, no compromise there...

I have a Nokia 6310i mobile phone that's about 3 years old & just makes phone calls & stores numbers - no camera, colour screen but it fits into my equally old car kit fine...

I have a 1MB DSL service because that's all I can get in my area. I'd like more but I'll live with this until there's an upgrade, it's no biggie...

I think far too many people (particularly the younger generation) get dragged into this "new technology is cool" thing without thinking about it - they just fall for the hype, hand over their money and off they go for six months until the next model comes out.

To be fair, I was probably the same 10-15 years ago but then there was less choice, less advertising and less constant change - now I figure something is worth buying only if most or all of its features are useful to me.

Yes, I'm turning into a miserable old git who actively avoids brand names ("How come Gap don't pay me to wear that T-shirt with their logo on it?") but what the hell... we ALL become our fathers one day...

Hooray!

[Greyfox]

We may finally get the videophone that was originally envisioned in the 50's. Of course, there're a lot of times when you don't want a video feed of the other party. That's probably why none of the current solutions have really seen widespread use. My company has a videoconferencing setup that seems to work pretty well for meetings, but I don't see it being common in the home anytime soon.

It seems to me that the vision of the future we all have today is nowhere near as optimistic as the vision of the future they had in the '50's. They all thought that by this time everyone would have flying cars, video phones, personalized robots to eliminate boring chores, food pills that would provide the nutrition of an entire meal in one small pill and so forth.

What's our equivalent of the flying car? It's not the flying car -- we've pretty much decided that that is an insurmountable engineering task for the foreseeable future. Virtual Reality? Doesn't seem to have the same style the flying car did and I don't expect VR to catch on anytime soon. Possibly not within my lifetime. A manned trip to Mars? I suppose it could be a manned trip to Mars.

Don't get me wrong, we're still doing some neat stuff. We just don't seem to have our sights set as high as we did back then.

What I'd like to see

[boatboy]

What I'd really like to see next in telecommunications is the ability to call someone from anywhere, speak into a device, and have a person on the other end hear what I say, all the time, every time. Once they get that working, the other things will be nice too.

Can't wait for television on stamps

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Think of it, those boring little static images you get on your snail mail. What if they could show you the latest Madonna video, or episode of Lost? Think of how much money the music, television and movie industries could make if they could beam their content to stamps?

I am surprised Apple isn't realizing the potential of showing videos and playing music on stamps. I mean, the iPod Nano is slightly bigger then a stamp.

I am also surprised Google hasn't figured this out yet, all that wasted space on a letter that Google could put ad words and Google adds on. That stamp is just dying to display Google content.

Also, think of the potential of not having to buy extra postage stamps when the Post office increases their delivery charges on a monthly basis. You could setup a stamp website that takes people's credit cards and automatically bills them for the increase in delivery charges and update the stamps face value, while the letter is CURRENTLY in transit! The post office could change their postage fees as easily as Gas companies change the price of oil!!!! No more returned mail for insufficient funds ... unless of course your credit card is maxed out from all the subscription service fees your paying to get tv, music, movies and video on a stamp.

Why is this so laughable, I mean, they thought TV on cellphones would work, why not stamps?

I don't know, I think the telecommunications industry has exhausted all their ideas for cell phones, I mean, TV on cellphones was so last week. The future is in Stamps I tell you, STAMPS!

Video Killed the Internet Star

[Doc Ruby]

Verizon and AT&T are sick of trying to compete with informed customers exposed to choices and chances to stick together in the conflict of their interests with vendors. Telephony was as interactive as they ever wanted to get - they always wanted to just shove content down their pipes to subscribed captive audiences. But cable TV arrived just when the telephony monopoly was weakest: the mid-1980s, when the monopoly finally was forced to at least compete in some markets, like long distance and mobile.

But now they've returned, buying up regional Bells and mobile operators rather than compete with them. Telephony is a lot like a duopoly, at least in "primary service" (the corp that bills the customer and maintains the brand): AT&T and Verizon. Their real competition comes from cable TV, with its own infrastructure, brands and increasingly telephony, and a little from Internet - the parts they don't own, like the cablemodem ISPs. So their strategy is to fight their main competitor, which is clearly cable TV.

They could have just made telephony better. Mobile phones so reliable they never permanently drop calls. Making the Internet so cheap that it "goes away" from customers minds, replaced by billable services. Integrating voice as merely a feature in every app that ties people together. Making ubiquitous "phones" the multimedia terminals of a complete telecom environment. But that meant taking a risk competing by improving the product, actually competing with cable TV in quality.

Instead they just want to leverage their competitive advantages, especially regulatory, to kill the competition and inherit those customers. All this talk of "2-tier Internet" is just a way to use up all the extra bandwidth capacity on video, making it scarce and expensive rather than cheap. The "nonpremium tier" will force competitors to substandard performance, or to subsidize their own demise, just like telcos did to DSL competitors for the few years they taught telcos how to operate that business.

All whether customers want more video or not. What we want is more P2P, more separated interests between networks, content and apps. More reliable, simpler features that connect us to each other. Instead we'll get a dazzling array of crappy features and content, all funneling a fat pipe from our wallets to the cartel controlling the network.

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