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Increased Bandwidth Irrelevant?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the fat-pipes-are-still-cool dept.

halbert writes "ArsTechnica has a story about AT&T COO Randall Stephenson telling folks that there is 'no discernable difference' between AT&T's 1.5 Mbps service and Comcast's 6 Mbps, because the backbone is slowing everything down. The main argument from the article is that fiber to the home is not necessary. How about letting the consumer decide that?" From the article: "This is a direct response to the criticism that AT&T has suffered for deploying a fiber optic network that reaches only to the local node, not directly into a customer's home--which means that the 'last mile' connection is still copper wire. Verizon, by contrast, is deploying fiber directly into the home, making for much higher speeds. AT&T argues that its model is cheaper, faster to deploy, and just as capable as Verizon's, which currently uses much of its massive bandwidth to distribute RF TV channels."

4 of 366 comments (clear)

  1. Survey says: False! by WhiteWolf666 · · Score: 1, Troll

    I regulary get downloads in the 900 KBytes/sec range.

    On occasion, I've see downloads in the 1100 KBytes/sec range. This is on comcast's 8 mbit service.

    Works as advertised, for me.

    AT&T, you suck. I can't wait to see the cable providers quoting your CEO on their advertising literature.

    Oh, and I believe their service maxes out at one HD stream per residence.

    Huh, you say?

    I've got 3 HD boxes at my house right now. I can get 3 HD on demand streams at any given time. Project Lightspeed = already outdated.

    --
    WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
  2. Sad, but true - but the devil is in the details by sreekotay · · Score: 0, Troll

    We found the same thing at AOL, in testing speed with our various Broadband partners. The average time to COMPLETE a pageload across a wide test suite of webpages basically doesn't change once you get over 1.5Mbps.

    HOWEVER, (1) the median time does shift slightly (i.e. the perception of load) up to 3-ish Mbps, though latency clearly starts becomes the dominant factor and (2) downloads and multimedia still scale pretty linearly.

    Still, B3! makes this irrelevant.
    --
    graphicallyspeaking

    --
    graphically speaking
  3. Actually, it *is* true, BUT.... by sreekotay · · Score: 0, Troll

    We found the same thing at AOL, in testing speed with our various Broadband partners. The average time to COMPLETE a pageload across a wide test suite of webpages basically doesn't change once you get over 1.5Mbps.

    HOWEVER, (1) the median time does shift slightly (i.e. the perception of load) up to 3-ish Mbps, though latency clearly starts becomes the dominant factor and (2) downloads and multimedia still scale pretty linearly.

    Still, B3! makes this irrelevant.
    --
    graphicallyspeaking

    --
    graphically speaking
  4. Well, its true, but incomplete... by sreekotay · · Score: 0, Troll

    We found the same thing at AOL, in testing speed with our various Broadband partners. The average time to COMPLETE a pageload across a wide test suite of webpages basically doesn't change once you get over 1.5Mbps.

    HOWEVER, (1) the median time does shift slightly (i.e. the perception of load) up to 3-ish Mbps, though latency clearly starts becomes the dominant factor and (2) downloads and multimedia still scale pretty linearly.

    Still, B3! makes this irrelevant.
    --
    graphicallyspeaking

    --
    graphically speaking