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Cable Industry Needs to Spend Heavily on Upgrades
BlueCup writes "A report from the cable industry's research arm suggests that Cable-television operators require another round of multibillion-dollar network upgrades to keep up with rivals in the fast-growing high-speed Internet hookup business. The conclusions underscore the challenges posed by the rapid growth of broadband video from YouTube and Google, and the looming threat of a planned $20 billion rollout of high-capacity fiber lines by U.S. phone giant Verizon Communications Inc."
Remember when cablemodems were first rolled out? About one megabit speed, when everyone else was on 56k dialup, and we sat and watched and waited for the cable companies to roll out. ISDN was king, and DSL was something hard to get.
Now? Cablemodem access is pretty much everywhere, and download speeds are pretty decent in general. DSL and Cable both have offerings in the 4-6mbit range, and now there is something else to look forward to...
Fiber. Downtown San Francisco has some of that Verizon fiber available in limited areas, and the access download speeds get into the 60-100mbit range. Let me say that again, since I'm sure a lot of people are going to say "he said WHAT?"
100 megabits. downlink. speed.
Yes, there are still some non-sensical "can't host a server" issues. Yes, uplink speeds are artificially asymmetrical (~60mb down, about 1mbit up. Still an improvement over cablemodem service speeds.) It's part of an experimental rollout, and hard to get installed. So was DSL, once.
HDTV, phone, internet access, 'digital radio', and more on a single line, all for around $100/month, at least for now.
Cable companies have something to worry about. Definately.
"Don't worry about the problems you have in mathematics, I assure you mine are much greater." - Einstein c.1919
http://muniwireless.com/community/10238 /_ F.shtml
http://saveaccess.org/node/288
http://www.newnetworks.com/scandalquotes.htm
http://www.blogmaverick.com/entry/123400026707348
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060131/2021240
Ars Technica already has posted a follow-up to the original story that says this isn't actually needed.
Actually, it isn't a lie. Please stick to topics you know about.
I worked for Time Warner for a number of years, ending a little over a year ago when I went into my own venture. TW was getting the technical details of rolling out their voice offerings to this area (Chicago/Milwaukee) and put some fairly horrible limits on home res services (how about advert'ing a 5mbit line on commercials/mail/etc.. then setting the QOS at 2mbit max..) It's pathetic.. It's a loophole that they say "up to -whatever number here-mbit connection!!!" when they make sure (at least in this area) that 90% can't get it.. I would be willing to bet that based on their limit claims (geographical distance, number of modems on the node pulling at once, etc) that the tactics may very well be illegal.
I currently have the 5mbit service, running at a steady 400kb during any time of the day. I like 4 miles outside the Milwaukee city limits.
Want to tell me it's a lie that they cap the lines?
If you have a 60 gig cap, then your speed should only be 5Mbit. For an extra 4 dollars for modem rental, you can get a 6Mbit line, and a 100 Gig cap. Still not too good, but i think its worth 4 dollars.
I have also heard from a friend on the inside that they will start to charge you for every gig you go over your limit starting in the next few months. You wont get cut off, or slowed down, you will just notice a big increase in your bill the following month. Im not 100% sure about this, but my friend who works in their business office told me this, so i think its true.
Other then that rogers is crap. Slow durring the day, traffic shapping, and slow speeds.
Altho i also heard that they will be offering a 12 Mbit connection for 100CND$ a month, but you still have a 100GB cap. I can do 200 Gigs at 6Mbit, why do i need more speed if i can only use it for a week, and then have to pay through the nose per GB?
-EL
You know what scares the crap out of the cable companies? As they race to score a triple play, they are finding that once fast data is there, the other two parts of the triple play are far from a sure thing. Digital tv and phone service are just more data.
Earlier this year, Comcast had a triple play going with my family. We had cable modem, digital tv and their phone service. Well, their phone service was unreliable as hell and we were unluck enough to get bad phone hardware from them, twice. So, we switched to Vonage and it has worked very well. About a month later the introductory offer wore off on the internet and tv and the +$100 Comcast bill and the shitty dvr made me look around for something different. I now have Dish and fairly happy with it (the dvr still sucks-- if they were going to infringe on Tivo's patents, they should have done a lot better job of it).
The last thing any of the cable (or phone) companies want, is to be commodity suppliers. Thus their fear of net neutrality regulations.
Because there are 20-200 houses for every neighborhood fiber-cable router. It would cost a lot of money to run fiber to every house, which would probably include replacing all the boxes on the side of everyone's houses.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Of course the phone company told you it was good. They're the freak'n provider. What were you expecting "Oh, Mr. Johnson, that's really slow. We're providing some really crappy service aren't we?" they don't want to be held to any kind of standard for service, so they aren't going to agree with any notion there's a problem if you'll go with their answers.
And they'll be able to start charging everyone per TV for their services. Which is why they really want to get rid of analog cable. They're like Ma Bell in the 50's wanting to charge you per phone in your house regardless of how many actual phone lines you have. The only reason that was undone was the availablity of wiring for do-it-yourself extensions and the analog nature of the PSTN making it hard to track how many phones a person had.
Plus, the external converter has the added bonus of making it hard to do automated VCR recordings of shows while you're away from home (hello, DVR rental fee!).
Why does nobody recognise digital cable for what it is; an excuse to roll back fair use and home recording rights, and find another way to nickel and dime the consumer?
Until there's legislation passed removing the encryption from cable (so makers of stand alone DVR's and VCR's can integrate digital tuners in their products) or requiring cablecos to provide as many boxes as a customer needs free of charge this will continue.
They need satellites because, contrary to popular belief, television *broadcasts* from content providers aren't delivered by *magic*. They are sucked down to each local cable branch via satellite dishes. I worked on a buildup of a provider headend before and they had a small satellite farm there just for receiving multiple broadcasts which they planned on sending out via a new fiber network.
;)
Your local news stations also use satellites to deliver live television broadcasts from various places. For everything else, they use tubes.