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Cable Industry Needs to Spend Heavily on Upgrades

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the think-of-the-children dept.

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."

13 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Certainly True in Canada by lkypnk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My ISP, Rogers Communications has all sorts of bandwidth shaping and usage restrictions in place. This is, from what I've read, apparently so they can have the bandwidth available for their VoIP and on-demand streaming TV services.

    They need to get their act together or they'll start to lose customers. They have a 60 GB/month usage limit. What good is a 8 Mbit/s line when you can hit your bandwidth cap in a single day?

    1. Re:Certainly True in Canada by nxtw · · Score: 2, Insightful

      My ISP, Rogers Communications has all sorts of bandwidth shaping and usage restrictions in place. This is, from what I've read, apparently so they can have the bandwidth available for their VoIP and on-demand streaming TV services.


      That's a lie. From what I understand a docsis channel can trasnmit 27 mbit/sec., which is plenty of voice calls. With an average of 100-500 customers on each HFC node, they'd be hard pressed to fill up just one channel worth of voice calls -- basically, if every single customer on that node had the voice service and a few hundred used the phone at the same time, they might have a problem.

      I wonder how popular on-demand really is - I can't ever say that I've watched a show on-demand; just a few music videos. I'd think the use of the on-demand channels is mostly limited to a) those that have digital cable but not the DVR, b) those that actually want to watch the limited content available, and c) those who aren't frustrated by the confusing interface.
      During those times when I do actually watch something on demand, it usually ends up failing 1/10 times -- worse if something happens to degrade my signal.

      Anyway, since it seems that most digital cable channels have low bandwidth allocations (and on-demand probably uses even less bandwidth), I'd say that they use no more than 2 mbits/second on each on demand stream, and probably less. If they can really achieve ~38mbit/sec on a QAM256 channel, they can probably do at least 15 on demand streams per channel. The nature of on-demand doesn't really lead to lots of people watching it at the same time... ...so I suspect they're using those two services as convenient excuses to not provide unlimited service.
    2. Re:Certainly True in Canada by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      "They need to get their act together or they'll start to lose customers."

      1-Are they losing customers now?

      2-Do you see any hints of them losing customers in the immediete future?

      3-Is anyone in Canada competing with them equally (this leaves out dial-up)?

      If none of the above are the case then why throw out "a guess"?

      "They have a 60 GB/month usage limit. What good is a 8 Mbit/s line when you can hit your bandwidth cap in a single day?"

      And exactly how many of Roger's customers are hitting their cap? Why does the minority feel they're a majority all of a sudden?

      Now on to the story. They'll need to upgrade because DOCSIS 3.0 (most don't even use 2.0) uses a multiplexing scheme that's not compatiable with the old equipment.

    3. Re:Certainly True in Canada by aevan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I could be wrong, but I THINK the 'lie' referenced here is needing that bandwith for the VOIP, not the fact of the traffic is being shaped. The necessity of that shaping is the questionable part ("the lie").

  2. ...at the best prices too! by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "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.

    Do you hear that?

    It's the sound of tens of thousands of dollars in new bribes starting the march to Congress to make sure that our taxes pay for these upgrades while the cablecos continue to act as if they own the infrastructure.

    Why just tens of thousands? Congress is notoriously cheap the best government money can buy at the best prices too!

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    1. Re:...at the best prices too! by GreggBz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Cable companies subsides are a fairly new thing, and far fewer than phone company subsidies. Most Cable Companies worked pretty hard to build their own plant, and indead own their infrastructure. The government had more prerogative to ensure the development phone and power companies, not MTV and HBO companies.
      Perhaps you are thinking of Verizon, MCI and Bell South.

      And remember, it's now the Cable Companies that compete with the phone companies as their networks and products begin to overlap.

  3. If you can't beat 'em by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    join 'em.

    Come on cable companies...ditch the coax and go fiber. Make the infrastructure interoperable.

    Is there really any reason for them to stick with coax? Other than grandfathering themselves in...

  4. Net neutrality? by whoever57 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Translation of the original article:

    "Industry controlled 'research' group claims big bills to be paid for infrastucture that video-streaming websites will push out. WEe need to be able to charge Google and other to 'prioritise' their traffic or we won't have enough money. Net Neutrality is therefore a bad thing"

    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  5. Re:True by kaiser423 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Satellite? You want to add half a second minimum of latency to everything that you do?

    Or do you want them to put LEO satellites into orbit and maintain them and launch new ones and have a huge switching network that would cost them nearly as much as just laying new cable with much more headache?

  6. Re:yay verizon by antonlacon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Because Verizon isn't a renamed Bell Atlantic?

  7. Re:True by omeomi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why do they need satellites?

    Because they're so big and bloated that it would be almost weird for them not to have a number of moons?

    That's a good question, though. You can already get satellite internet if you really want it, but it's expensive, relatively slow, and has high latency, given the distance of the satellite. Why would anybody who has other high-speed options actually want satellite internet?

    --
    ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
  8. Re:They are. by rshimizu12 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is really great for consumers. The cable companies are now forced to compete against the telco's. I predicted awhile back that IPTV is going to be a catalyst for greater competition and more bandwidth. Now Rupert Murdoch 's Direct TV is going to compete by deploying Wimax over satellite to deliver IPTV. So we will probably see reduced rates for TV.

  9. Re:Fiber is'nt enough by kayditty · · Score: 1, Insightful
    What? Did you just copy from the fucking Wikipedia article or something?
    That no matter what type of infrastructure you have, in many cases the limiting factor is your Upstream connection to the level 2 or 1 ISP.
    I know it's REALLY hard to understand... But ISPs have MASSIVE amounts of transfer speed. Just trust me. Ok, the cable companies generally have less than the Bells (OBVIOUSLY), but they both have an INCONCEIVABLE AMOUNT OF 'BANDWIDTH.' We aren't talking about a single OC-3, or half of the time, even an OC-12.
    Theoretically Docsis 1.0 cable modems can do 38 Mb/s downstream and 10Mb/s upstream and have been around for YEARS. I don't know of a single cable operator that sells those rates to their residential customers.
    It isn't theoretical. They CAN do that, easily, and they do. The reason that they don't sell you a 38Mbps connection is, maybe, because the HFC channel you're on is shared with the rest of your area????!?!?
    Sure, in some heavily populated areas the shared coax along the road is satuated. In many others like mine we don't have this problem either because the cable company laid fiber to the pedestal at the bottom of the driveway or the density of cable modem users isn't there.
    Hahah. When I first read this, I thought you were touching upon the point that I made immediately above, and somehow, asinine as it may be, managed to dismiss it. However, now that I've read it, I realize you were making an even more asinine assertion. You're not going to saturate coax that easily. They've ran 10Gbps over coax, and probably much more. The saturation point is at the cable channel that you're receiving your signal on. It is shared among many users, even in more sparsely populated areas (well, I guess).