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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."

4 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?

  2. Not to say that cable is dead ... but ... by martinbogo · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  3. If only there was something faster..... by dontbflat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    like fiber. Verizon is doing fiber. Why cant the cable companies. They already send the data through a fiber cable to the main cable box for the block, whats an extra few hundred feet. (I know this because in Henderson, NV Cox has done this to the neighboorhoods). It may not be done for every city, but there is no reason it cant be. To answer a post above, Satelite is not the answer. Its costly, bandwidth limiting, and has a long delay. I would never get satelite internet and if cable went that route, they would have less internet customers. Imagine playing CS at 500ms pings. ew...dialup all over again.... Fiber is the way to go. Just run some DWDM fiber and life will be good.

  4. They're already upgrading in a sense... by The+Vulture · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The cable operators, for the longest time, have been stagnant, as they never had any competition. They have the local monopoly, and the phone companies could never offer traditional cable television. When DOCSIS cable modems came out, it was a new form of competition - something that was standards based.

    Now, the main threat to cable operators is alternative forms of television - satellite and IPTV. The satellite operators don't have to pay the cable operators to broadcast their signals, and the phone companies are also monopolies that are rapidly expanding - FIOS, VDSL - techologies that can deliver more video bandwidth than cable, and still have room left over for lots of data.

    In an attempt to try to beat the phone companies to the triple play (television, data, phone), the cable companies sank a lot of money into proprietary digital television systems (Motorola and Scientific Atlanta). The telephone companies have been researching alternate systems, and I figure that they'll be able to beat the cable companies based on cost alone.

    Right now, the cable companies are trying to convert to digital cable as quickly as they can - for every analog channel that they move off to digital, they can put in between 5-10 analog channels. This space can then be redeployed for cable modems/EMTAs (for data and phone usage). But, there's a downside to this - every new digital subscriber costs the cable company hundreds of dollars in the form of an expensive PVR (a proprietary PVR that cannot be swapped out because of the proprietary encryption). So, they're screwed either way.

    -- Joe