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Comcast CEO Shows Off Superfast Modem
Gary writes "Comcast CEO dazzled cable industry audience by showcasing a super quick modem, using a technology called DOCSIS 3.0. It was developed by the cable industry's research arm, Cable Television Laboratories. It bonds together four cable lines but is capable of allowing much more capacity enabling a data download speed of 150 megabits per second, or roughly 25 times faster than today's standard cable modems. 'The new cable technology is crucial because the industry is competing with a speedy new offering called FiOS, a TV and Internet service that Verizon Communications Inc. is selling over a new fiber-optic network. The top speed currently available through FiOS is 50 megabits per second, but the network already is capable of providing 100 mbps, and the fiber lines offer nearly unlimited potential.'"
I can imagine the fark headline for this already...
Comcast announces faster modems, with new bandwidth caps, torrent blocking.
...doesn't matter much if the cable ISP's backbone feed is already saturated with today's technology cablemodem subscribers using 1Mbps to 6Mbps units. Their backend equipment and backbone feed would be crushed under the load of anything greater than 10Mbps in every customer's home, let alone 100+Mbps.
150x faster? My cable modem syncs at 20mbits/second, and so too does the majority of others on the Virgin Media network in the UK.
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But who cares? Does anyone actually think cable companies are going to provide any sort of significant speed boost to consumers any time soon? They've already demonstrated people are willing to pay $55 USD/month for 3 Mbps/768 kpbs service*; why should they increase those numbers?
And it's not like they're operating in a vacuum, since you can get 6 Mbps/1 Mbps ADSL for $35 USD/month.
*I'm looking at you, Charter.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
This is all very nice and impressive, but it's besides the point.
Verizon is coming into the Washington metro area with FIOS and based on informal discussions with friends and colleagues is kicking Comcast's butt.
Right now, it's primarily a price issue. High speed internet (5M/2M) is similarly price, but the FIOS TV is where Verizon has a huge advantage. Right now, most people are reporting savings of $25/month (that's SAVINGS) and this is for more channels, but standard def and high def.
Plus, the Verizon installers are, in general, far more professional because they haven't outsourced installation to guys in pickup trucks. They do it themselves, and the quality of their work is outstanding.
The good news here is for consumers... Comcast must do something they've refused to do so far... compete on price, because they have less features than Verizon. Right now, Comcast is offering limited deals (1 year, all your boxes for free), but as FIOS penetrates more neighborhoods, the prices will drop.
This really is good news for everybody.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
if you can get it....
i just dumped comcast entirely and it's about time. they've been blocking verizon from rolling out their TV service for quite some time. FiOS internet is FAR superior...my upload speed is faster hen my friends' comcast download speed. Their TV service competes as well. verizon's HD channels are much better in selection, signal, and picture quality. comcast blows verizon away in OnDemand selection though. FiOSTV offers 0 free movies on demand...$2.99 for Encino Man??...come on verizon.....
As much as the cablecos would like to make us all go "oooh" and "aaah" over this technology, it's still incredibly unimpressive. We won't see rollouts of this technology for at least a year and most projections show just 40% of cable subscribers will have access to DOCSIS 3.0 by 2012. It's really not all that impressive considering that projects like UTOPIA and FIOS are currently delivering better speeds than cable and can ramp up to 100Mbps+ without much in the way of equipment upgrades. UTOPIA can even do 1Gbps+ with a minimum of new equipment. This is just another way for incumbent providers to squeeze more blood from the turnip that is their aging copper-based plant. The stock market will reward them now, but the market as a whole will be punishing them in 5-10 years.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
For the foreseeable future it's much cheaper to lay down cable than fiber. Many, many areas still don't have access to fiber due to restrictions (distance to teleco, local laws, etc). However, cable is abundant. In my area, for example, we're STILL waiting on Verizon FIOS due to local laws. Cable companies would be happy to lay down more wire to my house on the cheap (and I'd be cool with paying for that).
Remember, don't think of things from technical advantages only. Think about it as a business (which it is). Why, for example, is DSL still successful in markets where FIOS/cable provide better speeds? Cost. If cable companies could lay down wire and give you the exact same speed as fiber (for half the cost), would you go for it? Even if you knew fiber would be likely to surpass it? I might. My neighbor definitely would.
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If you don't have fiber, it's probably because of regulatory/legal hurdles involved in negotiating the right-of-way, because Verizon might not have anything on the poles right now (where I am, they don't -- the POTS lines are the local telco, and then there's the cable co's coax and the power lines).
But the cable company already has stuff out there on the poles. If they're going to spend all the labor involved in stringing a new set of wires up there, they might as well use fiber instead of copper-conductor coaxial. It's not really that much harder to do, and there aren't any legal/regulatory hurdles that would stop them. AFAIK they already have fiber running to the nodes for backhaul, so it would really just be an expansion of their existing system.
They don't do it, because the labor involved in stringing cables is really expensive, and frankly they haven't really hit the saturation point of the coax they have out there yet. The phone companies have -- because they've pretty much maxed what you can do on TWP wiring with DSL -- but through skillful manipulation of the available bandwidth (eliminating analog channels and pushing more of it to heavily-compressed MPEG-2/4) the cable companies have at least another 5-10 years out of their coax that runs to the curb. When that gets saturated, the next step will be fiber, not doubling up the amount of coax.
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Several earlier posts, including one of mine, have pointed out that they will not be running new cable lines to your house.
With that attitude, do you think these guys will actually deploy this technology?
Having sat around the table with "these guys" for most of the past two years while developing the DOCSIS 3.0 specs, I can guarantee that most of the big operators will be deploying this technology as soon they can get their hands on it in sufficient quantities from the equipment vendors.
Sort of on topic, sort of off, but does Comcast's CEO actually use Comcast as his cable provider?
I ask this as my Comcrap cable has been knocked out *again* from a thunderstorm. Since January, we've lost service due to an ice storm, a relatively light snowfall, and just plain old rain. Another occasion had the TV service freezing up because it was *raining*. We've received nominal credits (yay, a $1.30 credit on my $90 bill!)
Does the CEO have to read about FiOS offering substantially better speeds and programming at a similar or lesser price than his own cable? If he has a problem, does he have to wait on hold for an hour and a half to talk to someone, just like his technicians? Is his area stuck with a cable guide that is 3 generations behind those in the middle of freakin' Indiana? Does his HD pixellate or get out of sync every so often? Is he happy with the literal handful of HD channels available to his lineup?
Yep, I'm bitter. I use Comcast because I can't get DSL (I'd have to get a landline phone for that anyway, which I don't want) and they are the only provider. I hate it hate it hate it. I just don't understand how someone could subscribe to their service and actually *enjoy* it, given the other technology alternatives that are out there, but just aren't available yet to everyone for some unknown reason. Gahhhhh!