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Bandwidth Crunch Looms for Cable Companies
coax4life writes "While Verizon and AT&T lay fiber, cable companies are looking at a huge bandwidth crunch according to a new report. Increased demand for high-def programming on the TV side and faster download speeds on the ISP side of the business will leave cable companies in a rough spot — after spending over $100 billion in the last decade on infrastructure improvements. Jumping on the fiber bandwagon may help. 'Upgrading to a fiber infrastructure is a much more expensive proposition, and one more likely to occur in areas where the cable companies are facing more competition. It can happen, though — several years ago, Comcast's predecessor on the northwest side of Chicago laid fiber on top of its existing coaxial installation. The payoff is good for both cable companies and users, as it can result in more programming choices and faster Internet access.' Moving to switched digital video solutions will also help."
If these companies could buy "blood bandwidth" from the mines in Africa.
The Internet? Is that thing still around?
For real this time! Seriously! I mean it!
That we prevent companies from putting down new technology that competes with cable.
That way everything stays the same.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Meanwhile, in satellite TV world, I'm looking forward to the 150 HD channels provided by the new DirecTV satellite.
Satellite, with it's massive downward bandwidth but high latency, is the better TV solution.
Internet is a different animal. Maybe we should kick TV off cable?
Dance like you're hurt, Love like you need money, and work when somebody's watching.
-Scott Adams
fiber is not THAT expensive and it's getting cheaper cuz more people want to buy it and lay it places. Plus depending on several factors, can't it be like 100x faster than cable? So in other words, 100 more customers in the same area or 10x more customers with 10x the bandwidth each. I'd freak if they offered 50 megabit connections that are never busy even if every single neighbor got on it at once. So basic math suggests that unless it's 100x more expensive to put in a fiber network than more copper, they'll make a profit by putting it in cuz DUH the demand is there
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
That's what I pay you $60-$70 a month for. Don't complain to me. In the time I have had my cable internet service (since the first day it was available where I live)... Comcrud has raised rates, capped downloads, slowed speeds, raised rates, had dropouts, raised rates, etc. I really don't care that you are "overwhelmed". Maybe you shouldn't have sold 10k people 5 Mb connections when you only have a total of 500 Mbps of bandwidth. Maybe you shouldn't have lied.
Last week we got a letter in the mail that said that our streets would soon be torn up as AT&T would be replacing our terrible old copper with fiber to the home (our copper is bad, no DSL). We should be able to sign-up for their TV and internet service within about a year (so they say, I'd guess 1.5-2).
Of course, Comcrud has also dropped the quality of our cable TV, added next to no new channels, raised rates, and more. I would guess we'll switch off that too to U-Verse.
Comcrud is already in deep trouble in this area now that they will have actual competition. That alone will cause them big problems. But soon people won't be able to sign-up for their "ultra high speed" internet service so they can download music (which you have to pay for), download movies wicked fast (but you can't, and you probably have to pay for it), and surf at lightning speeds (if they aren't having a random outage)?
Why don't they do like many businesses, and stop selling services they can't provide.
Then again, I'm sure just about other /.er has the same sympathy I do for the lying US broadband industry.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Ever since the whole bi-directional cable modem thing started, I've always hear it called the HFC network, hybrid fibre-coax. It's fibre up to a point, then goes to coax. I know that's the case here. The university I work for gets a cable feed, but it doesn't come in on coax. It comes in on fibre and is converted to coax on the premises (I've been to the cable termination room where it happens). They may need to build out their fibre networks further, but I think they've been doing that too. I know they've been segmenting the amount of users down further and further. A few years ago your segment was huge, you were in like a /22 subnet. Now it is a /26 and I don't see much traffic at all on mine.
Also I think the discontinuation of analogue will free up a good bit of bandwidth. I mean you have to remember that analogue takes up somewhere in the realm of 500-600MHz on most networks (a channel is 6MHz). Dump that for digital and you've got a whole bunch more available. Our cable network is 1GHz max bandwidth (since those are the splitters they provide) of that the lower portion is all analogue. In the digital portion they get all the analogue channels digitally broadcast (for their DVRs) several HDTV channels, 50 or so pay per view channels, and at least a hundred other digital only channels. More or less, they can do everything they do now in about half their available bandwidth if they axe analogue. That gives a whole lot more bandwidth for new stuff.
I don't want to sound too much like a troll here, but do we need that many TV channels- rather than hundreds of TV channels running 24/7 with their average uses being low, but of course having very high peeks on popular shows, we should have on demand services as television. This'd cut down bandwith, put up competition and work well. Of course its a good idea to retain "Recommended veiwing times" and "First Showing Times" to retain seasons with patterns, Example- my family likes House M.D, its on every thursday, for the last 7 weeks we've missed it (thursday isn't a good night) but because at the momenet I can pirate them (I don't see this as immoral as we're doing it in place of just watching it on TV and we're simply viewing the same thing at a different time), as a result I get to see the season I like and don't loose bandwith on preset re-runs, we just watch every wednesday night instead.
even then switched digital video may not help in areas with a lot of uses and people don't want to have to pay for a cable box on each tv that they have.
And the cable co need to give you free cable cards.
Why does this sound like a marketing document that is intended to prepare the groundwork for them starting to "meter" content? Meaning, I am sure that if Google just "pays for their fair share" that everything would be wonderful!
Actually, considering that the net neutrality failed 6 months ago, I would say these companies are quite aggressive on their marketing...
A really, really, tiny violin. Between the cable and telco's the poor thing is taking a real beating.
Physically there is no technology that can match a cable company's bandwidth to the house. As far as fiber is concerned Our internal network ran that for all our high speed internal links.Untill we start talking about pulling fiber into your house (Which will be a while; phone companies aren't doing that either in the US) Cable has major physical dvantages over any other currently common technology.
Disclaimer: I wrote software managing the network for the third largest cable company in the US.
Hajo Monogamy: Belief so strong that millions of people end perfectly good relationships in order to start a new one.
... because in my area, "cable" is fiber into and through the neighborhoods, and only 'cable' from a big box to your house.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
MOST up to date cable systems already use fiber in a "HFC" setup. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_fibre-coaxial
If they need more bandwidth they just split bigger nodes in to smaller nodes. HFC has no problem growing with the needs of more digital bandwidth.
The only issue with this is when some cable co's try to cut cost by over crowding a node.
I have to return some videotapes...
Is that ATT's new UVerse rollout of Fiber is capable of 100 Mbs right to the house. But they are only doing 25 Mbps. And, to make it worse, they'll only give you 6 Mbps for internet access. And to finally add the piece of crapola to the cake, you absolutely have to have ATT as your ISP. Ugghhh. Spare me.
You are absolutely correct in that satellite is the way to go. And DirecTV is superb (I have it and love it).
The other solution is to divest the Central Offices from the Phone companies, and open up the lines from the CO to the home. You know, like we had for a while back in the early 90's with modems. Old timers might recall that this is what started the popular adoption of the internet, allowing everyboday easy access via ISPs.
What is sadly amusing is that some third-world countries are getting faster internet access than what is typically given here in the U.S.. One has to wonder when this will change.
Do business before someone else does!
e rnment don't find a way to prevent the little guys from making a success of something they are unwilling to do themselves.
I think it's a well-established observation that the larger US companies do everything in their power to avoid changing their business model and practices... this includes immoral and illegal acts as history has shown time and time again.
But someone will see opportunity and find a way to make it happen, and when they do, it will spell an even MORE difficult life for the ones that didn't move fast enough to own the infrastructure that customers demand... that is if the big-bad-existing-companies-with-pull-over-the-gov
One thing that bothers me is how obvious this trend of avoiding "risky behavior" is simply the wrong thing to do in a world of constantly changing and evolving technologies? They can work to slow things down -- this has been shown. But they can't really stop things. But in the end, the more they fight change, the weaker the position they find themselves in when change becomes inevitable.
Perhaps this is why hundreds of people's internet accounts are being terminated by Comcast. It happened to me in January this year. After researching I've learned of dozens more who are pissed they get one call then are terminated for 12 months. I've been blogging about it for several months and have turned my efforts to bringing projects such as Utopia fiber to the home. I figure competition will force companies to bring the best product and service possible to consumers. It's pretty obvious Comcast isn't able to handle the increasing demand of it's customers. Especially after hearing how the terminations seems to be increasing.
I've been speaking with my City Council and the Mayor about joining Utopia. 14 cities have already joined and some are nearing completion this summer. With Utopia, if a company goes nuts (like Comcast did), you can simply give them the boot and select a more responsible provider.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
...but I love living in Sacramento, where I can get Surewest and have 100Mbps fiber optic service available to my house. Of course only 20Mbps of it is dedicated for my Internet connection (they have 50Mbps available), but it is still very nice service. I also have TV, which has room for improvement, but the picture quality on their HD service is awesome. I think I remember reading a quote from their CEO that said in the event of having a customer who wants 50Mbps plus more than 3 rooms of HD service, they will even run a second line from the pole to your house for another 100Mbps of bandwidth just to provide all the services to a customer.
The cable and phone companies need to get their heads out of their asses and run fiber to every home. I have a friend who works at AT&T as a fiber splicer, and he said they are running a lot of fiber, but most of it is just to the neighborhoods where they will then run VDSL to each home from remote terminals. With the amount of money the behemoths have, you think they would just run fiber straight to every home and get it over with. Eventually they will have to do it anyways.
Now, in Japan with ~$20/mo for 100 Mb/s service starts to sound more reasonable.
Anyone wonder why the USA is rapidly dropping below third-world countries?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Two way cable cards are designed to eliminate open digital boxes. By taking all the logic that a regualr box has and pulling it into a bi-directional cablecard, you effectivly make it impossible to add any value with a third party box. It won't matter that they can be made.
The cable companies need to create an open-standards network service for all upstream communications, allow third parties to implement the protocol that requests on-demand content and SDV channels, and then distribute single direction cable cards which do *nothing* but decode the signal.
Bi-Directional CableCARD 2.0 is an industry scam to bypass the integration ban entirely.
Excuse me, but I'm an executive for an "undisclosed" cable corporation, and I'd like to respond to, "after spending over $100 billion in the last decade on infrastructure improvements." The industry (cumulatively) hasn't invested nearly that level of resources toward its infrastructure. If I had to throw a figure out there, I'd have to say 25 billion is closer to the mark. Sure they make it look that way on the yearly's, but I see internal reports that indicate, to me, that we milk consumers, all the while increasing board member salaries at the expense of hardware upgrades, overhauls, and new copper. 100 billion dollars over the last decade . . . nonsense.
Cable is a dead horse. Either its fibre to within 100m or so, (good for at least 1GBit/s, 4-wires) then copper or fibre
all the way. Sand is cheaper than copper, so in the end, fibre wins. The "copper people" say it lasts far a much shorter period of time, due to moisture. Putting 3GHz down cables designed for 1GHz would be a nightmare beyond imagination.
BillSF
Its fiber to the node(just like cable does it) The last leap still uses plain old twisted pair wire. Its basicly video over VDSL.
I heard they where going to do FTTH in very few (read: $RICH$) towns but most will be FTTN.
I have to return some videotapes...
Just make them invest back some percentage of the immense profits they have made by overselling the bandwidth on the lines that were constructed by public funding, something which they should ALREADY had done in the first place.
Read radical news here
you're right -- cameras are cheap; its the computers attached to them and the video analytic software running on those computers that's expensive.
but the one-time-charge for that is a lot less than the recurring yearly charge for the salary of hiring a government employee to watching the camera even when nothing interesting is happening.
There is a shortage of bandwidth. So instead of applying free market principles and auctioning bandwidth to the highest bidder, ISP's seek out the socialist solution and ration the bandwidth between everyone.
Auctioning the bandwidth would bring in more capital, which could allow for expansion of the infrastructure. But that takes work, effort. Why bother maintaining the building when all you have to do is collect the monthly rent, right?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Amazingly there was only one intelligent thing said in the whole article. "Digital switching is key" is correct. Whats amazing is that some consulting has the balls to act like $great_prophet when proclaiming it. I mean, its not like Cablelabs hasn't been hard at work on the technologies to address the bandwidth issue. Both DOCSIS 3.0 (http://www.cablemodem.com/specifications/specific ations30.html) and Modular CMTS (http://www.cablemodem.com/specifications/m-cmts.h tml are designed to address this problem. M-CMTS basically works to divide cable plant into smaller sections by pushing the RF interfaces further out to the edge. This is done by placing fairly dumb/inexpensive edge QAM's out in the plant, these devices encapsulate DOCSIS frames into Gigabit Ethernet to carry them back to a packet processing engine. What this buys the operator is the ability to use fewer RF channels but gain more bandwidth at the cost of having some additional backhaul (to carry the GigE). Now some people might wonder if this consulting company is merely championing an idea that hasn't been developed, but sadly that isn't the case either. Many manufacturers are already producing EQAM's including big hitters like Cisco (http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/cable/ps22 09/products_implementation_design_guide_chapter091 86a00807c73c7.html/) These same EQAM's also handle switching of digital video so cable companies save on both switched video and normal IP traffic. DOCSIS 3.0 allows for bonding DOCSIS channels to create far more bandwidth, which is likely to be used for business services as well as more rich IP services. Comcast in my area already offers multiple HD on demand channels, for example HBO and Showtime. (http://www.comcast.com/HBOondemand/ and http://www.tvweek.com/news/2007/03/comcast_launche s_showtime_hdvo.php/)
Quite honestly it sounds like the "consultant" needs to do some research.
Telecoms firing up the waahmbulance, looking for more government subsidies for their 'struggling' business. Uh yeah, FTTH, didn't we already pay you for that one? Multiple billions?
I used to love Comcast. For years I waited for high speed in my town. I only live about sixty miles outside of Chicago in a small town known as Batavia(featured recently on slashdot). In spring of 2003 they finally put the fiber in to run high speed now two things happened right about the same time. First At&t lines were purchased and Comcast put new lines in and also Batavia was considering a tri-city(Geneva, St. Charles, Batavia) fiber system that would provide us with cable, phone, internet with pure fiber to our homes.
When Comcast got wind of that plan they initiated a massive surge to install their system before the town voted on our own. They also ran a slander campaign to make it sound like our system would cost us an arm and a leg to build and if it failed we would foot the bill.
When it came to vote of course our town people voted down on the our municipal system. The funny thing is that if everyone who voted "yes" would of purchased the towns system it would of paid itself off in ten years. Unfortunately, Comcast did a great job at putting their system in at the last moment and slandering the tri-city system.
Now, our quality of service is just horrible. Recently, quite a few people who live around my area(not just my neighborhood) have been complaining of sluggish and slow speeds on Comcast. Personally, it feels like during the day they are dropping packets on us or something. At first I thought it was my network but when my neighbors from around town started to complain I started getting a little suspicious. The cable line outside my house was cut and its been a month and they still haven't serviced it(I did). Some have said thats the root of my slow speeds but this was happening before that happened.
We've been paying for Fibre to the home for YEARS and we've yet to see ONE INCH of it.
All those fuckin' surcharges.
Years, I tell you.
Billions of dollars, I tell you.
Fuck 'em where they breathe.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Katrina, exploding pipes in New York, a collapsed bridge in Minnesota, power lines that continually fail, outdated oil refineries, on and on. Americans have got to start realizing that our infrastructure has been neglected for 20-30 years and now the cracks are starting to show.
All of this goes back to the Reagan philosophy of "tax cuts good, government bad." People have become so indoctrinated to hate government that we're not putting up the will power or resources to keep our infrastructure first rate. The fools following Milton Friedman somehow thing throwing everything into the hands of private industry would have fixed all of these problems.
I don't know what it will take to wait people up. We've had Enron, rolling blackouts all over the country, and an entire friggin' city swamped by cut-rate dikes bursting (from a hurricane that never even hit the city). Unfortunately, I think the Reagan philosophy is so ingrained that it'll take people waking up one day and noticing that we're not the #1 economy in the world anymore.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
http://www.naradnetworks.com/hardware.html
Good to at least 100 Mbps symmetrical over a modern cable system.
How old is multicast now? Doesn't it kinda get rid of MASSIVE CHUNKS of this bandwidth problem thing?
I know cable/adsl providers et al have a teensy issue with it, as a lot of their kit just doesn't do it, but, well, isn't that called making your bed and lying in it?
OTOH, my ISP multicast peers with e.g. the BBC, so I know it's doable right now.
they are just going to end up compressing the shit out of those HD channels. All you suckers with $2000 TVs are going to be watching blocky bullshit - but at least it will have 720 lines right?
In areas with more competition, prices are driven lower, and you're less likely to get all the customers available. So why would you want to throw all your money there?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You're spewing vicarious B.S. yourself here.
Point 1: If cable has such overwhelming bandwidth, then why do Dish/Direct TV satellites offer 5X as many HD channels, and climbing, as cable does?
Point 2: You may have the best download pipe bandwidth to my house, but you fill it up constantly with 99% of things I don't want or need at the moment! How smart it that?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Are you talking about Kutztown, PA? The entire town is fiber with a 68 strand backbone, and 40-something strand branches. I'm on 10-mbit down, 1 (although they give me 2) mbit up, and the fiber also provides TV. $45 a month for internet, $60-something for internet+TV (with premium channels and a sports package of some type. I only got the internet package.) Afterwards, Pennsylvania effectively made towns doing this illegal. Comcast, Service Electric, Verizon, etc. were not happy campers when they were trying to sell 1 mbit/256 kbit internet packages for $60/month. Oh, yeah, and the tech support is top notch. Even the utilities are remote administered from the borough, water, gas, electric - they monitor it all in real time and bundle your services on a single bill that you can have them put on your credit card. You get a single statement in the mail with a breakdown of your utilites, and can write a single check (I just have them charge my card each month). Beautiful system.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
In three rural counties in Washington state you can get fiber to the premises. Rates start at $40/month for 100mbps with bandwidth surcharges over about 7GB. It's provided by the county Public Utility. Point to point unmetered links are available too.
It would kind of make me feel bad for the cable company if I wasn't being charged twice that for 7% as much.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I have ZERO sympathy for the cable racketeers. Rates increase at 6 times the rate of inflation. Digital cable looks worse than analog (I know an over-compressed mpeg stream when I see it). The customer service is crap. Their technicians are morons.
Where I am, Comcast likes to screw up their DHCP servers about every 6 weeks, usually on a Sunday. Once, the customer service rep (imagine the George Carlin bit) insists on sending a truck out to check the lines. Tuesday when he showed up, I told him he was on a wild goose chase.
The next time, it took them 68 hours to figure out how to get their DHCP servers to hand out real IP addresses, rather than 192.168.0.* addresses.
I mean seriously, WTF?
When I had Sprint DSL in Vegas I was 3000 feet from the CO (it was great), but had the unfortunate luck of being plugged into a DSLAM that had taken a massive power surge. That I can understand as a source of my woes, but not the fact that it took them well over a year to replace it.
You built the house you live in, so deal with it. I can't wait until there is a new house on the block that is built right from the foundation upwards. What we need is a company that will charge fair prices for the services being offered; Americans spend a larger portion of their money on entertainment than other countries.
There is plenty of money to make it happen, if the CEOs need to sell their backup Ferrari, then be my guest, but get on your horse and get it done quick. We've had terrible service here at the home, you never know when it just won't work. Every time you call, you get the same response: "We're sorry, but our equipment is outdated and it just can't keep up. We're working on fixing the problem." If the service that was offered in the contract can't be provided, then hand out refunds.
Here's the real sad part, there isn't a lot you can do because the alternatives appear to be doing the same thing.
Am I the only one who thinks metered bandwidth would be a good idea? It would put an end to all the games they play with bandwidth caps and traffic shaping to keep you from actually using the service. They'd be tripping over themselves to make enough bandwidth available so you'd never see a slowdown. If you normally only do some light browsing, you'd normally pay very little, but the raw speed would be there on the rare occasion that you needed it. If you're a heavy user, you'd pay more, but the ISP would do everything they could to make you happy and give you as much bandwidth as you could handle. And somewhere in the middle is the average user who winds up paying effectively the same price. As a final side benefit, trojans and zombie botnets would fall off if users actually had an incentive to police their own traffic.
You pay for what you use with practically every other utility. I don't see why Internet access should be any different.
It is my understanding that cable companies have been using fibre to the cabinet for years, certainly since cable went almost 100% digital, with just the final 100s yards from the cabinet to the customer being copper.
Point 2: You may have the best download pipe bandwidth to my house, but you fill it up constantly with 99% of things I don't want or need at the moment! How smart it that?
While I agree with you that there is a huge amount of content provided via cable that I could care less about, this is not about what you want but what the market desires. I don't care about channels like SoapNet or Style but there is a target demographic that will shell out money for that content. I don't hear anyone complaining to Macy's because they don't carry enough of the clothing you like, they (like any other profit-motivated entity) will cater to what greatest number of people as possible while maximizing profit.
Before we get to the retort of a-la-carte offerings, it won't work. Under the current scheme, specialized niche channels are able to be offered (many times at a loss to the cable company) because they are subsidized by more popular mainstream networks. Also networks will offer discounts to the cable company by bundling cable networks together as a package.
This space for sale. Inquire within.
I like analog because then the cable company doesn't have to get me to pay them an extra $5 or $10 for a cheapo cable box and an additional fee for having "digital" cable. Furthermore, I know how the tech works and I know it's making them burn, so to me, it make me feel all good inside knowing that their profit margin is quite low.
Now, if they had worthy quality digital video, CHEAPER rates (digital is cheaper idiots), cable boxes that didn't take 2 seconds to change a channel, and idiot techs that are "required" to setup your tvs with additional fees per each tv, then maybe I'd reconsider. But seriously their business is driven by using digital as a marketing front with more gadets and fees to profit from while service only gets worse.
Seeing how TV is never going to come in decent quality in both video quality and content quality from the cable tv and entertainment companies, I seriously hope youtube and internet pipes get bigger so that the consumers will actually have choice again and not fed crap just to get 1 interesting channel out of 80 useless ones.
The Capitalist solution would be these greedy cable companies actually having had INVESTED the excessive amounts of profits they had been making overselling the lines.
CAPITALISM - its self evident - you have capital, INVEST it, create more capital and continue INVESTING from it to continue successful business.
why should i or anyone else care a fucking bit for capitalism, whereas the cable companies have themselves disobeyed capitalistic rules in the first place ?
what i vote is, govt. should bring on a socialist solution to these 19th century capitalist bastards that have gone haywire. why ?
because world has opposites and balances, and to punish some party best way is to lash at them back with their anti-philosophy. that should teach them not to fuck around overselling and not investing from then on.
Read radical news here
our cable runs on fiber to the distribution nodes, and we live in a fairly backward area. so i have to question the cluefullness of the article. it may just be propaganda.
Costs go up, wail and moan, charge even more than the cost increase, PROFIT!
Costs go down, warn that reduced profits could mean reduced supply, charge more, PROFIT!
Yes, they're learning. From the oil companies. Once you get a good crisis going you can always find excuse to keep it going as long as you can profit from it. You just need to keep redefining the crisis.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
very telling post
Read radical news here
They were really, really ticked! Here's a snippet from Wired News, it's from late '04 when this whole thing was going down: (FTA @ Public Fiber Tough to Swallow):
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
The above statement is true only if there is real competition for cable providers or phone providers. In the example given, Comcast had some form of competition in part of Chicago. I'm sure the price people paid for their high-speed connections reflected that competition.
However, in my area, I have two choices: Comcast or Verizon. In both cases it is impossible to get naked broadband. Not dsl, which can be purchased separately, but true, high speed broadband. Both Comcast and Verizon offer a package deal for over $100/month (not including taxes, surchages, etc) for phone, tv access and broadband.
I don't want all of that. I want just broadband connectivity. "Sorry faceless number. You cannot get what you want. It's either our way or no way."
Thus, unless there is real competition in an area, there is no payoff for the customer, only the provider as they can set just about any rate they want and you have to accept that rate or do without.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I hate how every daming article of the cableindustry always leaves out cablevision. Here in cablevision territory they are competing very well against fios. The normal package was just recently upgraded to 16.5/2, the boost backage the download was uncapped and has a max of what ever the cablemodem supports/and 5 upload. Cablevision also just added vshd,golfhd, and the voom hd networks wich there is maybe 7 or more of them. I dont see cablevision in trouble yet. They are slowly taking analog channels away and replacing them with hd channels. Our internet is at the max of what docisis 2 supports. Then you have all that spectrum abovbe 800mhz wich is not used. Cablecompanies are not in trouble. Just look at cablevision as what cablecompanies can really do.
I think these guys underestimate how much bandwidth the cable companies actually have to play with.
Every two analog channels they can free up off of their wires is good for around 25 Mbps of bandwidth. In my area that is worth at least 1.5 Tbps (60 channels * 25 / 2), and that is just the analog channels I know about - it is probably more like the first 80 or 100 analog channels are currently reserved, or almost 3 Tbps.
Once they are allowed to go fully digital (that is, once set top boxes are so cheap they can give them away to existing old-school customers), they will have no bandwidth issues.
I don't get what's so special about the 'bandwidth crunch' on cable. Compared to other last mile technologies, it stacks up pretty well. If you try to push the same services over *DSL, you'd come up very short. The only comparable alternative is fiber, and the cost of putting new fibre in the ground is going to be the same whether you are a cable co upgrading from coax or a telco upgrading from copper.
I'd even argue that cable cos are in a better position; the existing coax has loads of bandwidth so if they move the fiber to distribution points closer to the subscribers (e.g., instead of 5000 cable customers hanging off a single fiber node you have 100-200) you gain lots of last mile capacity without having to pull fibre all the way to each customer.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
So DOCSIS 3.0 is just a pipe dream? K. Just checking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
How to save bandwidth on the last mile: Don't transmit what's not being requested.
Only send a channel down the neighborhood coax if at least one person is watching. If a person is watching on or recording to a non-HD device, only send him the SD version.
I think some video delivery technologies already operate this way.
This does have some nasty side-effects: Channel-surfing isn't "instant" and there are privacy implications since the cable company knows what you are watching.
These concerns can be mitigated by having only the "top 25" or "top 100" channels always broadcasting in full definition, and having the next "top 100" channels broadcasting a non-HD version. Any other channels can broadcast audio, meta-data, and various-levels-of-quality video depending on their ranking. For best results,t he rankings would adjust dynamically by neighborhood and time of day and would include predictive elements.
Using technology like this, there is no technical reason a cable company couldn't be like a YouTube, with live and prerecorded programming available from around the world. It just becomes an issue of delivering the content to the cable company's head-end, negotiating rights, and making payment arrangements. I bet there is a big alumni market for high school sporting events, this is one way to deliver that content to the living room.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
So has someone figured out how to hack their signal yet and get it for free? With all other DRM schemes getting hacked, I haven't heard of any yet for satellite content like DirectTV, Sirius, or XM.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Little late, but....
The 2-way cable cards I believe already exist, MCards. The point of those is that, while nothing signal wise can be done, you can buy a settop from any supplier, you don't HAVE to rent a box from your cable company and their provider. Features like DVR would be one-time purchase and not a rental.
A week ago I took the plunge from Comcast to Verizon FIOS. It largely was a step backwards (lousy channel guide, no page down (With 800+ channels, that is a huge issue!) etc)... But last night I turn on the DVR and Verizon FIOS came of age. They have a new channel guide beats Comcast, has page down and is just so nice. Comcast actually took 3 channels away from a 1/2 screen channel guide to show you advertising! Did I see a drop in my cable bill? Nope. The FIOS one is FULL SCREEN, and you can filter to only HDTV channels.
I have the 15/2 plan, but for the torrents as of late, have had a hard time matching Comcast. I've gotten impressive speeds, but Comcast seemed to sustain them more. Of course, torrents are not a reliable benchmark method.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Two way cards exist, but the upstream signaling hardware currently must live in the STB. It does not live in the card. There is no standard for implementing such an interface, so the current two-way cards are only bi-directional if they are used in a box that you get from your cable company.
MCards don't need to be bi-directional. They are simply multiple-stream cards which allow for things like picture-in-picture without requiring multiple cards.
I believe you are incorrect. I work at Motorola, and despite how low rung I am, I know that the purpose of the MCards (now required by the FCC) is that now you only need to rent a card. You can soon buy a settop box from BestBuy, rent just the MCard from your cable provider, insert, and watch TV. Settop box makers now have to compete on features and price instead of the backroom deals with cable providers. At least this is the what I have heard from all my higher-ups.
Now, this will not affect most people as they don't want to go through the hassle of choosing a box or don't know why they should. Motorola boxes going to BestBuy will be open but the ones going to Comcast will have a metal shield bolting the MCard into the settop. Oh well.
"Back in the 1990's, I used to pay $23 a month for phone service and $36 for cable. Now I pay a combined total for cable, phone and internet of $160 per month. That is way above inflation."
My bill is around 100-110 a month. In the 90's It was around 60-70 just for cable channels, no internet access.
My bill now reflects a different set of services and channels from my 90's package. Broadband wasn't even available in my area until 97, so comparing the two is useless.
You're comparing apples and oranges.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
You realize that digital cable is nothing more than a cable modem and MPEG decoder right? Basically you say "show me channel 3" and the provider starts sending you the MPEG stream for that channel instead. It isn't like they send all of the channels all the time to every box.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
proxy servers at the local loop / local exchange level and up is what is needed to solve the video over interweb issue.
Most people are watching house / heroes / ghost whisperer etc anyway.
You can fit quite a few TBs on the cheap and in 4u of space these days.
Long time ago, the local Bell was having a problem making too much money. To cut back on profits to get the government off thier back, they started running fiber to every single subdivision in my area, and we're not talking huge city. There's fiber all around me, all of it neglected and cut up by now. Now the companys are saying it costs too much to do what they were blowing money on before...
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
In non-standard usage, the phrase is commonly used to mean "suggests the question" or "raises the question". So why should we embrace non-standard usage?
I'm disgusted.
I always imagined it as something as the opposite of a steam roller.. ala a big fat honking 12 foot pizza cutter blade with a notch in it-- the cable laying in the notch-- the pressure just spreads apart the asphalt and drops in the cable....why does the whole thing have to be trench dug???
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
sounds like a personal problem to me.
expandfairuse.org
You know, those things that have been around for decades? That's what they are for. I sit back and laugh at all the morons these days that buy into all this DVR and other crap that does what a VCR has done for eons.
You might want to inform yourself before you call BS.
1. Satellite providers are not bound by the same FCC rules. Cable has to maintain 70+ analog channels which could be used to deliver ~10+ digital channels each. This restriction was set to be lifted in 2007 provided we had OpenCable finished and deployed, which we unfortunately do not. It will be another year or two before we can replace our analog carriers.
2. Very good call. Most of what we do today is broadcast, in that we deliver the signal whether you want it or not. This will also change in the not so distant future.
As for it being BS that we have the _technical_ ability to deliver the most bandwidth . . . that is only somewhat true.
Spectrum Available for Bandwidth: 50-750(and in some cases 850, 950, or 1k but we'll focus on a 750MHz ceiling)
Carriers Available for Bandwidth: 700MHz / 6MHz = ~116 channels/carriers
Capacity per carrier at QAM256(not the highest BW carrier available, but one widely deployed): 42Mbit
Capacity available on the wire: 116 * 42Mbit = 4.8Gbit
You might argue that theoretically fiber to the curb providers could easily deliver 10Gig-E to every home provided they have the ability to aggregate that much bandwidth at the CO. In theory you'd be right . . . but theory doesn't change the fact that cable could deliver 4.8Gbit with existing technology that is in place today . . . and in fact we intend to.
You can already do this with the first-gen CableCARD. With the second generation cable card (MCard is something completely different), sure, you'll be able to buy a box, but it won't do very much. The program guides and interactive features are implemented inside the card. That doesn't leave much room for innovation on the part of the set top box maker, and is contrary to the intention of the integration ban.
So technically you're correct, but so was I.