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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."
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.
Read the fine print in DirecTV's ads. They will have more HD *capacity* but not more HD Channels. They will have to use most of their HD channels to broadcast the many iterations of the local affiliates. That means less channels for each individual market. Also, I don't see how IPTV will help cable. IPTV doesn't magically reduce the bandwidth needed to broadcast a channel, it only moves the data stream from the MAC layer of the network, to the transport layer (which would actually make it less efficient.)
(Which will be a while; phone companies aren't doing that either in the US)
u t+fiostv/about+fios.htm
Ahem...
http://www22.verizon.com/content/consumerfios/abo
Actually, the fiber that the phone companies (like Verizon) are using has a capacity of 2.4 Gbps. It's really not very fast, and only has capacity for a handful of HD channels. These are selected by the user and connected on-demand by the company upstream.
that is what switched cable is for. switched cable means that each customer gets N channels where N is the number of boxes you have, probably 1-3. with that they can give each channel 10 times the bandwidth, offer near infinite channels, AND have a metric assload of bandwidth freed up for other uses. the downside is that unless the hardware and signaling is very snappy you get annoying lag changing channels.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
That we prevent companies from putting down new technology that competes with cable.
That way everything stays the same.
On the other hand, take a look at your Verizon bill lately? How about your cable bill?
If you're like most people, they've gone up pretty dramatically in the last few years. 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. Before I switched back from Verizon (which sucks for TV in my area), I was actually paying more like $180 per month total.
Yeah, Verizon advertises "$95" a month for their triple play. But you will never pay that. "Sir Charge" is in full effect with them. At least with my cable company, what they quote me is what I pay.
Cablevision in my area also laid down fiber years ago, so Verizon has no advantage. CV's going to switched digital in addition to that; supposedly they're going to have 100 HD channels by the end of the year.
Verizon has always been one of the most hated companies in the Northeast, and it's really saying something when your company's hated more than Cablevision. I swore that I'd never go back to Verizon after they took more than 3 months to get a phone line installed in my last apartment (their excuse was "there are no more lines available" even though the previous tenant had one! They apparently took his line and made a 2 line apartment out of it somewhere, leaving me with nothing for 3 months until they got around to upgrading the box). I apparently forgot about that when I signed up for FiOS, but I remembered it pretty quick when I saw all the audio and video dropouts on the HD channels, then got my first bill. Now I'm out another $100 or so for the overlap in services (last bill from Verizon, first bill from CV).
If this is what we get with competition, then we'd probably be better off without it. Competition in television providers has only resulted in increased rates and a lot of blatantly false advertising.
the use a machine that goes into the ground and bores a conduit from one point to the other. it drills through the ground and can be aimed and turned, so it can pass under roads and parking lots. i work for a cable company that is actively expanding its fiber network. fiber IS much, much more expensive to run than other cable, and requires more skill and much more expensive hardware on the ends of it, despite the fact that the price is falling. also consider the fact that you have to rebuild so much of your cable system. AT&T is putting hundreds of millions of dollars into the ground PER CITY to do this, but if they don't they won't be able to keep up with the cable companies in bandwidth. by the way, DOCSYS 3.0 lets you get speeds of up to 160Mbps over coax, and a lot of cable companies are going to be moving to it very shortly. eventually, though, fiber to the home will be the only option for cable/phone/internet companies. AT&T's solution is a joke until they finish the last leg and put fiber to the home, instead of relying on twisted pair for the last stretch. Verizon is probably the only ones doing it right, but i'm sure my boss wouldn't want to hear me saying that as I don't work for them.
What, you didn't hear? DirecTV is bringing another bird online shortly for additional HD bandwidth... http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/07/07/directv-10-la unched-successfully-gears-up-for-september-action/
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.
Actually, IPTV does magically reduces the bandwidth needs because many channels are broadcast only when they're requested. It works like OnDemand. Currently every channel is sent down the pipe. With IPTV all the really obscure channels will be piped only when someone requests it. Once that stream is out there any of the other 100 houses on that node will piggyback. Once nobody is watching it, the feed stops to make room for more channels. Of course, all the popular channels will still be broadcast continuously for instant channel surfing. You can free up 100 obscure channels and add another 300 based on how many different channels are expected to be viewed at any one time by those 100 households with a majority usually watching a few popular channels anyway.
As for the fine print, you're exactly right. In addition, how many HD channels have a decent amount of real HD content. Watching National Geographic HD or Food Network HD is often pointless, even ESPN switches too much from HD to SD. But this applies to all providers and is just a result of the expense for the networks to upgrade to solely HD equipment.
Cable has the other provider methods beat in most areas. AT&Ts UVerse is too limited, Satellite's two-way is limited and Verizon's FIOS while good, is a major undertaking to set up the infrastructure and thus has limited availability. In San Diego, cable is still the best provider.
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.
I believe that should be www.utopianet.org.
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.
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.
(61.5, 99, 101, 103, 110, 118, 119, 120, 129, 148)
for Dish you NEED the 110, and 119 (129 for HD)
For DIRECT HD you need their HUGE dish that can pick up 5 sats - 99, 101, 103, 110, 119. It is 2 feet by 3 feet. And that is the SLIMLINE model. The first one was HUGEc at=02&CAT=&PROD=AU9-S
http://www.solidsignal.com/prod_display.asp?main_
For Dish HD you just need the 100.2 dish it is just slightly bigger than a standard dish.D ISH1000.2
http://www.solidsignal.com/prod_display.asp?PROD=
Dan