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."

Comments

DirecTV

[siphonophore]

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?

Re:DirecTV

[swb]

Can DirecTV ever economically come up with "enough" bandwidth? The HD capacity is "just barely" enough to cover their "basic cable" HD needs plus their premium HD needs plus their local affiliates in SD, let alone their locals IN HD, future HD quality improvements (note the low price of so many 1080p displays these days), etc.

It seems like they would need to put up a new bird every 18 months to get and stay ahead of it.

Re:DirecTV

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right to a large extent.

My apologies to all those in the US, but many of the benefits of IPTV are useless to you.

There are 2 benefits to IPTV implemented correctly:
1: You're working on the transport layer of a fast MPLS-based fiber network. This allows for quality of service to be guaranteed by establishing a dedicated transport on the dumb center of the network from the edges
2: You're only transmitting one channel, which is great as long as you have the response time to switch fast enough (see number 1)

Honestly, it's never ceased to amaze me at what's going on in the US with your telco and cabco infrastructures. Up here north of you we've got a regulated monopoly that has been working wonderfully for 100 years because they government balances the regulation of the market (giving them partial monopolies) with regulation of the industry (forcing them to let competition use their lines at a pre-determined rate).

not THAT expensive

[ILuvRamen]

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

Re:not THAT expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

directional boring machines. Hand holes every few hundred feet. Splice cases every several hundred feet.

And the fiber for really high speed stuff is the cheapest part.

4 port 10GE ports for switches are 100k a piece...

They are more expensive for routers...

It's EASY to go through several million dollars for a simple setup that spans 5 to 10 miles. and thats only for a couple of dozen drops along the way.

Even if you already have some fiber (and assuming it's decent enough, with no age related transmission issues), the gear is insanely expensive. for a project I was working on, I had access to 78 miles of dark fiber, all I had to do was come up with enough business to cover the cost of the gear to light it up.

Cost of the gear? (and the gear ONLY) 1.8 million dollars. And that was JUST the OC48 transmission gear. We really wanted to do it DWDM, but that would have tripled the cost (cause you still need the OC48 and Gig-e/10-gig-e equipment PLUS the DWDM gear). There simply wasn't enough business in the area of the fiber to justify doing it, and the folks that wanted it were unwilling to pay the price we needed to get to launch the project.

Then when you take account the upstream Internet transit bandwidth for a 10GE is about $8 - $12 a meg (if you get cheap bandwidth) thats another 80 to 120k a month in expense.

Don't forget the horde of people you have to pay to answer questions on how do I setup email. And the horde of people you have to pay to send out to service the fiber, and all the end boxes in peoples homes (where they will get broken, chewed, spilled on, etc), AND a small horde of people to oversee the whole thing...

Do the math and see how oversubscribed you would need to be at your desired rate of bandwidth to the home at the $30-$40 a month. And then tell me why you would go out of your way to sell someone 50M download rates when you can get away with 6M, have a much higher subscriber rate per amount of bandwidth you HAVE to have, and actually stand a chance of making a little profit.

This really smells...

[tgatliff]

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...

"improvements"

[Ant P.]

will leave cable companies in a rough spot -- after spending over $100 billion in the last decade on infrastructure improvements. Maybe their infrastructure improvements should involve more infrastructure in the network for customers then, and less infrastructure for the CEOs in expensive suburbs of foreign countries.

Re:There are places they don't use fibre?

[Umuri]

Sure, they could do that.

If they wanted to alienate a giant portion of their customer base.

If they wanted to remove their ability to charge for digital converters.

Currently you have MANY situations like my family's, in which we have close to 7 tv's in the house, with 9 outlets. 6 of those are analog, with only 1 digital. Of which you have to pay for the "privelege" of watching digital on that outlet via the set top box charges.

Why would they cut off their nose to spite their face, when they can currently work with what they have available?

90%+ of the internet "issues" with speed are the fault of the providers, not because their "infrastructures can't handle it". It has been proven again and again over the years that the service providers, whether they are cable internet or direct lines like dsl, have no need to upgrade thier infrastructure when they can oversell by a factor of 10, 100, and sometimes higher in certain areas, and receieve below the "minimum" level of complaints for change. Plus, iirc, wasn't there a big issue with the providers and congress over a decade ago in which they took millions, maybe billions, of government money in return for promised infrastructure upgrades, which never were realized?

I mean yeah, cable and dsl are cheaper and faster than modems, but compared to the technology that has been available for over the past decade or two, it should be a LOT more powerful and cheaper than it is now. It's all artificial shortages to keep the prices up and the profit margins high.

Comcast terminating user accounts

[u-235-sentinel]

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.

Re:Comcast terminating user accounts

[NevarMore]

I'm a candidate for city council. Could you please correct that link to Utopia so I can read up on it?

Re:It's only fair

[pilgrim23]

Some years back I lived in a small rural town that got all TV via cable; mountains blocked access to any broadcast TV. The local cable was horrid with terrible signal, lousy choices and over priced for the few channels we did get. One day the local rural telephone co-op decided to get into the cable TV bizz. They had a fiber line to the regional phone and a dish that could receive TV at the main office. After many trips to the court house for blind dates with the Cable company, they won the right to compete. SUDDENLY the other cable company offered 10 new channels, better signal quality and a lower price. I guess that was what they call synchronicity...couldn't be good old competition...

Re:We need 2 way cable cards and open digital boxe

[ivan256]

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.

Re:Too Bad

[Sponge Bath]

...why do you continue to pay them for such low quality service?

I was thinking the same thing while canceling my Time Warner cable
recently because of consistently crappy service. I was all fired up
to explain why I was canceling as I showed up in person to return the cable
modem as required.

They did not ask why I was canceling as I expected, so I started
to explain. I was cut off mid sentence, they handed me a receipt and
sent me on my merry way.

They don't care. They don't care if you stay or go.
They don't care if their service sucks. They don't care.

But my new DSL works fine, so even though voting with my
dollars has no effect on the cable company's thinking, I
hope the raw economics of their decisions eventually will
remove them from the market.

I guess this guy never heard of ethernet over HFC

[the eric conspiracy]

http://www.naradnetworks.com/hardware.html

Good to at least 100 Mbps symmetrical over a modern cable system.

Is this in PA?

[Gazzonyx]

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.