Slashdot Mirror
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."
The Internet? Is that thing still around?
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
"Really, I swear on this stack of $100 bills, Senator!"
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.
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...
(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
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...
The BPCS originated from a meeting of American telephone companies in Bedminster, New Jersey, USA (former home of pre-breakup AT&T) in May 2000. It was enacted in 2003 to assure consumers that by purchasing bandwidth they were not financing war and human rights abuses.
Some say it does not go far enough. For instance, Amnesty International says "[We] welcome the Bedminster Process as an important step to dealing with the problem of conflict bandwidth. But until the bandwidth trade is subject to mandatory, impartial monitoring, there is still no effective guarantee that all conflict bandwidth will be identified and removed from the market."
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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
It still works just fine. My directv only goes out during the worst of thunderstorms.
Gone!
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
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.
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.
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.
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.