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

obligatory Homer Simpson quote

[Anonymous Coward]

The Internet? Is that thing still around?

Re:obligatory Homer Simpson quote

[HAKdragon]

I heard they have it on computers now.

Re:Honest!

[Tackhead]

> For real this time! Seriously! I mean it!

"Really, I swear on this stack of $100 bills, Senator!"

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

Too Bad

[MBCook]

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.

Re:Too Bad

[fm6]

That's what I pay you $60-$70 a month for.

No, you pay $60+ for all the "bundled" content the content providers force them to buy in order to get the few channels people actually watch.

Don't get me wrong: I think cable TV is a horrible ripoff. (Which is just one of several reasons I don't subscribe.) But the cable companies aren't the bad guys here. That's the media monopolies who've become obsessed with sequestering content and squeezing every penny they can out of it. And when you subscribe to cable, you're feeding that pathology, no matter how much you bitch and moan about it.

There are places they don't use fibre?

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

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:Comcast terminating user accounts

[phalse phace]

I believe that should be www.utopianet.org.

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...

Amazing how dumb "experts" can be...

[Thorizdin]

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.

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.

More info on slimy attempts to legislate

[Gazzonyx]

The real kicker is that the town put in fiber because the telco's couldn't bother. We're out in the corn fields and probably wouldn't be worth the trouble. It's rumored that when the telco found out, it sounded something like, "Oh, what's that... a fiber backbone you say? Payed for with bonds? Breaking even and starting a profit in 7 years? This must be illegal! If not, it should be!"

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):

...

Kutztown Borough manager James Vettraino said his town's fiber-access project is on schedule to break even after seven years. Vettraino said there are currently 600 customers using data, video and voice services in the community.

"We wanted to have broadband throughout the community as an economic development tool for businesses, and we were not happy with the availability (at the time)," he said.

Vettraino said the incumbent cable TV provider, Service Electric, voiced opposition to the project at several town hall meetings. He said the cable provider also dropped prices to be more competitive in Kutztown while not changing rates in areas where it continues to have a monopoly.

Kutztown was the first community in Pennsylvania to offer fiber to the home for its residents, and a bill in the Pennsylvania House could make it the last. The aim of the Government Competition Against Private Enterprise Act (HB298) is to "protect economic opportunities for private enterprise against unfair competition by government agencies" in services "beyond their government function."

The bill, which was drafted a few months after Kutztown began providing fiber to the home, is a direct result of the threat of competition to cable TV and telecommunications providers, according to Nicholas Giordano, a telecommunications strategist at consulting firm Affinity Group.

Giordano, who previously worked for Pennsylvania's telecommunications department, said that data and video services providers have made it known to state legislators that they do not want to battle with municipalities for market share.

"It shows how threatened they are by that activity (in Kutztown)," he said.

Giordano said small municipalities might encounter difficulties in delivering fiber-based services because "they aren't familiar with managing these kinds of information systems." But he believes communities that are not receiving adequate broadband and cable service from the private sector should be able to fill the void themselves.

"Bandwidth is a necessity for the public good like water or electricity," he said. "You are not going to get a creative society (which) will be the engine of job growth in places where they can't have access to information."