Is Comcast Heading the Way of the Dinosaur?

CasualRepartee writes "Comcast has been one of the most successful cable companies in the world; in many parts of the U.S., Comcast sits pretty on huge user bases that don't have many viable high-speed internet alternatives. However, poor customer service, slow speeds and generally poor business practices could make the once-great internet giant another extinct dinosaur, no ice age required. The fact of the matter is this: Comcast is no longer the biggest and the best. Cable is taking a distant back seat to Verizon's FiOS (fiber optic service), which delivers speeds up to 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload speeds. Unlike Comcast, FiOS delivers the full range of bandwidth to each user, whereas Comcast users are forced to share bandwidth with other users on the same coaxial cable, causing speeds to fluctuate dramatically with usage."

Comments

You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

And if the pipe is before your destination, then you're going to be sharing bandwidth, FIOS, Cable or DSL.

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[nxtw]

With HFC (hybrid fiber coax) networks where the "coax" part is shared with more than one customer, you've got one more leg of the connection that's subject to problems -- and not as easy to upgrade. Cable companies already pack as much as they can into their limited bandwidth, balancing analog, digital, and HD channels; they can't just add more bandwidth on the coax for data services without rearraning other things. So they either have to upgrade infrastructure to DOCSIS 2/3 or expand their fiber out so that each HFC node serves less customers.

DSL / Fios services do not share this issue. If congestion happens between the cable/DSL/Fios node and the Internet, operators need only increase the bandwidth available between those locations - which shouldn't be nearly as hard to do, since they'd be adding another connection alongside or better utilizing an existing fiber connection.

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

OK why are folks just plain stupid.

FIOS connections are shared between a max of 32 home or nodes. They are rolling out GPON which will allow gigabit to the home (though no home will likely have it any time soon)

currently most FIOS users are BPON and could get nearly 100MB bidirectional. As it is Verizon has maxed out currently at 50/20 plans for the home user, and yes you can get full speed 24/7. They have built out the back end to support high speed bidirectional traffic and this can be seen by the lack of complaints by users on sites such as dslreports.com and others. Also they are demonstrating they can migrate from 40 to 100Gbps links with relative ease.

Cable on the other hand will roll out DOCSIS 3.0 later next year....but ...it will cost them 4 6MHz channels....and the resulting channel loss. Sure they will reclaim analog channels as well but FIOS has no such issue. And when FIOS converts over to all IPTV well game up call it day. They will have the ability to use two light streams to the home to manage tv and internet with speeds cable can only dream of with more bonding of channels and high revs of DOCSIS.

So sure do you share a node at some point but for FIOS users its at the CO and not 20 feet from your front door and not likely to be congested.

I know...i can dl from an internet service that cannot be spoken of...at 30mbps any time of day and i get 30mbps every time....

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

Of course. However, the difference between coaxial networks and DSL or FIOS is that the coaxial network is in a bus toplogy, meaning that the coax segment you are on is shared with everyone else on that segment. This is a major issue because the total bandwidth over the coax is limited and not very scalable as far as subscriber capacity is concerned. Get a few people maxing our their connection and you will have problems quickly.

DSL and FIOS are examples of star toplogy; you do not share your incoming line with anyone else at all. The bandwidth converges only at the local node where high bandwidth fiber is provided to the node.

Do you see why cable is at a disadvantage here?

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Shakrai]

do FiOS nodes contain huge 2000 port patch panels? No! you don't get your own dedicated fiber all the way to the node. It likely goes from the node out to splitters/taps etc. not that different than cable

It is different from cable. One single fiber serves a max of 32 locations, typically less. So, no, you don't have a dedicated last mile all the way back to the CO (you do with DSL/POTS service, albeit copper and slower).

But compared to cable? That single fiber can haul 1.2GBit/s on the upstream and 2.4GBit/s on the downstream (with GPON). That's shared with no more then 32 customers. A DOCSIS 2.0 network by contrast provides for 42.88Mbit/s downstream and 30.72Mbit/s upstream per channel. How many channels they can put on a single node depends on what else they are doing (i.e: how many analog channels, how many digital channels, etc, etc) with their HFC network. In any case, the typical DOCSIS node has at least a few hundred homes on it -- upwards of two thousand at times.

What do you think is better? 2.4GBit/s down w/1.2GBit/s up shared with 32 locations or 42.88MBit/s down/30.72MBit/s up shared with hundreds of locations?

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you're incorrect to contrast DSL and FIOS, together, with cable as something different.

FIOS is a brand name for marketing services, not a networking technology. The underlying technology is BPON, which is an ATM-based passive optical network. A PON uses an optical splitter to combine the laser signals from many subscribers onto the same fiber at the same wavelength, exactly as a cable splitter combines RF frequencies on metal coax cable. They are both point-to-multipoint technologies, and thus "shared" bandwidth. In both technologies, the head end equipment is responsible for scheduling bandwidth to nodes that request service. In both technologies, that head end scheduler can reserve bandwidth, cap the bandwidth, or make it all best-effort. DSL, by contrast, is point-to-point. The physical medium leads to only one customer.

Speeds do not necessarily go down when other users transmit in any of the point-to-multipoint technologies. That's a function of the scheduler and whether or not it reserves bandwidth. Note that a shared medium that does allow access to some bandwidth on a best-effort basis while guaranteeing some bandwidth is preferable to separate media with the same guaranteed bandwidth. You're not worse off in the worst case, can get more bandwidth at some times, and the latency overall drops as you can burst to the full capacity of the medium even when not exceeding a bandwidth cap.

As others have already pointed out, ALL bandwidth is shared pretty rapidly in most networks. As soon as you reach the head end, whether you call it a DSLAM or a CMTS or an OLT, you dump the data on network uplinks which might be heavily oversubscribed, and which take you to a router which might also be heavily overloaded. You're sharing all of those resources with hundreds or thousands of other users, even if you have your "guaranteed" DSL line all to yourself. Performance is really a matter of the network operator's willingness to spend money on their network core, and not of the access technology. The "last mile" has ceased to be the bottleneck that it was in the 80s and 90s.

A bit dated on the FiOS speeds...

[strredwolf]

Something to note -- Verizon has deployed a symmetric plan. In select areas it's 25Mbps both up and down. In other areas it's 15Mbps up/down. Check dlsreports.com for details.

Re:A bit dated on the FiOS speeds...

[imasu]

FiOS is still quite slow in comparison to the home fiber options in Japan. NTT's B-Flets is 100Mbit and has been available there for a while for less than $50/mo. Not sure about the upstream, I *think* it's symmetric based upon what friends tell me, but I have no cites to back that up.

Bah!

[Ben Dayho]

comcast used to not piss me off. Then the other day my hd/dvr 4 year old box died. Now they want to charge me 32.50 to come and fix their equipment.

Unlikely

[bconway]

A.) Comcast has over 12 million High Speed Internet users. They aren't going away anytime soon.
B.) DOCSIS 3.0 roll-outs, which are already started in test areas and expected to hit 25%+ in competitive Comcast markets in 2008, allows 450+ Mbps download and 125+ Mbps upload per channel in a node. For those not in the know, a node is where bandwidth is shared, and can feature many channels. Comcast is already planning to roll out 50 Mbps speeds, followed by 100 Mbps as it becomes competitive.

Bandwidth will continue to be competition-based, and Comcast is far from down and out.

Comcast CEO sees 160Mbps internet in 2008

[ewilts]

From Engadget:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/30/comcast-ceo-sees-160mbps-internet-in-2008/

See also LightReading:

Comcast Closes In on 100 Mbit/s

Comcast may not be the fastest today, but they don't appear to be sitting around doing nothing either.

.../Ed

Re:Where is FIOS?

[rfunches]

Two sources:

1. http://www.dslreports.com/. Their Verizon Fiber Optics forum is usually updated with information about the latest rollout areas and they also have a Google Maps application where users with FiOS service "pin" their location on the map and offer a user review in some instances. The forums also include some info on overall deployment, but it's usually secondhand info so take it for what it's worth.
2. The Verizon website for your state at http://www22.verizon.com/about/community/. For instance, Verizon Virginia has a monthly FTTP construction list in PDF format.

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[stonecypher]

This sounds like Verizon press puffery to me.

Why, of course. If there's something you don't know about, it's got to be a media lie, right? Well, welcome to reality: cable is a shared backbone. It's an artifact of the design of cable television networks, and it's cable's biggest problem. This isn't "press puffery," it's a real problem for these people. Right now it doesn't come up much because the backbones can handle 5 megabit times 1500 customers. However, the big reason it took so long to deploy ADSL2 was because it required the phone companies to gut their infrastructure and lay down more capacity. DOCSIS 3 is going to do the same thing to the cable companies.

Please stop pretending to know things you don't actually know. Grandparent was quite correct - cable is a shared connection, and it's going to hurt the cable companies pretty badly in about two years. This is the nature of the technology. Read a book.

What is Verizon's provisioning on the FIOS back end ?

There's no such thing as a "FIOS back end". Fiber is a discrete network like ethernet. If you and your neighbor have FIOS, and you connect to your neighbor, it goes from you to your phone pole to their phone pole to them. It doesn't go to any "back end". Unlike DSL and cable, it never goes back to a central office, which I assume is what you mean by "back end", since that term does not come up in telecomms infrastructure. Namedropping doesn't make you clueful, even if the word sounds really convincing to you.

How much do they underprovision ?

They don't. It's a brand new network. They won't be cutting bandwidth for at least five years. Also, please stop putting spaces before your question marks. It's obnoxious, it causes problems with line wrapping, and you look like a reject from third grade.

It is a very safe bet that there is not 10 Mbps of Internet transit reserved for every FIOS customer

No.

so there is still sharing of bandwidth

It's a discrete network. Bandwidth sharing isn't possible. You probably mean network bandwidth arbitrage, which is very different. Do you go into your car mechanic and talk about Carnot cycles because you read about it in a slashdot article about engine efficiency? No? Then don't do that here, please, because the only difference is that, unlike the lucky greasemonkey, I am unable to laugh in your face to display for you just how much of an ass you're being. Just because you're used to calling your web server code deployments and your sql choices "back ends" doesn't mean that every time you've imagined yourself up the arbitrary need for some service provision that it's automatically called a backend, nor does it mean that the arbitrary service provision even exists.

Doesn't it bother you to get so high up on a soapbox about a network you know nothing about?

This could be better or worse than Comcast

The only reason you believe that is that you know literally nothing about either technology. Doesn't it bother you to say "because I don't know jack, there is no way to differentiate between the two offers?" Verizon just dumped billions into a brand spanking new network. They hit this choke wall five years ago, because they were running on a much older general case network. Verizon is off of this hook for at least five years, and probably a decade. Comcast is just having the same set of problems that Verizon had in 2001, and the same set of problems that Verizon will have again in (checking crystal ball) approximately 2018.

but you don't know and can't tell just from the bandwidth of the edge circuit.

Jesus H. Christ. NEITHER of these networks has anything even resembling an edge circuit. You have no idea what you're talking about. Why don't you just do us all a favor and stop pretending otherwise? The cable network is a trunk

Re:Mistakes in reasoning

[Anonymous Coward]

"I would love to know when FIOS is coming to Seattle..."

They put FIOS in the Snohomish area last Spring. Now I have a choice between Comcast and FIOS. FIOS uses PPPoE so if you build your own gateway router and don't want to use the one supplied by Verizon you'll have to adjust to that protocol.

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere (mod up parent)

[$pace6host]

Thanks for posting this - I was in the middle of posting the same thing. Sure, you share a pipe - but the difference is the size of the pipe and how many other high bandwidth users you're sharing it with (and how oversubscribed it is). Around here (Philly burbs), Comcast offers "Speedboost" or "Powerboost" because they can occasionally allocate you the bandwidth, but they can't possibly give it to you all the time (they don't have it). DOCSIS 3.0 will help, but they're also trying to jam in all those new HDTV channels... FiOS, on the other hand, I NEVER see less than my rated speed, unless I'm going to a slow server or a server on a slow link. I might be sharing my downlink with up to 32 others on the BPON, but whatever they have at the CO and out is definitely not overloaded. My Mom on Comcast, though, sees a slowdown every day when the kids get home from school and log on to Xbox live.

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you really know what you're talking about. Does that mean you have to be a TOTAL DICK when correcting someone else? I mean every paragraph of your post contained some venomous remark.

You should really try to learn some manners and maybe take an anger management class.

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh oh, sounds like someone's mom came down into the basement and accidentally threw away their limited edition star wars action figures...

You should concentrate on being less of a douche bag than critiquing someone else post.

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no such thing as a "FIOS back end". Fiber is a discrete network like ethernet. If you and your neighbor have FIOS, and you connect to your neighbor, it goes from you to your phone pole to their phone pole to them. It doesn't go to any "back end". Unlike DSL and cable, it never goes back to a central office, which I assume is what you mean by "back end", since that term does not come up in telecomms infrastructure. Namedropping doesn't make you clueful, even if the word sounds really convincing to you.

While there's a lot in your post I won't dispute, FiOS network traffic from my house to my neighbor's house does not just go to the pole and back. It goes from the ONT in my house, straight to the CO on one fiber, into the OLU, probably gets handed to a high speed switch of some sort, probably up to some router layer in the switch or to another device, back into the OLU and back on its own fiber to my neighbor's ONT. The critical part is that it probably never hits any link where there isn't enough bandwidth.

Sorry to interrupt, carry on with the verbal abuse.

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[swm]

> If you and your neighbor have FIOS, and you connect to your neighbor, it goes from you to your phone pole to their phone pole to them. It doesn't go to any "back end". Unlike DSL and cable, it never goes back to a central office

ummm...that seems unlikely.

I'm pretty sure that for a packet to go from me to my neighbor, it has to pass through a switch, most likely at the CO.

Small Problem with Logic & Analysis

[ancarett]

Comcast /= all cable internet service
Verizon /= all fibre optic service

Until you can understand that a one-off comparison of apples and oranges (the technical promise of Verizon's very small roll-out versus the customer service dissatisfaction with a major broadband offering out of Comcast) doesn't equate to a rigorous comparison of the two technologies OR the overall future of the two companies in their broadband offerings?

*yawn*

A tale of two cable companies

[kilodelta]

Interestingly Cox has all of Rhode Island while Comcast seems to be dominant in Massachusetts. My friend has Comcast, I have Cox.

He was telling me that Comcast topedoes VPN connections to business entities that originate from residential accounts after four minutes of uptime. Cox does no such thing.

And the arrival of FIOS in RI forced Cox to upgrade their network and they now offer 20/2 net service. That's what I'm using now and its pretty good. Now if only I could find a wireless access point that didn't suck.

Of course I'll never go back into the arms of Verizon. I have such a blind hatred of that company it isn't funny.

This is ridiculous

[shiftless]

FiOS? And just where is this service available? Downtown in large cities? What about the 100+ million people who live in smaller areas? Wake me up when cable (cable *TV* would be a good start) or DSL becomes available at my home in rural Alabama, let alone fiber.