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Bandwidth Caps May Be Critical Error For Broadband Companies
Technical Writing Geek writes "An Ars Technica article argues that after many years of stagnation, the US broadband landscape is finally 'primed for change'. Companies like Time Warner that decide to cap bandwidth risk being relegated to a 'broadband ghetto. Alternatives to the standard cable modem vs. DSL conundrum will come from technologies like WiMax and (eventually) the 'white space' broadband that might be offered by whoever wins the 700mhz auction. 'All of that is to say that cable and DSL won't always be the only games in town. If wireless solutions are able to deliver on their promises of high speeds with no usage limits, capped cable broadband service like Time Warner has planned is likely to be unattractive, to say the least. Instead of developing plans designed to discourage consumers from feeding at the bandwidth trough, cable companies would be better served in the long run by making investments in new technologies like DOCSIS 3.0 and the kind of infrastructure improvements necessary to meet bandwidth demands.'"
Yeah, because we all know that the backbones have unlimited bandwidth...
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The power of DOCSIS 3 is not that consumers will be able to utilize all their bandwidth for downloading from the internet at large. Rather, it will be used internally by the cable companies for HD video on demand.
In the DSL arena there is ADSL2+ and VDSL which have lower absolute bandwith but that bandwidth isn't shared with your neighbors as is the case with cable so the end result is a wash aside from the distance issues with DSL.
On the wireless side of things, there is no way any service can compete with the hardwired services on speed. At some point the wireless systems have to connect to the hardwired network and that is the point where the bandwidth will be severely restricted. The telcos will treat these new providers the way they do the current CLECs.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Yeah, but with WiMax (which is what Sprints Xohm is using), your towers only cover like 25 Km or something (sure, you can go longer), so you will need a lot of towers (more than a cellular network). And, unless I'm mistaken, you need wired infrastructure to lead to those towers (and manage all the data). The towers aren't magically connected to the internet.
The pluses:
- unmetered bandwidth
- I got my own sideband slice, so my speeds were constant (1Mbps up and down)
- $55.00 USD per month, constant. No contract extensions were tacked on when I later added a static IP
- lag was present enough to hamper game play in an FPS (my antenna was 33 miles away from the tower), but still fairly usable
- when cable finally did arrive, everyone else whined about speeds bogging down at certain times of the day, while I never suffered any of that
- Sprint stopped taking on new customers when things got full (IOW, they couldn't quite 'oversell the modems' as easily as a typical ISP could)
The minuses:Overall though, I'd say I was very satisfied. I experienced exactly one outage the whole time, IIRC... and it was back up in less than an hour. I'm in Oregon now, so it would be kind of impractical to use it here (it tends to rain a lot), but if they can overcome the limitations that I saw as late as 2005, then more power to 'em. It was one of the most pleasant experiences overall that I ever had with any ISP. Plus, I had the exquisite pleasure of telling a Qwest sales droid to fuck off when they finally did get DSL into the neighborhood three years later (really... 256Kpbs DSL, when I already had 1Mbps both ways? Pfft! whatever...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
You know, never fails to amaze me how people are not looking at the larger picture of "services" offered by any provider, but especially by the cable companies. FTR, I used to work in business broadband sales for a major cable player, so I've seen the industry from just after the days where cable modems got installed until the dot-com boom from the inside.
The cable companies, as we speak, are caught in a precarious situation. Several factors came into play at the same time, which has limited their ability to make huge improvements, but, if they're lucky, they might come out on top.
So history: when cable modems first arrived on the scene, in the early-to-mid 90's, the technology was largely unproven and had tremendous issues, both technically and from a service delivery perspective. Much like the early days of DSL, the cable companies were essentially forced to re-wire infrastructure that had been in place for over a decade, sometimes up to 2 decades. Because of the technical issues, many cable executives didn't see the cost-benefit ratio of rewiring tens of thousands of miles of cities to be able to provide the service.
Plus, if you know anything about cost, doing so was a multi-million dollar effort, cumulatively probably costing in the billions.
However, with the advent of the dot-com boom and other highly profitable interactive services, the cable company PHB's finally got the picture and started rewiring and running fiber for the new cable plants.
Unfortunately, this was between 95-98, just before the internet boom really got underway, and well before DSL put any pressure on them.
As such, they did a reasonable job of getting the major metropolitan areas wired for a more modern infrastructure.
However, they failed in one major respect: they didn't have a crystal ball, and most, if not all, the cable companies put in the minimum infrastructure to support digital services. They didn't, however, put in overcapacity.
Now, if you swing forward 4-7 years, its pretty obvious that the cost-differential of putting in FTTP (or at least overcapacity of fiber to the neighborhood) would have been the smart thing to do. But at the time, wth DSL being crap, and no other real competition, they missed the boat. This wasn't maliciouos. They just did what they thought would be adequate.
Now, look at cable services today. On most cable infrastructure, the highest percentage of bandwidth (out of the 1000mhz available on the plant) goes to analog TV. Those 30-50 channels take up nearly have the space, each analog channel taking 6mhz of bandwidth.
This log-gain, low-profit bandwidth hog is the biggest impediment to modern services as they reside on the existing cable facilities.
And now there's another problem in the works: how to handle changes in Digital Broadcasting, DOCSIS 3, and PacketCable services, especially with HD programming getting more and more relevant.
While DOCSIS 3 has been out for over a year now, from the insiders I know its still a bit spotty on the internal side, and since many of the operators use Cisco (who fought DOCSIS 3 tooth and nail to get their own standard), they'd love to do it but are still unsure of quality. Not only that, but at least one smaller cable operator where I know the CIO is truly looking at how to deliver everything over PacketCable (TV, Phone, Data, etc.) rather than just make the leap to DOCSIS 3.
These aren't inconsequential issues, as the decisions made now will have some serious impact on the structure of Cable services for a long time.
And finally, when you add in the cost of maintaining hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber and copper plant, along with the huge increases in programming costs to the cable companies, along with the not-insiginificant support and CPE equipment costs of moving to Digital services, DOCSIS 3, or other advanced services, its not much wonder why the cable companies are moving a bit slowly. An error in judgement now could be fatally costly over the lon
See, you may be paying $50/month for an "unlimited" connection at 6 megabits/second. But guess what? 6 megabits of bandwidth costs your ISP *at least* twice that. If they aren't in a major metropolitan area, it can cost *50* times that.
Bandwidth is expensive. That's why ALL bandwidth is "shared" and "oversubscribed". There simply isn't any way to provide everyone with gobs and gobs of dedicated bandwidth. That's not how it works.
So, don't blame the cable or DSL providers. Blame the huge telcos that keep the price of bandwidth artificially high.
Eh. I don't know what your experience is, but since 2001, my cable modem w/ time warner has been about $42.
However, in that time, the downstream bandwidth cap went from 5Mbps to 7Mbps to 10Mbps (albiet upstream only went from 384Kbps to 512)
However, $42 dollars in 2001, is only about $36-$37 today, that's not a steep fall. (per http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/)
So I would say the average NY'er experience have been the exact opposite of yours (more bandwidth, while prices haven't fallen (in "real" dollars) steeply.
Most people in cities have a choice of at least 6 ways to connect to the Internet:
* dialup, slow
* DSL, relatively cheap
* cable modem, a bit more than DSL but a better bargain
* wireless through cell phone, expensive for what you get
* satellite, expensive for what you get and long latencies, may require phone uplink
* T1 and other business-grade, dedicated-bandwidth solutions, very expensive compared to DSL or Cable
Now, if you want faster than dialup, don't need mobility, and don't need dedicated bandwidth, DSL and Cable happen to be the cheapest options today.
The question is not, "Will WiMax, IP-over-power-line, blimp-wireless, and other technologies come online soon," it is "Will they be competitive?"
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You misunderstand Net Neutrality.
The Net Neutrality issue is:
AT&T/Yahoo: Oh, you want to use Google Video? Gee, what a shame, Google hasn't paid us to prioritize packets, even though it's you, not them who's using our bandwidth. But since Google hasn't paid extortion, you get to watch that video at 19.2Kbps. On the other hand, if you use our Wonderful AT&T partner(tm) (insert company name here), you get it at 3Mbps.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.