Next-Gen Broadband Primer

Aaron writes "Broadband Reports has a good read on the real deal behind next generation broadband deployments. In four years: half all Verizon DSL users should have fiber, half of all SBC subscribers should have 10-20Mbps DSL, and one tenth of all BellSouth customers should have 50Mbps DSL. At the same time cable companies should begin deploying DOCSIS 3.0 technology in 2006, eventually bringing 100Mbps speeds to end users."

Re:100Mbps

[FidelCatsro]

ITs a future development , The web will expand as the bandwidth becomes available
on the good side we shall see richer content , on the bad side we shall see um richer content.

It would be nice (!)

[krray]

It would be nice if they put 100Mbit to the end user -- but my personal experience with SBC and Verizon warns me to not believe all the hype. They regularly throttle connections -- and hosting any kind of service is typically a NO-NO. Thus they lost me as a customer (both residential and business grade).

The sad thing is that they're just _now_ getting to this. I've had 10Mbit (symmetrical) for many, many years now ($50/mo) through a wireless connection. Yes, that is a solid 10Mbit and I regularly see 800-900K/sec (up or down) if the remote site can handle it. A good test has always been downloading something from Apple. :)

Yeah, I said upload. My ISP has no issue with me hosting my own website, email server, heck camera video feeds too ... at home no less. They're towers used to be at 45Mbit and were since upgraded to 100Mbit (or better I believe) with the option to upgrade my antenna coming next month (to 45Mbit -- at my expense for the equipment, but I *own* it then :).

Why are the bells lagging to badly? Sure, the wireless connection (being shared) doesn't *always* give 100% throughput as many others may be tapping it hard at the same time; 8pm isn't a good download time, but gaming isn't a issue... (~10-12 ping on Quake or better -- yeah, that's me you love to hate :).

I will say that it is rock solid enough to have taken the POTS then ISDN line away from the Bells too -- all VoIP over here (through the ISP no less :). I can think of the last time my Internet went down -- it was about a week ago with golf ball sized hail falling from the sky. I was out for I believe 3 minutes, probably while a bunch of routers had to re-sync for whatever reason. Previous to that I can't remember.

Yes, 911 works as expected [tested, thank you :]. Of course there is the cell phone -- and honestly it is in my head to go for the cell in an emergency. If both VoIP and cell fail then there may be bigger issues at hand -- and running down the street naked yelling "FIRE!, FIRE!" will certainly bring help. :)

Re:Qwest customers?

[elister]

While its not being offered on their web site, depending on where you live, you can get 7M down / 1M up (technically 876k) speeds for 50$ a month. For me, it was only 10$ more than my 1.5M service. Mind you, its a basic service. No email, no newsgroups, no web hosting.

While 7M speeds arnt as good as the fiber service, its much better than what Comcast is offering in Seattle, which I believe is 4 meg down and 40k up for 45$ a month.

Call them up.

25 Mbps = TV, Internet & Phone

[Ironsides]

What are ordinary people going to do with 100Mpbs next year that they have such a difficulty doing now?
...
Older computers that run Windows 98 that a lot of people still use, probably can't even handle a consistent 100Mbps stream.

You're missing the point (as is probably most everyone else here) on why the TelCos are doing this buildout. Once they hit 25 Mbps, they can start offering full quality HDTV service over the lines and compete with cable like never before. They will be able to supply Phone, Internet and Video on one service. That is their main reason. 20 Mbps for TV, 5 mbps for internet and ~11Kb for phone. If they really want to have fun, they can start doing Video Phones on their networks for about 1Mbit total.

Chanel Changing times for the TV will be a little bit longer than with DTV, but that is because it is using the multicast on the network and has to tell the router/central server to send it the bits. However, this will mean a third competitor in the Cable/Satelite market. It will also mean a second proper competitor in the broadband market.

Once they get above 25Mbps, then they can start increasing the quality of the TV they offer. 15-20 Mbps is really the minimum you need for HDTV. ~45 Mbps will pretty much garuntee you great quality no matter what is on the screen.

One final comment on the prices of OC-3s. The TelCos are generally some of the companies that own various backbones that the internet here in the US is made of. They can charge themselves whatever they want for access.

meanwhile in Japan....

[Doppler00]

They already have this!
http://bbpromo.yahoo.co.jp/promotion/adsl/regular/ index.html [yahoo.co.jp]

I think it equates to around $40/month for the 50mbps connection. Doubt we'll ever get that good of a deal here.