North American Network Operators Group

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Cable/DSL and the future of high-speed internet

  • From: Jared Mauch
  • Date: Tue Mar 13 12:02:00 2007

On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 08:37:34AM -0700, Jeff Shultz wrote:
> Alexander Harrowell wrote:
> >On 3/13/07, Todd Vierling <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>Both cable and DSL providers are about to have a very loud wake-up
> >>call, and from here, I see absolutely zero uptake of newer technology
> >>and infrastructure to offset the inevitable.
> >
> >768 ain't broadband. Buy Cisco, Alcatel, and Akamai stock!

	I'd agree wit this.

> It certainly is - just ask the CALEA folks.... and as for who is pushing 

	And this.  (sigh).

> the bandwidth curve, for the most part it seems to be gamers in search 
> of the ever shrinking ping time. I suspect they make up most of our 
> >1536kb/sec download customers.
> 
> What "parts of the world" have long since upgraded to those speeds - and 
> how do they compare size-wise to the USA? We've got an awful lot of 
> legacy infrastructure that would need to be overcome.

	We have a lot more physical distance to cover which basically
requires fiber to get a reasonable distance from it.  Even with fancy
($300-1k) LRE/dsl extenders, your limits are somewhere around 7km.  Not
exactly something you can expect some consumer to jump on the costs of.
They expect the service to cost less than the computer they are going
to attach.

> I will happily agree that it would be nice to have higher upload speeds 
> than DSL generally provides nowadays. What are cable upload speeds like?

	I think that with the current market environment the only
choices will become some sort of municipal fiber builds (most people can
accept the cost via their property taxes or other means that may even be
tax deductable for them personally) or possible regulation of delivery of
"internet" services in the same way that delivery of POTS services are
necessary.  Last time I talked to someone at my PUC, he was griping
about the lack of POTS services in the state.  Even with all the USF and
other monies, tarrifed POTS services are not available.  I think this
says something.

	Me?  I see a resurgance (as long as regulatory - CALEA & other costs)
in the local SPs coming as opposed to the cable/dsl cartels.  Most folks
are thinking wireless these days, but I suspect that once they realize that
the cost of putting fiber across their property is actually low enough, a
number of these local isps will negotiate their own cabling paths.  This
may also have some problems as if they're "good enough" we may see the telcos
and cable co's vying for access to their facilities to deliver tv/voice/data
as well over it.

	Either way, the challenges in this space in the coming years at the
high end (100G and faster) as well as how to deliver content at a
reasonable speed to the end-user networks will make for a fun time
in networking.

	- Jared

-- 
Jared Mauch  | pgp key available via finger from [email protected]
clue++;      | http://puck.nether.net/~jared/  My statements are only mine.