Suggestions that RBOCs aren't that anxious to deploy fiber to the premises (FTTP) are born out in Light Reading's November Research Poll on the topic. Results so far indicate:
Municipal providers are more likely than RBOCs and other incumbents to aggressively roll out FTTP.
"RBOC resistance" is cited by 24 percent of respondents as the biggest roadblock to widespread FTTP deployment in the U.S. However, high cost is considered a bigger problem by the highest proportion of respondents -- 45 percent.
The likelihood of RBOCs deploying widespread FTTP next year is considered "unlikely" by the highest proportion of respondents (38 percent). However 24 percent say it's "somewhat likely," and a further 21 percent say it's "highly likely."
Ethernet PONs (passive optical networks) and Ethernet switches garner the highest number of votes for being technologies with "the biggest positive influence on FTTP rollouts." Third-gen DLCs, cited by their vendors as a handy stepping stone towards FTTP, get a paltry 10 percent of the vote.
The average residential subscriber would be prepared to pay between $50 and $100 a month for triple-play voice/data/video services, according to 68 percent of respondents.
To give your view on this topic, and to see the latest results in detail, click on this link.
"Ignoring all the issues with joe couch potato managing a server, just consider the amount of data: a 24-hour day of a single channel of MPEG-2 streams is about 38GB. Times 200 channels, times a choice of 10-20 advertisements per station break per channel per hour, and you are up to about 8 Petabytes per home per day."
The better way to do this calculation is to estimate the xxxx-bytes of more or less fixed content that gets paid for every day, day in and day out. Blockbuster has the numbers down cold. By paid for I mean advertised over, or subscribed to, or PPV.
I am betting it's about 0.1 petabyte. For example: 100 greatest movies ever made, 1.5 hours per hovie = 150 hours of data = about 0.1 petabyte. The bandwidth demand of the 100th most popular movie barely makes it worth having on local storage: it's a 1% bandwidth issue.
Advertisements, news, weather and billing (of course) may be the only near real time things needed.
The issue is how many independent heads can you get on the same track on that $5 hard drive? The new release will get maximum downstream bandwidth demand.
RE: "Words to remember:Common carriage. Structural separation. Open access. Connectivity over proprietary. Ubiquitous networks."
Then you should be interested in this: Pau, France deploying 100Mbps switched Ethernet, open access, carrier-neutral More at this link: http://lw.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=OnlineArticles&SubSection=Display&PUBLICATION_ID=13&ARTICLE_ID=192377
Text from above link copied below for posterity:
French city deploys carrier-class optical Ethernet
14 November 2003 Pau, France Lightwave -- The French city of Pau will deploy a new public optical Ethernet infrastructure that will allow -¿ for the first time in France -- end users to subscribe to voice, data, and video services via a single open transport network. The multi-service network will deliver Pau's residents 100-Mbit/sec access to triple-play services including Internet access, VoIP, more than 100 TV channels, and video on demand for 30 euros a month.
The new infrastructure will be one of the largest residential Ethernet deployments in the world, initially serving 21,000 homes with plans to expand to over 70,000 -- or 160,000 residents -- within three years.
The city will offer capacity on the network to service providers. "The wired optical end-to-end network belongs to the local authority, the same way the roads do," said André Labarrère, mayor of Pau, senator, and a former minister within the government of President Mitterand. "We rent this vital resource to a neutral company that lights and manages the infrastructure. In turn, they open the network to service providers that offer our residents and businesses advanced services such as Internet access, voice over IP, and video on demand. To accelerate this process, we created in Pau the first French 'triple play' service provider -- IPVSet."
Based on the concept of "open access," the new infrastructure is able to connect any service provider to its subscribers in the city. Leveraging optical Ethernet technology, the network will enable carriers to provide customers with guaranteed service level agreements (SLAs) and sub-50-msec resiliency along with the latest triple-play broadband services. In addition, the network's optical Ethernet technology supports integration with circuit switched networks while it delivers Ethernet Circuit Emulation Services (CES) for support of TDM traffic and point-and-click OAM&P.
According to Jean Pierre Jambes, in charge of development for the City of Pau, "Carrier-class optical Ethernet technology is the perfect match for the infrastructure build-out needs of this important endeavor due to its high scalability, stringent QoS in a variety of applications, and its low cost."
In making the announcement, the City of Pau cited the standards work being done by the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) as a key driver for its decision to deploy optical Ethernet technology. It cited the recent ratification of the Model for Ethernet Services, as well as progress the MEF is making on specifications for sub-50-msec protection, CES, and OAM&P.
"This deployment further validates that Optical Ethernet is technically and economically superior to legacy transport technologies," said Nan Chen, president of the MEF. "Citing the MEF technical work as a key driver for this deployment is further testimony of the importance of the MEF standards."
The real message I want to emphasize is that in my estimation, wireless is the leap-frog strategy for Telco's and not FTTP. The huge CAPEX and time-to-market to deploy FTTP will allow for wireless to trump it. Like I said, I could be wrong here though. Just have to wait and see :)
This is an apples to oranges comparison. Wireless is a fraudband technology while [E,F]TTX is a real broadband infrastructure. They are not the same thing.
And it will be entire socioeconomic groups who will be leap frogged if real broadband practices and policies are not put in place.
Words to remember:
Common carriage. Structural separation. Open access. Connectivity over proprietary. Ubiquitous networks.
Let's not let the incumbants leave a legacy to the next generations of a bunch a debt, underfunded pensions, and substandard infrastructures. Who is willing and able to step up to the plate and deliver on the promises? What does it take before so-called captains of industry learn to value doing the right thing instead of behaving like whores to Wall Street's greed?
Reply from a non-tech guy: I am impressed with the comments from strands555.
Just a few additional comments from me. MSO's are far superior to TELCO's as of today. Their earlier investments on two way traffic upgrades are taking a bite out of TELCO revenues. Two way traffic requires bandwidth. TELCO Copper is fine as long as the quality/density of available Copper is good but even that requires fiber at close proximity to Copper. Wireless is extremely good for one way traffic high bandwidth applications. ( TV Satellite etc ) The TELCO's are reluctant to upgrade because they have a monopoly on their Copper infrastructure and the inertia of that monopoly is what is keeping them from competing with the MSO's. They will never invest in any new technology till the time their existence is threatened. Their earlier investment in DSL is a good example of how they operate. Had DSL not taken a bite out of their POTS revenues they would have never invested in DSL.
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