UUronL

Let's be clear about the argument we're making here.

Sherman, set the wayback machine for, oh... about 10 years - give or take a couple.


Dialup Internet access is still prominent, but broadband access is beginning to take root. The discussion of the day centers on how much "faster" these new broadband technologies are. The engineers correctly state that all technologies pass bits at the speed of light - none are faster than any other. Electrical impulses travel at the speed of light over electrical mediums, as do photons through fiber, as do radio waves used in wireless, microwave, and satellite technologies. A bit transmitted over a dialup connection traverses at the speed of light, just as a DSL or cable modem connection passes bits at the speed of light, just as an OC-192 passes bits at the speed of light. Band"width" is a descriptive term... the -width- of the transmission band. In other words, how many bits we can transmit at a given time. Larger capacity means you can move more data in a given unit of time, but nothing travels faster than anything else. The key takeaway is that wider is better. An 8 lane highway is better than a 4 lane, which is better than a 2 lane road.


Back to the present day. The discussion seems different but it's essentially the same. We're talking about "last mile" in network-speak, but for these kinds of technologies it's really last "yard"... no pun intended (both yard 'measure' and yard 'lawn'). No matter. RBOCs own the "last mile" copper in the ground and on telephone poles (POTS service). Cable companies own similar copper too for CATV. Power companies hit every house, but their data services have never taken off as a commercially popular means of moving bits.

Regardless of the physical medium, we're talking about the width of the transmission band. I think the Cable companies have been arguing that it is wide enough to the home as it is. Perhaps. Perhaps not. I think if they had limitless money to fund hardware refreshes, this would be true. They do not. They are constrained not only by the copper in the last yard(s) but also by the hardware in the headends. Higher levels of QAM exist, but they need to invest to keep piling more frequencies onto the underlying copper. Verizon uses QAM as well - the video service is modulated over an optical carrier. What does that mean? Simply that they're using the optical wavelengths (colors of light) just as you'd use a set of frequencies on a piece of copper. There's just a lot more room.

DirecTV bit the bullet and changed to MPEG4 (not part of the ATSC standard) which enabled far greater effective channel capacity on the same bandwidth.


Verizon and AT&T (U-verse) both offer FTTP service (fewer AT&T locations). If you look at this purely as a financial issue, the RBOCs need this. Again, if we go back 20 years - you'd be hard pressed to find a household that didn't spend $100-$150 per month on phone service, especially if they had kids in college. The RBOCs had this revenue, times were good. Today, the cable companies have this revenue. You'd be hard pressed to find a household that doesn't have a cable bill that isn't $150-$175 per month. The phone companies would like it back. They move bits better than anyone, and well... it's a natural fit. They're building for the future, and capacity needs aren't shrinking.