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Thank you Teysha. I still expect the Comcast-TWC merger to create a larger strong-arming lobbying force against compe ion though, as the author points out.
With cable getting to gigabit is mostly a matter of updating user equipment and changing bandwidth allocation.getting rid of analog cable I s going to be one of the biggest deals for cable companies with all the necessary upgrades and education for legacy customers.
Thank you Teysha. I still expect the Comcast-TWC merger to create a larger strong-arming lobbying force against compe ion though, as the author points out.
Yeah....you can bet on that. They only have to win once. We have to win every time.
Docsis 3.0 allows gigabit downstream, but maxes out at 256Mbit upstream, IIRC. There's also the problem with their backend, which already struggles providing the current sub 100Mbit speeds in a lot of areas. Fortunately, it appears that the arrival of Google fiber in Austin has made everyone else up their games. Would love to see more of that.
I don't do an rust, but it's hard for me to envision that merger going through when AT&T/TMobile didn't
Also, why is gigabit necessary? Not saying it's not, but my porn downloads pretty fast as it is. Is there something that's otherwise unavailable when you get to these really fast speeds or is it more of a convenience thing?
The Consumer Experience
FTTH networks are now available to more than 15 percent of homes, and more than 9 million households across North America are now connected directly into high-speed, high-bandwidth fiber networks.
Thousands more connections being made every day.
As FTTH service providers continue their deployments and add customers, we are now getting a glimpse of what the new era of next-generation broadband will mean for the consumers who use them.
http://www.ftthcouncil.org/p/cm/ld/fid=55
I think Comcast is going to point straight to Google Fiber and AT&T to support the contention of a compe ive market (despite we all know monopolies/duopolies are the ruling class right now).
Unavailable, hard to tell. But it does expand the possibilities and reduces barrier to entry. It's akin to moving from a dirt road to a highway back in manufacturing-centric economy days.
So we can ship more jobs overseas.
I think that's a loser. Google Fiber is in what, 3 cities? AT&T failed, and there was a bigger rival (Verizon) one of slightly less equivalent size (Sprint) and a whole bunch of compe ively priced "local" service providers (Leap, MetroPCS, Cricket, etc..). And it still failed. I just don't see it happening with TWC/Comcast. But, I'm no expert so I could be wrong.
Kind of a "if you build it, they will come" situation?
...
For Joe Consumer, it's definitely just a convenience thing, but in a commercial/ins utional environment its a game changer. San Antonio and other cities are right to push hard for Google Fiber as a economic development catalyst. It's a huge draw for businesses looking for a place to call home, especially in the tech sector.
interesting, thanks
There's tangible issues right now. In this type of services/global economy, if your compe ion is in Singapore, paying 1/10th of the price for 20x the bandwidth, you're at a pretty big compe ive disadvantage. Which triggers what scott pointed out: companies relocating to areas where the price/bandwidth makes them compe ive again.
For consumers, it's hard to tell right now. Once you have the infrastructure there, you have fertile ground for innovation on high-bandwith/low-latency available to the masses. There are obvious convenience things like improved video/audio (without all the ty compression), etc. But it wouldn't be out of the question to see new services or products that were no possible using old infrastructure.
If you don't like our system, move elsewhere.
This is my main concern:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...31e_story.htmlYet don’t discount what may be Comcast’s greatest strength. Its wireless service is slow; its cable service lousy. But Comcast is wired politically. Its chief executive, Brian Roberts, has golfed with President Obama on Martha’s Vineyard. Its chief lobbyist, David L. Cohen, raised $1.2 million for the president in a Philadelphia fundraiser in 2011.
And Comcast is a poster child for Washington’s corrupting revolving door. One of its lead lobbyists — officially the senior vice president for government affairs of its subsidiary NBC Universal — is Meredith Attwell Baker. Appointed by Obama to hold a Republican seat on the FCC, she voted to approve Comcast’s takeover of NBC and then joined the newly merged company a mere four months later, after serving only two years of her five-year term.
The door revolves the other way, too. William Baer, who recently became head of the Justice Department’s An rust Division, represented General Electric and NBC Universal in their deal with Comcast. Maureen Ohlhausen, one of four sitting commissioners on the Federal Trade Commission, which is charged with enforcing an rust laws, provided legal counsel to Comcast before assuming her post.
I'm guessing about 4 megabit, but it depends on a few factors and I never checked. When I was at a hotel some years back for work, my room was limited to T1 (1.544mb). I could see the difference in my Netflix, but it wasn't too bad.
Netflix recommends between 6Mbps-12Mbps for HD streams. 4k streams using HEVC will require 20Mbps-50Mbps speeds. This is for a single stream. If you're watching on two TVs and recoding a third show, then multiply that by 3. Add up any other internet activity you might be doing (ie: downloading something), and it adds up pretty quickly.
The biggest thing with FTTH is overcoming the copper limits. Even if Docsis 3.1 offer 1Gbps speeds, the cable runs have to be shorter, or compression has to be higher. With Fiber you can go up to 10Gbps or even 100Gbps without touching the fiber infrastructure, just changing the routers.
Wire is a problem. You can go several miles without a repeater on fiber. On wire, your signal diminishes with distance. Cable companies have pushed the bounds of what they can deliver. Most are at a limit.
Compe ion is what's needed. Let other players in a game. Where I'm at, I only have Comcast as an option. I'm far enough from telephone switch plant that it's too far for DSL. Fiber isn't here yet. I pay $66.95 a month for a 15 megabit service. I get 26 megabit ever time I check, but only guaranteed the 15.
Good info, thanks.
I'm still using a cable modem that's about 6 years old and I have a 802.11n dual band router. I was contemplating upgrading both, but maybe the modem/router are not the bottleneck?
So when we change it through the democratic process will you take your own advice?
Yeah because infrastructure startups of scale have a long history of efficacy in the US......
smh
Hard to tell, tbh... run a speed test and see what you're getting. cable modems rarely need to be upgraded unless you're going to higher tier.
Just the same, I bought my own. I forget how fast it will go, but I paid the extra money for a very fast one in case I wanted more, later.
This kind of stuff pisses me off, I'm sick of it. it, I'm moving to Cuba where these evil capitalists can't stop me from having super fast internet speed.
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