BellSouth Network Upgrades

This may be all well and good, but it's not like the majority of us will actually see this within the next 5 years.

I bet it will be sooner than you think. We are already doing video over IP in Ringgold, GA. 5 or 6 mbps is enough bandwidth for one video stream, and we even go as high as 10mbps to get two streams into the house. It's still very distance-limited though, most of our customers are within 12,000ft. from the CO or the remote. However the service is fantastic in my opinion.

I'm thinking (hoping) that video over IP will be the thing to get fiber out the door.

It seems crazy to me that companies do not explore greater compression options.

Over two years ago I had 2hr long DVD rips that fit on a CD when compressed in Divx format - these were virtually indistinguishable from the original DVDs on a PC screen - hook it up to a TV and there is no way you'd see any dif!

For the fun of it I used to play them over my wireless network and I used DU Meter to track my bandwidth - I only needed about 600kbps!

Well you have to consider that it's a small set-top box decoding the streams, not a full-size computer. Currently the boxes we use are only capable of decoding MPEG-2 and WMP 9. I'm sure as the technology improves and the market expands we'll see products that are capable of utilizing more efficient video codecs. As it is right now there's new equipment coming out about every 6 months.

Better yet, ever hear of On-2's wavelet compression available with their video codices? It's possible to get DVD quality video and AAC surround sound audio in as little as 1~1.5 mb/sec stream. And unlike Divx/Xvid, you do not have to download the entire file, or the first half of it to begin rendering the video - this technology I mention is for use in streaming application. Later revisions, like v.6.2 are known as the "Enhanced sharpness" release.

I am broadcasting a small television service that supplies 4 channels of video through my paltry DSL upstream using this method. It's too cool!

True, but the problem is that none of it was created ny Microsoft. SO o one will want to use it in a large commercial application.

No, KISS technologies makes a box that can decode DIVX and XVID CDs.

For $70 I can buy a DVD player that will play Divx/Xvid files off a CD or DVD (see the hot deals forum, look for Norcent).

And, FWIW you don't have to download the entire file with Divx/Xvid - you just have to be able to see the end of it to start playing it - if you use the right tools this can be negated.

But Wolfox - how are you broadcasting TV over IP? What program do you use? Thanks for any info.

Shoutcast DNAS, NSVTools, On-2 VP6.2, AAC 1.x

Google them up for where, how and practical application. Nullsoft's Winamp site in the community forum has a wealth of applications and how-to's - but they too warn that is is NOT for the weak. This is THE future of small time broadcasting. Read the label. Wash, Rinse, Repeat as necessary - use this technology sparingly and with the help of an adult. But seriously, this can be a very powerful medium in the wrong hands. I must stress that one develops their skills to use it, and ultimately to have a BLAST with it. If it's fun for you, it will certainly be fun for your audience. Caio, and good luck!

I bet you are one of those guys that says you can't tell the difference between HD vs non-HD content and progressive vs interlace

The more you compress the worse the picture is, it is a plain simple fact and no matter how good of an system it is it still has to make up for the lost information and there is not a single one out there that does it 100% accurate.

Tell me about it. I would love to see 4-6 MB soon. I pay almost 60 bucks a month for it anyway...give me more bandwidth!!! Honestly though, I would really like to have more upload. 384k is ok, but I really need more like 512k-1MB. That would be in a perfect world though...where fiber is available to all, and Telco's don't rip people off for their service...and then try to convince them that they have a great deal.

Heh, this won't help me at all. I'm maxing out my line as is. Syncing any higher than 3mbps is something I can't do.

BellSouth is notorious for leaving people high and dry.

Title says it all

Curious, how much did you personally contribute to the infrastructure that brought you broadband? I thought so.

As if these massive corporations are doing us a favor...

Massive in terms of what? Have you looked at some of their SEC annual filings?

And they are pale in comparison when it comes to content delivery when you look at cable companies and satellite operators.

Still, would you prefer they didn't exist? I bet a lot more depends on them than you think.

After looking at their cash flow and earnings, cheap bastards sounds about right. SBC and BLS both have good amounts of free cashflow. VZ is actually reinvesting it back into the company, which goes to show good products and sound management make for better companies any day. BLS and SBC will be #2 and #3 always as long as primary profits go into exceutive pockets instead of back into the comapny.

Earning and cashflow? Please provide explicit numbers or references. Also keep in mind their portion of the Cingular debt, which grew tremendously with the AT&T Wireless acquisition.

IPTV is not something that is easily deployed on any of the RBOC infrastructures and the demand will require a lot of infrastructure deployment in order to even consider such a plan.

BTW, did you complain about the measely $75 Million Verizon is spending on a whopping 65,000 customers for FTTH? All of this since they originally said they would during the mid-1980's?

And you can think what you would like, but those executives are being paid by what you and I can find out quite easily as its in the SEC filings as well. You seem to think that the billions of dollars that will be necessary for the next network evolution is hitting executive pockets. I'd love to see how they could hide billions in their personal bank accounts and not catch the attention of the SEC. LOL

Lol they are just as easy to find as the sec filings you keep toting. If you dont know where to find them there is no reason for me to continue this post. History speaks loudest in these kinds of situations.

Now that is amusing. I admit to not knowing off hand to find relavent information--and you use it to not have to show foundation in your point(s). Laugh away.

I never said that. Of course we need companies that provide these services, which we will *always* have, thanks to capitalism. You act as if they are doing us a favor by selling us a service. They are simply in it for the money (which there is nothing wrong with, I might add). They do not need our sympathy, however.

And BTW, they are massive by any sense of the word. Here is some numbers you have been asking for.

They don't have my sympathy. Maybe a good bulk of their stockholders do, but the company as a whole and its top leadership do not. And no, the idea of offering a service is for the benefit of those stockholders.And to me it looks like someone hold 1.83 Billion shares of stock is the responsable party. I wonder who all of them are. Well, I am sure I own a couple of shares. Good job, boys!

Now, since I've already admitted I am not into business numbers and did call someone on their use of them, please explain to me (us) where in all of those numbers the good, bad, and ugly stands. Also, how much do you think BST and SBC are planning on spending on their respective network upgrades for ADSL2+, IPTV, and VoIP? I can say its a lot more than $75 Million Verizon has planned on spending on their network infrastructures.

If memory serves me right, the existing Alcatel platforms will not directly support ADSL2+, and this means completely new DSLAMs. And to go from a 1.5/3 Mbps platform to a 12/24 Mbps platform I would say their respect ATM cores will also need to grow substantially as well. That is going to be well into the Billion dollar range.

Yes, it shows you have no idea how things work.

Thank God I'm not in HellSouth region.

With Verizon moving to fiber I think ADSL 2 and VDSL is dead on arrival.

I guess you could argue that, by definition, DSL is copper on life support.

I personally don't see why anyone would continue to invest in that setup. I can't honestly see ADSL2 or VDSL or any other DSL going much higher than it already is. Fiber is the future. I'd be investing in that. Just me though.

What happens when you want to watch say 2 different programs? It would be even more of a tight squeeze with overhead too!

Subject says it all. Too many Suits in a "Good ole Boys" Network to actually have forward thinking. Wait for the dropouts and artifacts.

My JVC DVD player shows on a special menu the actual Mbps speed of the video playback and on a fair movie it exceeds 7 Mbps 80% of the time. Try an Action or Sci-Fi movie and it is over 9 Mbps video playback.

Welcome to Bellsouth, Home of the StoneAge.

The ability to line-bond two 12-Mbps copper pairs is well within the technical and business model of several LECs. The combined +20 Mbps pipe will serve any multi-play business model. Also, they are using Microsoft's IPTV and they only need 2 Mbps for SDTV and 8 Mbps for HDTV. VoIP requires much, much less.

Additionally, I think many of you are forgetting that next generation DSLAMs will be terminating IP (look at Alcatel as an example) and this makes things a lot more simply when you figure the LECs are backhauling with Gigabit Ethernet over fiber.

The 4-6 Mbps offering that Bellsouth is announcing is probably the initial service offer of a much bigger technical model. I would expect the same from SBC since they are doing the exact same thing as BST. Why on Earth anyone feels they 'need' a >30 Mbps pipe using the chosen technology these two LECs have chosen is beyond me.

How many of you plan on watching more than say two HD channels and pumping the Internet for 4-6 Mbps constantly while holding a dozen IP-based telephone calls at your home?

Have you seen what Microsoft's 2 megabit SDTV looks like? It looks like hell with pixelation and a noticeable lip flap that's an artifact of the compression.

If the broadcasters can't fit HD into anything less than 15 megabits, why would Microsoft think they can do it in nearly half that? Truth is, Mr. Nyquist hasn't been proven wrong and I doubt the people at Microsoft have figured their way around that one.

Well, a way around it using technical means as opposed to marketing.

Actually, I have not. I have seen what 7-Mbps high-definition looks like and it looks terrific. And when was the last time you have noted the DirecTV-delivered local SDTV channels? Its pathetic yet I see no up-rising to get them to change.

quote:

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If the broadcasters can't fit HD into anything less than 15 megabits, why would Microsoft think they can do it in nearly half that? Truth is, Mr. Nyquist hasn't been proven wrong and I doubt the people at Microsoft have figured their way around that one.

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Well, let's see. The broadcasters are using MPEG-2 and Microsoft is not. That's how. And yes, I have compared 8-9 Mbps HD/WM9 to 19-Mpbs/MPEG-2 and its amazing. I know some boutique projector manufacturers that also use WM( HD materials for demos at CEDIA and CES because they can get a lot more than they could (for the same picture quality in demonstration) than 28.2 Mbps MPEG-2.

You must be joking if you think we're supposed to be doing anything but dreading a combination of BellSouth and Microsoft. The utterly inept coupled with the bumbling buffoons.

Won't it be great when Microsoft can screw up television as badly as they've screwed up PCs.

Any company starting in virgin territory that chooses a Micro-slug solution over an open standard solution is just asking to be reamed.

BTW, you were called out on your bogus reference to inadequate cash flow as a rationalization for BellSouth's decision to screw the southeast US on infrastructure investment. It takes some serious chutzpah to try and turn the tables and ask for a reference. If you've got the 10-Qs, as you claim, and the ability to comprehend the financials they contain, then you know darned well what the score is.

So, you now blame Microsoft alone for the personal computer being screwed up? What about the hardware and software manufacturers? What about the ignorant computer owners to ignorant and too uneducated to try somethnig other than Microsoft?First, microsoft is not the only IPTV solution provider. Second, the MPEG committee must have found something reasonably of value to take the VC9 entry that Microsoft gave to them for free, and make it a formal codec a la VC1. And that codec has not only proven to be as good as MPEG-4 and much better than MPEG-2, but its also a lot cheaper than MPEG-4 in licensing terms.

Yet, where are your words against MPEG-4 with its higher licensing fees that both DirecTV and Dish Networks is beginning to migrate to? Those upgrades are not coming free of costs and do you not think they'll be pass onto the consumer (you)?What was bogus? How did Bellsouth screw the southeast on infratrsucture? And remember, Verizon is in the Southeast as well (we could deport some Tampa people to the Northeast if you would like).

Sorry, I am not familiar with the '10-Qs' reference. And no, I do not claim anything except that I claim a lot of people in this thread are clueless as to the costs of the infrastructure. Just read the Yahoo link above titled 'prepared statement' and you will see Bellsouth (and probably Southwestern Bell, too) is preparing 12-Mbps loop with the intention of bonding them for 24 Mbps transports.

Have you even considered what cable gets and how many times they have to recycle the signal, noise and all? And what, you are complaining that Bellsouth is at least making effort to deliver 4-6 Mbps for DSL? Show us a profound need that you have for more. If you have that much residential need I'd pack up and move to Odessa Florida and let Verizon sell you the fiber service.

And yes, I actually did move for broadband.

BS is very conservative. They would rather spend half the money and upgrade their network so it's up-to-date for the next 5 years, then spend twice the amount and have it ready for the next 10 years.

As long as there are satellite services then I won't even be concerned with this. I think the IPTV stuff isn't that great, and I love my DirecTivo unit. I'll just use BLS for the voice and DSL (when it gets here in April) and let them fumble over the video for a while. They do have a trial video service in several areas thats been up for a while, so maybe they have some ideas of what they can really do.

Also, no one mentioned the fact that the press release stated that they could get 24mbps to your home by bonding 2 pairs. I already have 2 pairs into my home, and I imagine it'd be cheaper to run 2 pairs to a house instead of fiber (although I think they should be planning a FTTP rollout at SOME point though)

I am a little confused as to why you need so much bandwidth for video. I could see about 2Megs, but anything greater seems like a waste. I guess I am not a videohead or audiohead. If we used fractal compression we could get 500:1. I don't see anyone talking about that anymore because the frontend compression time is tremendous even though the other end can be decompressed with a 486 (remember those?).

People, get a life. I honestly do not have the need to have that much clarity. A decent storyline and actors is all I need. Use your imagination for the rest.

Has anyone realized that DivX exists? Last time I checked, DivX can compress a video stream to a very very small package and still maintain some of the highest quality ratios in the industry.

It doesn't say a thing about 6meg, it says 12-24meg. Apparently whoever posted this blurb missed that. Wonder why?

If 6mbps supplies 1 video feed, and 10mbps can squeeze 2 feeds, what is the bandwidth of my Comcast cable?
Seeing as I have two TVs running, this computer getting 4mbps, and Comcast Digital Telephone Service all coming across the same coax... Comcast must be hitting me with some bizzaro bandwidth.

They do not tell you, if you are using that full on 6mbps for a video feed, kiss your internet surfing good bye!

Even if they hit you with the 12mbps, you will only have 1 TV able to be on and get your download on. Do you have two TVs running? Bye bye internet.

Or am I missing something here? If so, someone explain how xDSL(+?) will ever actually compete with what cable has been offering for a while now.

so bellsouth is trying to offer tv through copper lines? (correct me if im wrong i didnt really read the article to its fullest) Well at least they wont have to upgrade to fiber. Looks like cable companies are going to hell unless they come up with newer technologies. Verizon is trying to become the god of communications with their new FIOS.

When we're alone it's two of us watching TV. When guests visit, it's up to 4 people that may be watching something on TV at the same time at night.

And what about HDTV?

Provision another copper pair.

Getting true NTSC or HD is tough to the home unless you receive it off air. I used to work in broadcast TV for years as an engineer (RF and Video) and once you see a true virgin feed any of the compression schemes just don't cut it.

I have Directv and it's pitiful when one compares it to the original feeds. Putting TRUE HD on IP has a long, long ways to go.

Fiber to the home will be an absolute must because copper just doesn't have all the bandwidth required.

TRUE,
I am a audio engineer and I have worked with analog, digi at 16 bit to 24 and now DSD(65million bits at 2.8 MHZ).

I have listen to DSD sound mixes of strings i have recorded and it blows away all sound formats. I like it because it sounds like the artist are still in the studio performing.

When I hear compressed versions( MP what ever, DVD, CD...) it sounds like the equipment is broke.

In the pro audio world we send pro audio over multi T1's and higher and that's for 24bit 192khz. DSD at the moment has to go over a fiber net like FIBER CHANNEL(100Mbit to 1Gbit) to preserve the data stream.

Sony is using Super-bit mapping and ATRAC( MinDisk compression) to step-down the data stream for CD and DVD formats and it still sound better than a DVD or CD native recording.

It will be along time before we hear what it sounds like if you go to a full blown pro Digital DSD theater streaming into your home.

Yeah, one of my hobbies is audio. Designed and built most of my stereo years ago and I like reproducing sound at high SPL... especially down close to DC. -3db down at 16 cycles!! Total of about 2KW RMS so it's fun to make good sound!

Anyway to get video on demand to every home PLUS being able to deliver HD TV we have a long, long way to go with the Internet... Maybe when we get to Internet IV!!!

What is the point in trying to get quality video through half of a 12mbit connection? I'd be pointless because there would be no way to tune to two different channels at once, let alone like 6 different tvs. I'd rather get cable tv or satellite tv with my multiple tvs, than only being able to use 1 tv and losing half my internet bandwidth. Personally I would be pissed if they had the capabilities to run 12mibt over the dsl line but only let me use 6mbit because they probably will reserve that extra 6mbit whether you order their tv service or not. And if they didn't reserve that bandwidth, then people are going to just keep their cable or satellite and have an awesome 12mbit connection.

This is only an interim solution. We we told to get true HD we will have to get 100Mbps to the home. Sounds like FTTH to me, but dont know how far out this is. The 12-24 is only a temporary solution though.

An ILEC releases a statement that they're working on 24meg DSL. 50 posts later, not a single positive comment. Just out of curiosity, what would it take to make you guys happy?

so with all the bell bashing
so what do you think would happen if

all the bells pulled the plug
now do you think there would be joy in mudville
or do you think most of the country would come down on
its knees
its fine to sit here and type the bells suck
but wake up one day and they are all gone?????????
now who you gonna bitch about

and no i dont work for any bells

if bs does deploy the 6-8-9-10-or 24 megs so be it
if they dont then its up too them--
and posting here or any where else wont change there minds

so sit back and wait--- because thats all we can do

You want to know what will happen.... Someone else will come in and do it. I personally would like to see the government assign a company or 2 to build, own, and maintain the entire network. Not allowing them to provide any services other then to build and maintain the infrastructure.

And I like how you say you don't work for BS, but in the post right above it you say "..... call us". So which is it?