Rick
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-06
Waterbury, CT
clubs: 
| The latest and greatest technology doesn't always win out...
Remember how Intel stood by their idea of what ram should be (Rambus) versus DDR?
DDR won out because it both performed very well in addition to being priced right and being considered a value versus what Rambus offered. And all the power of Intel and their dominance couldn't change that outcome.
I certainly won't argue that FTTH doesn't have it's pluses but it's also the expensive solution. 25 to 30 Billion to be exact for Verizon alone.
And, they're trying to do it in a very short amount of time compared to how the cable industry approached this over the last decade. Those who think that Cable co's like Comcast and TW don't have a ton of fiber in their networks are very mistaken. They have a lot of it and numbers I've read suggest that number is approaching 75% for Comcast these days. What I've also read is that to get 30Mb speeds via Verizon and their fios service, one would have to pay well over 125.00 per month.
I see that on Comcast for 42.95 month.
Even fios's 15Mb service is priced higher than Comcasts for the most part. Will people really want to pay those kinds of prices just to say they have FTTH and, in many cases..to actually cut their DL speeds in half for many of the kinds of things that people download everyday that powerboost accomodates? IMHO..I'd say that person choosing that option wasn't really doing their homework. For many..cable HSI really is the way to go in terms of speeds and value.
Is their entire network fiber? No. But it doesn't have to be either. The combination of the huge amount of fiber they do have together with the coaxial last mile is a very cost effective solution. And, it's already been demonstrated to perform at 150Mb + Speeds when combined with docsis 3.0 technology.
I'm not knocking verizon at all. In fact..as I've written about..they're to be commended for doing the only sane thing they could and biting the bullet and rolling out FTTH. But I don't think that means that the cable industry has to..or should do the same. They should agressively pursue docsis 3.0 and personally..I think that comibination will ultimately rule the day..and be the DDR of the broadband industry and the most heavily adopted and be both the speed..price..and the value option.
While Verizon is making some inroads..one has to consider that it's still very small in comparison to where the cable industry is today. And, it won't be long until the cable industry has docsis 3.0 rolling out. That's going to make verizons job all that much harder to get incumbent cable customers to switch over.
Why should they? I can see it if it's a service issue..but if people are getting great service..very fast..and at a great price..there's really no incentive.
And Verizon will have some VERY large bills to be paying..and discounting Fios to gain acceptance will grow ever more difficult.
As hard as this is for Verizon..imagine what it's like for AT&T and their PewVerse (tm) service.
IMHO..that company might as well start boarding their windows shut.
The outlook is really that bad for them IMHO.
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The Coyote captured the RR! Roadrunner Rick is now Comcastic! |
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gatorkram
Spelling and Grammer impared
Premium
join:2002-07-22
Winterville, NC
clubs: | I don't see cable offering 20/20 |
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bufbarnaby
join:2002-01-06
Riverside, CA | reply to Rick
I`m in a ATT area in southern California and was just wondering where the heck U-Verse is being deployed.
Is there a map somewhere that shows their deployment ? |
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JTRockville
Data Ho
Premium,MVM
join:2002-01-28
Rockville, MD
clubs:
 ·LINGO
 ·Sprint Mobile Broa..
 ·surpasshosting
 ·Verizon FIOS
| reply to Rick
Re: The latest and greatest technology doesn't always win out...
said by Rick  :...Those who think that Cable co's like Comcast and TW don't have a ton of fiber in their networks are very mistaken. They have a lot of it and numbers I've read suggest that number is approaching 75% for Comcast these days.... Do you have a link to substantiate that? The last I read (dated May 2007, posted by devnuller from an analyst and investor meeting) shows ~22% of Comcast's plant is fiber, if I'm reading it right.
»This is like saying your unit is 12cm big.
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Rick
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-06
Waterbury, CT
clubs:
| said by JTRockville :Do you have a link to substantiate that? No. It wasn't from the net. It was in a report describing their Northeastern plant that I read a couple months ago from some brokerage analyst I believe.
It described it as your report does stating plant route miles and fiber route miles.
Based on those numbers it was about 70 to 72% at that time.
Perhaps the difference is your's is reporting nationwide and what I saw was regional.
Anyways..that's what it said and actually.it surprised me as I didn't realize it was that high.
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The Coyote captured the RR! Roadrunner Rick is now Comcastic! |
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djrobx
join:2000-05-31
Valencia, CA
·PHONE POWER
·AT&T U-Verse
·AT&T CallVantage
·Time Warner VOIP
 ·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to gatorkram
quote:
I don't see cable offering 20/20
It may very well be possible to pull off 20/20 over HFC, but the need to do it just isn't really there to prompt those sorts of upgrades. What's really a bigger seller, $10.95 768/128 DSL or $64.95 20000/20000?
People feared the shared nature of cable back in the days when 1.5-2.0mbps cable was the norm. Well, now 6mbps or more seems to be standard fare and the technology is, overall, holding up just fine. Optimium Boost is at what, 30/5 now?
I'm not entirely convinced that FTTH is necessary, but Verizon's certainly using it to raise the bar. More power to them, they're driving the entire rest of market towards faster speeds. Thanks Verizon.
-- Rob
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Laser eye surgery rocks! I love frickin' laser beams. |
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Ignite
Premium,VIP
join:2004-03-18
UK
clubs:
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3 edits | reply to Rick
Could you perhaps scan the report for us?
Saying that plant is 70% fibre regionally is a bit of a misnomer. You could stick a node at the end of a 75km fibre run feeding 5,000 homes and claim it's great because it's mostly fibre even though performance would be dubious. Homes per node is a much better measure of depth of fibre in a network than % route km.
With Comcast's network being so regionalised a high quantity of fibre in the network isn't hugely surprising as they have a lot of hubsites apparently. Doesn't necessarily follow a network is of a comparable quality to FTTH though. They still offer on a single downstream less than 100kbps per home passed while the current incarnation of FTTH offers 200 times that.
Fact is that eventually HFC will give way to a pure fibre architecture, which is why these products exist, to give a smoother migration path to that architecture. DOCSIS 3 etc are sweating the copper and making use of existing plant and CPE, FTTK is a stopgap on the way to deploying FTTH.
The demonstration of DOCSIS 3 showed 150Mbit to a single modem, so what? Split that 150Mbit between an average Comcast node of 468 people and you're left with 321kbps per home passed, assume 33% uptake you're left with 1Mbit/s per home passed. 1/20th of what a fully split worst case BPON FTTH solution delivers and 1/80th of what a worst case GPON solution delivers.
It's all about the unicast bandwidth per home, and short of throwing 80 DOCSIS downstreams at a single node DOCSIS 3 cannot keep up with GPON. That 80 downstreams represents 2 1 million dollar list price Cisco ubr10ks fully loaded with MC5x20c cards. On a GPON network it represents a few switch ports. |
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fiberguy
My views are my own.
Premium
join:2005-05-20 | reply to gatorkram
Then your eyes are closed.
DOCSIS 3.0 can handle that easily. |
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JTRockville
Data Ho
Premium,MVM
join:2002-01-28
Rockville, MD
clubs: | reply to Rick
So, if the northeastern plant has ~70-72% fiber, and the national average is ~22%, then many Comcast plants must have much less than 22% fiber. That seems pretty hard to believe. |
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Ignite
Premium,VIP
join:2004-03-18
UK
clubs:
·BlueYonder Interne..
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1 edit | reply to fiberguy
said by fiberguy :Then your eyes are closed. DOCSIS 3.0 can handle that easily. Well no I think your eyes may be closed because if you reread his post....
said by gatorkram :I don't see cable offering 20/20 Present tense, and he's right. I don't see any cable offering of symettrical 20Mbit, do you? BPON FTTH can offer 600/150, don't see an offering of it right now even though the tech could in theory deliver. |
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Rick
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-06
Waterbury, CT
clubs:
| reply to JTRockville
said by JTRockville :So, if the northeastern plant has ~70-72% fiber, and the national average is ~22%, then many Comcast plants must have much less than 22% fiber. That seems pretty hard to believe. Personally, I find that 22% number cited in that report as being way low.
When you consider all the fiber feeding their head ends..fiber out to the distribution hubs..then fiber out to their enormous array of nodes..I find it virtually impossible to consider that only represents that small a percentage of their network.
Perhaps the Northeast is a higher percentage than other parts of the country but I doubt it's that huge a difference.
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The Coyote captured the RR! Roadrunner Rick is now Comcastic! |
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Rick
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-06
Waterbury, CT
clubs:
| reply to Ignite
said by Ignite :The demonstration of DOCSIS 3 showed 150Mbit to a single modem, so what? Split that 150Mbit between an average Comcast node of 468 people and you're left with 321kbps per home passed, assume 33% uptake you're left with 1Mbit/s per home passed. 1/20th of what a fully split worst case BPON FTTH solution delivers and 1/80th of what a worst case GPON solution delivers. It's all about the unicast bandwidth per home, and short of throwing 80 DOCSIS downstreams at a single node DOCSIS 3 cannot keep up with GPON. That 80 downstreams represents 2 1 million dollar list price Cisco ubr10ks fully loaded with MC5x20c cards. On a GPON network it represents a few switch ports. I highly doubt they have an average node of 468 people for starters. As for your comment about the demo of 150Mb being "so what" I'd have to ask what exactly do you think that residential users will be needing in the years ahead?
That kind of capacity will virtually quadruple what we already see on comcast and I highly doubt that many residential users will ever want or expect more than that even looking out 10 years.
And, even if they do, docsis 3.0 will allow them the ability to expand on that..not to mention their ability to split nodes.
I really don't buy at all that they'll want or even need to ever spend the money for FTTH. Why should they with that kind of capacity? It would seem very foolish and a total waste of money to me.
IMHO..we'll see docsis 3.0 starting to roll out in late 2008..and along with that..up to 50Mb speeds.
Already they're giving us 30Mb on the existing networks with powerboost. When Capacity is quadrupled it will certainly stand to reason that they can at least upgrade that to 50Mb or more.
And, who knows? With PB we might even see the 100Mb mark.
What you're forgetting here is what is really going to sell the consumer. It's just like DDR versus Rambus. The latest technology..if it's priced too high..isn't going to necessarily be the winner.
If Comcast can continue to deliver on the speeds they have been..and can take their levels up to the 50Mb or more mark..I think that most will never leave them for fios.
Why would they want to? There just isn't any real compelling reason to do so..and especially if it's going to cost more.
Verizon IS doing what they need to do because they have no choice really. Their network has to be totally reworked..and it might as well be with FTTH. But, it's at such a huge cost that it's hard for me to see them competing with cable's docis 3.0..especially on a price versus value..versus speed combination.
At least it will be some good competition.
Uverse..on the other hand..is perhaps the biggest flop to ever hit the broadband world.
When will AT&T ever realize that?
ps: as for the research report.I wouldn't even know where to look for it at this point...or if I even have it any more.
It was going back 2 or 3 months ago. I recall the percentage because it really surprised me. Whether it was completely accurate..I certainly don't know.
I do think it's probably greater than 50% though and that the 22% number isn't right. I mean..we KNOW they feed all their nodes with it..so that's right into the neighborhoods from their headends.
Maybe 50 to 60% nationwide would seem more realistic.
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The Coyote captured the RR! Roadrunner Rick is now Comcastic! |
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old_dawg
"I Know Noting..."
join:2001-09-22
Westminster, MD
| reply to Rick
said by Rick : What I've also read is that to get 30Mb speeds via Verizon and their fios service, one would have to pay well over 125.00 per month. I see that on Comcast for 42.95 month. I'd sure like to see hard copy to back up that statement or
I'll call shenanigans, or fan boy, or both 
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