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 XBL2009------
join:2001-01-03
Chicago, IL | reply to MyDogHsFleas
Re: so much said by MyDogHsFleas:Amazing. The first post is "so much for the argument that AT&T can't compete" and the very next post implies it is going to fail soon. Y'all need to recognize that U-verse is a huge success from a business point of view, even though its technology is not as robust as DOCSIS 3.0 or FTTH from a raw bandwidth standpoint. AT&T has met and exceeded every business goal they had for U-verse. They are installing it as fast as they can (and probably over-extending their install capability in some areas, leading to some of the poor install experiences you see posted here). They are laying the groundwork for future expansion into VDSL2 (cheap/easy, only firmware upgrades required), pair bonding (more expensive, requires new NIDs), and extending fiber to the last mile (most expensive). It's a real success story. Those of you here who have consistently bashed U-verse because it's not FTTH and have parroted predictions of doom need to step up for their piece of crow pie. Who's first? 1. How many more years does copper have left before even cheapskates like att are forced to start running fiber all the way into people's home?
2. U-verse over copper was and is more complicated since you need VRAD's everywhere to get any real bandwidth from copper. With fiber they could have just run it straight from the central office and skipped the HUGE refrigrator sized equipment sitting on every neighborhood's lawn.
Fiber would have been a good long term investment and it has less maintenance cost. | | |
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| said by XBL2009:1. How many more years does copper have left before even cheapskates like att are forced to start running fiber all the way into people's home? I think a lot of years. First, as evidenced by today's news, they have a lot of room left to convert passed homes to customers even in areas they've already built out with VRADs. Second, they have two more technology jumps they can make before they go FTTH as I pointed out in the post you replied to -- those being VDSL2 and Pair Bonding, which will increase bandwidth AND distance by a significant amount.
The real impetus will come when competition from Verizon (FTTH) and the cable companies (DOCSIS 3.0) starts actually hurting AT&T. Right now it's not. Verizon and U-verse do not compete head to head, except in a very small number of areas. And DOCSIS 3.0 is rolling out really, really slowly from my POV. The slowing economy is only going to make these high-speed broadband rollouts slower, as customers will be less willing to pay for higher speed services.
Finally, you have to realize that "cheapskate" is not a bad thing, especially in today's economy. Your "cheapskate" is my "savvy business strategist". If you can conserve capital and still get 90% of the customers you would have, you survive to grow and participate in the next round. AT&T's plan to spend about 1/3 of what Verizon does per passed home, make service available, and also lay the groundwork for eventually running FTTH from the VRADs, is looking smarter and smarter.
Look, personally, I'd love to have fiber to my home, and I'd probably pay $100++ for high speed Internet over that fiber. But I don't extrapolate myself to the entire market.
2. U-verse over copper was and is more complicated since you need VRAD's everywhere to get any real bandwidth from copper. With fiber they could have just run it straight from the central office and skipped the HUGE refrigrator sized equipment sitting on every neighborhood's lawn.
Fiber would have been a good long term investment and it has less maintenance cost.
I don't know how you measure "complicated". All I know is that their cost per passed home is less than 1/3 of the cost to run new fiber to an existing home. The VRADs are essentially a replacement for the old DSLAMs, so they know how to do it. And, running PON from the central office is Verizon's way -- that is not the AT&T direction.
AT&T's architecture is to have powered intelligent nodes in the neighborhood and be active on the traffic on that node. In many ways this is a better architectural solution than PON because it gives them the opportunity to insert intelligence close to the home. Eventually they'll have a way to run fiber from the VRAD to the home just like they run copper now. Thus they don't lose their investment in the VRAD infrastructure, they reuse it in their FTTH-to-existing-homes eventual strategy.
Finally, you are just repeating cable company spin with the "VRADs on every lawn" shibboleth. You know that's not true in most cases, and in every case it's using a right-of-way or easement that already existed. | |
wierdo
join:2001-02-16
Tulsa, OK | said by MyDogHsFleas: If you can conserve capital and still get 90% of the customers you would have, you survive to grow and participate in the next round. AT&T's plan to spend about 1/3 of what Verizon does per passed home, make service available, and also lay the groundwork for eventually running FTTH from the VRADs, is looking smarter and smarter. What they're doing is increasing long term opex for a short term reduction in capex. That's just dumb. In the long run, they'll be spending far more money than Verizon, even if only because they have to pay the power bill and maintenance on those VRADs for absolutely no benefit. Additionally, in power outage situations, their service will be dead in the water unlike Verizon, whose customers can make the choice to install a bigger battery backup or even a generator and still have phone/internet service.
My clients are seeing the impact of this first hand. Cox's active infrastructure in the field has their Internet service out thanks to widespread power outages that aren't affecting the customer. Same with DSL on remote terminals.
There's just no way to spin having powered electronics in the field as a good thing from an engineering standpoint when it's possible to avoid. It may not be terrible, but it's better not to have them.
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It's wierdo, not weirdo. Yes, I know that's not the 'proper' spelling of the similar english language word.  | |
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