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| Uverse, etc It seems to be that U-verse is a reasonable compromise. Considering that much of AT&T's territory would require them to bury fiber if they tried to push fiber beyond main access streets into subdivisions it occured to me the other day that building a VRAD to within roughly 1/2 mile of their customers makes sense. In the last 30+ years it has been popular to bury utilities in new communities. The downside is that its very difficult and too expensive to upgrade the copper lines in such places. For now, I can see why U-verse is actually pretty brilliant given that they are able to offer 18mpbs internet, 2 HD streams, and voice service over the cheapest, thinnest, crappiest wires that were possible to use for phone service 30-50 years ago to begin with (ie, they were barely adequate for voice service).
Eventually, they will have to at least bring Fiber to the curb (on the street) so that VDSL would be able to deliver 100mpbs to virtually ever home. But given the difficulty of trenching people's yards and tearing up (expensive!) sidewalks in more recent subdivisions to run fiber I don't blame them for not running fiber that close right away.
I have 1.5mpbs and it is "adequate". I had 6mpbs from AT&T for a while and I rarely was ever able to use ALL of THAT bandwidth. Very few websites, servers, etc allow downloading faster than about 1.5mpbs anyway with the exception being some file downloads and perhaps P2P traffic. Although, some video can use at least 3mpbs down (though I had that for a while and it was adequate even for ABC's HD streams).
Sometimes, I think that people just want to do outdo each other for bragging rights. Such as comparing the engines in their cars or P$&!& size etc.
The cable companies have an advantage for sure. The only area where I wish I sometimes had much greater bandwidth is on the upstream. I'd gladly take 6mpbs if I had 2mpbs upstream vs having 15 mpbs and only having 1mpbs upstream.
Having said all this. I think that as AT&T sets up their VRAD's for new VDSL service that perhaps they should take their previous DSLAM equipment and move it further out into areas that do not have DSL available at all (such as rural areas). After all, that equipment was expensive and there are still many that would be glad to have regular ADSL in a suburban, exurban or even rural environment that cannot even get broadband service now. | |
Sammer
join:2005-12-22
Canonsburg, PA | said by jkeelsnc:It seems to be that U-verse is a reasonable compromise. Considering that much of AT&T's territory would require them to bury fiber if they tried to push fiber beyond main access streets into subdivisions it occured to me the other day that building a VRAD to within roughly 1/2 mile of their customers makes sense. In the last 30+ years it has been popular to bury utilities in new communities. The downside is that its very difficult and too expensive to upgrade the copper lines in such places. For now, I can see why U-verse is actually pretty brilliant given that they are able to offer 18mpbs internet, 2 HD streams, and voice service over the cheapest, thinnest, crappiest wires that were possible to use for phone service 30-50 years ago to begin with (ie, they were barely adequate for voice service). U-Verse would work fine if AT&T was willing to install three or four times the number of VRADs in an area as they are deploying now. Instead they are slowing deployment suggesting that things aren't going well. Part of the reason AT&T won't be able to compete with cable is they haven't even been willing to deploy their fiber as deep as the cable companies. | |
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