Analysys Mason: Copper's Good enough > Actually, they are right.

Actually, they are right.

Do I really need to mention the 64k of RAM quote again?

Besides, we don't expand roads after we see massive traffic jams building up, ideally we would anticipate it and expand the lanes before the demand is there.

MPEG4 is just barely 2x as efficient as MPEG2, if that. It is not an excuse to overcompress video like U-verse is doing right now.
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Yeah, the HD over uVerse is a bit over-compressed but they are making it better. I don't know what they are doing but the picture quality of uVerse HD is getting better. Just in the last year it's gotten better, not a whole lot better but better in the sense that you can see the difference.

Yes, MPEG4 H.264 AVC is a very good codec and better codecs are being developed. Problem is that if a codec does come out and it's miles ahead of H.264 it will probably require all new STB and encoder boxes for uVerse customers.

Biggest problem that AT&T currently has is that for most people there aren't enough HD "streams" for those households that have multiple HD TVs. That's the biggest problem that uVerse is facing right now and there's not a good way to get around it especially at longer loop lengths.

They are deploying pair bonding but so far the deployment of pair bonding hasn't been very successful. AT&T says that it's a problem with the iNID that's causing the problems with pair bonding. If you ask me pair bonding is just a band-aid on a problem that will just get bigger as time goes on.

AT&T has a good thing going, they have a consistent HD experience in all of their uVerse territories. It's consistent in the sense that no matter where you are you get the same HD picture quality and the same HD channels no matter where you live. Cable TV can't say that since the HD experience can drastically change from market to market. That alone makes AT&T better in my book.

The other big problem is that AT&T's executive are so afraid of making the stockholders angry. I say to tell the stockholders where to go and how to get there. Then start deploying at the very least FTTC where the loop lengths are less than 400 feet (hell you could use Ethernet at those lengths using Cat7a and use cheap Ethernet repeaters every 400 feet or so) and then expand from there.

Once they get that going AT&T can really start to munch on "big cable's" lunch and then those investors that said it wasn't such a good idea to go FTTC/FTTH will be raking in the dough as they squash "big cable" flat.
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Tom

While I have no love of either the phone or the cable companies (having had to deal with them in various capacities for the past 30 years), I have an even greater dislike for companies which display no real business sense (lord knows we've had business "nonsense" lately, what with the current financial crisis and things like the dot-com bust before it). That said, while I might dearly love to have FTTH at my residence (I'm sure I'd find a way to fill that pipe, at least on some occasions), I think I can perfectly understand AT&T's desire to milk their copper to the last drop. So let me play devil's advocate for a minute.

I currently have AT&T U-verse triple play (going on 3 months now), and so far I like it pretty well. The profile is 19/2 and I have 12 meg internet, which is double what I had previously and really what I care about the most, personally. I have the single-channel HD limitation (which I really don't understand from a technical perspective, but at least the quality is good), and voice (which I am not impressed with, for quality reasons.) I'm paying just under $200 a month for the bundle (the TV package accounts for most of that), which is less than what I was paying previously while I'm receiving more services - so all in all a pretty good value in my situation, at least for the time being.

All my utilities are underground, and the neighborhood (and therefore the copper) is about 25 years old. I sit about 800 feet from AT&T's latest big box (whatever it's called - they installed it about a year ago), but more like 2,700 feet as the copper is measured - hence the 19/2 profile. I have a second pair available for pair bonding at a later date, if needed.

So now to my point. I probably represent the top tier of AT&T customers in my neighborhood. So if I could call up AT&T tomorrow and ask them to install FTTH at my own expense (cash money, out of my own pocket), what would that cost me? What if AT&T volunteered to front this expense for me - what kind of contract might I be looking at, at what kind of premium compared to what I have now? I'd like to know this info in round numbers, but I suspect the general answer is going to be "More than I'm willing to pay". So unless that FTTH deployment is much cheaper than I expect it is, it just makes sense for AT&T to feed me services over copper until the day comes where the cost to deploy FTTH is basically a no-brainer.

What I really expect to happen at some point is for AT&T to install an antenna at their box, then let me access their "last mile" wirelessly - maybe even using some kind of mesh network to extend its range. They could even provide all of my internet services wirelessly (this would make a lot of sense, in my mind) and retain the copper for video services, etc.

I forgot to add that, instead of sinking too much money into fiber too soon, I would really like to see AT&T make a bigger effort to help out those people who are still stuck on dial-up or low-speed DSL. I have plenty of friends and family is this situation. A few more megabits won't matter that much to me, but would make a huge difference for them.

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