US Cable Support > Charter Internet/TV > [HSI] Coax vs Fiber -- What's in the futre

reply to GvilleDSL

Re: [HSI] Coax vs Fiber -- What's in the futre

reply to kherr
Ive never seen cable marketed as fiber ever before....just cable. Even if it is now hybrid coax/fiber to the node. Check the review section here on dslrepots for Uverse and it falls under fiber which is laughable.

"When the alternative to DSL is pricey cable, DSL has a market."

Yeah but that market is limited and not available to everyone. I wonder how long these telcos are going to keep supporting DSL as well...Seems like Verizon and AT&T are trying to push their customers to FIOS and Uverse. Like i said you are lucky to live in an area where you have options. Id imagine 90% or more of the US does not.

Also as far as distance issues are concerned id have to say DSL comes up far more often then that of a consumer wanting cable service. How many times have you heard of someone complaining they cant get DSL when the neighbor across the street can compared to cable? Perhaps if you live out in the middle of nowhere and not in a community then i could see it being a problem. But then again it would be a problem for DSL as well.

Charter is currently running a carefully worded deceptive commercial as well that makes the viewer think that cable is all fiber.
It's one of the "get charter, it's smarter" commercials. I'm sure the phone company lawyers are drawing up their complaints as we type.
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If someone refers to herself / himself as a "guru", they probably aren't.

reply to kherr
I have yet to see any of these CMs but then again i dont watch much tv anymore. I still dont understand why Uverse is labeled as fiber on this site...makes no sense.

reply to nunya

The 5 Ghz band is a junk frequency rage.

Really anything above 2100 Mhz is no good for fixed wireless.

Because it's unlicensed spectrum (it's easy to do). That's also why it's crowded. That's not really the kind of wireless we are talking about here anyway.
--
If someone refers to herself / himself as a "guru", they probably aren't.

reply to Razoul

reply to nunya
@nunva im will to bet coax will be domenant even 30 years from now cell communcations and wirless will never catch on

charter has 1 gigherts cable plant on my area right now it can be upgraded to 3 gigherts with some investment

on this current plant charter offers 60 hd channels 100 meg internet and phone plus 68 analog channels

just getting red of analog alone charter can increse internet bandwith to around 1 gigabyte proveded cmts upgrades and modom upgrades

»web1.phonescoop.com/articles/art···?a=10978 throw into it h265 codec and double the number of hd channels most setops can get that with firmware upgrade

using h265 and sdv and assuming a node size of 200 ppl per node combined with 3 gigherts plant cable can offer as many as 1000 hd channels plus

or if charter was to use docsis 3 to deliver stuff over 3 gigherts plant to 200 ppl per node youed be able to get 62 megabyte of dedicated internet for every user guaranteed without any congestion of course in some markets charter has it down to 100 people per node (most nodes in cleveland tn are 100 per person they upgraded it from 200 last month)

in principal coax has a ways to go its possble to offer google fiber speed and channels over coax with the right upgrades i think your see an end to nuclear weapons and wars long before we see anything overtake coax as the domonant communcations medium for internet/tv

reply to nunya
@nunya the type of crowding I'm talking about comes from having too many users on a single tower, not that everyone uses the frequency for their home, business, lemonade stand or just because they want to broadcast in that frequency for no reason.

If you have a tower with (I'm going out on a limb here for an average cell tower since I don't know the actual number for newer technologies, only CDMA) 500 - 900 customers on it then those airwaves get crowded quickly and the technology can't support each and every user using their phone at the same time otherwise you get speed and latency issues or just downright won't get access at all. I know LTE and others are huge improvements, but I can imagine they still have limitations that will be hit if everyone sends and receives data over it like they would if we started using them for internet, TV or whatever else Verizon and AT&T would like to use them for.

My point has always been there's limitations for wireless and even if the technology is getting better, that limitation will be hit, especially with how AT&T and Verizon like dealing with things now. What about the cell towers that can only have a microwave backhaul? For many places outside of metro areas, that's how AFAIK how they do it and those are only theoretically possible to reach 1Gig. There's a single point of congestion that's a lot harder to upgrade than if it was fiber fed.

Wireless has it's uses, for replacing wired internet connections however, is not one of them. No matter how you play it the technology can't support the strain of everyone getting home from work and firing up an HD stream from Netflix, downloading game patches or video chatting with Grandma about her Thanksgiving plans. It's still wireless and still suffers from weather, interference, etc

As I said in my original post, you can't get hung up on AT&T or Verizon. You have to clear your head of those thoughts.
I agree, anything on microwave backhaul will be an issue. As I also referenced in my original post, FTTT will be the dominate use for fiber.
Even off the shelf crappy WiMax radios today can handle 200+ concurrent users per sector without noticeable degradation. Small cell technology is going to put less people on a tower, and allow for extensive spectrum re-use.
That's available today. Here and now.
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If someone refers to herself / himself as a "guru", they probably aren't.

reply to nunya

Only time will tell, but I can see the writing on the wall. I'm confident that the reason no new fiber networks of significance are being built is that most providers have already decided where things are going. The ILECs and RBOCs have made it perfectly clear that they intend to exit the wired "last mile" business. Fios was a drop in the bucket. U-Verse was a joke. Google fiber is a publicity stunt hardly worth mentioning because of it's relative small scale in the grand scheme. UTOPIA has failed miserably and is only being kept afloat with taxpayer money.

A lot of people keep post that wireless can't do this, or wireless can't do that. So far I haven't seen one example that's correct. Even current WISP customers using old wi-fi technology can stream HD Netflix.
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If someone refers to herself / himself as a "guru", they probably aren't.

reply to Razoul

reply to nunya

reply to DataRiker

reply to DataRiker

reply to kherr
as a wisp owner, I am switching my customers over to fiber. I see it as the long term solution.

Why? It's not subject to interference, it's not subject to trees and growth. Alignment that's good one year isn't good the next it requires service calls. It's more stable, and will be good for 20 years with minor maintenance, where as in 2-3, I'll have to make service calls to replace fixed wireless gear.

There's a limit to how small a wireless cell can get before it starts stepping on the cell next to it.

On wireless you basically have 900 MHz to 2400 to work with. Some of that is licensed, even if it is, you're still subject to stepping all over your own frequencies. 900 can go through walls, trees etc, great, but because of the frequency, it puts through less than 40% of a signal at 2400 mhz. Now spectral efficiency will increase, but what you can't increase is your amount of spectrum, you will still be limited to those frequencies. And the hgiher the spectral efficency, the stronger your signals need to be.... higher SNR and higher power.

Wireless is based off a SNR ratio, just like cable, you need to maintain a good ratio, otherwise it won't work as efficiently as possible. Wireless doesn't stop at your intended target so it will continue on and still see the next tower...Easy right? just turn down the power, well now you need to be closer to the tower and your efficiency goes down.