Industry CEOs Issue Broadband Challenge

seeing how the FCC set the date for broadcasters to be digital at 2006, and most have barely budged, let's watch the trend bleed over into internet access. when most actually get to the 100Mb/s speeds, it will be 2005 or later, and the rest of the connected world will already be on gigabit.

Does digital mean that $2,000 HDTV i bought will actually be of use to me? or does it simply mean like digital cable type quality?

it means that the affiliate networks have to be HDTV or hybrid by 2006. your set may or may not be completely compatible with the signal. your best bet is to get an HDTV-ready set, and then later on get a converter, once a real standard is established. in the year 3000.

The U.S.A. will be the broadband backwater of the developed World...

As other countries install 100 mbps networks and FTTH now, simple 384k/128k DSL languishes in the USA... and cable is even placing these lame speed caps on. I suspect by 2009 much of the country will have low-speed broadband, but 100 mbps is very unlikely.... and what broadband we do have will be greatly overpriced and thus under utilized.

The only exceptions to this rule are probably going to be forward thinking communities that have laid their own public highspeed infrastructure down (ie stopped waiting for the Monopolies to do it) and have an open access policy...... this will allow the local Government to make money and upgrade the network as well as giving the citizens really fast service and choices of providers.

[text was edited by author 2002-02-16 12:17:06]

people are always braggin up these 100mbit networks. do they not realize they only see those speeds within their own neighborhoods and not out to the "real internet". once out to the real world its a sleepy megabit or

less.Broadband U.S.A reminds me of that country song "Little bitty" by alan jackson. perhaps someone should write a broadband version parody of that song.

if you're on AOL via a BYOA account, I can see how you have a false impression of the 'real internet'. the fact is, the internet has no speed value. the users determine the speed. the fiber and backbones holding it all together have capacity of WELL over 1 megabit. we're talking terabit speeds and higher.

Nobody can get DSL/ADSL/Cable to work right! 100mb, many people would be thrilled just to have more reliability with what they have (I have no complaints).

And... who needs to chat at 100mbs! (AOL Users)

said by srwargo:

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Nobody can get DSL/ADSL/Cable to work right! 100mb, many people would be thrilled just to have more reliability with what they have (I have no complaints).

And... who needs to chat at 100mbs! (AOL Users)

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Personally I'd like to have VOD (video on demand). Imagine having some sort of digital hub, where your pc is connected to your television, and every movie is encoded at DVD or HDTV quality (stored on some massive terabyte server) and you could pay a subscription fee to watch them in real time at your leisure. netflix.com is an interesting idea but still you have to wait for the DVD to ship to you. And with a regular video store they may not have the indie film you want, and then there's the late fee issues. And so on. If we all had speeds mentioned in this article we could have true VOD, and that's really the lure for me.

Also, instead of watching television programs at a set time, or buying a DVR (digital video recorder) to record them only to watch them back later.... why not have television on demand? You could have every episode of Seinfeld stored at a central location (run by the networks such as HBO, CBS, NBC, etc.) and pay a subscription fee to watch what you want to watch when you want to watch it. If we had 100 megabit per second connections the above could very easily be a reality. In fact, DVD quality video/audio streams at around 5-10 megabits per second if I'm not mistaken. HDTV more so, but ideally you'd want more bandwidth to buffer the stream.

The only problem with your idea is that companys make alot of money off commercials and VOD service where you watch what ever show you want to they would have problems limiting what you watch...

Too many cooks spoil the broth! You don't see this as much with cable because there's only one company with its hands in the pot. With DSL you have to be lucky with 2, 3 or more companies that only seem to want to point fingers at each other.

That the industry leaders will be retiring somewhere after 2009 and they need a way solidify their portfolios. What we have right now will do the basic home user just fine. So what if you can't download a file in 2 seconds? God forbid you should have to wait 20....25, or even 1 minute!

yeah. i'm changing. so what if it costs $30, 40, even $300 a month! we should be glad to have computers and not still be writing on stone tablets! we should all line up to kiss the asses of whoever is actually in charge of limiting our speeds, and be happy to be so lucky. nuts to the other countries who will lap us 4-5 times in terms of progression on www-access.

fyi, this was total sarcasm.

Just curious if the employees of broadband providers have capped speeds or are they "full open" as a perk for working for the company. I would assume there are no horror stories with company workers.

some may not be capped but I was talking to a cable installer for comcast and he did not like the @home to comcast.net switch at all he was capped like everybody else

Try downloading the 4 disc set of BSD. on todays sleepy connects (other than OOL) its an all day affair. with speeds like that even remote burning of iso could be a reality with the right software.

Throw down the gauntlet and call on the federal gummint to crush the ILEC's monopoly, and FORCE them to get their anti-competitive asses out of the way!

THEN you will see rapid broadband expansion in this country.

Unfortunately the only things the "Federal gummint" is good at crushing is my income or "take home", and one other thing, which I will leave to the imagination. Nevertheless, that doesn't invalidate the idea or concept behind your suggestion.

I agree. I mean isn't the government already trying to demonopolize the software industry? Look at the Microsoft antitrust witch hunt for example. If we really want rapid expansion in any industry and especially in the technology race we have to insure that there are NO monopolies. sure the game (monopoly) was fun as a child but were all grown up now. Right?

HA HA HA HA!
This will never happen in the United Sates.
Remember the article posted a few weeks ago here at DSLR about the Japan trip? They are years ahead of us in cell phones. Why? Because corporate greed!
Why would they ever throw away all the $$ they have done to install the slow networks now.
They need to milk it for every penny before actually moving forward and then it will only be on the new equipment installed. We can not even bother to look at what is existing now as an infrastructure.
Just look at the FCC now trying to limit Ultra-Wideband. That can't unleash it fully. The big corps would lose major bank and we all know that is who is paying off government officials.
Ultra-Wideband will be our next broadband with real speeds. We just need to find how we can oust the bribed politicians from letting us have it.
It's is all in black and white, better yet, in hundred dollar bills.

Ultra-Wideband as is fibre would cut deeply into the lucrative T1 market. you may find pockets of fibre deployment but it'll never be lit on a wide scale.

sdialect made a comment below my review of @Home/Cox.net about "The Future". He or she mentioned "....6mbps/1mbps (dwn/up), yes with new (xDSL) technology from Next Level Communications (www.nlc.com)...." as well as Fiber To The Curb.

I had something to say about that...here is the link to the thread:

»The Future

There is no way that the proposed service will be offered in the foreseeable future. No way.

Current broadband performance and customer service sucks. It also is getting slower--even dial up is slowing down.

Providers, (corporate America), makes all its decision based upon what it PERCEIVES as getting it the most money in the short run while spending the least.

Most Americans don't even know what broadband is, let alone have it. Those that do have it as a general group think only in terms of email and eBay.

The government and Telcos don't do anything well. Never have and never will.

We will have affordable AND reliable mass access to 100 Mbps when pigs fly.

From a product or service standpoint the only people that will have the top of the line of anything will be those who are wealthy and willing to pay for it. The rest of the folks will just get promises and a jar of Vaseline with their self-install kit and free modem.

By the way don't forget, especially in the context of marketing, deals, and sales, free is a four letter word that starts with the letter F.

[text was edited by author 2002-02-16 17:36:52]

Our society, especially as manipulated or managed by our current capitalistic style pretty much guarantees you are right. The goal is first and foremost to make money now. All other goals if any are secondary.

Here in Canada we are pretty lucky. Almost the entire country has broadband. And the smaller cities who don't yet will soon, as cable companies are rushing to expand on there own. Also the current cable plants are constantly being upgraded. And I know shaw is always working on faster more reliable internet and cable modem products.

Only because canada does not have all the red tape that america has. Although it seems canada is in the forefront of capping data transfer Which will probably occur here as well now that the @home free ride on bandwidth is gone.

My modem sure isn't capped. And the crtc is alot worse then the ftc for red tape.

By caps, i was referring to the 5gbit monthly limit that rogers and another provider are going to implement. Shawcable as far as i know has that sort of cap but they haven't really enforced it unless you are very heavy on usage.

Yeah they say 10 up and 1 down, but the guy i know who got a call asking him to stop using so much was using like 60 gig up and any service providor would probably get a liitle upset about that

It should be 100 Mbps/100 million broadband customer
$100 per customer per month.

I would pay $100 a month for something with the service levels that OOL Customers enjoy. Most power users would.

100 Mbps? And, this on the heals of an MSN spoksperson stating that msn feels 128 Kbps is broadband.

From MSN's own page, they tout MSN broadband as being lightning fast. if lightning ever struck that fast then nobody would ever get hit.

If we reach 10mbps/100 million customers by 2009 i will be happy.

how many other countries of the world have most of its population in sprawling suburbs like we do in the USA, distance is the bottle neck where is in places like asia you have people stacked in apartment towers.

I won't be holding my breath waiting for 100mbit broadband, at least not in North Dakota. Here, 384kbit DSL at $50/month is considered a steal.

Ok this sounds great on paper. I doubt I would ever use all that bandwith but it would be nice. Here are things I see holding this back

1) Cost to the consumer. I am already paying $60 per month just for 1500/380. What is a 100 Meg connection going to cost me?

2) Already pissed off. I know there are people in the US who went back to dial up because they had a bad experience with broad band. They won't see why they should upgrade. They just plug their computer into an existing phone jack (already in all houses) and they are happy.

3) Greedy companies. Ok, cable internet can handle much more speed than the companies let customers have. They like to cap the shit out of those lines. What on earth makes you think they are going to give you 100 Meg?

4) Expense to the companies. Sure they probably have the money to start slowly making this high speed network a reality, but why spend the money to do that when they have smucks like me paying $60 per month for what they already provide?

5) Slow adoption rate in the US for new technology. Don't believe me? Just look at how slow HDTV is being deployed.

It is a nice dream but I doubt it is one that will happen until 15 years from now.

said by ArchAngel21x:

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5) Slow adoption rate in the US for new technology. Don't believe me? Just look at how slow HDTV is being deployed.

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Boy, you aren't kidding.... Exactly how many years ago now was it that the U.S.A. was supposed to have been "finished" converting to the metric system?

Ya know, i've seen alot of negativity and doubt about this being a reality here... and with that kinda attitude, what you expect is what you'll get.

The big companies are RELYING on you to doubt that the government (if any of it left is truely run by the people) can help every American get broadband at 100Mbps.

I say LET's DO IT!... as a community, as a people... screw big business, the internet was suppose to be FREE dam@it. FREE for education, FREE to grow, FREE for the people who helped pay for it with their tax dollars.

I say, 'make' it possible for the communities and the individual to be their own ISP, to put in their own ethernet and backbone, help FUND and finance it through individual tax breaks and community grants... this could happen if enough people stood up and voiced not an opinion, but the demand for FREE HIGH SPEED.

Best stand up comic material I've seen in years! Keep it up.

this came from a guy in Japan that brag about good his country's broadband deployment was going and etc...

He's not wrong
The reality is that the US is far behind in infrastructure...

I have 1.5 up/512 dn Adsl for about the same price you pay for an Outback steak dinner. That's the best way for me to make a comparison to those in the US.

And... I'm being upgraded to 8Mbps at no additional cost.

And... I can get 100Mbps fiber for about 9,000 yen per month - that feels like $45 US to me. Installation cost is equivalent to about $150 US.

3rd generation cell phones (camera included) with 16bit color displays, 150 hours of battery life and all smaller and lighter than anything you've ever seen in the U.S. No charge for incoming calls and the monthly cost is about the same as Taco Bell for two/month.

And... my (free) terrestrial broadcast TV picture is better than any cable or satellite TV reception available in the US.

Infrastructure and investment is the reason. The horrible state of the communications industry in the US is attributable directly to a foolish deregulation policy that has failed to protect the industry from itself. And contributed nothing toward the advancement of infrastructure to enhance the U.S. society.

The Enron fiasco is a perfect example of government failing to protect the utilities and jobs of the American people by means of a foolish deregulation policy. "We don't need no stinkin' policy..."

Investment and cooperation among companies to build, maintain and advance infrastructure and utilities (services for the betterment of society...) creates more jobs and helps the economy more than disruptive, cut-throat, short-term stock price thinking.

As an ex-pat living outside for more than a few years now, I can see things very clearly now by looking through the window. I understand how I was only looking in the mirror before.

more to this story here: »He's not wrong

which really started here : »Gates Criticizes US Broadband

Broadband is pathetic in Sillicon valley, if you can get it. Pathetic isnt it?

I am an early broadband user,got my first broadband service back in the days of 1500/up 1500/down and have seen my speeds shrink to 720/384...and I know there are many folks out there with slower speeds than that. In my opinion, as has been stated on DSL Reports the technology for much higher speeds are present but it is just plain greed by the telco and cable companies along with letting the telecommunications act of 1996 slowly evolve into an advantage to the telco companies...and why should these companies care when they know alternative broadband services are limited? I believe higher speeds will come once the phone and cable companies finally are able to vanquish all competition, they are close to that goal right now, and they have implemented a model that will focus mostly on providing content that THEY control and supply and prevent the hobbyist such as many who frequent this site from supplying our own content i.e. web servers and the like. Only then will you see 10mb or higher speeds available to millions.

Okay the average consumer has 100 Mbps access, what is the average consumer going to use it for? Currently a well connected web server can handle 200 to 1000 page requests at once, how many visitors at 100 Mbps is a server going to be able to serve? And how much is running a server going to cost.

Secondly consider the DOS attacks that will be possible with 100 Mbps connections, the internet will not be faster at 100 Mbps, it will grind to a halt.

DDOS attacks probably wouldn't even happen if ISPs secure they're gateways properly. Drop any packets not inside its own range of IPs. Problem solved, the attack'd should just phone their ISP and drop any packets coming from compromised machines.

The main reason I think broadband in the US is so slow is the entertainment industry wants to keep it down until they find a way to put a strangle hold on media dilivery. Movie trading is only happening between broadband users right now, but what do you think will happen if everyone was a broadband user? The Motion Picture Association of America would go into a suing frenzy like the Recoding Industry Association of America.

In 1995 we started using 28.8k.. seven years later we have things like OOL Cable/DSDN that are boasting speeds of 8,000k/second. Around 280 times faster. It's not available to everyone, but it is quite an improvement. Technology doesn't seem to be slowing down at all, so seven years from now 100Mb/second doesn't seem to hard to do.

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[text was edited by author 2002-02-17 03:12:25]

Companies need to stop trying to develop new technology. Fiber is already proven to be the most effective possible carrier of the internet SO STOP WASTING MONEY ON FIXED WIRELESS AND BULLSH*T LIKE THAT. A fiber line can carry 10terrabytes of data. New compression technologies are already being developed for the OSI model to allow data over existing lines (dsl/cable) to be up to 10x faster. We already have the technology we need, it's just a matter of rolling out the fiber optics needed to expand it. Think of all of the advantages of fiber to the home/office.

1) Fiber has a capacity for so much data that it could carry your phone/cable/internet signals. This means it would be much cheaper to build a home because you wouldn't have to pay an electrician to wire your whole house with 3 separate lines. Plus you're saving the money on all of the wire you buy.

2) We would NEVER have to worry about broadband speed again. Eventually computers will be able to compute 1000's of megabits of data at a time, and fiber will always be there to keep up.

3) Fiber is not interrupted by EMS or any other outside signal. This means an ALWAYS on connection with little to no packetloss. No more degrading signals over distance like DSL.

4) NO MORE NEED TO RENT MOVIES. They are already testing neighborhoods in selected cities (mainly rich ones) to see how well renting dvds through a fiber line works. It has been tested successfully and could eventually take over the need to run to blockbuster and rent a movie.

5) Fiber is expensive now, but the prices have dropped so drastically and they continue to drop. Give fiber another year or two and compare prices of a fiber line and that of a coax or copper.

These are all i could think of off the top of my head but at least it's a start!