CONVERGENCE by Jackson Pollock
Top phone company AT&T Inc. shrugged off concerns on Tuesday that it would need to build a more expensive, all-fiber network to handle an expected surge in high-speed Internet and video traffic.
AT&T is currently upgrading its networks to deliver an Internet-based video service called U-Verse to compete with cable companies.
But unlike No. 2 player Verizon Communications, which is launching a similar service by building a “fiber to the home” network, it is making use of existing copper lines to save costs.
“Our view at this point is that we’re not going to have go ‘fiber to the home.’ We’re pleased with the bandwidth that we’re seeing over copper,” Chief Financial Officer Richard Lindner told a Credit Suisse conference.
“On average, at this point, we’re producing about 25 megabits (per second). But in many many locations, we’re producing substantially more than that.”
Some analysts have said AT&T’s method is more efficient, while others have said it would need to upgrade its network again when more consumers start to watch high-definition channels and download movies, requiring increased bandwidth.
Most of the U-Verse adverts are still talking fibre. If their infrastructure can handle 25mbps, when will they offer us “more efficient” access — affordable access?
Where is it? Wha?
AT&T ain’t gonna change. Comcast ain’t gonna change. Telcoms and Cablecos will offer the lowest common denominator for the highest price they can get away with.
The voodoo economics crowd will praise them for being true capitalists — even though it’s all premised on the government shutting down any potential competition.
Say nothing about the money the government gave the telcos specifically to provide fiber to the home to the tune of $200 billion. They should be thankful the government gave them the right-of-way to lay those cables to begin with. I would have loved to see how much it would have cost them to lay all that cable if they had to pay each land owner.
This internet thing has no future… – AT&T
My grandparents live in rural Wisconsin, and have no prospects of cable availability. When I was visiting over Thanksgiving, I saw they have replaced their satellite dish with a digital television service running through their existing copper phone lines. Their DSL comes through the same line. While you can clearly see the compression when a lot of action is happening on-screen, I was still impressed with it as a whole.
No one will ever need more than 640k.
Eventually they will have to upgrade to fiber to the curb, the only question is when and how much pain will their investors have to suffer through while we wait for short sighted MBAs convinced that their Yale degrees give them a clue of how technological innovation works.
We need to stop hoping that the communication companies will do something against their corporate interest, i.e. giving up content control and high prices for a pay as you go fat-pipe-of-all-information. We need to start trying to do this ourselves, and it is frankly within our reach. By utilizing short-wave or other public spectrum, along with spread spectrum data technology, we could ourselves build a high speed network with no wires at all. With congress in a state of upheaval, it might be a good time to start lobbying for more freedom in the use of the “public” airwaves, so that we can make a new, better internet for our children to enjoy.
I still fail to understand the rationale for declaring the radio spectrum as belonging to the “public.”
There was an interesting episode of Moyers on America: The Net @ Risk which follows the efforts of Lafayette, Louisiana to run fiber to every house as a government utility function – and how the cable and telephone companies are up in arms over the “unfair competition.” The state whether utility revenue can be used to pay off the bonds that, if issued, would finance the deployment.
Bye bye AT&T! Hello Verizon!
WTF is wrong with AT&T? do they want to fail?
Copper and Cable begins with a C and that stands for CRAP!
The telecom’s are such crybabies.
Within the price of service has to be a budget for upkeep and upgrades. Twenty years later the catchup is huge of course, fiber has been around for more than two decades!
The bottom line for me is that verizon and at&t gave private records to the nsa, and that is against the law, and I wont give my business to criminals, so it doesnt matter how they spin their high speed, im staying with my cable provider.
Spend a penny charge a dollor.
10,
Umm, you need to understand something…Cable dont have the backbone that runs accross the nation. They tap into the telco to get access.
#6 — no one is surprised.
This is old news – check out: http://sasktel.com/about-us/news/current-news-releases/sasktel-first-in-north-america-to-deploy-hdtv-over-ip.html
#12, all resources are scarce; so why don’t we just say everything belongs to the “public” and get it over with? Otherwise, your comment has proven nothing.
#4: Telecom and cable MBAs (as well as other companies) will only invest in infrastructure and innovative ideas if it shows up almost immediately in quarterly earnings, because that’s what Wall Street wants.
We apparently need tax incentives of some sort that will actually encourage the MBAs in these companies (and the rest of them) to invest in domestic R&D that turns into domestic infrastructure improvements and into domestic jobs. And–as long as we’re thinking about it, figure out a way to get Wall Street to understand that investing for the long haul is a very good thing.
#12. You are right. In a free-market economy, spectrum should belong to whoever can build the most powerful transmitter.
let the static wars begin!
#6 & 14
Because if they didn’t belong to the public, then the right to broadcast your signal would end at my property line. Unfortunately radio waves don’t understand property rights.
I realize you have no idea when it comes to the functioning of government. Yet it is the purpose of government to regulate society in a manner that is fair and equitable to all. Without government regulation, there would be anarchy as multiple broadcasters tried using the same frequency at the same time. None of the signals would be clear.
Now if you read the article, you understand this isn’t about radio spectrum. It is about telecommunication over wire and the efficacy and sufficiency of the type of wire used.
#17: And if you read the comment directly above mine (#5), you would see the poster making a reference to using the public spectrum. I’m sorry if your attention span is too short to make the connection without me drawing an arrow for you.
And as far as your other argument about broadcasting rights ending at your terrestrial property line, its as absurd as saying that I should need a government license to talk in my back yard because the sound waves don’t respect your property line either.
As you are so keen to lecture others about how much you think they know about the government, you are probably also aware that another one of its jobs is to enforce property rights. If a particular frequency is identified as belonging to Broadcaster A within a certain geographic area, there is no reason to honestly believe, or make the false claim that we would somehow have some kind of anarchy of the airwaves. But, if the government wasn’t able to claim ownership of it all, then it wouldn’t be able to extract its licensing fees and play morality police with its censorship regime. And boy would there be fires burning in the streets then.
Verizon appears to have patented rights to Fiber to the Home Telco Network technology in US Patent 6,961,335:
“A communications network, for example forming a local exchange carrier telephone network, utilizes three layers of fiber optic rings.”