OT But kind of related. Broadband

There are major political discussions regarding who gets to deliver broadband and how. Today, you can get broadband anywhere in North America as long as you have a clear view of a geosynchronous satellite. So there really isn't anywhere that just can't be served.

The telephone companies, being regulated, are trying to get out from under regulations. To do so, they may be holding broadband delivered over their networks hostage. But then there's broadband over CATV systems, satellite (mentioned above) and work is being done on wide area WiFi (wireless broadband).

On this subject, there have been some strange sounding 'news stories' about how the FCC is holding broadband hostage. I usually hear these whenever the telecos are trying to shove legislation favorable to themselves through congress, or kill legislation that they don't like.

Personally, I'd like to see some sort of 'universal broadband service' rules, similar to those that put telephone service into practically every community in the US. But this is the sort of legislation that the telcos would resist. And since these sorts of rules don't apply to anyone else (CATV, cellular), these providers would resist falling under such rules as well.

You need a phone line to use a satellite. Are phones under similar regulation as electricity as to be supplied to everyone?

Nope...dont need a phone line. Up/down links are available if you want to pay the price. (see DirectDuo and Starband)

The "universal" telephone service idea was the justification AT&T used to maintain their near 100% monopoly in long lines and control over a majority of the local telephone lines.

But there isn't an AT&T to kick around any more in the telco world and there never was a single BIG operator in the cable business.

What this means is that folks in the middle of nowhere (and even folks in semi-rural areas) just aren't going to get hardwired broadband or cable until the dust has settle on the "intown" installations. I suggest that the solution may well end up as piggy back on the wireless voice network(s). Dead spots in cell phone coverage make for unhappy customers who tend to switch providers for the hell of it.

I suspect that the cell phone folks might just start renting out their rural capacity on a "as available" basis. It would be win-win-win as there will still be competition, the marginal cost would be low for the providers, and internet users would end up with EXCELLENT service "most of the time."

In fact, according to a Communications Technology (?) article I read years back, and there was a chart, the top 10 MSO's were all in the red financially. Adelphia, at the time, was in the best position, but I'm told that the were and no longer are a family owned biz.

I think the reason is because as long as congress isn't in turmoil regarding future regulations, the banks extend credit to MSO's on a per subsciber basis. $2000-$5000 per, I've been told. But the plant is expensive to maintain, which they slack off on and have to rebuild using contractors. About 10 yrs ago, I figured it cost $15,000 per mile to build splice and activate coax and that's not including fiber or electronics.

Someone also wrote on an estimate that every telco employee (including secretaries and janitors) would have to cut down 2 mi IIRC of copper to get rid of it all so it will be a viable medium until death.

Think wireless techs are cheaper. I do, but I have no numbers to guestimate with

As far as BIG CATV ops go, somehow telcos have finagled deals (with the FCC's help) where, for example, MCI can sell local service to Verizon customers. With CATV you can't do that without an over- build because there's only enough BW on the coax for one service. Bear Creek area of Houston, TX comes to mind. You can (could) get Prime or Time Warner. Business was great for a contractor. Offer free premium channels for a month to switch and the orders just flood in.

We are approaching a time when the bandwidth desired will exceed the capacity of existing outside plant for the local loop. (The overbuild of backbone fiber capacity etc. was based on overly optomistic projections of when the demand would arrive but make no mistake that the demand is still growning) The problems of delivering to the end user are the bottle neck for several reasons. The biggest drawback being the cost of installing it. DSL is stopgap but clearly has limitations. Cable is fine as long as the demand in a neighborhood is not so high that the shared pipe gets overloaded. Wireless has spectrum limitations. What will be needed is fiber to the home. One possible player that never seems to have materialized despite years of prediction are the power distribution companies. Fiber can be run inside the conductors of power cables making for a shared resource and the use of existing right of ways that are more ubiquitious than any telephone or cable system. For wireless to keep growing, the cell size will need to keep shrinking. The bandwidth to supply these micro cells will need something like a local fiber loop to feed them. The voice traffic will end up packet switched despite the overhead bandwidth. None of this is new predictions, it is just a matter of when and how politics play out. In the mean time look for fixed wireless and other creative schemes to deliver bandwidth.

Dave at inventgineering.com

Many things have changed in 10 years. Companies that were burying fiber with reckless abandon only a few years ago have disappeared.

Most of the cost of coax/fiber/whatever is the hanging (or digging) and splicing. The cost for higher bandwidth itself is very small. Therefore, when you have to replace, you do so with the current state of the art.

With the telcos help??? More likely over their screams of anguish. The '96 Telecom Act mandated that they open their 'last mile' to competitors. Some did so only grudgingly and they continue to try to have this ruling reversed.

The current argument over who is holding broadband hostage is over whether the telcos can take back their last mile from CLECs before they invest in upgrading it. They want anything more advanced than copper loops to be exempt from sharing, claiming that they need to monopolize it to recoup their investments.

This doesn't make sense in that they are allowed to recoup the reasonable costs of installing and operating last mile facilities that are leased out to whomever. Its just that their business model doesn't work with alternate service providers (i.e. competition).

What??? Modern CATV (in many cases, its fiber to neighborhood distribution points) has plenty of bandwidth. CATV companies are looking for additional revenue sources (digital telephone service, etc.) to sell on it. The bandwidth is parceled out in rather peculiar ways, which makes it appear to be scarce. If they have 'excess' bandwidth, governments (through utility franchise agreements or FCC regs) make them hand out extra public access channels or 'must carry' laws force CATV operators to carry any home shopping network or religious channel that can throw up a 100 watt UHF transmitter to be declared a 'local broadcast station'.

Cell phone services (particularly digital) are getting to look a lot like big WiFi networks. This will take some money to increase the bandwidth, but that's the promise of '3G' services.

In the meantime, the WiFi fans are prototyping city-wide 802.11 networks. There have also been some news stories about developing countries bypassing hardwired broadband and putting in wide area WiFi in remote towns. Its cheaper than running copper of fiber on poles. What is holding this back is the lower customer density. But once someone builds a VoIP 'cellphone' that works on that network, you might have the critical mass of customers to pay for it.

Yeah. Most of the amp spacings are designed so that an upgrade from

750 MHz to 1 Ghz is just a matter of changing Active modules and passive faceplates. But the fence companies come through and cut the lines (if the locator doesn't get out there in time) and you end up with another signal degrading splice. Then there are my friends the squirrels. I used to have a piece of galvanized steel hardware with squirrel chew on it. Sometimes they don't stop 'til they hit the center conductor and the AC knocks 'em off the line. Eventually, the coax gets replaced, and it's usualy either a complete rebuild or overlash, as opposed to replacing spans as needed, AKA maintainance.

Then they might decide that while they're at it, they can bring the fiber closer to the home. Reduce the customers per node.

Sometimes, a city won't renew their franchise agreement unless they upgrade to provide new services. OTOH, at least say 6 yrs ago, in Pudee, MO (remember Footloose?) the town has to vote on what channels to carry and MTV is too evil, so they don' have it. Children of the Corn and all.

Huh? I said FCC. Ok. Congress' help?

Sorry wrong word. How about one cable company assuming they provide all services? If, say, Prime Cable and Time Warner upgrades their systems to handle all the video services AND telephony AND Inet, there will still be 2 systems in the air and ground.

In KC MO we had the choice of 6 local telephone carries. Ok, if you have 500 homes in the node, you can only place so many phone calls and each one could be handled by a separate carrier, but if 500 customers want 6 different cable companies to choose from it isn't going to happen. 6 different encrypions of the same digital channel still takes 6x the BW as 1 encryption of the a channel.

Yup. Built part of one for (can't remember) that was to be bought by ATT who planned to do a faceplate change to handle telephony.

As much as I disliked Ameritech (now SBC), I have to give them credit on their brass-balls approach to broadband in Chi, IL. The FCC still hadn't approved their application and they went ahead and built anyway. Cost them something like $165k in fines, but you know the potential revenue from doing it (Media One - Later ATT) was in the middle of their upgrade so Ameritech wanted revenue NOW. And the fine was a drop in the bucket compared to the $1.x Meg class action suit they lost. They had to pay each customer $0.75. :) The fun never ends.

Yes. I got a good chuckle when I learned that HSN and friends were a must carry because they're in the public interest or the best interest of the public. I can understand that. I can't deny that giving an old lady that can't get out of the house a chance to get some cheap jewelry (or conveinience tool) that makes her feel good or helps her in some way is a good thing. They can get cheap computers to write recipie books, play games, talk to other people... Beats Lawrence Welk.

snip

I too, have hope for WiFi. Wonder what will come after that.

Uh, Is this a new concept? I know a guy who did a helicopter F/O placement and it was lashed to the outside of the conductors.

I don't know what "Comcast Newsgoups" is supposed to mean, but I'm thinking that when you set up your news reader, the server name you assigned was copied to your screen name and you didn't change it.

If you actually worked for Comcast in a capacity where you'd actually seen fiber cable, you'd know that even a single hair needs a cable constructed of so much other stuff that the smallest diameter you can hope for is maybe just over .250" for the old Siecor fiber and most of the fiber cable placed today is about .500" and up.

Ok. The electrical cable will give it strength, so we can just wrap the buffer tube in Kevlar and maybe some armor and pray that the expansion and contraction doesn't rub though all that. Eh, let's add something that allows it to slide. We're back to big dias.

Now tell me this. How are you going to leave a 25 - 50 foot tail or loop for the splicer? Is he going to have to remove 25 ft of conductor, or are you going to remove that part for him and just leave the fiber cable? In either case you're trashing a fair amount of conductor or hauling it to be recycled or piled up for bonds.

Yes. I'm saving room to rent out :) Let it shrink enough and they'll be so close together we'll wonder why we went wireless in the first place. If the population keeps increasing we could just ask the guy next to us to pass the messege.