Adam

AT&T Lightspeed: The Price of Mediocrity Just Went Up

On the current access platform, this project so critical to AT&T's success is doomed. A few statistics. The average household has ~2.3 set-top-boxes. Although most average compressed HD demands at 10M, thats what it is, average. An actual HD stream ranges between 8-15M. 8M Internet is table stakes. No matter how look at it, it doesnt fit in 34M. So whats the answer, more copper pairs, hardly.

Perhaps selling AT&T Broadband to Comcast was a mistake! HFC and FTTH are the only viable solutions.

Cablecos Wake Up To Reality

Andrew,

In general your assertions are correct however I dont agree with your conclusions. Theoritically it is possible to delivery GB of data capacity over the coax system providing sufficent capacity for many years to come. There is no specific limit (high or low) to the number of modems that can be on a channel or the number of channels that can be used to deliver DOCSIS services. The issue that you did correctly identify is that the spectrum that would be used for this additional capacity is currently consumed by video services. It is correct that analog "must carry" consumes signficant spectrum however the spectrum "crunch" was really caused by Digital Simulcast. This is the re-transmission of the analog channels as digital on the same system and was implemented to compete with Satellites picture quality. These digital channels are the candidates for switched broadcast and as they are already use settop boxes, no premise equipment changes are necessary. Freed channels can be used for data services. This can all be done with today's network.

A big rebuild is a long way off for the cable operators, they will continue to improve their existing spectrum usage allowing them to offer competitive services for quite some time.

Adam