So long, broadband duopoly? Cable's high-speed triumph | Hacker News Reader

So long, broadband duopoly? Cable's high-speed triumph

arstechnica.com

30 pointsGoronmon20 comments

The whole article is based on the flawed assumption that DSL is reaching its theoretical maximum.

20+ Mbit DSLs are already widely available in many countries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wikipedia/ITU_G.992.5). And 100+ Mbit DSLs are being rolled out (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDSL2).

Is there a reason why DSL speeds can't keep up in the US?

That might be fine for dense cities but once you get any real distance in the lines the speed drops way off.

Operators typically bring fiber close to homes, while still using DSL for the last mile. True, this requires investments, but not much compared to wiring each home with phone lines, cable, or fiber (all of which have been done before).

Note that part of the reason that cable is able to reach such high speeds is precisely because they use the same infrastructure I described: fiber to the neighborhood, then coaxial cable for the last mile. I don't see why DSL operators shouldn't be expected to do the same if they want to compete.

I think it has less to do with density than with willingness to invest in upgrades.

Plus DSL can be bonded.

This is talking about leading edge tech heavy users. The difference between being able to get 24Mbps at AT&T ( http://www.att.com/u-verse/explore/internet-landing.jsp ) and 50Mbps from Verizon ( Link is down at the time of posting: http://www22.verizon.com/Residential/FiOSInternet/Plans/Plan... ) or a cable company doesn't matter to 99% of the population. By the time the "average user" wants higher speed the providers will spend the capital to roll out the infrastructure.

Look at the numbers provided by Internet World Stats for the USA for 2010 ( http://www.internetworldstats.com/am/us.htm ) and you'll see that only a third of the users are even on broadband at all...

People in the USA: 310,232,863

People in the USA on the Internet: 239,893,600

People in the USA on the Internet with broadband: 85,287,100

This isn't due to the fact they have no option to get cable/DSL/Satellite -- it is that their dial-up "works just fine for me". These are fixed line stats, not mobile -- so this may show that many are skipping fixed line broadband and going full mobile.

If I could get unmetered 10mbps mobile internet, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

I'd pay $150 a month for such a thing.

Not to diminish "net neutrality" but this state of monopoly--or duopoly, if you're so lucky--seems like a more immediate issue to me. If there was competition amongst providers I could even see net neutrality becoming less of an issue.

I don't know what to do about this issue, though. Nationalize cable lines? Consider Internet access a piece of common infrastructure and have governments build it out, competing with the existing private companies?

There are really three competing systems phone lines, cable, and fiber. Now, I switched from cable to FIOS a while ago and it's a huge upgrade so IMO even cable is a distant second place. Verizon realized they needed to ditch copper a while ago and now it's just a question of how much fiber they can roll out.

Earlier this year VZW said they were stopping FiOS rollout and would only finish what they had already announced.

Citation? I'd love to hear more about that.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230341040457515...

It sounds like working through the red tape in each community was costing them so much they finally said screw it.

My understanding is Verizon has abandoned fiber-to-the-home and sold off the franchise to Frontier Communications. (Assumedly they still maintain a fiber backbone to serve their wireless networks.)

"While Frontier's $8.5 billion acquisition of six million users consists largely of DSL and landline customers, there are roughly 100,000 FiOS customers that also have been transitioned to Frontier"

"At the end of the last quarter, we had 3.4 million FiOS Internet customers and 2.9 million FiOS TV customers. " http://forums.verizon.com/t5/Verizon-at-Home/FiOS-Where-We-S...

So, I think that works out to ~3% of FIOS customers. IMO, selling off their DSL customers is probably a mixed bag. They are getting ~1500$ per customer in a vanishing market so it sounds like a great deal. But, up selling service to existing customers is probably less expensive overall.

The cable provider in my area in germany just upgraded to DOCSIS 3 which enables me to get 128Mbit instead of 32 which already was twice as fast as the fastest DSL in the area. I am going for 64Mbit though, 128 still is to pricy but i like the development of bandwidth here. Also had many problems with DSL in the past (losing sync, broken splitters etc) while my cable connection is flawless. But many people say their experience was the other way round, so it heavily depends on the area i guess.

I believe it, I can already see it happening among my peer group. Some of it is poor reliability with AT&T, but mostly it's better latency and download speeds.

Sure, it's a duopoly now and could turn into a monopoly in the near future but wireless/mobile networks are making improvements and that could bring real competition to customers.

Yeah, all 4 of them (quality varying by location), oh boy!

Did someone miss the memo?

The future is wireless.

South Korea has very advanced wireless infrastructure. Yet, most people access internet through cable.

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