psh, from my perspective, the one new and major twist since those earlier times is this: There is now the prospect that T may be doing something downstream in the way of lessening contention/congestion by passing fewer homes per fiber node. A la the Salt Lake City trials.
If T follows through with these and or other bandwidth-increasing techniques, then there could conceivably be plenty of additional capacity for all. But this is not likely to take place on a grand scale for some time to come. One only needs to consider the status quo, and that is: ATHM, itself, even while they still hold exclusive occupancy on the last mile in many MSO territories, cannot see its own way clear to grant their own users full streaming content and telecommuting privileges with the amount of bandwidth they now have at their own disposal, currently. Their reluctance in this is well founded, because their engineers know full well that once penetration reaches a certain level, while at the same time the newer applications reach greater levels of acceptance, there are bound to be much tighter times ahead.
What does this portend when considering the admission of others onto the same pipe at this time? There are plenty of ways to do this, but some of those methods would be in violation of DOCSIS and other Open Cable mandates, or would require some breakaway thinking which the MSOs are not necessarily widely known for, historically.
See my reply to Kevin, which follows. |
