FredE:
Mike....DISH people do well in court, they've gotten plenty of practice at this thing. They
have a plan I'm sure and I think
should be given access...why not? Digital cable around my area stinks and 1/2 the quality of
DBS and 2x the price. Their
edge is truly in the cable modem side, IMO.
Digital cable? I assume you have HFC which is actually analog? In any case, HFC is a two way
multi-media access for the last mile. My brother has satellite in the Washington DC area, and
you are quite correct; you get more one way broadcast channels and they seem to be higher
quality. As I understand it the installation cost (of the dish, etc.) is much higher, but I didn't know
it was 1/2 the price; I assume you are paying $15 per month for DBS and 200 stations, as I'm
paying about $30 for cable and my measly 100 stations, which is probably 80 stations too many
in any case.
However, the point is that cable also supports TWO-WAY data, phone, and interactive
services. Any shared multi-media two-way access will have to compromise different traffic
loads. The business case for HFC is based on supplying all the services, bundling them into a
single bill, and paying back the large investment required to build out the network. The allocation
of bandwidth between them represents a practical compromise between supporting existing cable
and providing new services: this is its biggest strength and biggest limitation.
Also, the quality of HFC, if it is based on DOCSIS 1.1 will be high; they have spent a lot of time
on QoS, management, and even more time on Security. I suspect Security will be more
important than QoS in the long run- Cablelabs has a very long specification on it if you are
interested.
If the satellites get a free ride on cable for broadband, phone, and interactive services, the
network business case will collapse, and we will be left with only DSL or the hope that FTTH
can make a residential business case. You may be right that the DISH people love government (I
found this out from a glancing acquaintance with Iridium- most of them are ex-DOD types), but
the FCC is more interested in finding a competitor to the big phone companies than in helping out
the dish people. |
