First to answer Susan's question, no.. I hadn't seen the first article, specifically, but I posted the second one on nFCTF three days ago. But as Mike has stated these are reucurring themes that we've been reading over and over for a while now.
Both of these articles reminded me of a message that I posted on another forum recently, in response to a question on the future of residential broadband, concerning whether future applications will materialize that will warrant greater capacity. To which I replied:
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You present a good question. I'll assume for the purpose of this reply that you are referring to individual users at the residential level. The question you raised is one that the fiber-to-the-x camp is struggling with at this time in their business cases, as well.
Over the past several years there have been inflated expectations, similar to the larger bubble-effect we've experienced in general, with regards to overall throughput requirement. This is probably due to more factors than I could possibly list in the span of a short post here. But several salient (to me, at least) factors do come to mind.
One factor is that the content side still doesn't present a uniform set of features and applications to the greater population - an agenda that could capitalize on economies of scale - due to the severe lumpiness that exists between delivery platforms, and the proprietary adaptations of delivery schemes by disparate access providers. In short, there is no standardization on delivery with regards to the attributes that content providers must plan and design for, hence no economically viable way to address everyone with the same product.
There needs to be some greater semblance of orchestration in this regard beyond pure transport. IP is a great unifier, but it's only a part of the transport scheme. The applications sit on top of it, and those applications have their own demands.
Another factor, which is probably obscure to many observers and in some ways related to the above, is that the larger cable multiple system operators (MSOs) have diluted their energies and resources w.r.t. just how they want their subscribers to be fed the more demanding applications. This could be profound when you consider that cable modem is till poised as one of the most capable of access solutions to date (with qualifications going forward as systems begin to saturate, unless capex is expended on what will soon become necessary deeper-fiber upgrades).
While the MSOs along with their beacon CableLabs maintain a placeholder in broadband through their DOCSIS cablemodem services, they are at the same time developing interactive services - for pay - on their own digital spectrum on 750 MHz systems, as a follow through to their earlier (circa 1991) visions of what broadband was supposed to be all about.
It sometimes seems as though they regard the Internet as a necessary inconvenience to contend with until their own platforms are developed and stabilized. I can still see the tele-shopping carts in the Jetson motif that was splashed on the Northern Telecom "Cable World" screen at a Broadband Conference in WashDC in 1990, which characterized their vision - for all to follow - of the future, eleven years ago. A vision that the MSOs are now attempting to bring to fruition.
Whatever the reasons are for the speed bump at this time, we can depend on the demand curve to continuing its upward climb, for sure. Just as the Internet itself catalyzed bandwidth growth in general, we'll see something come along and spike demand in the goings forward. But not while the media platforms are still as lumpy and proprietary, as disjointed as they are, both from the standpoints of speeds supported and requisite home furnishings, and while most service providers apparently still can't decide on how best, from a consumer's perspective, to serve their markets.
FAC |
