Thanks for posting that piece, Ray. It reinforces a goodly number of comments I've heard recently concerning 1.1 and the complications involved with meeting its certification criteria. There has to be a message in "two years and not a single certification."
"To clear a path for voice-over-IP service, cable operators have upgraded two-way hybrid fiber/coax plants and specified PacketCable for real-time multimedia delivery over the cable modem infrastructure."
The fact that packet cable (which will support IP voice services) will be handled under the same existing high speed access platform that end users use to access the Internet presents some other interesting issues. Is there a potential here for some serious conflict between the bsuiness models of cable modem ISP's (here I'm referring to the ISP's offerings, such as @Home's <and a growing number of others who will be coming on board later via open access>, that make use of the same DOCSIS wares), and those of the cable operators themselves, who in turn are the landlords of the black cable and Head End infrastructures?
Stated another way, what happens if and when Home and its newly arriving neighbors (o-a ISPs) on the cable modem spectrum want to begin offering voip services of their own? Will they be permitted the functionality of packetcable (which leverages cable modem infrastructure), or will they be asked to take their agenda out of spectrum, or into some other corner of the IP/UDP packet structure?
I think that I asked this question almost two years ago, btw, on Home territory. I was projecting then what we are about to see now (or, next year as it now turns out). At the time o-a was still up in the air (as it still is today in many ways, imo) and T had just bought out TCI.
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I find much of this talk about primary and secondary lines [used for lifeline and casusal use, respectively] somewhat academic at this point, almost anachronistic, and in some instances amusing, in light of the ubiquity and pricing models that wirless pcs services can support in many areas. Maybe it was never intended that pcs would become the wireless local loop, per se.. but it certainly appears to have become just that.
It used to be that a family had a single telephone line, their main line, and it was used for all purposes. Some had a second line for business, and more recently for inet access. In contrast, today there is still the single line in the home, but a family of five might come home from their daily activities, and as each of them enters another phone arrives, and suddenly six telephones are in the home. The main line? The primary one? It's been relegated to a non-status entity, because someone invariably has it tied up on AOL or Compuserve. |
