Own,
Your thesis appears to preclude the possibility of overbuilders, e.g., RCN (not necessarily for the service mix that they provide, but for their construction orientation), who would plow through existing coverage areas and create their own facilities-based alternatives over their own, or shared, ROWs.
I understand and appreciate your reasoning, but I don't want DSL at 1.5 Mb/s down and 100 kb/s up, because it will forever be insufficient. Especially if it is to compete with all of the services afforded by cable as you suggest, if the mechanisim is DSL that results from a one-time national buildout resulting from legislation (which I don't believe would happen, in any event).
And my gut tells me that DOCSIS cable modem, itself, will experience capacity exhaust, especially in the upstream, as content [gaming, entertainment, more voracious software programs and soho work activity] begins to catch up to line rate potentials, which will undoubtedly be faster than most MSOs will be willing to pony up to another upgrade, before the last one pays for itself.
Offsetting this exhaust, in part, will be additional (bit) rate caps imposed on users who abuse their privileges and terms of use, and more packet filtering and monitoring of content in order to (1) protect IPR holders' interests, ostensibly, and (2) extract higher (commercial) rates from work at homes who are attaching to enterprise VPNs. Is asking more money for higher capacity usage justified? Perhaps, under the conditions imposed by existing network designs. Is it possible to improve on these designs, making additional capacity consumption less costly to both providers and end users at the giga lot level? Definitely.
If a provider has to start blocking bits of then-common user applications in order to keep their platform from collapsing, it's a sign that they were either caught by surprise by evolving user needs and expectations with no means of economically scaling their capcity accordingly, or they are limiting supply in order to achieve other ends (such as protecting payfer services that would be cannibalized by a high speed open Internet channel). My thinking is that they will block bits and/or charge more, for both of these reasons.
[Btw, there are some products in finishing stages now that allege to offer gigabit speeds over Cable and aggregations of twisted pairs, but these are primarily targeted at industrial parks and other commercial and government uses. Here, Narad and Actelis come to mind. Perhaps these and others like them will also support large apartment complexes or MDUs, where they will once again get dilluted down into smaller feeds for individual users, but they are not engineered to the economics of supporting single family homes at this time.]
In short, I don't see a long-term, sustainable solution worth writing home about in any of these existing models, no matter what kind of regs or legislation is written to improve them, without radical changes in their fundamental design. And it should be no wonder, since they were all conceived, and later designed, prior to the impact of the Internet being understood. Since then, there have only been bandaid upgrades, however noble and ingenious their intentions and designs, respectively, may have been. The one exception to these shortcomings probably comes in the way of APON development, and its potential, but APON (or ATM PON, which is based on SONET and ATM extended to the residence via fiber and/or vdsl twisted pair, primarily) have their own list of baggage items, suitable for another thread, entirely.
Add eminent domain to the list of problem variables in your equation, and then add the question surrounding forcing the RBOCs to become video program providers against their desire, or before they are ready.
If you keep pulling on the string, its ball gets bigger, not smaller, when the means to these ends is through legislation guided by power lobbying and today's vested-interest realities, and the feigned or misguided interest in public welfare expressed by some of the more celebrated members of the nation's top think tanks.
Comments and corrections are welcome.
FAC |
