Cable vs xDSL
Forgive me if this has already been posted. I read this thread only occasionally. I ran across this story and thought of you folks.
FROM innergy.com
********************
The following story originally appeared on the ClariNet news service. It offers a contrasting view to last issue's article,
Emerging Standards 4: ADSL, which touted telephone-based Digital Subscriber Line as the broadband technology most likely
to succeed, at least in the near term. We still think ADSL's ability to leverage the installed copper plant is a telling advantage;
but hey -- it's up to IT managers like you.
Cable To Win Out Over xDSL - Report
Copyright 1996 by Newsbytes News Network / Tue, 12 Nov 1996 15:07:18 PST
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA, U.S.A. -- By Bob Woods. Cable TV modems will emerge victorious in the battle to bring broadband content to homes and businesses, according to a new report from Communications Industry Researchers (CIR). The big broadband loser will be the various digital subscriber line (xDSL) technologies, the study
forecasts.
The report What Building the Internet Will Mean for Service Providers and Their Suppliers, made the prediction based on scalability. "The choice between the two programs has been
falsely presented as a battle between the telephone companies and the cable companies,"said Lawrence Gasman, CIR project director for Internet Implications. He said telephone companies are also using the delivery system many cable companies are beginning to implement around the US -- hybrid fiber coax (HFC). Gasman said that, while both xDSL and cable modems have the capacity for broadband, xDSL will run out of steam because fiber has a far greater capacity to carry information than xDSL, which uses the existing copper telephone line infrastructure. xDSL's main problem, Gasman said, is that it works the best over short distances.
While xDSL could be used to pump data into homes at a few megabits-per- second (Mbps), Gasman said demand for broadband will ramp up to a point where more information will be needed for such applications to work well. "Just a few years ago, many of us thought a 386 machine with four megabytes (MB) of RAM and a 30MB hard disk would last us forever," he said -- nowadays, such a machine is woefully inadequate for many of today's software programs.
But in an interview with Newsbytes, Gasman said he is "not saying that xDSL technology will be a complete failure." He stressed because Web content will need higher speeds to work effectively in the next three to five years, the speeds the cable modem model can provide will be best suited to deliver such content to PCs in the home and businesses.
Gasman added that for some phone companies not laying fiber or planning to use HFC architectures, xDSL may be the way to go for them because they can sell broadband access sooner than ramping up new plans that will take years to implement, because xDSL can use
existing copper phone lines.
Cable modems can deliver up to 30 Mbps of data, while Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) technology -- xDSL's most abundant technology -- speeds data along at up to 9 Mbps, Newsbytes notes.
The What Building the Internet Will Mean for Service Providers and Their Suppliers report also addresses subjects like Internet backbones, and strategies of the largest Internet service
providers (ISPs).
A brief summary at CIR's World Wide Web page said in the next ten years, the Internet infrastructure will present companies, especially equipment and service providers, with a multibllion dollar opportunity for new business.
(19961112/Press Contacts: Lawrence Gasman, Communications Industry Researchers,
804-984-0245)
|
