Nice link Ed,
To get this bandwidth into the hands of the consumer will require a drastic reduction in price for this service, which will likely come with time and increased competition. That never came with ISDN, though. Perhaps competition from cable modems will provide some incentive for the RBOCs to get moving.
Here's another link from the same area discussing costs/implementation of xDSL:
zdnet.com
Some excerpts:
"DSL is going to cost you $100 to $400 a month, depending on the DSL provider and the speed allotment. Speeds range from 128 Kbps to 1.54 Mbps each way. Many plans are asynchronous, and your upload speed is a fraction of the download speed. A popular combination is 1.54 Mbps downlink and 384 Kbps uplink. A typical cost for such a lash-up is around $300 a month, although I've seen $400 and one company has claimed $100. Watch out for hidden charges. DSL companies are sometimes partnered with RBOCs, and there are two charges involved. Then there's the cost of a router or DSL adapter, about $750.
...The home environment is still where this service will shine, although the providers are all pushing DSL into small businesses, believing that cheaper cable modems and 56K will dominate the home. But when voice over DSL begins to work, it'll be possible to pump five or six or more voice lines over a DSL connection. Many families have two to four phone lines plus a cell phone or two. Consolidating all the phone lines along with high-speed 24/7 Internet connectivity into one DSL twisted pair should eventually cost less for the phone companies and bring the price of DSL down even further. There's no reason for all this redundant copper when a single twisted pair will do the job and do it better. Unfortunately, all the phone companies see DSL as a threat to the lucrative (that is, rip-off) T1 business. So they're roadblocking implementation despite legal mandates. Visionaries they are not." |
