Ken,
>>TCI to miss deadline for cable-system upgrade for Seattle - will be fined $10,000 per month.<<
That 10 K dollar amount struck a cord, maybe relevant, maybe not. You tell me:
I recall when when an analog modem was priced on the open market at approximately one dollar per rated bit. A 9,600 bit per second modem made by Motorola's CODEX division, in other words, cost roughly $10,000 plus the cost of the RS232 cable assemblies.
These trail blazers were sized approximately the same as today's microwave oven form factor, and could often be seen within the confines of a single floor in a skyscraper, talking to each other between minis.
They were also good, of course, for dealing with antiquated voice carrier lines that were in place since the early Fifties [and prior in some cases: J Carrier, K and N Carrier, etc.}, if the "conditions" were right.
These did not come with software, or even firmware, floppies weren't invented yet, flashes were something that caused you to see a doctor, but quick, and a drive was something you took on Sundays with the family. At that time, in relative terms, 9.6 kb/s represented all the possibilities that are now being imagined possible with DSL and CableModem speeds. Sound Barrier stuff, to put it mildly.
9.6 required special engineering which translated into telco engineers doing "selective assignments" of analog FDM and PCM channel facilities [sound familiar?] to ensure that signal to noise was viable for these blistering speeds [> 30dB total harmonic distortion], and that there were no compressor-expander (compandor) units present in any of the facilities, or in those cases where they were permitted, that they were the latest generation of manufacture. The biggest killers were phase jitter (especially low frequency jitter) and nonlinear or harmonic distortion.
Today's analogue to this form of selective engineering is to ensure that noise on the pair (or ingress in the cable TV section) are within tolerances, and to remove loading coils where they exist. And let's not forget the distance constraints.
Today, that same modem speed [or even * 6, or * 12, or 56k and 128/144 k, respectively] is made possible by a set of instructions occupying negligible real estate on a substrate; it costs a few dollars in licensing fees to implement [they often come as a "throw-in" withthe box]; and will run over barbed wire, given the opportunity to do so. Again, if "conditions" are right.
At the same time these 56 k and 2B+D lines are now being regarded by users with the same levels of scorn as their 300 Baud forebears, since they are fast becoming relegated to being too slow and clunky for today's needs. The users are right, of course.
But, as in the past, this is only a temporary and relative quality that must be endured by most users as the regulators use reverse tension in allowing deployments, both in WLLs and in allowing certain franchises to be granted in the wireline sector, and of course, there is the unbundling issues that now seem to be entering into all of the above. In the meantime the incumbent carriers will continue to take ride the waves of many of the latter circumstances to their cash flow advantages. It just doesn't seem to ever end.
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In comparison, promised download speeds today ranging into the megabits per second (when the coast is clear, and given that a host of other variables are lined up with the stars and the planets just right) are being seen for those same kinds of redeeming qualities as the 9.6 was seen when they replaced their 300 baud and the 1200 bps ancestors. Soon, however, these will be taken for granted too, as application creep proceeds to render them, likewise, too slow and clunky due to speed factors and certain other inflexibilities.
Improvements in network architecture will have more to do with viability of these devices over the next couple of years than increases in their intrinsic speeds, allowing for a window of optimization that will last for several generation cycles in time that would ordinarily be spent improving the gate speed.
During this upcoming period, the network's edge will see reallocations of resources, and the outside plant topologies will undoubtedly need to be rewired in parts, to allow for segmentation, reducing the level of contention between individual users that exists today due to the "leveraging" of yesterday's broadcast cable TV mentality, attempting to shoe fit it into today's discrete delivery requirements, for access to the cloud.
At some point, to be sure, we will be discussing the paltry limitations of these "next generation" optimized on-ramps which will run anywhere from 256 kbps to 10 Mbps, with the same relative degree of quaint historical anecdote that we now refer to the 9.6's.
DSLs, high speed WLLs and CMs are only, IMO, a sequence of breathers that we will be allowed to take on the trek to the all-optical network. The more of this CM and DSL stuff we see going in now, due to impatience regarding the lag in technological fit of the the optical alternative, the longer the optical alternative will be delayed for reasons that are all too-well understood now.
Regards, Frank C. |
