>> Long-term -- optical and wireless slide in underneath and eventually dominate. Copper is scavenged for use in jewelry and kitchenware.<<
Optical to replace Cable modem? Is it a fact that the backbone net work which AT&T is building for @Home is completely a OC-48 based
DWDM network? OC-48 is in fact a fiber optical transmission protocol that can handle 2.5 Gbps bandwidth. @Home is well integrating fiber optic into their network. So fiber optical technology only benefit @Home, rather than a threat. If @Home doesn't have fiber optic in mind, how can they be confident enough to team up with RealNets to
lunch video streamming service?
I agree Wireless can become a threat to Cable in the long run. But
so far, there is nothing viable that can remotely compete with either cable or ADSL. I was one of the original developers of HNS's DirecPC product line and intimately familar with Satellite based Internet service. The max DirecPC can go is 400kbps, sure, a lot faster than 28k modem, but way slower than Cable. The biggest problem satellite access is the following:
1) Round trip delay. The signal has to be bounced back from 10 of thousands of miles to the Hughes satellite. Every download effort will
have to add that delay. But only the signal hits the dish, boom, it's fast. So you'll see the web page to be loaded all of a sudden after a 2 second or 4 second no show. This is bad for voice and video.
2) Inbound traffic is still thruough dialup modem at 28K. Satellite is only one way traffice, not too way.
So, we can pretty much rule out GEO Satellite access as a competition in any time. This kind of satellite is too faraway in the orbit to cause huge delay.
The only wireless threat to cable may be LOW ORBIT SATELLITE.
Teledesic may be the real enemy of ATHM in 5 years. But Teledesic hasn't lunched enough satellites yet. Plus they have to seamlessly hook up all the small satellite in low orbit. That will require years of
software development.
So, IMHO, I don't think Cable will have any real threat from now to 2005. Mean while, we should pay attention to the wireless front, finding out the wireless equivalent of ATHM.
Jing |
