"To St. Arnaud, the whole idea of convergence is a backward-looking attempt to preserve existing assets. He proposes a divergent, third residential network for Internet traffic only, installed alongside telephone and cable feeds. Like the CA*Net 3 backbone, it'll have only two layers: IP and WDM. Information over light. It'll be a stupid network — cheap and simple, under-engineered, over-provisioned and controlled at the edge by users."
Ken,
That was an interesting article. Sounds a little George Gilderish to me. I wouldn't bet on, "fiber to the home," happening for at least 15-20 years. I've been waiting for HFC to happen for about 5 years now, and *DSL for about 8. Only now are they finally getting started. *DSL is moving along at less than a snails pace if I'm not mistaken. Only HFC upgrade threat is finally driving the telco's *DSL plans now.
I found his description of the newer data networks having to be, "backward-compatible," quite accurate. But, when you have spent hundreds of billions over the past 100 years (I think that is when the telephone was invented, and in Canada no less), I can understand why no telco wants to give up on the old twisted pair without milking it for all it's worth. Same with the MSO's coaxial infrastructure.
Thanks for the link,
MikeM(From Florida) |
