Ed,
"As you compare DSL with cable, which do you feel will
win in the end (market share)?"
A few months ago I decided to avoid this kind of bake off
discussion. I was getting turned off by reading all of the
industry rags, the threads, the ads, and other points of
misinformation, while at the same time listening to erstwhile
intelligent peers of mine stepping on their you know
whats over this matter.
I ran the numbers, and determined that both DSL and CM
are merely gap ups in spectrum allocation and speed, in
relative terms to traffic profiles that exist today, similar to the
gap up that was experienced between the 14.4 milieu of
1993 through 1996, and the 56 k dialups and ISDN pipes
of 1997 through 1999.
While the latter improvements during the past half-decade
have afforded everyone some temporary breathing room,
the number of subscribers to the www at the same time has
increased enormously... suffice it to say, disproportionately
to the improvements. I'm sure to many the improvements of
both DSL and CM look a lot better than I'm implying here,
and for this very brief moment in history, they are probably
right.
In 12-step programs, they called this the pink cloud
stage, when the body is initially purged of its toxins, and
endorphins are free for the first time in eons to support
quasi-hedonistic feelings: a form of euphoria.
For the dialers, however, the same levels of discomfort that
once existed in 1994 at speeds of 4.8, 9.6 and 14.4 kb/s
now exist at 56 k and 128 k ISDN. A near ten- to thirty- or
forty- fold increase has had very little effect, in other words,
for those who have been relegated to the dialup path.
DSL and HFC Cable Modem systems are now positioned
to satisfy this new and momentary discomfort for the dialers.
HFC has a higher potential, by a fairly wide margin, to
surpass the current flavors of DSL, by upgrading, but I don't
see this happening. They now face the uncomfortable
prospect of supporting aggregate populations per segment in
the range of from 500 to 2000 subscribers, where we are
going to begin seeing straight-line growth in uptake.
Beyond the number of subscribers alone, we will now see
additional growth in the number of applications that are
going to be supported by these facilities. I.e., they now have
the added burden of much greater [read: media-rich] content
payloads to contend with, as well. These will include
streaming video of a much greater resolution [and throughput
requirement] than was achievable at 28.8, multiple forms of
voice services, telecommuters doing client server work at
home, remote virtual call attendants doing both voice and file
pull downs, and other platforms which the MSOs are overtly
forbidding, but will come to pass, nonetheless.
While each model [DSL and CM] is still in its nascent stage,
the overall implications of both subscriber growth and
payload sizes, i.e., files downloaded and uploaded)
are not being felt to their full potential effects, yet. Give it
some time.
And while you're at it, keep an eye on the subscriber
use policies which will revert back to restrictive
clauses. I know, there were several reversals on this score
recently, but the situation is still nascent, in relative terms.
When the pipes get clogged with teeny bopper concerts and
evening rush hour jams during tax season, we'll see them
again, and the only way out of re-adjudicating user freedoms
will be to resegment the outside plant, or introduce higher
bandwidth carrying capabilities on each branch. Which may
very well mean upgrading modems, as well.
But if you resegment cable, why not resegment DSL too?
The means to achieving the latter are already spelled out
here in this thread upstream (see my post to Perry
concerning the adsl vs. xdsl question, which led to a mention
of the FSAN initiative).
In other words, if we say that HFC is upgradeable, we may
as well also indicate that DSL is upgradeable, too. And the
FSAN model does not preclude the use of coax or fiber
straight into the living room either.
See where I'm coming from? It could be a game of leapfrog
ad infinitum.
"Is there room for both?"
Absolutely. I don't mean to sound flip, but this is not
because of desire, truth, or divine order, but because of
what is.
"Will AOL be able to succeed with dial-up and DSL
alone? "
No one will be able to survive with dial up alone, over time,
except those Virgin Airline types who go with the no frill
menu (or no menu at all). We'll always have some of those
around on the lineup of some 6,000 ISPs, citing
Boardwatch's "List."
DSL could be used as a staging platform, but in the end I
see no greater hope for it than I do for HFC in its currently
deployed form.
"Will they need to strike a deal with broadband?"
They will indeed need a broader band than any of the
alternatives we've discussed here. Perhaps (and I haven't
heard this mentioned anywhere else) they will use a Trojan
Horse of their own. Perhaps they'll elect to buy out a major
network broadcaster and commandeer their channel
allocations on all cable systems. Who needs all the networks
we have now, anyway, with cable systems proliferating they
way they are? Or some other similarly, and still unheard of,
approach.
"Do you foresee a continued dominance in the field of
broadband for ATHM?"
I'll agree that ATHM appears to have their overall
architectural plans in order, and that they do present a
market leader presence in many ways. But I don't consider
the first couple of strides in any race to be indicative of the
ultimate winner, or who will even still be in the running half
way through the race.
It's still too early to tell who will dominate broadband, if in
fact such a distinction will make sense over time. A LVLT
can have a shift in mindset, or a QWST, or an ENRON or
WMB, or some combination of ILECs and MFNX, and we
could be off to a different set of rules in another race,
altogether. Note that each of these is predominantly rich in
fiber delivery systems. MFNX is already doing things with
BEL and AOL in this regard, albeit disjunctly, and in a
limited corridor, for now.
"Do you see the lack of an ATHM/RR merger as being
a bad thing for ATHM or RR for that matter?"
I think that the implications are only minor ones and
momentary in nature. As major players in a model that
competes with the status quo [the cumulative ILEC power
structure] they will find themselves aligning in some not so
obvious ways. The solvency of the architectures they are
promoting will depend on it. Also, packet cable standards
call for unifying all participating MSOs/cable-ops to a
standard set of networking rules in the voice sector, in order
to create a separate voice environment from the public
switched telephone network, or PSTN. This initiative, along
with several others, will cause further harmonization
between the players that you have cited.
As you can see, I tend to be agnostic in these matters.
Frank_C.
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