>>Does anyone know if any important progress has been made so far this year?
I believe things have been fairly evolutionary. The ILECs are installing DSL carefully. CLEC's like Covad and Northpoint are working as fast as they can, but with fewer resources available than the ILECs or Cablecos. I am biased (I own some), but PAIR has come out with a second-generation product that should be much more attractive to the telcos than earlier offerings. They are looking for great things from it (it is in certification process at various companies). I presume, but do not know, that other companies are working toward the same end.
>>Which is moving faster ADSL or Cable?
In absolute numbers, Cable. In percentage terms, DSL. It's still early. And by the way, the two are not self-exclusive. There is ample reason to believe that both will be around for a long time, addressing slightly different markets.
>>Does G-lite have a chance to become a star in near future?
Ahh. That's the question, isn't it? That is currently being debated. The issue being whether avoiding the truck roll can overcome the limitations of G-lite. My sense is that G-lite is too little and is arriving too late. And, it doesn't offer the easy upgrade path that the telcos will need. I.e., it is not the broadband "answer" for the last mile, and telcos might realize that they are just delaying the eventual truck rolls, not eliminating them, and then the CO equipment would have to be replaced too.
Not a bad article in The Economist this week, giving some sense to the ATT/MediaOne issue. They assert that all of these companies will want to provide all of the electronic access to the home, eventually. Thus, the telcos must eventually offer a bandwidth wide enough to provide "500 channel" cable-type TV access at the same time they provide high-speed internet access. G-lite can't do that. Maybe a future splitterless version will be able to. But at that point you're going to have to provide an installer anyway to divide the signal among TV's and PC's, etc. How much bandwidth is needed to supply the cable shows? How much is needed in total? (Rhetorical question, at this point).
economist.com |
