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Technology Stocks : George Gilder - Forbes ASAP
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To: D. Newberry who wrote (1529)5/13/1999 10:19:00 AM
From: Clarksterh  Read Replies (2) of 5853
 
Cable capacity vs DSL:

Just out of curiosity I worked through some numbers.

For internet traffic:

1) Assume that cable currently broadcasts to several thousand homes for each headend - call it 2500 homes per headend (a WAG). Also assume that they have 200MHz (about 30 conventional TV channels) to spare for ISP service. If you assume peak loading of 20% of homes on line of which only 10% are actually downloading at any given time that is still about 4MHz per user. (Of course not all MHz are created the same, but for back-of-the envelope purposes, ...)

2) For DSL the best rate will be less than 1.5MHz.

Cable wins for internet traffic

But for less bursty traffic, like video on demand:

1) Cable - same assumptions as before, but assume max usage is 35% of households and the burstiness is less. Assume that burstiness is 3 now instead of 10. Now the users each get about 700 KHz.

2) For DSL the best rate will be a little lower due to cross talk, but it will probably still be above 1MHz.

Thus, DSL wins. But it should be noted that for a fairly small price cable can decrease the number of households per headend. Add an extra 2 or 3 headends and cable wins in both cases. The coax pipe is a big advantage. Note that, like you, I actually expected that the DSL would provide the higher rates until I did some calculations.

FWIW

Clark
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