Hello Dave, I like both for their chutzpah and dare, but have to question
some of their capabilities along the lines of extensibility and market
acceptance. Some concerns could be viewed as technical, and others
would be market related, such as the retail level pricing gradients that
service providers would be forced to administer.
CMTO appears to be pointed in the direction of assuring certain higher
levels of service which would support QoS in ways that transcend many
of the others, ostensibly. That's viewed as one of their primary strengths.
But QoS itself, while a highly debatable issue on the greater 'net, even
when achieved, is by no means a no brainer when it comes to service
providers' marketing issues. On the issue of QoS, I recently posted a
series of ISP and backbone provider comments on the VoIP thread. The
most recent of which could be found at:
Message 9589329
It costs more to have delivered, and for that reason alone, the average
user may elect to aim lower when making the buying decision. I'm not
necessarily referring to the cost of the modem itself. Rather, the grade of
service they elect to purchase from the service provider.
As an example of this, see CMTO's own pamphlet on this topic that I
think they shoot themselves in the foot with, showing some of the pricing
elements of the Palo Alto Cable Cooperative's offerings:
com21.com
See what I mean? Pricing and availability dynamics in the future, once the
pipes get clogged, will need to be reviewed at that time. It's quite possible
that higher rates might be deemed palatable by more takers then. Some of
this will depend on the willingness in the future of service providers (based
on affordability - financially, administratively and from the perspective of
technological preparedness) to perform upgrades, either through
resegmenting, or bringing fiber closer or into the residence.
TERN's approach is laudable, I think, since it enables providers to
overcome some otherwise hostile last mile conditions in many coaxial
builds. But their speed may become a limiting factor if they can't get
around their current limitations. I'm not the chip level one to be talking
about this aspect, however, and thus far I've been following the
discussions of Bernard Levy and several others like WTC, in this respect,
both here and elsewhere.
But it does remain a question, in my eyes at least, whether and/or when
TERN will be able to reach the next plateau beyond their current 14 or
16 Mb/s (even symmetrical) delivery speeds that will be necessary in
order to compete going forward.
There is some good discussion that takes place in the last mile thread
occasionally (right now, in fact) on these topics, in case you are
interested.
Regards, Frank Coluccio
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