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Technology Stocks : Frank Coluccio Technology Forum - ASAP -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (135)	10/30/1999 3:42:00 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1782

Re: LoudCloud and SpotOn Here's a link to the cast of characters at LC. Looks like the NS heavies are all jumping ship from the clutches of Steve Case. One of the new LoudCloudNiners, Jonathan Heiliger, has a newsletter here: donutz.org that might prove interesting to those who are curious as to the next evolutionary step through the looking glass we call the web. Best, Ray

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (135)	10/30/1999 10:20:00 PM
From: ftth	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1782

Hello Frank, I guess the short answer would be not for at least 7-10 years. Even though such a “full digital” system could be built today as a science project (i.e. a functional system only, without security, OSS, QoS, (gulp..open access) and a host of other acronyms being addressed), I think the argument would be it's a distraction to devote many resources to it today since they already have their hands full “finishing” the current systems. Another argument would be that there's no need for it, i.e. that today's systems will be adequate for some time to come (which I don't believe, but I know that'd be one of the arguments). By definition they'll be adequate for their depreciation life , right?<gg>. Another argument would be that because there's no standard, the end-user equipment manufacturers (who don't like to take risk given their razor-thin margins) aren't too excited about developing products. I'd tend to think that FDM across the full spectrum (750MHz or 1GHz), at the lowest channel / channel multiplex level, will live on for quite some time (with more effort being put into what happens inside these FDM channels rather than moving them to a different medium). The legacy drag effect-—especially in something as widespread as television—-is hard to overcome. The consumer electronics industry (maybe even industry in general) is replete with graduates of the University of Curad®™, so the Band-Aid mindset will live on. Building things with a long lifetime until obsolescence isn't as profitable as the short-lived, “just do what works for now” approach. Only when we start hearing serious noise about changing the channel plans and that 256QAM capacity (which isn't even being used yet) is maxxed out will people begin to seriously ponder how we'd make such a step-change in delivery format. There will undoubtedly be experiments, which eventually lead to multiple standards bodies (one of my favorite oxymorons is ‘multiple standards'), which in turn drive a new generation of end-user equipment. I'd think this is easily 7-10 years out, and I'd also think we'll need several years of “pain” being frustrated by capacity limits in the current way things are done before such a value chain begins to form by companies excited by the prospects and by the obvious market demand. HDTV has to “catch on” first, since that has far and away the maximum Bandwidth Sucking Power of any applications available today. Average bandwidth demand per user probably needs to increase 500% or more. Since a TDM stream that aggregates all the channels across, say, a gigahertz of bandwidth makes for a much more expensive receiver (today) than one that merely has to deal with under 40Mbps encoded within a 6 MHz channel, cost is also an issue. The FDM channelization currently used (i.e. the 6 MHz channels used today, whether they contain a single analog NTSC TV channel or multiple digital channels), also makes for much easier planning and re-arranging of multiple services besides the basic push-channels of video only, as well as mixing and grouping service offerings in their own spectrum chunk. When such all-digital systems do get addressed, and assuming for the moment that DWDM will persist and capacity will get even higher, the FDM model of the old system could cross over to the new system. Maybe even to the point that an old 6 MHz channel maps to a single lambda, thus expanding the capacity of a 6 MHz channel easily by an order of magnitude. Since it's a discontinuous step-change (the 2 systems are fundamentally incompatible), a graceful transition that doesn't require everyone to have their new equipment in place when they “flip the switch” is difficult. You'd need excess bandwidth to support the old and the new simultaneously during the transition, with the new system requiring new infrastructure in the last mile, in parallel with the old. Since they're not even done with upgrading to this “old” infrastructure yet, and the upgrades (for the most part) don't touch this part of the infrastructure anyway, there's no sign of such changes on the horizon. [speaking of discontinuous, this post is a pretty discontinuous collection of thoughts--sorry about that but not enough time to go back and shore it up at the moment] An argument could also be made, however, that repartitioning further up the line, i.e. much smaller node sizes, would provide another interim band-aid and extend the life of the coax a bit longer. This approach, as you know, is currently being experimented with. Even this interim approach isn't necessary at the moment, but at least they're thinking ahead to the next band-aid. I don't know of any serious work being done in this area, but it would seem the DWDM-lambda-mapping-of-legacy-6MHz-channels approach might make the most sense if one were to undertake such an experiment today (unless, of course, one has a working relationship with SilkRoad). I'd like to hear what your approach would be if you were to undertake such a job today.