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To: elmatador who wrote (8797)10/7/2000 8:33:31 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 12823
 
My not believing that something is going to lay down and die is by no means the equivalent to my believing in its superiority. There are lots of mediocre and mundane aspects of life, and those which are patently banal in nature, that are deemed by the masses to be better than nothing at all, and they survive the test of time. And then again, there are some things that actually deserve to die but don't. For the latter, tune in to any commercial TV program any night of the week, and see what I mean. If you are lucky, you'll catch a debate between the presidential candidates... and, well, I digress. But the example which I cite, i.e., banality in TV, makes my point rather nicely, I think.

DSL, like CM and FWBB, will meet the present level of user expectations, provided that users stay within service providers use policies. However, they will not meet the same users' expectations at the next plateau of Web content richness, in another one to two years. They will, instead, experience increasingly restrictive SP policies (related to throughput, and types of services that are permitted), and tiered pricing. The tiered pricing structure will frustrate those who will not pay, making more capacity available for those who will pay, but these sorts of tactics only serve to delay the inevitable, at best. No service provider wins the race by supplying less capacity over time. The bandaids that I cited don't cure the ailments, which are, like I said earlier, congenital in nature.

And the SPs of CM and Wireless will employ other schemes which utilize edge caching, they will encourage local caching, proprietary compression algorithms and background streaming of push content to CPE storage media as alternatives to the real time experience.

Increasingly, non-fiberized solutions will have to economize by using every available bit in the providers' spectrum allocations, whether they are being accessed real time or for future localized reference. I foresee this being accomplished using available capacity during periods of non-real time activity, on an instantaneous basis. These cm and fwbb technologies don't die. They'll just get old and require geriatric treatment. One such means of treatment that makes sense in wireless is through the use of intelligent antennas. In HFC cable modem systems, they can go to a lightwire architecture.

For DSL? Move closer to the central office, I suppose. I'm only three blocks from mine, and I've been guaranteed 2 Mb/s both ways. To wit, my existing pairs to my home didn't meet noise criteria upon the qualifying tests, and Verizon is in the finishing touches of adding a new block cable to accommodate my SP's guarantee. Can't ask for more than that, except to see it actually work.



To: elmatador who wrote (8797)10/8/2000 9:23:32 AM
From: zbyslaw owczarczyk  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 12823
 
The only one who support your "visioin about DSL" is you.

Zbyslaw



To: elmatador who wrote (8797)10/8/2000 1:14:06 PM
From: justone  Respond to of 12823
 
elmatador:

I have really enjoyed your humor on 'the death of DSL'- and attempted to contribute to it- but I think DSL has a place in the network.

I have noticed several things on 'home' DSL as opposed to business HDSL. Now this
is from an US/Canada perspective, so it may be different in other countries.

1. the local phone company didn't offer DSL until the cable company offered modes
over HFC- then suddenly they started to deploy in areas that CM wasn't available-
eventually they will collide and then we will see which will win
2. DSL data costs 25% more than CM data, at least in my area, and I suspect a
shared media has a cost advantage over point to point
3. the short reach of DSL and the limited bandwidth of cable due to sharing may make
this difference moot eventually- you will need to deploy neighbor hood 'boxes' in both
cases, and they will level the cost differential.
4. cable has a well targeted well defined standards body (Cablelabs) that is carefully
defining the network services and protocols; xDSL has a new 'x' each month, it seems.

Thus I believe cable will win, but I also think competition for voice and data will let
DSL live for quite a while. In fact, where DSL has taken a subscriber due to the slow
deployment of cable, I think they will find a way to keep the subscriber, perhaps by
noting they bundle voice with data, and can offer a competing price to cable.

However, ultimately people who want broadcast TV will find cable compelling, since
cable can bundle tv, data, and voice. Unless DSL can offer point to point video, for
say, work at home, CM has an advantage over DSL that is hard to beat for most
people. And even if you need work at home video, you might use both CM and DSL,
since the DSL will be subsided, no doubt, by the company you work for.

I personally have a dail-up and a CM for data and a second line for fax- not all of
which are necessary, and would add a DSL if it worked for me- but for business
reasons (SOHO). They typical home will likely be happy with CM and interactive TV.

If a business case for FTTH can be made, that may overwhelm both technologies, but
FTTH will look at lot like HFC with DWDM fiber in the neighborhood.

Conclusion: DSL will have a niche market, but will have difficulty competing with
cable. On the other hand business DSL (HDSL) makes a lot of sense to me.