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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stoctrash who wrote (9557)	12/8/2000 6:14:26 AM
From: justone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

FredE: Mike....DISH people do well in court, they've gotten plenty of practice at this thing. They have a plan I'm sure and I think should be given access...why not? Digital cable around my area stinks and 1/2 the quality of DBS and 2x the price. Their edge is truly in the cable modem side, IMO. Digital cable? I assume you have HFC which is actually analog? In any case, HFC is a two way multi-media access for the last mile. My brother has satellite in the Washington DC area, and you are quite correct; you get more one way broadcast channels and they seem to be higher quality. As I understand it the installation cost (of the dish, etc.) is much higher, but I didn't know it was 1/2 the price; I assume you are paying $15 per month for DBS and 200 stations, as I'm paying about $30 for cable and my measly 100 stations, which is probably 80 stations too many in any case. However, the point is that cable also supports TWO-WAY data, phone, and interactive services. Any shared multi-media two-way access will have to compromise different traffic loads. The business case for HFC is based on supplying all the services, bundling them into a single bill, and paying back the large investment required to build out the network. The allocation of bandwidth between them represents a practical compromise between supporting existing cable and providing new services: this is its biggest strength and biggest limitation. Also, the quality of HFC, if it is based on DOCSIS 1.1 will be high; they have spent a lot of time on QoS, management, and even more time on Security. I suspect Security will be more important than QoS in the long run- Cablelabs has a very long specification on it if you are interested. If the satellites get a free ride on cable for broadband, phone, and interactive services, the network business case will collapse, and we will be left with only DSL or the hope that FTTH can make a residential business case. You may be right that the DISH people love government (I found this out from a glancing acquaintance with Iridium- most of them are ex-DOD types), but the FCC is more interested in finding a competitor to the big phone companies than in helping out the dish people.

To: Stoctrash who wrote (9557)	12/8/2000 8:27:55 AM
From: MikeM54321	Respond to of 12823

Digital cable around my area stinks and 1/2 the quality of DBS and 2x the price... Fred- I couldn't tell if it was political fluff or not. You could be correct and posturing is all EchoStar is doing. My feeling is DBS two-way data has been proven to work, but it doesn't appear to scale. Hence it may not be a feasible consumer technology. I am in the unusual position of having two digital cablecos in my area. I've tried them both, almost literally, side by side. I was quite surprised by this--They are remarkably different in quality. GTE Americast has very high quality TV, Time Warner Cable stinks. GTE Worldwind has terrible Internet service, Time Warner Roadrunner is much better. Wonder what you ended up with? I ended up with Time Warner. Shows where my priorities are(data). -MikeM(From Florida)