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

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (9558)	12/7/2000 11:46:03 PM
From: Jorj X Mckie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Frank, I know of two different solutions in development that are using PONs. However, I have no idea if they are using the FSAN model or not. Interesting that you brought up the power companies. I have been suggesting that they are the darkhorses to be watching for the last mile broadband solutions for a little while now.

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (9558)	12/8/2000 6:55:28 AM
From: justone	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 12823

Frank: Let me respond to a small part of your post. If the promoters of the Gb/10GbE model have their way, and there is now every indication that they stand a more than equal chance at having their way in many parts of the world (starting with Canada, Sweden and Holland), then the answer is, IMO, yes. I'll further posit that the US of A will be in a reactive mode to these advancements abroad, just as in the case of many wireless initiatives in cellular and pcs, and now wireless broadband Internet access, because of the momentum and single-/narrow-mindedness of the powers that be in both the cable and telephony sectors. It's for this reason that I think that it'll be up to the power companies, and the fledgling ventures they sponsor, to make it otherwise. My understanding os 10Gb "Ethernet" is that it is a great marking idea- the best since naming Greenland, well Greenland. After some encouragement from you and ftth on your thread, I finally came to understand that 10G "ethernet" isn't "ethernet" even thought 10 different sites said it was just "ethernet but with more bandwidth"; after drilling down the spec. sites, I found it is two protocols. One designed as a shared collision detection (CD) LAN like ethernet, and the other a point-to-point for backbone high bandwidth connections. You chose which one you want at initialization time. I assume the architecture would be to deploy a shared CD ethernet fiber LAN in the neighborhood to the office, and then go into the metro/core using the point to point protocol. I note that DOCSIS uses a shared point-to-point IP protocol to the residence, with more limited two-way bandwidth than PON or 10G, but a lot of build in QoS and security, which are issues that PON and 10G 'ethernet' will have to address in deployment. So, with 10G I guess you can get effectively 2G shared neighborhood access (well, my old 10Mbyte ethernets were actually 2Mbyte effectively, but I don't know if this traffic metric scales up to Gbytes), which is better than HFC for broadband data and other two way services, but it may not be better for TV and VOD and other one way services, particularly if you mix them. I realize that this is an open, debated, and fun issue in acdemica, but I don't think we have deployment experience with multi media multi host multi client point to point shared access network yet to know if they will really work well. Now I don't think the problem is narromindedness so much as "businessmindedness". My experience is that the cable people are trying to provide, in order: about 100 channels of broadcast and/or pay TV, broadband data up to 300K at least, multi-line phone with basic CLASS features, VOD and videoconferencing. Thus they have to compromise. Their minds are not narrow at all, but inclusive, since they want all the $'s from the services. As to your comments on reactive modes of USA vs. THEM. My own observation is that when standard committees are national, the USA comes off better since we are less political and more business oriented. When the standards board is based on a OPERATORS vs. VENDORS, the operators win. The GSM MOU committee let GSM "win" for this reason, and Cablelabs will win for the same reason; the ITU is probably about to adapt a slightly modified cablelabs standard as we speak. Who is in the reactive mode now? My final belief is that the HFC vs. FTTH debate is eventually a CONTROL vs. FREEDOM debate. If you put a fat open IP pipe to the home and let your client do everything, then FTTH is better. If you just want TV and phone service, and IP only for web and email, then HFC is better. Thus for the next five years, I think HFC will be fine. Perhaps in 10 years, a FTTH solution, where you have a central office in your set top, as well as a firewall, web client and browsers, video recorder, and camera, will be preferred.