Broadband Bytes: Wednesday Edition

  • Popular Mechanics has an article about cable companies recompressing DTV signals. It also talks about bit rates and what makes HD look good or not.
  • Hate being forced to rent your cable box? This guy does to so he filed a class action lawsuit calling it an antitrust law violation. This would be one to watch the outcome here could mean the ability to purchase your HD Cable DVR from the company of our choice. Kind of like how you can walk into Walmart now and pick out a Cable modem of your choice.
  • Just how much bandwidth is enough? Telephonyonline.com has an article with a few metrics. For those of you who read the EDUCAUSE article A Blueprint for Big Broadband these numbers won’t be much different. But a good summerized look at how much bandwidth it takes to push HDTV over that fiber.
  • Wonder what broadband speeds in Utah look like? The Communications Workers of America have their 2nd report out. The data is compiled from the speed test application on their site.
  • This was mentioned in the FreeUTOPIA forums by Capt. Video. It looks like 400 or so residents in Canada are going to own the last mile of fiber to their home. The fiber will terminate at a common peering location. Which they then will be able to choose their provider. The fiber is their’s they can sell it with the house, lease it to the neighbors, even roll the purchase into their shiny new morgage.
  • American Airlines began offering broadband today on flights. Unfortunately, you have to pay $12.95 to use it.
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9 Responses to Broadband Bytes: Wednesday Edition

  1. FGF says:

    Customer ownership of The Last Few Meters is an interesting concept that has been implemented recently in another area with some success as to its cost mitigation

  2. FGF says:

    My attempt at using the xhtml tags, not so good…

    http://www.ftthblog.com/lay-it-yourself-fiber

  3. Jonathan says:

    Interesting FGF. The article in the blog entry seems to return a 404. The difference between your link and the link above is ownership. It looks like the link you reference the install cost is offset because the home owner trenched and layed the conduit. As well as the inside wiring. Then the techs came through and pulled the fiber. Its unclear from the comments if the home owners actually owned the fiber.

    In the case of article listed in Broadband Bytes today the home owner actually owns the fiber. Thus they can choose how and what to do with it.

    This is similar to how some companies own long haul dark fiber vs leasing bandwidth from Level 3.

    An example of this would be the National Lambda Rail (NLR) vs the Internet2’s production network. Internet2 contract with Qwest now Level3 for connections between the peering points. While NLR is fiber owned by the NLR and its member instutions.

    There is a gotcha to my previous paragraph. I did a quick look to see if Level 3 was the current contract for the network. It seems the Internet2 now has optical services now. I don’t know if that’s because NLR and I2 merged? Such a merger was proposed once but didn’t happen. I haven’t been following it close lately. Just an example.

    For those who are curious.
    NLR’s website
    NLR’s website talking about ownership
    Internet 2 Network info

  4. cturner says:

    I personally think the <a href=”http://www.google.com/tisp/install.html”Google self-install fiber product holds more promise…

  5. Jesse says:

    Paying $12.95 for one flight’s worth of broadband is a bit steep, though I can’t imagine that the cost of transporting that data over a ground-based cell network is too cheap either. Maybe they can work out some kind of roaming arrangement with WiFi providers like Sprint, Boingo, etc.?

  6. Mike Taylor says:

    Speaking of pay-for broadband, I agree that $12.95 is pretty steep. They already charge to use it in airports too. How many people with laptops actually use that? By the way, one day while sitting the SLC airport with my laptop, I was wishing I could have used the wireless Internet (but was too cheap to pay $7.95), so I started probing it. I discovered a way to get full Internet access without paying for it. I was surprised to see that they don’t lock things down very tight and this network was administered by Boingo.

  7. Jesse says:

    Before I had a phone-as-modem plan, my “sweet spot” was around $4-5/hr of usage or less. I usually wouldn’t have more than 2-3 hours in an airport, so I’d balk if the cost was more than $9.95. If I were stuck on a 4-hour or longer cross-country flight, I’d probably be willing to throw down up to $18 for a connection provided it was low-latency enough to do Remote Desktop, play EVE, etc.

  8. Jonathan says:

    I don’t know if the article talks about the tech. But my guess is they are using satellite connections for the uplink. Either way my main comment is don’t forget a lot of times TV costs $5. When I took a trip to Thailand we flew on China Air (Taiwan) and the VOD and regular channels were all free. I watched like 4 movies during my 13 hour flight.

    Doing that messed me up in my video rentals because they were post theater but preDVD. So when I went to rent a movie a week or so later I realized all the new releases I wanted to see I had watch.

    Kind of funny.

  9. Proofread says:

    This guy does too so he filed a…

    This would be one to watch the outcome of; here could mean the ability to purchase your HD Cable DVR from the company of your choice.

    But a good summerized look at how much bandwidth it takes to push HDTV over that fiber. Where’s the rest of this sentence?

    Which They then will be able to choose their provider.

    The fiber is theirs, they can sell it…

    Otherwise, good article. Great information, thanks!

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