SubscribeIt’s appropriate that it is snowing heavily in Denver as attendees of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers meet at Cable-Tec Expo ’09, under the banner “Touch the Technology.”
Yesterday’s Technology Leadership Roundtable, according to Lightwave’s Steven Hardy, was reserved for out of touch Verizon fiber bashing:
The title of this morning’s Technology Leadership Roundtable was “Enough Already!” “Enough of what?” you ask. Answers the roundtable description: “Growing a little weary of all that FiOS in your face?” The short answer, not surprisingly, is yes. Roundtable moderator Leslie Ellis (Ellis Edits LLC) opened the discussion by asking whether the cable-TV community should be defensive about the fact that it hasn’t fully embraced FTTH — particularly since the industry invented video over fiber and carries more video over fiber than anyone else.
Much pooh-poohing of FTTH and telcos ensued. Paul Liao, president and CEO of CableLabs, said that the MSOs are the big dogs when it comes to video and becoming big dogs in voice delivery — and when you’re a big dog, you’re going to attract competitive attention.
Dermot O’Carroll, SVP, engineering and network operations, at Rogers Cable Communications up in Canada, asserted that fiber “doesn’t do much” for voice or video (I assume he meant fiber access versus HFC) and perhaps only a little bit when it comes to Internet access. This last shortfall should go away with deployment of DOCSIS 3.0, he said.
Liao agreed that DOCSIS 3.0-enabled HFC should prove more than adequate for customer needs today and into the future, adding that DOCSIS 3.0 should enable more bandwidth than anyone will ever need. (This sounds like one of those “eat your words in 10 years or less” statements, but Liao is certainly smarter than I am and more versed in DOCSIS 3.0 capabilities.)
Meanwhile, at least two workshops later in the week will discuss how to migrate HFC networks to FTTH. It doesn’t hurt to hedge your bets, apparently. Getting a better understanding of how MSOs really feel about FTTH is one of my goals here.
The cable industry has routinely confronted the threat of fiber optics by dismissing it as irrelevant wizardry until they are forced to upgrade their networks to try and match the capabilities a well run fiber to the home system can provide. Broadband service with equal upload and download speeds on cable? Not so much. The sheer bandwidth potential of fiber optics? Quite nice, thank you. The potential for Verizon FiOS to be positioned to meet the current and future needs of customers without a lot of expensive upgrades? Very high, assuming it’s priced competitively.
Fiber bashing snowjob from Time Warner Cable
Rogers Cable has a point when they dismiss fiber’s potential for broadband. That’s because the company treats its customers to a host of Internet Overcharging schemes which provide blazing fast speeds that customers can’t use for very long without facing overlimit charges on next month’s bill. Few companies want to provide robust video broadband service in a country where such usage limits and other schemes prevail from Vancouver to St. John’s.
A Time Warner sales rep called yesterday with an offer for a grand-and-glorious all-in-one program to beat all programs. I asked her about FiOS. She said what? After a couple of repeats, I finally let her off the hook and told her I wasn’t interested.
Fiber is the future and they know it. They are bashing it because eventually, they will either have to do FTTH or die off with their hybrid system. The Internet is growing fast and old copper wire isn’t going to cut it in a few years. That is why the rest of the world is installing fiber while we sit back and listen to these cable industry numbskulls saying we don’t need it.
Cable hearts selling 12 year old modems as “cutting edge”