Subscribe[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/ABC Extended interview with Dr John Cioffi – Father of DSL 11-18-13.mp4[/flv]
Dr. John Cioffi, the “Father of DSL” doesn’t think much of fiber to the home service, suggesting it is a waste of money and delivers budget-busting losses to providers. He has the ear of the man in charge of overseeing Australia’s National Broadband Network, Communications Minister John Turnbull. Turnbull’s public statements imply he supports Cioffi’s approach – a hybrid fiber-copper network similar to AT&T U-verse.
By adopting cheaper VDSL technology, Cioffi claims providers can avoid the “$800 unrecoverable loss per customer Verizon FiOS has experienced” bringing fiber to the home. He also claims fiber to the home service isn’t as robust as fiber proponents claim, with flimsy, easy-to-break fiber cables and loads of service calls commonplace among some European providers.
Few media interviews, including this one with ABC Television, bother to fully disclose how Cioffi has a big dog in the broadband technology fight. Cioffi founded ASSIA, Inc., a firm that markets products and services to DSL providers. ASSIA is backed by investments from AT&T, its first customer, and a handful of overseas telephone companies. Cioffi estimates ASSIA software is used to manage 90 percent of existing DSL accounts in the United States and is a fundamental part of AT&T’s efforts to increase U-verse speeds. Dismantling DSL in favor of fiber could have a marked impact on ASSIA’s profits. (8:47)
[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Malcolm Turnbull Discussion with Father of DSL John Cioffi Part 1 11-18-13.mp4[/flv]
Australia’s new Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull talks with Dr. John Cioffi about the differences between VDSL and fiber technologies. Cioffi bashes one form of fiber to the home service dubbed “GPON” because it shares infrastructure. Cioffi claims fiber speeds drop to 20Mbps when a few dozen people share a GPON connection. When in Paris, Cioffi claims his shared fiber connection maxed out at 2.5Mbps while ADSL still ran at 6Mbps. (3:52)
[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Malcolm Turnbull Discussion with Father of DSL John Cioffi Part 2 11-18-13.mp4[/flv]
Unsurprisingly, Cioffi claims his company’s software is essential for a good vectored VDSL user experience. Cioffi also claims VDSL can easily beat GPON fiber broadband speeds, a very controversial claim. In Cioffi’s view, even Wi-Fi can perform better than fiber. Finally, Cioffi claims Google is spending $8,000 per customer to deploy its fiber to the home network, when VDSL can do the job for much less money. (2:58)
Ok. So you bring costs down to a few hundred dollars per line. So then 100/20 service should cost $20 per month. Right!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nice report Phillip, always good to see progress being made on all this old copper. So Cioffi toots his own horn – I think he has earned the right, and promoting your products/services is called advertising. The technology does work, I’m on 20/3 VDSL2 with Frontier and it works great with no bonding or vectoring. The more people that desert POTS, the better those pairs work in the trunk for the remaining users. Now if we could get the marketing team out of the way and let the customers talk directly to engineering, we might see some big improvements in… Read more »
I think he goes beyond tooting his horn. Some of these claims are on par with a full throated brass band. Cioffi’s claims are based on GPON fiber and mis-assumes the aggregate bandwidth available for sharing. Anyone who tells me the average GPON user gets about 20Mbps of performance needs to be drug (or conflict of interest)-tested. In terms American readers can understand, Cioffi is actually suggesting AT&T U-verse can outperform Google Fiber or Verizon FiOS. Sure it can and I am a pink rabbit. Even AT&T understands U-verse technology isn’t going to cut it in Austin when Google Fiber… Read more »
It’s unfortunate he feels this way.
I don’t know the actual economics of fiber deployment — maybe he’s right, for now. But fiber is the future of wired broadband. Any solution that involves his precious copper is an interim solution at best. Eventually bandwidth needs will exceed the capacity of copper to deliver it.
I’m sure he knows that, at least I hope he does.
Good point, Txpatriot . . . just because there are some bumps in the deployment of fiber in Europe right now doesn’t mean that a copper and fiber hybrid is automatically the solution here. I know that in the U.S. FiOS users who are unhappy with their internet speeds is nearly unheard of. Of course, the U.S. has sub-par speeds overall to begin with, so a 20 – 50 Mbps speed is amazing to most of us.