AT&T: 15 Mbps Internet connections "irrelevant"

Frank Bulk frnkblk at iname.com
Sat Apr 1 19:26:51 UTC 2006


The majority of U.S.-based IP TV deployments are not using MPEG-4, in fact,
you would be hard-pressed to find an MPEG-4 capable STB working with
middleware.  

SD MPEG-2 runs around ~4 Mbps today and HD MPEG-2 is ~19 Mbps. With ADSL2+
you can get up to 24 Mbps per home on very short loops, but if you look at
the loop length/rate graphs, you'll see that even with VDSL2 only the very
short loops will have sufficient capacity for multiple HD streams.  FTTP/H
is inevitable.

Frank

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu] On Behalf Of
Edward B. DREGER
Sent: Saturday, April 01, 2006 1:16 AM
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: AT&T: 15 Mbps Internet connections "irrelevant"


MA> Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2006 08:34:36 +0200 (CEST)
MA> From: Mikael Abrahamsson

MA> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060331-6498.html
MA> 
MA> "In the foreseeable future, having a 15 Mbps Internet capability is

[ snip ]

MA> Is this something held generally true in the US, or is it just 
MA> pointed hair-talk? Sounds like "nobody should need more than 640kb 
MA> of memory" all over again.

I think the Comcast and "cheaper cable plant" references answer your
question.  With "new AT&T" adverts, political lobbying, selling retail DSL
below loop/backhaul-only, and consolidation costs, how much money is left
over for last-mile upgrades?

Call me cynical.  I just seem to recall AT&T ads in US news magazines
bragging about backbone size _and_ the large portion of Internet traffic
they [supposedly] carry.  (I say "supposedly" because claims might be
technically true, but misleading, when traffic passes over AT&T _lines_ via
other providers' IP networks.  Shades of UUNet and Sprint[link] from years
gone by, anyone?)

So... uh... assuming all three claims -- "backbone is bottleneck", "we have
big backbone capacity", and "we carry big chunks of Internet traffic" -- are
true... I'm puzzling over what appears a bit paradoxical.

The IPTV reference is also amusing.  Let's assume a channel can be encoded
at 1.0 Mbps -- roughly a 1.5 hr show on a CD-ROM.  I don't see two
simultaneous programs, Internet traffic, and telephone fitting on a DSL
connection.

Perhaps the real question is which regulatory agency, or shareholders,
needed to hear what the article said. ;-)


Eddy
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