IPTV (was Re: AT&T: 15 Mbps Internet connections "irrelevant")

Sun Apr 2 16:11:44 UTC 2006

On Sun Apr 02, 2006 at 08:58:25AM -0700, Joel Jaeggli wrote:
> >Anyone looking to do HD will be looking at H.264, and looking to bring the
> >bandwidth requirement down to 8-10Mbps. That is certainly more practical 
> >with ADSL2+ deployments (unless you want more than one STB per DSL).
> 
> US homes with digital cable or satellite typically do have more than one 
> STB at this point simply becasue you need one for each TV...

I should have qualified my statement by saying that I have a predominantly
UK focus for my IPTV work.

In the UK, looking at the Satellite and Cable, I believe that 2nd box has only
really taken off in the last couple of years. You don't tend to hear about
3 or more boxes.

In the SD world, multiple STBs isn't a real problem with 8Mbps ADSL, and 
definitely not for ADSL2+ (which 1 or 2 providers in the UK are doing).

For the deployment I'm working on at the moment, we have "ethernet to the
home", so it's not a big problem at the moment, and when we move onto DSL
based deployments, hopefully 8M+ will norm for connection speeds.

The big problem we face in the UK is that the majority of DSL connections
are provisioned on BT DSLAMs, and presented centrally to the ISP as L2TP. 
There is no real benfit of multicast, as the connections are fanned out at
the ISP, not at the DSLAM. The non-BT DSL connections (known as LLU - Local
Loop Unbundled) fare much better, with the deployment of Lucent Stingers or
equivalent which do IP in the DSLAM, so enable proper multicast to the edge.

Simon
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