DSL Prime News: The Inside Source

As alternatives to DSL proliferate, the Bells need to choose to invest in the future while they still can, before the cable companies take their customers, and wireless becomes viable.

by Dave Burstein DSL Prime [July 3, 2003]

"The Bells all know cable telephony is coming, but haven't bitten the bullet to fight it hard. I think the most likely scenario is the Bells take partial measures till it really hurts."
—Editor Dave Burstein quoted by Brian Bergstein of AP

Call me Cassandra. Mark Coblitz of Comcast is building a network with far more bandwidth than the Bells, BT and FT. Consider this:

• Your customers want to watch live football
• Live football requires 2 to 4 Mbps today. Your most profitable customers will rapidly switch to HD TV, as the price is headed under $1,000. That needs even more bandwidth.
• Result: Likely need to search for excuses, again, when today's marketing plans prove a disappointment in two or three years, with cable holding a large market share and converting that to telephone customers.

Spain now has joined Japan and Korea with a strong video rollout; Bell Canada is moving ahead and Telmex has interesting plans; midsized CenturyTel has a large RFP out. Kudos to Verizon for the Wi-Fi, larger network, faster speeds, and price drop, key steps but not quite enough. Far too many folks are trying to fight the last war, assuming cable and other competitors will stand still where they were in 2002. The other guys have some very smart people looking for ways to improve their service. "I want my HDTV", Jennie insists, after we spent an evening watching Anton Wahlman's. We already have a TiVO, "God's box" as Mike Powell calls it, to skip commercials and watch when she wants. You need to be ready to win in tomorrow's technology wars, not yesterday's.

Mike Powell plans to release the Triennial; watch for grave pronouncements and boring pontificating. The bells will claim the part they prefer will incent them to invest, and the areas they dislike prevent it. Reality is cable modems are here and cable telephony coming—the bells will have to fight that, and the D.C. propaganda is a very secondary cause.

Is 802.11g robust enough for TV in the home?
Brad Kayton of Prismiq is sending me an set top to try, with performance rated to 20 mbps, more than enough to move 4 Mbps video streams around a small apartment. 802.11B, with speeds up to about 6 Mbps "just doesn't cut it for video" Kayton tells me, but he's found the new .11g units "work great" where there's no interference. Another set top manufacturer, one of the world's largest, has had more mixed results in testing .11a and .11g, and is finding too many dropouts in their testing so far. Bengtsson is supplying wired Ethernet gear to Spain, knowing reliability is ensured. Prismiq is a company to watch, with ex-Polycom CTO Ken Goldsholl as CEO and many of his former colleagues joining him.

Copyright 2003 Dave Burstein.
The DSL Prime Newsletter is reprinted with permission.

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