DSL Prime: 100 Mbps VDSL

Only one U.S. telco even has plans to deliver 100 Mbps, and cable won't be at 100 Mbps in the U.S. until 2008.

by Dave Burstein of DSL Prime and Future of TV [July 3, 2006]

"Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it's the people who are taking control."
—Rupert Murdoch. Yes, that Rupert Murdoch (Wired)

13 percent of TV customers will sign up for Project Lightspeed because they hate their cable company so much, a Microsoft survey predicts. AT&T has some pleasant surprises coming in deployment and early sales. Expectations are so low they will be easily exceeded, despite lack of Internet and HD TV throughput. The DOCSIS 3.0 delays should cause an AT&T sigh of relief audible from San Antonio to Chicago.

50 and 100 Mbps download cable modems will be few in North America until 2008, as Cable Digital News reports CableLabs and Comcast are rejecting DOCSIS 2.0b. Scientific Atlanta, Bigband, and others are demonstrating the wideband modems, based on Broadcom chips, and are ready to ship this year after testing around the world. Cisco also has a 300 meg (shared) 8 channel wideband modem based on a BroadLogic chip. Dave Fellows of Comcast said he rather wait for the full DOCSIS 3.0, unlikely to meet Brian Roberts' 2007 goal.

100 Mbps VDSL will be part of the news, and Verizon is close to announcing 100 Mbps GPON contracts as well. Tellabs will get part of the GPON contract, Nikos Theodosopoulos expects, after bidding GPON gear cheaper than the BPON Verizon is installing by the millions of lines. Running fiber throughout some apartment buildings is impractical.

14,000 VDSL remote terminals (2 million homes at 50/10 Mbps speeds) are ready to go in Germany, waiting for modems and IPTV gear to finish debugging. DT is using the delay to put pressure on Merkel's government to give them a monopoly. EU Commissioner Viviane Redding knows they are bluffing, four competitors are building ADSL2+ nets across Germany and will take millions more customers if DT doesn't upgrade.

1,088,935 Indians have DSL (Q1), as deployments are starting to accelerate. India is adding 4 million mobile phones every month, close to the 5 million in China, suggesting enormous potential.

10,000,000 ADSL DSLAM ports shipped from Conexant in Q1, Cyrus Namazi tells me. That's an important corrective to my "ADSL is so 20th century" comment. ADSL, not VDSL, is still the vast majority of shipments. The crossover could come in 2007, as Centillium, TI, Broadcom, and PMC-Sierra deliver chips and bring down the prices. Alternately, power and space demands could keep ADSL sales robust for several years. With DSL selling for $8-10/month in India, even $6 VDSL chips may be too expensive.

There's an extraordinary video of AT&T's Ed Whitacre at the U.S. Senate. Republican Senator Arlen Specter threatens him with contempt for not answering questions, and Big Ed just goes on smiling [.rm].

Verizon's ready for 100 Mbps VDSL
Fiber to the basement, VDSL up the risers
Mark Wegleitner, Verizon CTO, told DSL Prime in 2004 that some of his "fiber to the premises" deployment would be VDSL from the basement, and they are ready to move from trials to deployments. Wegleitner clearly prefers fiber all the way, for lower maintenance costs and ultimately more bandwidth. However, many buildings literally don't have room for the new cable, while others are difficult and expensive to unwire. Wall Street sources tell me Verizon is ready to move forward to serve the millions of customers living in apartment buildings in New York, Boston, D.C. and suburbs. The rumored vendor is Tellabs using Ikanos chips. Ikanos is hoping for more good news at KPN and Telefonica.

Rajesh Vashist of Ikanos demonstrated VDSL at 100 megs down, 100 megs up in April of 2005 at my Fast Net Futures conference. He showed working boards at 100 meg symmetrical over 600 feet of phone wire, enough to reach the fortieth floor of most buildings. In 2004, Ikanos and Metalink brought to Fast Net the first 100 meg downstream chips, although the upstream was only 30 meg. With Metalink offering similar capabilities (with QAM VDSL, not DMT), prices were reasonable from the beginning, $75-150 for DSLAM plus modem, and have gone down now. The other cost, running the fiber to the basement, varies widely. Where Verizon already has fiber in the building, this is a no-brainer. In many other locations, it's practical to blow fiber through existing conduit at reasonable coast. Digging up streets, especially in Manhattan, of course is much more expensive, although the distances are often short and the population density extraordinary. Japanese and Korean carriers have been buying the gear in the millions. It works.

I don't know what speeds Verizon will choose to offer. Japan is selling 100/50, Germany 50/10. The latter keeps nicely out of the way of the video offering. While AT&T is struggling to fit a single HD channel into the 20 Mbps Lightspeed, Verizon will be able to run five HD 9 Mbps channels and 50 Mbps of data.

Larry, Ivan: Please wire my home. All would be forgiven.

Copyright 2006 Dave Burstein.
The DSL Prime Newsletter is reprinted with permission.

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