MS Thesis on CATV architecture

Again, thanks to Bill St. Arnaud for this interesting pointer. H. Mark Bowers recently wrote a Master's Thesis ... what makes this thesis noteworthy is that he is also a vice-president of Cablesoft Inc. (Iowa, US). This thesis is "Assessing the Evolutionary State Of the Modern U.S. Cable Television Network Towards An All-Digital Platform" and is a worthwhile read for those of you interested in peering a little into the crystal ball. Given Mr. Bowers' work, how do you see the FTTH projects of Verizon and AT&T shaping the future competitive landscape? How do 3G and 4G mobile technologies fit in to the big picture?

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HFC, Broadband, Telecommunications, Internet

Sean Donelan's Post on Cybertel

Sean Donelan posted the following on the CYBERTEL mailing list. I thought you might find it interesting. What is the impact on the so-called "next generation networks" (NGNs)? How about network neutrality?

------------------------begin post-----------------------------
RCN's operations director published some data about current traffic mix on the RCN network.

http://www.dslreports.com/speak/slideshow/15346514?c=959120&ret=L2ZvcnVtL3JlbWFyaywxNDk5NzY3MX5zdGFydD0yNDA%3D

He doesn't show how few customers are using the bulk of the bandwidth.

Of course, there is the usual ranting and flaming going on.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,14997671~start=240#end

In the short term I suspect providers will try to make do with various traffic shaping attempts. Due to upstream technology differences, traffic shapers tend to be more popular among cable providers. But in the longer term I expect the US will see usage based pricing for high-bandwidth connections at the residential level. Usage based pricing is already becoming more common in other countries on high-bandwidth connections.

ISPs tend to have very simple billing systems. And even usage based billing tends to be very simple. Its similar to reading an electric meter once a month. You have a base allocation (e.g. 2GB, 6GB, 10GB) each month and any usage over the base amount is billed separately. No time of day or distance calculations.

http://cfp.mit.edu/events/slides/jan05/seg_jw.pdf

An interesting side-effect of providers moving to usage based pricing is they often have "uncapped" connections and more "open" AUP policies. With usage based pricing, the ISP's incentive is to give the user the fastest line possible. With very high-bandwidth connections the user has to control his or her own usage, such as from servers or p2p applications running on the computer, instead of the inherent throttling of the connection.
-------------------------------end post----------------------------

Technorati Tags:
Internet, pricing, traffic, NGN

Wireless in the developing world

Thanks to Bill St. Arnaud at CA-Net for the pointer to this book. Resources like this can be extraordinarily useful. The ITU-D has in its charter to provide "technical assistance" to developing countries ... this is an example of what that could be (even though this was not an ITU-D project). What is notable about this particular project is: (1) it is a practical guide written by people who have been doing it; (2) it is freely available; (3) it is being represented as a work in progress (I wonder why they didn't do this via a wiki).

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wireless, developing countries, Internet, Telecommunications

Report: China will surpass the US in broadband subscribers by late 2006

This report showed up on Om Malik's blog today. The data in this report are interesting and worth reading. Be careful in interpreting the statistics, though, as the report switches back and forth between total users (as reported in the headline) and penetration. How do these results help you understand the Internet governance issues that came up at WSIS, and that continually come up at ICANN? How about concerns about splitting the root (see this and this for more details)?

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Broadband, China, ICANN, WSIS

Telecom reform in the US

This topic has shown up on this blog from time to time (see this, for example). This article points out the political hazards of telecommunications reform. This year (2006) will feature a midterm Congressional election ... is it really so surprising that the road to reform is becoming rocky?

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Telecommunications, Telecom policy, Internet,

Report on Spectrum Management

Since we're on the topic of spectrum management, you might be interested in this report on spectrum management in different countries. At 255 pages, it is not a brief summary! If you want to test your language skills, the report is also available in German ...

Technorati Tags:
spectrum, spectrum management, wireless

BW: Whither WiMAX?

This article in one of the BusinessWeek blogs addresses bandwidth for WiMAX (which has also been reported elsewhere). The idea is to auction spectrum being vacated by analog television after the switch to digital takes place in 2009 for WiMAX.

Why not auction the spectrum in an application blind way? In other words, is it important to specify that this spectrum should only be used for WiMAX? Why not let the auction winners decide what to use it for?

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WiMAX, spectrum

UWB Standards war?

My colleague recently posted this item on his course blog about a brewing standards war in the UWB pysical layer. Do you expect the dynamics to be similar to what we are experiencing in the next generation DVD standards that I have posted earlier on this blog? Why or why not?

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UWB, Standards, DVD

Lessig: Internet arose because of regulation

In this article, David Isenberg exerpts a recent item from Larry Lessig. I found this to be interesting. The observation about neutrality under the regulated monopoly is largely true.

Is it equally true for unbundling? Would we have today's network if we had maintained the kind of regulation that we had then? Can you really draw the conclusion that Lessig's example from France and Japan are substantially due to "strict unbundling"? What kind of industry organization are Lessig (and perhaps Isenberg) advocating?

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Network neutrality, telecommunications, regulation, Lessig

Is WCDMA stalling?

Forbes reported today that Qualcomm was downgraded by a stock market analyst because: “We see limited upside to our already optimistic forecasts for WCDMA adoption and handset growth". Do you believe this, despite the large installed base of GSM handsets? What are the other options for GSM providers? Do you think GSM providers are going to bypass WCDMA? Do you think that this gives CDMA-based carriers an edge in the market?

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Qualcomm, WCDMA, CDMA, GSM

Wireless vs. wireline expenditures

Earlier on this blog, I brought up wireless substitution for wireline. While this is documented in the decline of access lines and other factors, this new report lends more weight to this. In-Stat reports that expenditures for wireless services by firms of all types is expected to exceed expenditures in wireline services in the coming year. This is a much more radical result than some of the earlier reports that were mentioned on this blog. Why the difference?

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Wireless, wireline, telecommunications

Transitioning to IPv6

In this item, I had raised questions about IPv6 in light of new Internet technologies and architectures. There have been two items recently that speak to the question of IPv6. First, Geoff Huston examines the fate of IPv6 in this thoughtful article. A few days later, this paper came to my attention, in which the Indian regulator (TRAI) makes a recommendation that India transition to IPv6. Japan and Europe have been leaders in the past few years in encouraging the adoption of IPv6, though this might be in part to gain some advantage in the competition these countries face from the US.

Do you think that IPv6 is destined for stardom or extinction? Would you convert?

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IPv6, Internet, India

Traffic balance on broadband links

A recent thread on the Cybertel mailing list has been discussing upload bandwidth. In the asymmetrical broadband systems favored by many carriers in the US, the upstream bandwidth is lower than the download bandwidth (both ADSL and cable have this property). As we begin treating users as providers, the way peer to peer applications and some social networking applications tend to do, the traffic profile becomes much more symmetrical. As this article points out, this is already apparent in wireless networks. In this item, the author (Frank Coluccio) notes:

"We puzzled over how far HSDPA and other enhanced networks would play out. What MOTO has found from their carrier customers is that user demand has shifted so that now, if available, usage goes to about 50%-50% uplink/downlink. Users are doing more image, video, file sharing and online activity such as gaming where usage is more asymmetrical. And given that new lower power and cost high resolution mixed signal imaging chips and processor SOCs are on the way, higher bandwidth imaging and video from the user to the network is likely to be the trend. In fact, there is some thinking that the uplink to downlink bandwidth needed will shift to 60%-40% when these higher resolution devices become available. Start putting this puzzle together and you can see why Qualcomm has become so aggressive about acquiring and developing the OFDMA field of technologies."

Given that, would you expect carrier investments to be directed toward converting existing networks to symmetric bandwidth? Do carriers want users to be service providers as well? What impact do you imagine this might have on pricing?

Technorati Tags:
broadband, telecommunications, GSM, CDMA

Broadband Bargains

This item is interesting. As I mentioned earlier on this blog, pricing matters, and the data here underscore this. Notice also the difference in bandwidth as to what constitutes "broadband". This is also apparent in the recent postings on network neutrality, only here it is end user pricing rather than service provider pricing that is at issue.

This leads to the question of whether broadband should be included in the universal service package. If so, what is the rationale, and where would the subsidies come from? Would all end users be able to take advantage of broadband (the way they can for voice telephone service)? If not, what is the rationale for including it as a part of universal service?

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Broadband, pricing, internet

Carrier pricing and network neutrality

This item on the PFF blog is another response to the recent discussion on network neutrality and carrier pricing. Do you find the FedEx analogy apt?

Update: Here is an article in favor of network neutrality published in the Financial Times. This debate is clearly percolating from the blogoshpere to the MSM (main stream media) ...

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Network Neutrality

NGN in the UK

In a follow-on to this item, here is a report from the UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom. While this report does not propose a new architecture for the Internet, it does propose a commision to study how to transition to a NGN core.

What, exactly, do you think is meant by "a NGN core"? Would you expect the tension between network neutrality and the economic interests of the carriers (discussed elsewhere on this blog)? Would you be able to infer an outcome based on the composition of this panel (especially since the panel is supposed to be industry-funded)? What influence would you expect this group to have?

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Internet, Network Neutrality, NGN, UK

Next Generation DVD standards

I have blogged about this earlier (see this). In this article in today's NY Times (free subscription required), Toshiba is announcing a HD-DVD player for <$500 in March, whilst the competing Blu Ray players will come out "this year" priced at $1000 - $1800. Blu Ray is also supposed to be included on the Sony Playstation 3 due later this year.

Do you expect a "winner" in this technology battle? If so, does your guess about which standard will win change based on this pricing and availability information? Why?

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Standards, Blu-Ray, HD-DVD

Google 'Ecosystem' and Wall Street

This article caught my attention ... in particular David Ng's use of "ecosystem". He seems to refer to external (to Google) services, but might the notion also apply to the plethora of services Google has recently introduced (which have been reported widely in the media)? Are network externalities a factor here, or are there other economic phenomena at work?


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Network externalities, Google

Too Much Throughput?

Happy New Year! I would like to start the year by drawing your attention to this article in David Isenberg's blog ... if you recall, Isenberg has an interest in network neutrality ... see this and this ... on this thread, you might also want to see this from Mark Evans' blog.

Do you expect demand for backplane speed networks to evolve? What applications might be compelling for networks of this speed? Does this reasoning apply to mobile networks as well? How would you balance network neutrality objectives and the finanical interests of carriers who would be providing this service? Do you think municipal networks are an answer? If so, why?

Technorati Tags:
broadband, Internet, network neutrality