Cable internet will slow to a crawl as more users sign up and download videos etc

probe

A British cable company Virgin Media announced "200 Mbits/sec" broadband to 100 residents of Ashford in GB using DOCSIS3. Ireland's cable monopoly (upc.ie) is currently using the older DOCSIS2 standard, for the most part.

Under the DOCSIS3 standard a group of homes (perhaps 400) share a single 160 Mbits/sec connection. The more homes that are active users in an area the slower the system gets. Internet is moving to transporting large quantities of video on demand from sites like vimeo, dailymotion, blip.tv youtube, etc - which is a heavy user of bandwidth. As more people sign up for cable, it will slow to a crawl. An unsustainable solution.

Fibre to the home eliminates this bottleneck and delivers a sustainable platform that can be upgraded as technology developes without having to rip out the basic infrastructure (ie the fibre optic cables).

There is no sign of UPC upgrading their infrastructure to FTTH. Ireland will be stuck in virtual gridlock for decades. Eircom's copper loops are incapable of competing - aside from the small issue of eircom's financial condition and debt problem.

While Virgin Media might claim that WiFi is the slowest link in the chain, anyone with a serious home network uses cable gigabit ethernet (ie 1,000 Mbits/sec).

To quote from another article in Ars Technica:

Bottleneck speed

A connection to a distant server is only as fast as the slowest link. Even when the connection between home and the central office's CMTS (cable modem termination system) is humming along, upstream choke points in the backhaul network, the public Internet, or at the remote server can all lower perceived network speeds.

The gear in your house

As cable's DOCSIS data architecture continues to mature, the new high speed offerings may be too fast for some customers even to use. As Virgin notes when describing its 200Mbps trial, "there are no wireless routers able to deliver throughput of speeds as high as 200Mb, and computers require very high specification in order to be able handle data at such a high rate.

If a home still has a (not uncommon) 802.11b wireless router, for instance, the device can only move 11Mbps under normal circumstances. 802.11g routers can move around 54Mbps, while some 802.11n routers claim speeds in the 100Mbps+ range. None can hit 200Mbps, however.
200Mbps is also faster than fast ethernet (100Mbps), still common in plenty of home PCs tucked in dens, bedrooms, and basements across the country. These machines can never access 200Mbps speeds—and in fact won't even get 100Mbps speeds thanks to network overhead.
In addition, the cable modem needs to be fast enough to handle the new speeds, and customer wiring in the home needs to be able to support 100Mbps+ speeds reliably.

Your DOCSIS profile

When a cable modem is attached to the local loop, it contacts the CMTS and downloads the customers DOCSIS profile. The profile provides all sorts of variables to the modem, including the maximum upstream speed that it can send data (downstream speed to each modem is limited by the CMTS itself to avoid flooding the wire with data).
Cable operators can change this remotely to fix problems or allow more speeds; "enterprising" customers have also attempted to hack their devices to go faster than their pay tier. The CMTS can detect modems transmitting faster than their allowed rate and issue a hard bandwidth limit to such devices to prevent flooding the upload link with data.

Cable plant noise

Noise is the enemy of data, and cable lines can be full of it. Cable modems operate at different power levels in order to overcome any noise on the line that might interfere with transmission. The problem could be inside the house, where it's the customer's problem, or in the local node. Either way, too much noise degrades speeds and makes for a miserable experience.

Severe upstream congestion.

Even with the new DOCSIS 3.0, upstream bandwidth is quite limited in cable systems. When shared between an entire neighborhood, this can cause speed problems—and not just for uploads. (This is why Comcast's P2P blocking system only targeted the upload link.)
Users seeding .torrent files or uploading photo sets to Flickr will see a slowdown anytime the upstream link is congested, of course, but so will plenty of other users. TCP, the most common protocol on the Internet, relies on a stream of acknowledgements to make sure that data is arriving accurately at its destination. In the case of a severely overloaded uplink, such acknowledgements may be delayed, which can in turn affect a user's downloads. (This does not apply to "fire and forget" protocols like UDP.)

More here: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/05/why-your-cable-internet-connection-gets-slow.ars

watty

UPC is replacing large, long coax with Fibre to Cabinet to limit the number of people on each cable segment for broadband. Also they can ditch the analogue

There would be about 200Mbps upstream capacity and 400MBps to 800Mbps downstream capacity per cable segment fed with fibre eventually.

DOCSIS 3.0 adds no capacity at all. Simply allows a modem to use muliple downstream channels instead of one channel. The increase in cable capacity is by five methods:
1) New coax increases bandwidth to 110MHz to 865MHz instead of 170MHz to 500MHz, that's about double.
2) Fibre driven segments instead of one long coax: Can be 5 to 100 times capacity
3) Ditch Analogue. Each analogue channel is 45Mbps of BB or 25 MPEG4 TV channels
4) Migrate from MPEG2 to MPEG4 for digital. Half the space needed for SD TV.
5) Replace 2/3rds of channels, the least popular by "Switched Video". Saving depends on how many TV users per segement there is, i.e. how much smaller segments are.

Basically beyond 300m range, cable will thus outperform VDSL or ADSL2+ for downstream and beyond 1km copper pair will outperform DSL for upstream.

This means that the majority of BB users will get better BB performance on Cable than the absolute best Data Only DSL. But deliver TV too. DSL can only do TV up to 1km and at expense of dramatically reducing BB data.

johnciall

probe wrote: »

The gear in your house

As cable's DOCSIS data architecture continues to mature, the new high speed offerings may be too fast for some customers even to use. As Virgin notes when describing its 200Mbps trial, "there are no wireless routers able to deliver throughput of speeds as high as 200Mb, and computers require very high specification in order to be able handle data at such a high rate.

If a home still has a (not uncommon) 802.11b wireless router, for instance, the device can only move 11Mbps under normal circumstances. 802.11g routers can move around 54Mbps, while some 802.11n routers claim speeds in the 100Mbps+ range. None can hit 200Mbps, however.
200Mbps is also faster than fast ethernet (100Mbps), still common in plenty of home PCs tucked in dens, bedrooms, and basements across the country. These machines can never access 200Mbps speeds—and in fact won't even get 100Mbps speeds thanks to network overhead.
In addition, the cable modem needs to be fast enough to handle the new speeds, and customer wiring in the home needs to be able to support 100Mbps+ speeds reliably.

True but lets face facts, how many people ordering 200Mbps connections are only going to have 1 PC, personally i'd love to have a 200Mbps connection and i honestly think i could max it out

probe

watty wrote: »

UPC is replacing large, long coax with Fibre to Cabinet to limit the number of people on each cable segment for broadband. Also they can ditch the analogue

Patching coax networks with fibre backhaul is only a catch up game – it does little to provide a solid foundation for the future. Any platform investment should be engineered for the future – not some myopic view of current needs for now and the next year or two.

The patching will involve an investment (read waste of money) of several billion. Netflix and iTunes full movie downloads are taking the place of DVD rental and scheduled TV programme watching in the States. Not to mention hulu.com and all the others - youtube, vimeo, blip.tv. While Netflix started out life doing mail rental delivery of DVDs, more and more subscribers now are just downloading the DVD from the Netflix site, rather than waiting for the mailman. People don’t want to wait for the mail to arrive. People don’t want to have to make a second journey to the DVD rental shop to return the DVDs.

BluRay (BD) is rapidly taking over more shelf space in video stores in most countries (a trend not yet evident in Ireland but it will happen). A BD video is typically a 25 GB download (compared with about 4GB for a DVD) – who will have the patience to be hang around for that to come down the line over an old fashioned coax cable service? A chain is as strong as its weakest link – any coax element in the chain will be a bottleneck.

The Norwegian Altibox fibre IP service (www.altibox.no) set-up by an electricity utility is now testing 1 GBits/sec fibre to the home. With fibre you can easily start off with 100 Mbits/sec and move up to Giga when the time requires. Ditching analog TV and moving from MPEG2 to MPEG4 (which they should have done several years ago to ready the system for HDTV – think of all the new houses with cable TV boxes installed over the past few years that can only do MPEG2 and will have to be replaced!) provides an alarmingly modest increase in overall capacity. They probably shouldn’t be wasting the limited cable bandwidth they have carrying terrestrial services – if DTT was up and running. Several broadband TV suppliers in France have built-in DTT receivers in their set top box to provide the basic DTT services – instead of duplicating traffic by sending it down their DSL lines, leaving more space for other channels and VoD. But of course Ireland still has no DTT – the only country in Europe without it..... It reminds me of FRIACO in Ireland – everybody wanted flat rate dial-up internet access! Meanwhile the rest of the world was installing broadband.

One of the Irish utilities could go into the FTTH infrastructure business like Altibox, creating a network of fibre to each house and place of business, and this could be engineered as an open network allowing service providers to deliver content and services on a competitive basis – without duplication of the basic infrastructure. This venture could perhaps be partially or fully spun off in due course as an independent listed company. If it used innovations like self-install of fibre ducting on private property, voting systems for people to indicate their demand for the service to be installed, and the mechanised wrapping of fibre around overhead ESB cables, etc they could save capital costs and speed up deployment. Fibre is cheap to install, has no reach limitations in rural areas – the main cost is digging trenches – avoid that at all costs! Fibre is also easy to install – it is faster, easier and cleaner to link a set-top box, PC, BD player or other component to an audio amplifier with a fibre connection that using a conventional dangling cable connection.

I heard someone from the IMF yesterday saying that Ireland needs to change its “business model”. The Irish cable TV monopoly provides an appalling range of services – crammed with low quality tabloid Anglo-Saxon TV services. One important way of achieving a “change of business model” and mindset is for the country to become less insular. A starting point would be to make good quality TV channels from the rest of Europe widely available on cable – eg mezzo.tv, arte.tv, www.dw-world.de/dw/0,,9102,00.html, france24.com, http://english.aljazeera.net, Eurosport and Eurosport2 (as opposed to “British Eurosport”!), CNBC Europe (as opposed to “CNBC UK”) etc etc.

Another way to change the “business model” is to plan for the future rather than the present. Ireland has planned for the present (or even past, if such were possible) when building ring roads, devising home insulation standards, public transport systems, broadband, etc. Is it not time for a radical change in the national mindset?

paulm17781

They're building an entire new network here, it's by no means a catch up game.

The title of this post also reads as though you have an agenda.

_Sidhe_

First off Probe, UPC are using DOCSIS 1.1, not 2.
But they will be switching to 3 with the "Fibre Power" (sounds like the worst superhero team ever!:p) in the next few years.

Secondly, Ireland has the English channels, because people in Ireland want the English channels.
You may not, but that's you.
Simply look at the Irish stations themselves, and you'll see that they are nothing but repeats of the English programmes anyway.

Next up, UPC Ireland is laying an enire new infrastructure.
You really have a problem with them, because you are either wrong, or being completely misleading.
they are not "patching" up a network.
In Dublin/Limerick/Cork/Galway etc they have most of the cities covered.

InDublin they had to relay the mess that NTL and the multitude of previous companies had made.

In Cork, they had to completely relay everything.
Cork had the most old fashioned cable Network in the country.

In Limerick when UPC took over, Chorus had 30% of the city cabled.
Now it's past 90%


If you consider building a whole new boat to be patching, then you need to get a dictionary.


Ireland will never have a proper cable lay out, because it wouldn't be cost effective.
We're too sparsely populated, and even in the built up areas, it wouldn't be worth it.
Also, construction in Ireland cost so much more compared to the rest of the world.

UPC have invested hundreds of millions.
Ireland isn't theitr charity case.
They are a buisiness.
And they are here to make money.

bk

Firstly probe there are a couple of technical inaccuracies in your post:

1) UPC do not use DOCSIS 2, they currently use EuroDOCSIS 1.1
2) UPC will not use DOCSIS 3, they will use EuroDOCSIS 3
3) EuroDOCSIS 3 is capable of the following speeds (downstream/upsteam):
- 4 Channel 222.48 / 122.88 Mbit/s
- 8 Channel 444.96 / 122.88 Mbit/s

Yes these are shared speeds, but that isn't a major problem, as the entire internet is shared, what is important is how well the contention is managed and in a cable network it isn't too difficult to subdivide a local node as subscriber numbers increase and generally it is easier and cheaper then the problems faced by DSL and Fibre providers.

Also it is worth noting that as they have now figured out how to do channel bonding on cable, there is no reason why future versions of DOCSIS won't bond even more channels. As an example using a standard, modern 865MHz cable network, if you use it purely for BB, you could deliver up to 4.7 Gbit/s on when section !!!

So a decent HFC cable network is very future proof.

You also seem to be under the impression that residential FTTH is point to point, in fact most residential FTTH is also shared just like cable, for instance in the US Verizon use GPON which is shared between 32 customers and they use cheaper optical gear which limits the total bandwidth to 2.4/1.244 Gbit/s. Also it is worth noting that Verizon don't actually use IPTV, instead they broadcast all the channels across the fibre cable using cable technology. This further reduces the bandwidth available to each customer.

Don't get me wrong FTTH is excellent, but it isn't as clear cut as you think. It is worth noting that in countries where FTTH is being rolled out like Japan and Sweden, not only have the cable companies there been able to match the speeds of FTTH, in many cases they offer faster speeds for less money.

probe wrote:

Patching coax networks with fibre backhaul is only a catch up game – it does little to provide a solid foundation for the future. Any platform investment should be engineered for the future – not some myopic view of current needs for now and the next year or two.

This is by far your most unfair and most inaccurate comment. UPC are spending 100's of millions building a superb next generation Hybrid Fibre Coax network, a very deep fibre network that is almost a fibre to the kerb network, that is by far the biggest fibre network in already and far, far better then anything deployed by Eircom or any other telco.

In conjunction with the high quality coax they are laying, there is no reason why their network shouldn't be competitive with FTTH, never mind crappy DSL for decades to come.

EuroDOCSIS 1.1 is more then competitive with DSL and EuroDOCSIS 3 is designed and has proven to be competitive with FTTH. As cable companies switch off analogue channels, switch to MPEG4 and use clever channel switching tech, you will see a big increases in the bandwidth they can deliver.

Personally I think cable companies are in a much better position then telcos, as the cable companies can grow their network organically and cheaper as subscriber numbers grow and bandwidth demand increases, compared to the very hard choice telcos face of either sticking with crappy, slow DSL on rotting unshielded twisted pair lines or go to the massive expense of rolling out FTTH and it ending up not delivering much more benefit then EuroDOCSIS 3 cable for a lot less.

But in summary the most important point is that UPC are the only company in Ireland actually investing money in their network and actually building a next generation network. Eircom certainly aren't, their barely investing enough to keep their crappy DSL network from collapsing.

And as much as I wish it wasn't so, I don't see anyone else investing in your pipe dream and building a FTTH network, do you?

watty

Probe, mostly you are right. But your analysis and criticism of UPC cable is way off the mark.

There are huge problems with Internet in Ireland. It's pointless to attack a technology and company that's out to do a half decent job.

Highlight lack of VDSL & ADSL2 and DSL extenders on copper.

Highlight high line rental and Exchange co-location and backhaul costs.

Highlight cross subsidy of over 200:1 from voice to Data to suck people into 4th rate Mobile Data contracts when they really need fixed internet.

This is the wrong target at the wrong time.

Highlight lack of a joined up plan for Fibre. The MANs are OK, but too blinkered and narrow a vision without the last mile.

Highlight lack of use of both of eircoms national Wireless licemces and that there are no other National Fixed Wireless licence (delivers x8 to x20 the capacity of Mobile in same spectrum bandwidth size and more reliable than Mobile).

Highlight lack over overall plan and vision for Spectrum of 175MHz to 2700MHz, with future expiry of 900MHz GSM, 1800MHz GSM, 2500MHz MMDS, space freed in 470MHz to 864MHz by Analogue Switch off. Space in 175MHz to 280Mhz by closure of BandIII TV and failure of DAB as a format. Various Chunks from 275Mhz to 925MHz due to non-deployment of services and migration.

Bord Gais and NRA empty ducts that should have fibre in them.

bk

probe wrote: »

Fibre is cheap to install, has no reach limitations in rural areas – the main cost is digging trenches – avoid that at all costs! Fibre is also easy to install – it is faster, easier and cleaner to link a set-top box, PC, BD player or other component to an audio amplifier with a fibre connection that using a conventional dangling cable connection.

WTF, fibre is hard and expensive to install. It costs Verizon $900 per home in high density urban areas using cheaper shared FTTH technology like GPON. This is Verizon, one of the biggest telcos in the world, rollinng out one of the biggest FTTH networks, so they get big economies of scale. Here in Ireland it would probably cost double that per home.

Don't underestimate the cost and difficulty of FTTH.

BTW I would love someone like the ESB to do it here. I believe they have the technical skill and infrastructure to do it. But unfortunately I just don't see it happening, specially now in our current economic situation and I certainly don't see any reason to rag on UPC, it has nothing to do with them, they actually are investing in and building their own next generation network.

probe

_Sidhe_ wrote: »

First off Probe, UPC are using DOCSIS 1.1, not 2.

While they probably do use DOCSIS 1.2 in parts of the "network", evidence please that they don't use DOCSIS 2?

Secondly, Ireland has the English channels, because people in Ireland want the English channels.
You may not, but that's you.
Simply look at the Irish stations themselves, and you'll see that they are nothing but repeats of the English programmes anyway.

1) The additional channels I listed above have services in the English language.

2) Ireland's linguistic insularity is part of Ireland's economic problem. While being part of the Euro currency zone, most of the country's indigenous business activity is with English speaking bubble economies. Economies that have no substance and have lost their own industrial base. While they used to live off the financial "industry", that too has imploded and will not return to its securitized, over leveraged, bubble boom mode for several generations. Hopefully never!

In my travels I can't help but noticing that countries that have brain dead tabloid TV have low quality poor economies and a low standard of service in most things. Access to decent programming is as important as access to a good education system. You don't have to watch non-Anglo saxon channels if you don't wish - in the same way as you don't have to attend university. You won't get away with that in an era of "globalisation".

probe

DOCSIS3 = EuroDOCSIS3 aside from regional variations between Europe and North America.

The above analyses that UPC can deliver the goods are flawed in a number of respects:

1) If the patched up hybrid UPC network can deliver the bandwidth needed, they will end up being a monopoly. They can charge what they like, take as long as they wish to answer the phone and fix faults, and deliver as few channels at as low a bit rate as they wish, censoring what you watch to their Anglo-Saxon Murdoch style agenda. They provide a slow internet service in Ireland compared with UPC in the Netherlands where one can get 120 Mbits/sec down and 10 Mbits/sec up on their Dutch system.

In France where you have multiple competing fibre providers you can get 100 Mbits/sec fibre internet for EUR 21.90/month (eg numericable.fr) or EUR 31.90 gives you internet + 120 TV channels + unlimited free phone calls to 53 countries. Why, because in IRL they have a monopoly and are poorly regulated!

2) HD Video has only started to develop using a 2K (1920) resolution. The next stage is 4K, and 4K video cameras are already available*. 4K cameras generate five times as much data as a 2K camera. 12 million pixels of video on your TV screen/projector. Any investment is cable infrastructure needs to have the basic foundation to deal with this next generation of uHD TV.

3) A national independently owned (independent of the service companies like UPC) would allow multiple service providers to deliver services over the same fibre infrastructure. I have no problem with UPC or anyone else competing over a shared fibre platform. My root posting was not a “rant” against UPC – one might call it a “rant” for an open platform that is future proof, scalable and creates competition and choice.

4) As the world moves in the direction of video on demand (eg someone watching a video that interests them on youtube or vimeo etc), and a world of HD and uHD TV, there is no point in the content travelling long distances over oceans every time someone clicks to watch a video. We are at an intermediate stage at the moment where companies like http://www.cachefly.com deliver content for multi-media content producers and push it near the consumer. When the consumer clicks to watch, the file is streamed from a server local to them rather than one is a server farm in California or wherever.

The next stage in that caching process is that the 80% of the content that people mostly watch will need to be cached on or close to the fibre platform that serves their premises. This will guarantee speed, low latency and will reduce delivery costs. If UPC or any other UPC type company has a monopoly of the pipe, with no other choice, they will end up being a gatekeeper and charging content providers a fee to cache locally and make their content available to subscribers. The internet will cease to be open. It will become a walled garden. Few internet based offerings, aside perhaps from google would survive – and even they might pull the plug on youtube - especially in countries where the monopoly ISP charged fees to them. They are already paying hundreds of millions for the plumbing they use.

*www.red.com

bk

probe wrote: »

While they probably do use DOCSIS 1.2 in parts of the "network", evidence please that they don't use DOCSIS 2?

They both have the same download speed, EuroDOCSIS 2 just gives you greater upload speed. It is mostly only for near symmetrical business type products. While some of their gear maybe EuroDOCSIS 2 compatible, there is no sign they are using it.

probe wrote: »

DOCSIS3 = EuroDOCSIS3 aside from regional variations between Europe and North America.

There are very significant technical differences, the first being the extra 60 MBit/s in download speed which is not to be ignored.

probe wrote: »

The above analyses that UPC can deliver the goods are flawed in a number of respects:

You say that, but then don't actually give any relative points on how my analysis is flawed and also ignore the fact that even FTTH faces the same problems.

probe wrote: »

1) If the patched up hybrid UPC network can deliver the bandwidth needed, they will end up being a monopoly. They can charge what they like, take as long as they wish to answer the phone and fix faults, and deliver as few channels at as low a bit rate as they wish, censoring what you watch to their Anglo-Saxon Murdoch style agenda. They provide a slow internet service in Ireland compared with UPC in the Netherlands where one can get 120 Mbits/sec down and 10 Mbits/sec up on their Dutch system.

Again there is noting "patched up" about it, it is a ground up building of a very good next generation network, don't you get, it will deliver many of the things you want.

The UPC Netherlands network is just as much a private network in the Netherlands as it is here. 120 Mbits/sec speeds were only introduced a few months ago in the Netherlands and will be coming to UPC Ireland in a few months time. The Dutch just get the new toys first because that is their home market and HQ.

And sure they can do what they like with their own private network, offer as few channels as they like, blah, blah, etc. etc. just like any private company can. However the only answer to that is competition. UPC face fierce competition from Sky and Freesat in the TV market. In the BB and phone market,Eircom are the incumbent, UPC need to have attractive packages to win customers from Eircom and Eircom will need to compete with them to try and not lose lots of customers.

probe wrote: »

In France where you have multiple competing fibre providers you can get 100 Mbits/sec fibre internet for EUR 21.90/month (eg numericable.fr) or EUR 31.90 gives you internet + 120 TV channels + unlimited free phone calls to 53 countries. Why, because in IRL they have a monopoly and are poorly regulated!

Again nothing to do with UPC, it is up to Eircom, Smart, Magnet, etc. to roll out FTTH or VDLS2+ products, if they don't that isn't UPC's fault or problem.

probe wrote: »

2) HD Video has only started to develop using a 2K (1920) resolution. The next stage is 4K, and 4K video cameras are already available*. 4K cameras generate five times as much data as a 2K camera. 12 million pixels of video on your TV screen/projector. Any investment is cable infrastructure needs to have the basic foundation to deal with this next generation of uHD TV.

Again irrelevant to UPC, residential FTTH will struggle just as much with 4K HD video as a modern HFC cable network will. Remember a cable network sub divided to pass 64 homes has the same bandwidth available per home as Verizons FTTH products.

probe wrote: »

3) A national independently owned (independent of the service companies like UPC) would allow multiple service providers to deliver services over the same fibre infrastructure. I have no problem with UPC or anyone else competing over a shared fibre platform.

I actually completely agree, for a long time I've been suggesting a model like what the Australians are currently proposing, where a new company is set up, 51% government owned, who owns all the government fibre, plus fibre owned by the likes of Eircom, UPC, Smart, Vodafone, etc. and who rolls out FTTH or at least FTTK/N.

UPC might certainly be interested in getting involved in something like this, in return for access to a wider fibre network, but there wouldn't be any particular need for them to move off cable for the last mile.

probe wrote: »

My root posting was not a “rant” against UPC – one might call it a “rant” for an open platform that is future proof, scalable and creates competition and choice.

But that is clearly not true, just look at the inflammatory title and your original posts is quietly clearly a rant against cable and UPC.

Which is something I don't get at all, UPC is the one company that has been driving innovation and competition in the Irish BB market. They were the first * to have affordable 1.5mb BB, then 3mb, then 6mb, then 12mb, just 2 months later 20mb and now they are talking about introducing 120mb/s !!

Each of these new products introduced was a shock to the Irish BB market and left Eircom scrambling to catch up. UPC is the best thing to ever happen to the Irish BB market.

Like Watty said, you should be ranting about Eircom, LLU, crap Irish regulation, the stupid mistakes made by the Irish government, certainly not UPC, who have done nothing but good for the Irish BB market.

_Sidhe_

probe wrote: »

While they probably do use DOCSIS 1.2 in parts of the "network", evidence please that they don't use DOCSIS 2?

When UPC came into Ireland and started their rebuild programme about 3 or 4 years or so ago, they were using EURODOCSIS 1.1.
There is no evidence, or need for that matter, for them to have changed that to 2.
So you prove to anyone besides your deluded self that they are using 2.

You assume something, with no evidence, and want others to prove you wrong.
Prove yourself right first.

probe wrote:

1) The additional channels I listed above have services in the English language.

2) Ireland's linguistic insularity is part of Ireland's economic problem. While being part of the Euro currency zone, most of the country's indigenous business activity is with English speaking bubble economies. Economies that have no substance and have lost their own industrial base. While they used to live off the financial "industry", that too has imploded and will not return to its securitized, over leveraged, bubble boom mode for several generations. Hopefully never!

Yeah, poor America.
Shíte economy for decades now.

probe wrote:

n my travels I can't help but noticing that countries that have brain dead tabloid TV have low quality poor economies and a low standard of service in most things. Access to decent programming is as important as access to a good education system. You don't have to watch non-Anglo saxon channels if you don't wish - in the same way as you don't have to attend university. You won't get away with that in an era of "globalisation".

That's funny cause I've lived in Holland, France, and England, and can tell you that you're talking out of your ar$e.

France, England, and America are the homes of tabloid media, but also homes of some of the greatest higher educaional schools, out there.

Japan is a giant tabloid country, and look at them.

Tabloid, is a new term for an old system.
The paper has simply replaced the pulpit, and that has nothing to do with technological advancment.
And never will.


Seriously my friend, get off the high horse.

probe

bk wrote: »

I actually completely agree, for a long time I've been suggesting a model like what the Australians are currently proposing, where a new company is set up, 51% government owned, who owns all the government fibre, plus fibre owned by the likes of Eircom, UPC, Smart, Vodafone, etc. and who rolls out FTTH or at least FTTK/N.

What are we waiting for then? A regulated monopoly fibre utility platform that served all suppliers is a very "bankable" proposition - it could issue bonds which do not form part of government debt because it would be a for profit utility. The ESB would be an ideal vehicle to set the entity up, probably with other shareholders - eg participating service providers and others. It could be spun off as a listed company at a future date.

Eircom and their DSL re-sellers also need it, because the copper network platform they currently rely on is inadequate for the explosion in multi-media traffic, HD and probably many applications that haven't yet hit the drawing board. The same goes for wireless carriers who won't be able to keep up with multi-media traffic load either.

There is no point in duplicating fibre resources to the end user premises. It would provide considerable employment during the infrastructure installation phase to people who have worked in the construction industry. One way or the other everybody is wasting money on some aspect of their network infrastructure investment because it will quickly become obsolete and incapable of competing. A fibre infrastructure is good for the day when households enjoy holographic laser multi-dimensional video experiences where the movie or TV programme you watch is all around you! And fibre optic cable is very low maintenance offering maximum reliability.

Now is the time to do it!

paulm17781

probe wrote: »

A fibre infrastructure is good for the day when households enjoy holographic laser multi-dimensional video experiences where the movie or TV programme you watch is all around you!

You can't plan for what is effectively fantasy. While what you're saying may happen one day, no one is doing this mainstream yet and AFAIK, it's not being talked about. Should I not buy a car as we're all waiting for rocket packs?

probe

paulm17781 wrote: »

You can't plan for what is effectively fantasy. While what you're saying may happen one day, no one is doing this mainstream yet and AFAIK, it's not being talked about.

Not a fantasy - just an example of a potential application that would make extreme demands on residential bandwidth - which I believe the basic fibre optic plumbing could handle (obviously with some new kit at each end of the existing pipe).

Hansung University in Korea has done some work in the area.

http://www.hansung.ac.kr

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0923596506001317&ei=CF0NSs3CNM_LjAfJqp2zBg&rct=j&q=holographic+3D+image+laser+image+bitrate&usg=AFQjCNF8SjEx17nCILPnuVFxdQ7z_jEIyw