Cable Companies Selling More Broadband Than Telcos

Last week the Leichtman Research Group published a study that included the nineteen largest cable and telephone broadband providers in the United States. The survey, representing 94% of the current U.S. broadband market, revealed some interesting findings:

• The top broadband providers account for 64.1 million subscribers.
• Cable companies have about 34.7 million broadband subscribers.
• Telephone companies have about 29.5 million subscribers.

And even more interesting:

• The top cable companies added 1.2 million subscribers, representing 54% of the net broadband additions for the quarter versus the top telephone companies
  
• This is the first quarter since 3Q 2004 that cable added more broadband subscribers than telephone providers.
• Overall, broadband additions in 1Q 2008 amounted to 75% of those in 1Q 2007 – with cable having 84% as many additions as a year ago, and Telcos 67%.
• The top cable broadband providers now have a 54% share of the overall market, with a 5.2 million subscriber advantage over the telephone companies.

Cable broadband subscriber rates are growing at a more rapid rate than the telcos. The cable companies have built a network that has always been easier to upgrade and offer broadband services on. Telcos are stuck with having to provision lines for ADSL by removing bridge taps and loading coils on copper wire lines that, in some of the older cities, are approaching 100 years old. The telcos have also had to deal with distance limitations and have struggled with cramming ADSL equipment into remote terminals in the field - there is only so much room in those roadside boxes and if they don't have space for you, you don't get a connection. Here's more from the Leichtman Research Group:

Verizon added a net of just 4,000 subscribers to its copper-based DSL service in the first quarter. It gained 262,000 customers for its fiber-based (FiOS) service during the same period.

Is the low hanging ADSL fruit picked over? The ADSL push by the telcos may be coming to an end - at least for some of the providers.

See the Leichtman Research Group study for details.

Broadband Divide: People and Businesses Moving for Bandwidth?

Ars Technica has an interesting post titled FiOS tops satisfaction survey; worth moving for? The post discusses a recent issue of Consumer Reports that rated Internet Service Providers (ISPs). In the Consumer Reports article Verizon's fiber optic FiOS service was declared to be best of breed. The Ars Technica post then goes on to highlight a couple of people who's recent moves were, at least in part, due to Verizon FiOS availability. Here's a quote describing Andru Edwards' relocation:

Andru Edwards of Gear Live tells Ars that he's one of those willing to relocate for the promise of fiber optic goodness. "I moved 10 minutes north of Seattle specifically for FiOS service," he tells Ars. "We push a lot of video to the web, and Comcast's 768k upload wasn't cutting it. Gear Live now has a 30 megabit down/15 megabit up connection. While customer service is horrendous (even ignoring possible security flaws that can result in easy identity theft), the FiOS connection is a Godsend for us."

And another quote describing Ars Technica's Editor in Chief' Ken Fisher's move:

"We're in a region where everybody is getting FiOS within six months, so it didn't really influence our exact location," he said. "We've had FiOS for almost four months and there hasn't been a single outage. It's always fast, it's so reliable that when you see performance problems online you can assume it's something other than your connection. In fact, some people will be disappointed when they get it and realize that it can't make Yahoo serve to you any faster."

I'm sure Yahoo (and others) will catch up in serving these high bandwidth areas so I'm not too worried about that. This is also not new news - Realtors have recognized over the past year or so that high bandwidth (like FiOS) availability can be used as a marketing/selling point - much like a 3 car garage or bonus room!

I'm also sure we'll see the cable companies going in with competing DOCSIS 3.0 based services in areas of high bandwidth availability. My concern continues to be the under served areas and, over the past year, my definition of an under served area has expanded to places where ADSL is offered. Sure ADSL is faster than dialup (if that is all you have) but when you compare it to FiOS type bandwidths.... it crawls. And........... don't forget, the "A" in ADSL stands for "Asymmetrical" - I've written in the past about the shift to symmetrical services.

Here's a few questions I've been asking myself:

• Will people start moving out of areas where high bandwidth is not available?
• What will happen to property values in these under served areas?
• Will businesses want to move into areas where high bandwidth is not available for the business and their employees?
• What kinds of academic issues will these communities face?

The Speed Matters blog has a post titled To candidates: How will we get high speed Internet?
Sounds like a pretty good question to me.

Tera-bits Per Second Over Fiber

Tech.co.uk has reported that Tohoku University researchers in Japan have enabled Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) over fiber to move information at rates of hundreds of tera-bits per second. Here's a few quotes from the Tech.co.uk press release:

At the heart of the development is a technique already used in some digital TV tuners and wireless data connections called quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). One glance at the Wikipedia explanation shows that it's no easy science, but the basics of QAM in this scenario require a stable wavelength for data transmission.

As the radio spectrum provides this, QAM-based methods work fine for some wireless protocols, however the nature of the optical spectrum means this has not been the case for fibre-optic cables ... until now.

The university team has solved the stability problem using a special laser that makes it feasible to pipe data down a glass fibre using the QAM method at blistering speeds. Although we shouldn't expect to be choosing from internet connections rated in Tbit/s anytime soon, the development could one day make us look back on ADSL as fondly as we now do our 56K modems.

Analog modems have used a form of QAM for years to move information from device to device across the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) or voice network. QAM is also used by cable modems and ADSL modems to modulate (convert digital signals to analog) and demodulate (convert analog signals back to digital) communications signals.

Let's try to get a basic understanding of how QAM works - without any math! Computing devices (computers, PDA's, laptops, etc) use digital signals (1's and 0's) to process, store and manipulate information. Sending this information over long distances though typically involves a conversion or modulation of digital signals to analog signals on the sending device and a conversion or demodulation of analog signals to digital signals on the receiving device. QAM has been the method of choice for transmitting signals this way for years.

QAM combines amplitude modulation (think height of a sine wave) and phase shift (think of a sine wave moving along the x-axis relative to a zero degree reference) and allows multiple bits (combinations of binary 1's and 0's) to be transmitted for each cycle of a sine wave. I like to use the term multiple bits per cycle when I describe QAM.

QAM is categorized by the number of bits that can be transmitted in one sine wave cycle. To get a simple understanding let's take a look at 16-QAM. 16-QAM is considered rectangular QAM - the square root of 16 is 4 and this indicates that each cycle of a 16-QAM waveform can represent a 4 bit binary (1 and 0) pattern. Using the same method we can calculate 64-QAM represents an 8 bit binary (1 and 0) pattern because the square root of 64 is 8. 256-QAM can represent a 16 bit binary (1 and 0) pattern because the square root of 256 is 16, etc.

QAM signals are susceptible to instability and noise but it appears the Tohoku University researchers have figured out a way to stabilize optical signals and use QAM methods for tera-bit level data transmission. I have not been able to find any detail on the stabilization methods being used at this time.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

250 Mbps Over Your Telephone Wires!

Dr John Papandriopoulos, an Australian research fellow at the University of Melbourne, won the University's highest academic prize on Tuesday - the Chancellor's Prize for Excellence in the PhD. According to the Australian Herald Sun, Papandriopoulos has "developed technology to make broadband internet up to 200 times (Internet speeds up to 250 megabits per second) faster without having to install expensive fiber optic cables."

This kind of bandwidth is hard to imagine over copper telephone wires and requires a little bit of background to understand. Papandriopoulos' work is based on the work of Stanford Professor John Cioffi, considered by many as the "father of ADSL". Cioffi is currently working in the area of dynamic spectrum management which, according to Wikipedia, is: "a technique being researched to improve DSL performance over ordinary copper phone lines by reducing or eliminating crosstalk between DSL phone lines that are close together."

Crosstalk occurs between conductive wires that are close together. Information, whether voice, video or data is transmitted in the form of electrical signals on copper wire. These signals produce magnetic fields around the wires and these fields are inductively coupled into surrounding wires. Ever drive under a high voltage power line with your AM radio on? If you have then you've likely heard the effects of a coupled field. Telephone wire fields are no where near as strong as high-voltage power transmission fields but, when other wires are close, crosstalk will occur and produce interference on the receiving wire.

Right now there is not a lot of technical information available on Papandriopoulos' work. According to the Herald Sun:

"Dr Papandriopoulos' research, which took a year to complete, uses mathematic modeling to reduce the interference that slows down downloading."

Also, according to Image and Data Manager:

"Dr John actually plans to part ways with the University of Melbourne and is “Currently trying to find a licensee for the intellectual property and I’ve also recently taken a position with a startup in the US, this startup focuses on this area and is run by Stanford Professor who is known as the father of ADSL” he continued, “The professor is John Cioffi who is pushing this whole notion of dynamic spectrum management, which is another way of saying dynamically managing interference.”

and:

"... the technology could be installed directly into existing modems as a software upgrade or be shipped in new modems depending on the ability of the particular modem type. In addition to this there would be a further installation required at the DSLAM in your telephone exchange which would then start cutting down the interference. Don’t expect to see the offering on your local PC store shelves anytime soon though, as Dr John hopes it will be available within 3-4 years."

This will be very interesting to watch.

Verizon Launches 20 Mbps Symmetrical FIOS Service

On Monday of this week Verizon announced 20 Mbps symmetrical FIOs service in parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut for as low as $64.99 a month. There are two things that I find exciting about this offering. First - it's great to see the bandwidths continue to go up. I feel this is just the start and we'll see bandwidths of over 100 Mbps within the next two years in selected areas as the telcos, like Verizon, go head-to-head with the cable companies like Comcast. If you are lucky enough to live in an area where FIOS is available you re in for a real treat regarding bandwidth.

The second exciting thing I see here is a shift to symmetrical services. Broadband products to date, including FIOS, ADSL and cable modem, have always been asymmetrical - the "A" in ADSL is even short for asymmetrical! Asymmetrical services provide more downstream bandwidth than upstream bandwidth. It's been a way for the providers to "cheat" a bit based on traditional Internet usage. Consider the way you traditionally surf the web - you enter a small amount of information in the address bar and hit enter. The address you type ends up going to a DNS (Domain Name Service) server and is looked up. The DNS server sends back the IP address of the site you want and your browser is directed to that site location. The site server then sends your browser the site contents you want to see.

Think about it - in the traditional model - a little information gets sent upstream and lots of information comes back downstream. Recognizing these patterns the providers have designed their networks to provide a little upstream bandwidth and lots of downstream bandwidth. Well...... all this has changed with this new FIOS offering from Verizon. Here's a quote from a Verizon press release:

"Verizon's new symmetric service is a smart response to the changing usage patterns of high-speed Internet subscribers," said Vince Vittore, senior analyst with Yankee Group. "We believe that as user-generated content continues to expand and telecommuting increases in popularity, upstream speed will become just as important as downstream for all users."

User generated content........ upstream speed becoming just as important as downstream for all users...... these are historical times!

Update - 10/31/07 - I found this video product demo on YouTube.