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BT to Offer TV-on-Demand via Broadband
http://media.guardian.co.uk/city/sto...167284,00.html
Broadband bandwidth is going up at a similar rate to Moore's Law (Moore's Law states that CPU speeds double every couple of years), so if that continues over the next decade (and from what I've read it is likely to) then TV-on-demand via broadband becomes a feasible alternative to digital TV. I for one hope it succeeds so that Sky have some competition in the premium-content arena. -- Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband internet and FM |
On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 16:15:00 -0000, "DAB sounds worse than FM"
wrote: Broadband bandwidth is going up at a similar rate to Moore's Law How do you work that one out? The fastest consumer service you could get two years ago was 2Mbit, and today its still the same, and still too expensive. -- Andrew. To email unscramble & remove spamtrap. Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards, please don't top post. Trim messages to quote only relevent text. Check groups.google.com before asking a question. |
On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 16:31:34 +0000, Andrew [email protected] wrote:
| On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 16:15:00 -0000, "DAB sounds worse than FM" | wrote: | | Broadband bandwidth is going up at a similar rate to Moore's Law | | How do you work that one out? The fastest consumer service you could | get two years ago was 2Mbit, and today its still the same, and still | too expensive. In c1970 I worked on a time shared PDP8 half the country away at 300bps, and paper tape storage. In c1979 I was at uni and we were given a comunications coursework, with a choice modems up to 4800bps. I got an A by using a *cutting edge* modem with 9600bps. Now .... Hardly Moores Law but quite a speed improvement. Dave F |
On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 16:49:41 +0000, Dave Fawthrop
wrote: In c1970 I worked on a time shared PDP8 half the country away at 300bps, and paper tape storage. In c1979 I was at uni and we were given a comunications coursework, with a choice modems up to 4800bps. I got an A by using a *cutting edge* modem with 9600bps. But the OP specified broadband which I don't think your acoustic coupler (those were the days!) or 9600 modem qualifies as. -- Andrew. To email unscramble & remove spamtrap. Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards, please don't top post. Trim messages to quote only relevent text. Check groups.google.com before asking a question. |
Andrew wrote:
On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 16:15:00 -0000, "DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote: Broadband bandwidth is going up at a similar rate to Moore's Law How do you work that one out? The fastest consumer service you could get two years ago was 2Mbit, and today its still the same, and still too expensive. Maybe not as quickly as Moore's Law, but historically it's gone up pretty quickly. The modem connection speeds I've used are as follows: 1995 - 33.6kbps 199? - 56kbps 2003 - 512kbps so in 8 years it's gone up by a factor of 512/33.6 = 15.23. I've seen different definitions of Moore's Law, but one definition is doubling speed every 2 years, and increasing by 15.23 in 8 years is actually very close to Moore's Law: 33.6 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 537.6kbps For me to keep up with Moore's Law I'd have to get a 2Mbps broadband connection by 2007, which I'd say is almost a certainty. -- Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband internet and FM |
On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 17:04:31 -0000, "DAB sounds worse than FM"
wrote: Andrew wrote: On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 16:15:00 -0000, "DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote: Broadband bandwidth is going up at a similar rate to Moore's Law How do you work that one out? The fastest consumer service you could get two years ago was 2Mbit, and today its still the same, and still too expensive. Maybe not as quickly as Moore's Law, but historically it's gone up pretty quickly. The modem connection speeds I've used are as follows: 1995 - 33.6kbps 199? - 56kbps 2003 - 512kbps so in 8 years it's gone up by a factor of 512/33.6 = 15.23. I've seen different definitions of Moore's Law, but one definition is doubling speed every 2 years, and increasing by 15.23 in 8 years is actually very close to Moore's Law: 33.6 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 537.6kbps For me to keep up with Moore's Law I'd have to get a 2Mbps broadband connection by 2007, which I'd say is almost a certainty. The only problem with your calculation is that you are working it through based on the speed YOU were using, not the maximum speed which was available. -- Moldy "Then you have the low-carb dieters. This involves the active avoidance of life-giving antioxidants while scarfing massive amounts of known carcinogens until someone punches you to death for bragging about how much weight you lost." - Scott Adams |
Moldy wrote:
On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 17:04:31 -0000, "DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote: Andrew wrote: On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 16:15:00 -0000, "DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote: Broadband bandwidth is going up at a similar rate to Moore's Law How do you work that one out? The fastest consumer service you could get two years ago was 2Mbit, and today its still the same, and still too expensive. Maybe not as quickly as Moore's Law, but historically it's gone up pretty quickly. The modem connection speeds I've used are as follows: 1995 - 33.6kbps 199? - 56kbps 2003 - 512kbps so in 8 years it's gone up by a factor of 512/33.6 = 15.23. I've seen different definitions of Moore's Law, but one definition is doubling speed every 2 years, and increasing by 15.23 in 8 years is actually very close to Moore's Law: 33.6 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 537.6kbps For me to keep up with Moore's Law I'd have to get a 2Mbps broadband connection by 2007, which I'd say is almost a certainty. The only problem with your calculation is that you are working it through based on the speed YOU were using, not the maximum speed which was available. If you use the maximum speed available then where do you draw the line with cost? I'm sure that if someone had the money they could have had some stupidly expensive link installed just for surfing the net at home even in 1995, although if you remember back to 1995 then the web was so frigging slow that it would have been a bit of a waste of time. So using relatively inexpensive, widely available possibilities then back in 1995 ISDN at 128kbps would probably have been the state of the art above which things would become unfeasibly expensive. In 2003, I dunno, would you say 2 Mbps would be state of the art broadband speed while still being affordable? That makes the increase in speed by a factor of 2000/128 = 15.623, which almost exactly the same as 512k/33.6k. Anyway, if you want to prove me wrong then provide some figures. It's far too easy just to criticise people without providing any figures to back up your claims. -- Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband internet and FM |
http://media.guardian.co.uk/city/sto...167284,00.html
Broadband bandwidth is going up at a similar rate to Moore's Law (Moore's Law states that CPU speeds double every couple of years), so if that continues over the next decade (and from what I've read it is likely to) then TV-on-demand via broadband becomes a feasible alternative to digital TV. I for one hope it succeeds so that Sky have some competition in the premium-content arena. BT years behind as usaul. homechoice already offer this service in some areas. almost 1000 films on demand, similar amount of music videos etc etc. |
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
http://media.guardian.co.uk/city/sto...167284,00.html Broadband bandwidth is going up at a similar rate to Moore's Law (Moore's Law states that CPU speeds double every couple of years), so if that continues over the next decade (and from what I've read it is likely to) then TV-on-demand via broadband becomes a feasible alternative to digital TV. I for one hope it succeeds so that Sky have some competition in the premium-content arena. Any chance of posting the article, I can't see it (something about needing a subscription). I guess if they can get away with 4Mbps MPEG-2 on freeview, then with something like VC-9 or H.264 the same sort of quality should be possible over 2 or even 1 Mbps ADSL |
Ben wrote:
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote: http://media.guardian.co.uk/city/sto...167284,00.html Broadband bandwidth is going up at a similar rate to Moore's Law (Moore's Law states that CPU speeds double every couple of years), so if that continues over the next decade (and from what I've read it is likely to) then TV-on-demand via broadband becomes a feasible alternative to digital TV. I for one hope it succeeds so that Sky have some competition in the premium-content arena. Any chance of posting the article, I can't see it (something about needing a subscription). I guess if they can get away with 4Mbps MPEG-2 on freeview, then with something like VC-9 or H.264 the same sort of quality should be possible over 2 or even 1 Mbps ADSL They mention DVD-quality, and so using one of the newer codecs I assume that'll be about 3 Mbps? Here's the article: BT to offer TV and movie hits online Owen Gibson Thursday March 11, 2004 Telecoms giant BT today unveiled ambitious plans to boost subscriptions to high-speed broadband services, including taking on pay-TV companies with 'video on demand' television shows, including hit ITV series The Bill. Under the proposals, broadcasters and movie studios will be able to deliver a huge library of television shows and films to broadband users at a quality equivalent to digital TV or DVD. Although BT again insisted it would never become a content provider to rival the BBC or BSkyB, it claimed its new BT Rich Media suite of products would make it much easier for broadcasters to offer pay-per-view services to its subscribers. It has already sealed a deal with Fremantle to show episodes of The Bill on a pay-per-view basis and said it had 31 other major deals in the pipeline with UK and US broadcasters in the pipeline. For a monthly fee, BT will handle the distribution of the content and, through its Click & Buy service, charge customers subscription fees or one-off payments to their credit card or BT bill. It said it could also boost the speed of the network when showing paid-for broadcast content so the picture is equivalent to DVD quality. The chief executive of BT Retail, Pierre Danon, said the monthly charge could be as little as £100 in an effort to persuade community channels, regional services, special interest groups and even local football teams to broadcast over the internet. He insisted broadband lines would eventually deliver video on demand directly to subscribers' television sets. "It is technologically already possible, so I don't see why we wouldn't do it," said Mr Danon. Andrew Burke, the director of online services at BT Retail, said the move would make broadband complementary rather than competitive with pay-TV services from cable and Sky. "If you want video on demand you'll be broadband and if you want broadcast TV you'll go to pay-TV," he said. The move ties in with another BT initiative unveiled today, allowing its broadband subscribers to upgrade the speed of their service at any time and, if they subscribe to the basic £19.99 a month product, purchase extra chunks of access. Rather than charging a high fixed monthly fee, BT anticipates slowly migrating its customers to a pay-as-you-go model, where they will pay a low fixed fee plus extra occasional charges to boost the speed of the service to watch films or download software. The flexible bandwidth service is due to begin trials next month and is expected to launch before the end of the year. The move is also a response to increased competition from other internet service providers. Unlike other European markets, where the incumbent telco dominates, BT has around four in 10 connections in the UK, with the rest split between 350 other ISPs. This is fuelling downward pressure on prices and an explosion in services. Tiscali announced yesterday it planned to undercut BT's premium 1Mb service by £8 and offer high-speed broadband access for £29.99 a month. It also launched a new service to match BT's £19.99 offer. BT, which has 2 million broadband subscribers over its lines, has promised shareholders that it will have 5 million by 2006 and said today's announcements were designed to appeal to those who saw no reason to upgrade. Including cable subscribers, there are now more than 3.5 million broadband connections in the UK. "This is the second stage of the broadband revolution in the UK and we aim to drive it forward. Today's announcement underlines our determination to continue innovating to ensure broadband develops a 'must-have' appeal for millions more households throughout the UK," said Mr Danon. In partnership with US internet giant Yahoo!, with whom it last year launched the BT Yahoo Broadband ISP, it is also launching a new service called BT Communicator that will integrate instant messaging, email, text messaging and the ability to make phone calls over the internet to any fixed line or mobile phone through a PC. If the call is made to another PC with BT Communicator then it will be free, but calls to fixed line phones and mobiles will be charged at the standard national rate. The service will also allow users to make video calls. Gavin Patterson, the former managing director of Telewest's consumer division who joined BT earlier this year as managing director of BT's consumer and ventures division, said the new innovations would allow consumers to have more choice and flexibility in mixing the broadband services they wanted. "In a marketplace with more than 80 million customers you need more than one front to fight on and compete in. There are several dimensions you can combine and in doing so you can provide more focused and targeted solutions to customers," he said. -- Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband internet and FM |
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
Moldy wrote: On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 17:04:31 -0000, "DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote: Andrew wrote: On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 16:15:00 -0000, "DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote: Broadband bandwidth is going up at a similar rate to Moore's Law How do you work that one out? The fastest consumer service you could get two years ago was 2Mbit, and today its still the same, and still too expensive. Maybe not as quickly as Moore's Law, but historically it's gone up pretty quickly. The modem connection speeds I've used are as follows: 1995 - 33.6kbps 199? - 56kbps 2003 - 512kbps so in 8 years it's gone up by a factor of 512/33.6 = 15.23. I've seen different definitions of Moore's Law, but one definition is doubling speed every 2 years, and increasing by 15.23 in 8 years is actually very close to Moore's Law: 33.6 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 537.6kbps For me to keep up with Moore's Law I'd have to get a 2Mbps broadband connection by 2007, which I'd say is almost a certainty. The only problem with your calculation is that you are working it through based on the speed YOU were using, not the maximum speed which was available. If you use the maximum speed available then where do you draw the line with cost? I'm sure that if someone had the money they could have had some stupidly expensive link installed just for surfing the net at home even in 1995, although if you remember back to 1995 then the web was so frigging slow that it would have been a bit of a waste of time. So using relatively inexpensive, widely available possibilities then back in 1995 ISDN at 128kbps would probably have been the state of the art above which things would become unfeasibly expensive. In 2003, I dunno, would you say 2 Mbps would be state of the art broadband speed while still being affordable? That makes the increase in speed by a factor of 2000/128 = 15.623, which almost exactly the same as 512k/33.6k. Anyway, if you want to prove me wrong then provide some figures. It's far too easy just to criticise people without providing any figures to back up your claims. Speaking from my own usage I've moved home twice in this time - here's my stats: I had 56k in 98, 64/128k in 99, 600k in 2000 (cable), 1Mbit in 2002(cable), 512k in 2003, 1Mbit in 2004 (gaydsl). At no time did I pay more than £50 a month, which I consider to be absolute maximum. Considering that the original trials from c1997-98 were done at 2Mbit I don't really consider this any sort of progress, I had to take a step BACK due to moving from a cabled area to an ADSL area, and in 2004 I finally got back the same speed I had in the first half of 2002. No doubt it will happen eventually, and indeed already is in a very few places through Homechoice and 2.3Mbit Videostream HDSL, however to compare increase in connection rates with increase in CPU speeds is a fallacy. My increase in 2 years has been nil, in 4 less than double. At the end of the day the only DSL progress has been Datastream, and 1Mbit IPStream, even that took nearly 4 years to be released. BT Wholesale have no intention of breaking the 2Mbit barrier, while ntl: are testing 3Mbit burst speeds in Guildford BT's new burst product will not break this psychological 2Mbit barrier. Anyway I have spoken extensively about this on adslguide's forums, proposing a PAYG as fast as your phone line will tolerate package, however people seem more concerned about remote areas getting DSL than any sort of progress towards real broadband so.... Igni |
Ignition wrote:
Speaking from my own usage I've moved home twice in this time - here's my stats: I had 56k in 98, 64/128k in 99, 600k in 2000 (cable), 1Mbit in 2002(cable), 512k in 2003, 1Mbit in 2004 (gaydsl). At no time did I pay more than £50 a month, which I consider to be absolute maximum. 1 Mbps / 56 kbps = 17.86 2004 - 1998 = 6 years Moore's Law predicts a doubling of speed every 2 years, so in 6 years you get: 56kbps x 2 x 2 x 2 = 448 kbps So you're more than twice ahead of Moore's Law. I don't really see what you're complaining about given that some areas can't even get 512kbps, let alone 1Mbps. Considering that the original trials from c1997-98 were done at 2Mbit IIRC the form of ADSL used in the UK goes up to 8 Mbps, but due to the broadband business models they limit your bandwidth. I don't really consider this any sort of progress, 18 times faster in 6 years is not any sort of progress?? I suggest you look in the dictionary for the word 'progress'. No doubt it will happen eventually, and indeed already is in a very few places through Homechoice and 2.3Mbit Videostream HDSL, however to compare increase in connection rates with increase in CPU speeds is a fallacy. Up to now it seems to be standing up to scrutiny, and I'll tell you why: Fibre optic cables that are used for the internet backbone can handle virtually unlimited bandwidth, but to harness the bandwidth that fibre optics allow you need to increase the speed of the processors that process the signals being carried on the fibre optic cables, so doubling the speeds of processors will allow the data bandwidths to increase roughly proportionally with CPU speed. And just to point out that the original form of Moore's Law was that the number of transistors you can fit into a given area of silicon doubles every 2 years (IIRC) (and because the electrons have a shorter distance to travel they can switch faster), so PC CPUs are not the only CPUs, and the dedicated network processors will also have smaller transistors that switch faster, just like your 2.x GHz Athlon XP in your PC can. My increase in 2 years has been nil, in 4 less than double. An increase by a factor of 18 in 6 years, that's excellent. What do you need this bandwidth for anyway? At the end of the day the only DSL progress has been Datastream, and 1Mbit IPStream, even that took nearly 4 years to be released. BT Wholesale have no intention of breaking the 2Mbit barrier, while ntl: are testing 3Mbit burst speeds in Guildford BT's new burst product will not break this psychological 2Mbit barrier. Anyway I have spoken extensively about this on adslguide's forums, Why doesn't that surprise me? proposing a PAYG as fast as your phone line will tolerate package, however people seem more concerned about remote areas getting DSL than any sort of progress towards real broadband so.... You have to put yourself in the shoes of those without broadband at all, and then you might just have the humility to realise that you're not doing at all badly IMO. -- Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband internet and FM |
"DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote in message snip Maybe not as quickly as Moore's Law, but historically it's gone up pretty quickly. The modem connection speeds I've used are as follows: 1995 - 33.6kbps 199? - 56kbps 2003 - 512kbps Over POTS 1978 - 300bps 1982 - 1200bps 1985 - 9600bps v32 1992 - 14k4bps v32b 1995 - 28k8bps v34 1996 - 33k4bps for analog injection this is the limit according to Shannon's law. 1997 - 56kbps (NOT end to end) ISDN 1990 - 128kbps ADSL current - up to about 2Mb over local loop, but as you go faster the range falls. Moore's Law says the number of gates on a chip (CPU or memory) doubles about every 18 months. This has held pretty well from the first Intel chips (4004 & 1103 in ~1970) to date. Various predictions that the laws of physics will run out for chips have been made for ~30 years, but so far the fabs have outsmarted the cynics. Predictions of the limit of how much information you can get down 2 - 10km of thin single core twisted pair wire are more scientifically based, and IMHO unlikely to be outsmarted. The realistic way to go much faster (Gb's) is fibre to the kerb. so in 8 years it's gone up by a factor of 512/33.6 = 15.23. I've seen different definitions of Moore's Law, but one definition is doubling speed every 2 years, and increasing by 15.23 in 8 years is actually very close to Moore's Law: 33.6 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 537.6kbps For me to keep up with Moore's Law I'd have to get a 2Mbps broadband connection by 2007, which I'd say is almost a certainty. -- Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info |
wowfabgroovy wrote:
"DAB sounds worse than FM" went: http://media.guardian.co.uk/city/sto...167284,00.html Broadband bandwidth is going up at a similar rate to Moore's Law (Moore's Law states that CPU speeds double every couple of years), so if that continues over the next decade (and from what I've read it is likely to) then TV-on-demand via broadband becomes a feasible alternative to digital TV. I for one hope it succeeds so that Sky have some competition in the premium-content arena. it seems to want me to register. what does it say? usually when people go on about things like this they really mean stamp sized realplayer videos, not broadcast quality mpegs you could actually watch on a telly. freeview is about 1.5 to 2 gig per hour. Here you go: BT to offer TV and movie hits online Owen Gibson Thursday March 11, 2004 Telecoms giant BT today unveiled ambitious plans to boost subscriptions to high-speed broadband services, including taking on pay-TV companies with 'video on demand' television shows, including hit ITV series The Bill. Under the proposals, broadcasters and movie studios will be able to deliver a huge library of television shows and films to broadband users at a quality equivalent to digital TV or DVD. Although BT again insisted it would never become a content provider to rival the BBC or BSkyB, it claimed its new BT Rich Media suite of products would make it much easier for broadcasters to offer pay-per-view services to its subscribers. It has already sealed a deal with Fremantle to show episodes of The Bill on a pay-per-view basis and said it had 31 other major deals in the pipeline with UK and US broadcasters in the pipeline. For a monthly fee, BT will handle the distribution of the content and, through its Click & Buy service, charge customers subscription fees or one-off payments to their credit card or BT bill. It said it could also boost the speed of the network when showing paid-for broadcast content so the picture is equivalent to DVD quality. The chief executive of BT Retail, Pierre Danon, said the monthly charge could be as little as £100 in an effort to persuade community channels, regional services, special interest groups and even local football teams to broadcast over the internet. He insisted broadband lines would eventually deliver video on demand directly to subscribers' television sets. "It is technologically already possible, so I don't see why we wouldn't do it," said Mr Danon. Andrew Burke, the director of online services at BT Retail, said the move would make broadband complementary rather than competitive with pay-TV services from cable and Sky. "If you want video on demand you'll be broadband and if you want broadcast TV you'll go to pay-TV," he said. The move ties in with another BT initiative unveiled today, allowing its broadband subscribers to upgrade the speed of their service at any time and, if they subscribe to the basic £19.99 a month product, purchase extra chunks of access. Rather than charging a high fixed monthly fee, BT anticipates slowly migrating its customers to a pay-as-you-go model, where they will pay a low fixed fee plus extra occasional charges to boost the speed of the service to watch films or download software. The flexible bandwidth service is due to begin trials next month and is expected to launch before the end of the year. The move is also a response to increased competition from other internet service providers. Unlike other European markets, where the incumbent telco dominates, BT has around four in 10 connections in the UK, with the rest split between 350 other ISPs. This is fuelling downward pressure on prices and an explosion in services. Tiscali announced yesterday it planned to undercut BT's premium 1Mb service by £8 and offer high-speed broadband access for £29.99 a month. It also launched a new service to match BT's £19.99 offer. BT, which has 2 million broadband subscribers over its lines, has promised shareholders that it will have 5 million by 2006 and said today's announcements were designed to appeal to those who saw no reason to upgrade. Including cable subscribers, there are now more than 3.5 million broadband connections in the UK. "This is the second stage of the broadband revolution in the UK and we aim to drive it forward. Today's announcement underlines our determination to continue innovating to ensure broadband develops a 'must-have' appeal for millions more households throughout the UK," said Mr Danon. In partnership with US internet giant Yahoo!, with whom it last year launched the BT Yahoo Broadband ISP, it is also launching a new service called BT Communicator that will integrate instant messaging, email, text messaging and the ability to make phone calls over the internet to any fixed line or mobile phone through a PC. If the call is made to another PC with BT Communicator then it will be free, but calls to fixed line phones and mobiles will be charged at the standard national rate. The service will also allow users to make video calls. Gavin Patterson, the former managing director of Telewest's consumer division who joined BT earlier this year as managing director of BT's consumer and ventures division, said the new innovations would allow consumers to have more choice and flexibility in mixing the broadband services they wanted. "In a marketplace with more than 80 million customers you need more than one front to fight on and compete in. There are several dimensions you can combine and in doing so you can provide more focused and targeted solutions to customers," he said. -- Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband internet and FM |
R. Mark Clayton wrote:
"DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote in message snip Maybe not as quickly as Moore's Law, but historically it's gone up pretty quickly. The modem connection speeds I've used are as follows: 1995 - 33.6kbps 199? - 56kbps 2003 - 512kbps Over POTS 1978 - 300bps 1982 - 1200bps 1985 - 9600bps v32 1992 - 14k4bps v32b 1995 - 28k8bps v34 1996 - 33k4bps for analog injection this is the limit according to Shannon's law. 1997 - 56kbps (NOT end to end) ISDN 1990 - 128kbps ADSL current - up to about 2Mb over local loop, but as you go faster the range falls. 2 Mbps / 300 bps = 6667 2^((2004-1978)/2)) = 8192 Not bad at all! Moore's Law says the number of gates on a chip (CPU or memory) doubles about every 18 months. This has held pretty well from the first Intel chips (4004 & 1103 in ~1970) to date. Various predictions that the laws of physics will run out for chips have been made for ~30 years, but so far the fabs have outsmarted the cynics. I read the Intel CTO (I think) saying they'd be able to stick with Moore's Law for about the next 15 years or so. Predictions of the limit of how much information you can get down 2 - 10km of thin single core twisted pair wire are more scientifically based, and IMHO unlikely to be outsmarted. What speed do you think will be the typical speed consumers will have in, say, 10 years' time? The realistic way to go much faster (Gb's) is fibre to the kerb. I think we're a long time from getting that. -- Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband internet and FM |
My background in comms goes back to 87, so you can do further maths on these
commonly used data rates if you like: 1987 - 1200bps 1990 - 2400bps 1992 - 9600bps 1993 - 14400bps 1994 - 28800bps .. 2003 - 2048kbps on regularly available urban broadband 2004 - 4096kbps on city metro broadband Expect to see 8Meg this year possibly and potentially much greater. Korea SP's now offer a 100meg service in the metro FYI So its real, just needs some pricing incentives and of course broadband TV and whatever else to create the demand. I cant wait for a bi directional TV service rgds "DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote in message ... Andrew wrote: On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 16:15:00 -0000, "DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote: Broadband bandwidth is going up at a similar rate to Moore's Law How do you work that one out? The fastest consumer service you could get two years ago was 2Mbit, and today its still the same, and still too expensive. Maybe not as quickly as Moore's Law, but historically it's gone up pretty quickly. The modem connection speeds I've used are as follows: 1995 - 33.6kbps 199? - 56kbps 2003 - 512kbps so in 8 years it's gone up by a factor of 512/33.6 = 15.23. I've seen different definitions of Moore's Law, but one definition is doubling speed every 2 years, and increasing by 15.23 in 8 years is actually very close to Moore's Law: 33.6 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 537.6kbps For me to keep up with Moore's Law I'd have to get a 2Mbps broadband connection by 2007, which I'd say is almost a certainty. -- Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband internet and FM |
I was under the impression that 8 mbit SDSL was already available via some
unbundled local-loop in London. I know that at least one company is offering 4 mbit ?DSL for £79.99 aimed at 'home users'. That should be more than enough for a single high-quality video stream. David "Robin Smith" wrote in message news:[email protected] My background in comms goes back to 87, so you can do further maths on these commonly used data rates if you like: 1987 - 1200bps 1990 - 2400bps 1992 - 9600bps 1993 - 14400bps 1994 - 28800bps . 2003 - 2048kbps on regularly available urban broadband 2004 - 4096kbps on city metro broadband Expect to see 8Meg this year possibly and potentially much greater. Korea SP's now offer a 100meg service in the metro FYI So its real, just needs some pricing incentives and of course broadband TV and whatever else to create the demand. I cant wait for a bi directional TV service rgds "DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote in message ... Andrew wrote: On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 16:15:00 -0000, "DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote: Broadband bandwidth is going up at a similar rate to Moore's Law How do you work that one out? The fastest consumer service you could get two years ago was 2Mbit, and today its still the same, and still too expensive. Maybe not as quickly as Moore's Law, but historically it's gone up pretty quickly. The modem connection speeds I've used are as follows: 1995 - 33.6kbps 199? - 56kbps 2003 - 512kbps so in 8 years it's gone up by a factor of 512/33.6 = 15.23. I've seen different definitions of Moore's Law, but one definition is doubling speed every 2 years, and increasing by 15.23 in 8 years is actually very close to Moore's Law: 33.6 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 537.6kbps For me to keep up with Moore's Law I'd have to get a 2Mbps broadband connection by 2007, which I'd say is almost a certainty. -- Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband internet and FM |
On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 18:42:52 -0000, "DAB sounds worse than FM"
wrote: Anyway, if you want to prove me wrong then provide some figures. It's far too easy just to criticise people without providing any figures to back up your claims. Erm, I wasn't trying to prove you wrong or criticise, just saying that you can't really compare it to Moores Law as you are comparing your own figures. I am not making any claims. Get over it. -- Moldy "Then you have the low-carb dieters. This involves the active avoidance of life-giving antioxidants while scarfing massive amounts of known carcinogens until someone punches you to death for bragging about how much weight you lost." - Scott Adams |
Robin Smith wrote:
My background in comms goes back to 87, so you can do further maths on these commonly used data rates if you like: 1987 - 1200bps 1990 - 2400bps 1992 - 9600bps 1993 - 14400bps 1994 - 28800bps . 2003 - 2048kbps on regularly available urban broadband 2004 - 4096kbps on city metro broadband Increase by a factor of 3413, and clearly exponential growth. I think I've proved my point to the non-mathematical sceptics. :) Expect to see 8Meg this year possibly and potentially much greater. Korea SP's now offer a 100meg service in the metro FYI So its real, just needs some pricing incentives and of course broadband TV and whatever else to create the demand. I cant wait for a bi directional TV service As well as broadband TV, I'm looking forward to something more humble: CD audio quality radio via broadband, because when multicasting is enabled on the IP routers (when IPv6 is rolled out I've been told) then there'll be no excuse to use crappy Real Player and other such codecs at stupidly low bit rates. Also, I think it'd be cruelly ironic if broadband TV became successful by being the first to deliver HDTV. -- Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband internet and FM |
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
Ignition wrote: Speaking from my own usage I've moved home twice in this time - here's my stats: I had 56k in 98, 64/128k in 99, 600k in 2000 (cable), 1Mbit in 2002(cable), 512k in 2003, 1Mbit in 2004 (gaydsl). At no time did I pay more than £50 a month, which I consider to be absolute maximum. 1 Mbps / 56 kbps = 17.86 2004 - 1998 = 6 years Moore's Law predicts a doubling of speed every 2 years, so in 6 years you get: 56kbps x 2 x 2 x 2 = 448 kbps So you're more than twice ahead of Moore's Law. I don't really see what you're complaining about given that some areas can't even get 512kbps, let alone 1Mbps. I fail to see the relevance of Moore's Law to this. CPU enhancement comes from improvements in technology. With ADSL the same technology that gave 512kbit 6 years ago will give 8 now. Considering that the original trials from c1997-98 were done at 2Mbit IIRC the form of ADSL used in the UK goes up to 8 Mbps, but due to the broadband business models they limit your bandwidth. I don't really consider this any sort of progress, 18 times faster in 6 years is not any sort of progress?? I suggest you look in the dictionary for the word 'progress'. OK and since 2000 when I left the narrowband technologies? Even had to take a step back due to no cable... No doubt it will happen eventually, and indeed already is in a very few places through Homechoice and 2.3Mbit Videostream HDSL, however to compare increase in connection rates with increase in CPU speeds is a fallacy. Up to now it seems to be standing up to scrutiny, and I'll tell you why: Fibre optic cables that are used for the internet backbone can handle virtually unlimited bandwidth, but to harness the bandwidth that fibre optics allow you need to increase the speed of the processors that process the signals being carried on the fibre optic cables, so doubling the speeds of processors will allow the data bandwidths to increase roughly proportionally with CPU speed. And just to point out that the original form of Moore's Law was that the number of transistors you can fit into a given area of silicon doubles every 2 years (IIRC) (and because the electrons have a shorter distance to travel they can switch faster), so PC CPUs are not the only CPUs, and the dedicated network processors will also have smaller transistors that switch faster, just like your 2.x GHz Athlon XP in your PC can. The internet's backbones in the UK sit mostly idle due to the extreme bottleneck close to the customers. Speaking from my own *experience* having worked for ISPs in the past. The original form of Moore's Law doesn't apply in any way to this. Juniper's higher end kit switches and routes better because it has multiple switching modules working in parallel. As I said anyway well run backbones aren't even stressed, due to extreme bottlenecks over the 'last mile'. My increase in 2 years has been nil, in 4 less than double. An increase by a factor of 18 in 6 years, that's excellent. What do you need this bandwidth for anyway? The same reasons you don't have a 486 in you PC probably. Do people ask you why you aren't using a 500MHz CPU, does most things a 2GHz does, just *slower* What is it to do with you why I want better services for myself anyway? Should I be happy paying the same as places traditionally more expensive to live in, for less? Personification of 'rip-off Britain' bend over and take it, and stop complaining. At the end of the day the only DSL progress has been Datastream, and 1Mbit IPStream, even that took nearly 4 years to be released. BT Wholesale have no intention of breaking the 2Mbit barrier, while ntl: are testing 3Mbit burst speeds in Guildford BT's new burst product will not break this psychological 2Mbit barrier. Anyway I have spoken extensively about this on adslguide's forums, Why doesn't that surprise me? You tell me, again getting moaned out for wanting a lazy telco to do more. Want me to pass the vaseline there? proposing a PAYG as fast as your phone line will tolerate package, however people seem more concerned about remote areas getting DSL than any sort of progress towards real broadband so.... You have to put yourself in the shoes of those without broadband at all, and then you might just have the humility to realise that you're not doing at all badly IMO. I'd rather not, I live in a not small city, and have access to the same services as a village with a population of 500 enabled by the local Government throwing BT a few quid. Madness. If you're happy with the current situation I'd suggest you look elsewhere and see we are at the bottom of the pile of the G8 as far as connection speeds available go, but at the top for availability. Although of course by the time the nationwide rollout is done 512k will be a laughable connection speed, but hey at least we'll all be shafted together, and BT make more profit either way. You have no idea about why the UK's DSL is so relatively slow, it's for mostly preserving legacy revenues for BT, and political expediency. In no other field at the moment I think are the 'early adopters' so poorly catered for. Igni |
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
Also, I think it'd be cruelly ironic if broadband TV became successful by being the first to deliver HDTV. I'd pay for that :-) It wouldn't surprise me. Broadcasters have no plans for HDTV, HD-DVD is years away, nobody has a true HD television set at the moment, yet you can already go out and buy Terminator 2 extreme edition (or whatever its called) and watch it in high definition on your PC. |
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
I guess if they can get away with 4Mbps MPEG-2 on freeview, then with something like VC-9 or H.264 the same sort of quality should be possible over 2 or even 1 Mbps ADSL They mention DVD-quality, and so using one of the newer codecs I assume that'll be about 3 Mbps? Or maybe they mean DVD quality in the same sense that DAB is CD quality? |
Robin Smith wrote:
My background in comms goes back to 87, so you can do further maths on these commonly used data rates if you like: 1987 - 1200bps 1990 - 2400bps 1992 - 9600bps 1993 - 14400bps 1994 - 28800bps . 2003 - 2048kbps on regularly available urban broadband 2004 - 4096kbps on city metro broadband Expect to see 8Meg this year possibly and potentially much greater. Korea SP's now offer a 100meg service in the metro FYI 2Mbit services generally of a dubious quality are available in some exchanges for less than the £60+VAT or more that is to be paid for IPStream 2000 services. 4Mbit services are available *only* on 35 Central London exchanges, or on approximately 100 exchanges for business rates, around £200 per month + VAT I believe. 8Mbit has been available on the same 100-ish exchanges for £300 per month + VAT for a while now, and is being tested on the 35 Central London exchanges, however the price for that will be well outside the £50 or so range I mentioned. Being in comms since 87 you'll know that the only way to go over 8Mbit is with ADSL2+ and/or line bonding, or with vDSL, and neither of these services will come anywhere near a viable residential price point, Considering that a 4Mbit service on those 35 Central London exchanges is £75 a month + VAT. BT have no intentions of releasing ADSL2+ services (and Ofcom have effectively banned the use of ADSL2+ frequencies) or vDSL any time soon. Korean SPs received government funding, Japanese companies offer 26, 51.2 Mbit DSL And 100Mbit fibre to premises in some places. This is as much to do with acceptance of contention and relatively low international traffic I believe. *please* stop with the maths it doesn't apply in this case as there is no technical reason why 8Mbit products can't be made available to those whose lines are good enough to support it right now. Just a question of finance, politics, a little innovation, and willing. :( |
Ignition wrote:
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote: Ignition wrote: Speaking from my own usage I've moved home twice in this time - here's my stats: I had 56k in 98, 64/128k in 99, 600k in 2000 (cable), 1Mbit in 2002(cable), 512k in 2003, 1Mbit in 2004 (gaydsl). At no time did I pay more than £50 a month, which I consider to be absolute maximum. 1 Mbps / 56 kbps = 17.86 2004 - 1998 = 6 years Moore's Law predicts a doubling of speed every 2 years, so in 6 years you get: 56kbps x 2 x 2 x 2 = 448 kbps So you're more than twice ahead of Moore's Law. I don't really see what you're complaining about given that some areas can't even get 512kbps, let alone 1Mbps. I fail to see the relevance of Moore's Law to this. CPU enhancement comes from improvements in technology. Moore's Law says that the number of transistors you can fit onto a given area of silicon doubles every 18 months, and because the clock speed of a CPU is dominated by the duration it takes for transistors to switch from one state to another, and that doubling the number of transistors in a given space implies a halving of the size of the transistors, and that it is the time it takes electrons to move from through the transistor that determines switching speed, then making the transistors half the size implies that the switching speed doubles. Conclusion: CPU speed is directly related to Moore's Laws predictions about transistor size. With ADSL the same technology that gave 512kbit 6 years ago will give 8 now. Yeah, it's going up extremely quickly, so what are you complaining about? 18 times faster in 6 years is not any sort of progress?? I suggest you look in the dictionary for the word 'progress'. OK and since 2000 when I left the narrowband technologies? Even had to take a step back due to no cable... You are just ONE consumer, and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. And just to point out that the original form of Moore's Law was that the number of transistors you can fit into a given area of silicon doubles every 2 years (IIRC) (and because the electrons have a shorter distance to travel they can switch faster), so PC CPUs are not the only CPUs, and the dedicated network processors will also have smaller transistors that switch faster, just like your 2.x GHz Athlon XP in your PC can. The internet's backbones in the UK sit mostly idle due to the extreme bottleneck close to the customers. Extreme bottleneck close to the consumers? The bottleneck close to the consumers is controlled by the multiplex contention ratio, isn't it? It's usually 50:1 isn't it? So clearly if they lowered the contention ratio then bandwidths could go up. Speaking from my own *experience* having worked for ISPs in the past. The original form of Moore's Law doesn't apply in any way to this. Juniper's higher end kit switches and routes better because it has multiple switching modules working in parallel. As I said anyway well run backbones aren't even stressed, due to extreme bottlenecks over the 'last mile'. Parallelization will of course allow higher capacity. My increase in 2 years has been nil, in 4 less than double. An increase by a factor of 18 in 6 years, that's excellent. What do you need this bandwidth for anyway? The same reasons you don't have a 486 in you PC probably. Do people ask you why you aren't using a 500MHz CPU, does most things a 2GHz does, just *slower* What is it to do with you why I want better services for myself anyway? Just asking. I've had broadband for about 6 months now and although I've not gone scouring the net for such things, I've not heard much about decent high-bandwidth content that's available, and I've assumed that we're just going to have to wait for broadband market penetration to grow before we start seeing useful wide bandwidth services, that's all really. Also, most of the delays when general surfing I've experienced seem to be due to delays within the internet, and not at my end, because if a website is slow, if I try a random different website in my Favourites folder it isn't slow, which proves to me that the broadband connection isn't the problem. Should I be happy paying the same as places traditionally more expensive to live in, for less? Personification of 'rip-off Britain' bend over and take it, and stop complaining. It's not even close to being a prime example of rip-off Britain. If you want a good example of rip-off Britain then just look at the state of the audio quality on DAB in the UK due to the low bit rates being provided by the broadcasters: http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/worldwide_dab.htm At the end of the day the only DSL progress has been Datastream, and 1Mbit IPStream, even that took nearly 4 years to be released. BT Wholesale have no intention of breaking the 2Mbit barrier, while ntl: are testing 3Mbit burst speeds in Guildford BT's new burst product will not break this psychological 2Mbit barrier. Anyway I have spoken extensively about this on adslguide's forums, Why doesn't that surprise me? You tell me, again getting moaned out for wanting a lazy telco to do more. Want me to pass the vaseline there? No, you keep it. proposing a PAYG as fast as your phone line will tolerate package, however people seem more concerned about remote areas getting DSL than any sort of progress towards real broadband so.... You have to put yourself in the shoes of those without broadband at all, and then you might just have the humility to realise that you're not doing at all badly IMO. I'd rather not, I live in a not small city, and have access to the same services as a village with a population of 500 enabled by the local Government throwing BT a few quid. Madness. It's not madness at all. I think it's the right thing to do to give rural areas access to broadband ahead of you getting your multi-megabit broadband connection. And for the record, I live in a not small city either, and am looking forward to higher bandwidth broadband, but I'm not so selfish that I demand multi-megabit broadband while those that live in the countryside can't get it at all. If you're happy with the current situation I'd suggest you look elsewhere and see we are at the bottom of the pile of the G8 as far as connection speeds available go, but at the top for availability. Can you provide a URL to back up your claim? Although of course by the time the nationwide rollout is done 512k will be a laughable connection speed, but hey at least we'll all be shafted together, and BT make more profit either way. You have no idea about why the UK's DSL is so relatively slow, it's for mostly preserving legacy revenues for BT, I watched the unbundling of the local loop issue with interest, and agree that BT were acting badly. But I think that was the previous BT CEO's fault (he was a bit of a fk up really), and you've got to give the new CEO time to get BT's act together. The first thing he said he'd do when he took charge was to improve broadband, and to my mind he seems to be sticking to his word. Could it be quicker? Obviously you could get things done extremely quickly if you throw money at the situation, but I reckon we're catching up. And the UK is at the top of the league as far as market penetration of broadband is concerned IIRC, and I'm afraid that'll have been achieved by making your multi-megabit connection a lower priority than those that don't get broadband at all, and I agree with that. and political expediency. In no other field at the moment I think are the 'early adopters' so poorly catered for. DAB stations in the UK used to be usually transmitted at 192kbps, now 98% of stereo stations use 128kbps, and a load of music stations now use mono, so DAB is going backwards, not forwards, so clearly the early-adopters have been completely screwed. -- Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband internet and FM |
Ben wrote:
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote: Also, I think it'd be cruelly ironic if broadband TV became successful by being the first to deliver HDTV. I'd pay for that :-) It wouldn't surprise me. Broadcasters have no plans for HDTV, HD-DVD is years away I read the following article yesterday which says that HD-DVD is waiting for the licensing for H.264 and WMV9 to be sorted out (trust Microsoft to stick their bloody oar in...): http://www.planetanalog.com/news/sho...cleID=18311332 So hopefully once that's sorted (and it says that they're going to revise the situation in 60 days' time) then it can start moving ahead again. Reading comms/electronics web sites there seems to be a lot of standards squabbles these days. The UWB spec is frozen because there's 2 sides that have competing technology and neither will budge an inch, and it looks like each side is going to develop their own proprietary systems, and before that there's the obvious writable DVD format war, although with DVD+/-R drives it's not been as bad as it could have been. -- Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband internet and FM |
Ben wrote:
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote: I guess if they can get away with 4Mbps MPEG-2 on freeview, then with something like VC-9 or H.264 the same sort of quality should be possible over 2 or even 1 Mbps ADSL They mention DVD-quality, and so using one of the newer codecs I assume that'll be about 3 Mbps? Or maybe they mean DVD quality in the same sense that DAB is CD quality? Possibly. -- Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband internet and FM |
"DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote in message ... http://media.guardian.co.uk/city/sto...167284,00.html Broadband bandwidth is going up at a similar rate to Moore's Law (Moore's Law states that CPU speeds double every couple of years), so if that continues over the next decade (and from what I've read it is likely to) then TV-on-demand via broadband becomes a feasible alternative to digital TV. I for one hope it succeeds so that Sky have some competition in the premium-content arena. IIRC BT developed ADSL in the '80's for Video on Demand but couldn't actually provide a service because the regulatory framework of the time forbade them from being a broadcaster. This was to stop them competing with the cable companies who needed the protection as an incentive to dig up all our streets in the name of cabling us all up! (Funny how I still can't get cable, even on a new estate. Oh, I forgot, the cable companies are all virtually bust now. Most of their subs are being paid straight to $ky and their only profits are coming from broadband! There's a really skewed logic here, I'm sure, but I can't work it out.) -- Antony Colwood |
Antony Colwood wrote:
"DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote in message ... http://media.guardian.co.uk/city/sto...167284,00.html Broadband bandwidth is going up at a similar rate to Moore's Law (Moore's Law states that CPU speeds double every couple of years), so if that continues over the next decade (and from what I've read it is likely to) then TV-on-demand via broadband becomes a feasible alternative to digital TV. I for one hope it succeeds so that Sky have some competition in the premium-content arena. IIRC BT developed ADSL in the '80's for Video on Demand but couldn't actually provide a service because the regulatory framework of the time forbade them from being a broadcaster. This was to stop them competing with the cable companies who needed the protection as an incentive to dig up all our streets in the name of cabling us all up! Great! (Funny how I still can't get cable, even on a new estate. Oh, I forgot, the cable companies are all virtually bust now. Most of their subs are being paid straight to $ky and their only profits are coming from broadband! There's a really skewed logic here, I'm sure, but I can't work it out.) Someone said NTL's broadcast transmission section is profitable. -- Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband internet and FM |
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
Ignition wrote: DAB sounds worse than FM wrote: Ignition wrote: Speaking from my own usage I've moved home twice in this time - here's my stats: I had 56k in 98, 64/128k in 99, 600k in 2000 (cable), 1Mbit in 2002(cable), 512k in 2003, 1Mbit in 2004 (gaydsl). At no time did I pay more than £50 a month, which I consider to be absolute maximum. 1 Mbps / 56 kbps = 17.86 2004 - 1998 = 6 years Moore's Law predicts a doubling of speed every 2 years, so in 6 years you get: 56kbps x 2 x 2 x 2 = 448 kbps So you're more than twice ahead of Moore's Law. I don't really see what you're complaining about given that some areas can't even get 512kbps, let alone 1Mbps. I fail to see the relevance of Moore's Law to this. CPU enhancement comes from improvements in technology. Moore's Law says that the number of transistors you can fit onto a given area of silicon doubles every 18 months, and because the clock speed of a CPU is dominated by the duration it takes for transistors to switch from one state to another, and that doubling the number of transistors in a given space implies a halving of the size of the transistors, and that it is the time it takes electrons to move from through the transistor that determines switching speed, then making the transistors half the size implies that the switching speed doubles. Conclusion: CPU speed is directly related to Moore's Laws predictions about transistor size. Still completely irrelevant to available DSL speeds though, isn't it? With ADSL the same technology that gave 512kbit 6 years ago will give 8 now. Yeah, it's going up extremely quickly, so what are you complaining about? Sorry, there's no excuse for not going up at all really in 4 years. Dialup progress is completely irrelevant, and I fail to see what the issue is with grasping this. For dialup to be accelerated equipment at both sides of the connection has to be updated. The CVXes or whatever would require new modem cards at very least, probably new system controllers as well. For ADSL to be accelerated it's just a case of changing the rate cap on the DSLAM, a *trivial* configuration change - is it that complicated to grasp that to offer a PAYG or capped 8Mbit service will in no way require more money from BT in most cases, just reconfiguration, and not particularly nightmarish reconfig at that, and will in no way impact on Farmer Piles getting his 512k. 18 times faster in 6 years is not any sort of progress?? I suggest you look in the dictionary for the word 'progress'. OK and since 2000 when I left the narrowband technologies? Even had to take a step back due to no cable... You are just ONE consumer, and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. About as irrelevant as discussing dialup platform progress along with ADSL, and Moore's Law in relation to it. Extreme bottleneck close to the consumers? The bottleneck close to the consumers is controlled by the multiplex contention ratio, isn't it? It's usually 50:1 isn't it? So clearly if they lowered the contention ratio then bandwidths could go up. No. If contention goes UP bandwidths can go up. Think about it. At the moment BT are running some of their 'usual' 50:1 DLEs at 12:1 - 15:1. Contention being visible is an apparent swearword right now, which is part of the reason for the slow development. Most other places will accept some slowdown at peak times, although saying that they start from 4Mbit or whatever so some slowdown is more tolerable! Speaking from my own *experience* having worked for ISPs in the past. The original form of Moore's Law doesn't apply in any way to this. Juniper's higher end kit switches and routes better because it has multiple switching modules working in parallel. As I said anyway well run backbones aren't even stressed, due to extreme bottlenecks over the 'last mile'. Parallelization will of course allow higher capacity. As will advances, remember this is ASIC hardware not generalised x86 or whatever so new developments allow routers to significantly break Moore's Law, although as I've already mentioned backbones are underutilised anyway! My increase in 2 years has been nil, in 4 less than double. An increase by a factor of 18 in 6 years, that's excellent. What do you need this bandwidth for anyway? The same reasons you don't have a 486 in you PC probably. Do people ask you why you aren't using a 500MHz CPU, does most things a 2GHz does, just *slower* What is it to do with you why I want better services for myself anyway? Just asking. I've had broadband for about 6 months now and although I've not gone scouring the net for such things, I've not heard much about decent high-bandwidth content that's available, and I've assumed that we're just going to have to wait for broadband market penetration to grow before we start seeing useful wide bandwidth services, that's all really. Also, most of the delays when general surfing I've experienced seem to be due to delays within the internet, and not at my end, because if a website is slow, if I try a random different website in my Favourites folder it isn't slow, which proves to me that the broadband connection isn't the problem. You and I obviously use the Internet for different reasons. The takeup of 1Mbit services was so high BT couldn't keep up with demand, and are still struggling to maintain that leased line like performance as apparently a lot more people want the bandwidth than they thought. The popularity of the 2Mbit services also indicates some considerable interest. snip DAB stuff It's not madness at all. I think it's the right thing to do to give rural areas access to broadband ahead of you getting your multi-megabit broadband connection. And for the record, I live in a not small city either, and am looking forward to higher bandwidth broadband, but I'm not so selfish that I demand multi-megabit broadband while those that live in the countryside can't get it at all. I do apologise. Maybe we should give them 100+ store shopping malls as well, buses every 10 minutes, trains every 5, cinemas, etc. Some rural areas don't have mains gas or sewage, maybe I should offer my sewage pipe up for the water company to recycle so someone in a village with a 3 figure population can have it? If you're happy with the current situation I'd suggest you look elsewhere and see we are at the bottom of the pile of the G8 as far as connection speeds available go, but at the top for availability. Can you provide a URL to back up your claim? I don't need to. Google will tell you all you need to know. Although of course by the time the nationwide rollout is done 512k will be a laughable connection speed, but hey at least we'll all be shafted together, and BT make more profit either way. You have no idea about why the UK's DSL is so relatively slow, it's for mostly preserving legacy revenues for BT, I watched the unbundling of the local loop issue with interest, and agree that BT were acting badly. But I think that was the previous BT CEO's fault (he was a bit of a fk up really), and you've got to give the new CEO time to get BT's act together. The first thing he said he'd do when he took charge was to improve broadband, and to my mind he seems to be sticking to his word. Could it be quicker? Obviously you could get things done extremely quickly if you throw money at the situation, but I reckon we're catching up. And the UK is at the top of the league as far as market penetration of broadband is concerned IIRC, and I'm afraid that'll have been achieved by making your multi-megabit connection a lower priority than those that don't get broadband at all, and I agree with that. Ben Verwaayen is not interested in offering faster services. I have spoken to him about this myself and the vibe was very much that BT aren't interested in it right now as people don't get excited about it. Even Ofcom commented on the unhealthy obsession with rollout of these services and concern at them being obsolete - which they already are. and political expediency. In no other field at the moment I think are the 'early adopters' so poorly catered for. DAB stations in the UK used to be usually transmitted at 192kbps, now 98% of stereo stations use 128kbps, and a load of music stations now use mono, so DAB is going backwards, not forwards, so clearly the early-adopters have been completely screwed. How many people take DAB just out of interest? Probably significantly less than the 3 million HSI users (I am NOT calling current services 'broadband'). Interesting you get somewhat more animated at discussion about DAB - maybe you should stick to what you care about. I feel as strongly about this issue as you do about DAB. I'm happy that you're happy, I'm not, and I'm quite happy to stand on the highest mountain and shout about it. |
Sorry, there's no excuse for not going up at all really in 4 years. Dialup progress is completely irrelevant, and I fail to see what the issue is with grasping this. For dialup to be accelerated equipment at both sides of the connection has to be updated. The CVXes or whatever would require new modem cards at very least, probably new system controllers as well. For ADSL to be accelerated it's just a case of changing the rate cap on the DSLAM, a *trivial* configuration change - is it that complicated to grasp that to offer a PAYG or capped 8Mbit service will in no way require more money from BT in most cases, just reconfiguration, and not particularly nightmarish reconfig at that, and will in no way impact on Farmer Piles getting his 512k. The DSLAM config would be trivial, but the required upgrade upstream to the capcity of their core ATM network might be more of an issue. It most certainly would not be cost-free. David |
Ignition wrote:
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote: Ignition wrote: Conclusion: CPU speed is directly related to Moore's Laws predictions about transistor size. Still completely irrelevant to available DSL speeds though, isn't it? I don't think it is. IC speeds go up with Moore's Law, so replacing boards with newer kit will follow the general trend followed by Moore's Law. With ADSL the same technology that gave 512kbit 6 years ago will give 8 now. Yeah, it's going up extremely quickly, so what are you complaining about? Sorry, there's no excuse for not going up at all really in 4 years. There clearly is an excuse: rolling out to areas that don't get it. Dialup progress is completely irrelevant, and I fail to see what the issue is with grasping this. Resources are limited (i.e. the money to be invested, and the engineers to do the work), so although I'm sure they could upgrade the odd exchange for higher speed, I'd imagine they try to keep things relatively uniform because that'll help their marketing departments. For dialup to be accelerated equipment at both sides of the connection has to be updated. The CVXes or whatever would require new modem cards at very least, probably new system controllers as well. For ADSL to be accelerated it's just a case of changing the rate cap on the DSLAM, a *trivial* configuration change - is it that complicated to grasp that to offer a PAYG or capped 8Mbit service will in no way require more money from BT in most cases, just reconfiguration, and not particularly nightmarish reconfig at that, and will in no way impact on Farmer Piles getting his 512k. It's not me that needs to grasp this, because I don't work for BT. Farmer Piles getting his 512k is obviously having some effect on you getting your 700 Mbps connection though, otherwise you'd have seen some big changes. OK and since 2000 when I left the narrowband technologies? Even had to take a step back due to no cable... You are just ONE consumer, and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. About as irrelevant as discussing dialup platform progress along with ADSL, and Moore's Law in relation to it. No, you taking a step backwards is about as irrelevant as it gets. You are 1 person in 60 million, so just because you went backwards is just you whinging, nothing more. Extreme bottleneck close to the consumers? The bottleneck close to the consumers is controlled by the multiplex contention ratio, isn't it? It's usually 50:1 isn't it? So clearly if they lowered the contention ratio then bandwidths could go up. No. If contention goes UP bandwidths can go up. Think about it. At the moment BT are running some of their 'usual' 50:1 DLEs at 12:1 - 15:1. Contention being visible is an apparent swearword right now, which is part of the reason for the slow development. Oh, so you do admit that there are reasons for the slow development, then? Parallelization will of course allow higher capacity. As will advances, remember this is ASIC hardware not generalised x86 or whatever so new developments allow routers to significantly break Moore's Law, That just means that you have no understanding of microelectronics then. Moore's Law is the exponential reduction in transistor size by the silicon chip fabricators, and it's not limited to x86 chips by any means, and ASICs will follow the same speed changes as general purpose CPUs. What you're saying is that ASICs can significantly break Moore's Law, which is about as wrong as it gets. although as I've already mentioned backbones are underutilised anyway! Although you've provided no evidence that this is the case. Just asking. I've had broadband for about 6 months now and although I've not gone scouring the net for such things, I've not heard much about decent high-bandwidth content that's available, and I've assumed that we're just going to have to wait for broadband market penetration to grow before we start seeing useful wide bandwidth services, that's all really. Also, most of the delays when general surfing I've experienced seem to be due to delays within the internet, and not at my end, because if a website is slow, if I try a random different website in my Favourites folder it isn't slow, which proves to me that the broadband connection isn't the problem. You and I obviously use the Internet for different reasons. The takeup of 1Mbit services was so high BT couldn't keep up with demand, and are still struggling to maintain that leased line like performance as apparently a lot more people want the bandwidth than they thought. The popularity of the 2Mbit services also indicates some considerable interest. Maybe I'm just more patient than you are? Although I find that hard to believe because I'm a relatively impatient person! It's not madness at all. I think it's the right thing to do to give rural areas access to broadband ahead of you getting your multi-megabit broadband connection. And for the record, I live in a not small city either, and am looking forward to higher bandwidth broadband, but I'm not so selfish that I demand multi-megabit broadband while those that live in the countryside can't get it at all. I do apologise. Maybe we should give them 100+ store shopping malls as well, buses every 10 minutes, trains every 5, cinemas, etc. You can if you want, but it doesn't sound particularly profitable. Some rural areas don't have mains gas or sewage, maybe I should offer my sewage pipe up for the water company to recycle so someone in a village with a 3 figure population can have it? That would be a good idea. If you're happy with the current situation I'd suggest you look elsewhere and see we are at the bottom of the pile of the G8 as far as connection speeds available go, but at the top for availability. Can you provide a URL to back up your claim? I don't need to. Google will tell you all you need to know. I'm not the one that needs to convince the other about something. If you want me to believe you, provide some evidence, because I've got better things to do than search for information that YOU are claiming. I watched the unbundling of the local loop issue with interest, and agree that BT were acting badly. But I think that was the previous BT CEO's fault (he was a bit of a fk up really), and you've got to give the new CEO time to get BT's act together. The first thing he said he'd do when he took charge was to improve broadband, and to my mind he seems to be sticking to his word. Could it be quicker? Obviously you could get things done extremely quickly if you throw money at the situation, but I reckon we're catching up. And the UK is at the top of the league as far as market penetration of broadband is concerned IIRC, and I'm afraid that'll have been achieved by making your multi-megabit connection a lower priority than those that don't get broadband at all, and I agree with that. Ben Verwaayen is not interested in offering faster services. I have spoken to him about this myself and the vibe was very much that BT aren't interested in it right now as people don't get excited about it. Even Ofcom commented on the unhealthy obsession with rollout of these services and concern at them being obsolete - which they already are. If there's high enough demand for the higher bandwidth services then we'll get them, and I suggest that until then, you calm down, make yourself a nice cup of Horlicks, put your feet up, and chill out, because you'll have a heart attack the way you're going. and political expediency. In no other field at the moment I think are the 'early adopters' so poorly catered for. DAB stations in the UK used to be usually transmitted at 192kbps, now 98% of stereo stations use 128kbps, and a load of music stations now use mono, so DAB is going backwards, not forwards, so clearly the early-adopters have been completely screwed. How many people take DAB just out of interest? Probably significantly less than the 3 million HSI users (I am NOT calling current services 'broadband'). Interesting you get somewhat more animated at discussion about DAB - maybe you should stick to what you care about. I feel as strongly about this issue as you do about DAB. I'm happy that you're happy, I'm not, and I'm quite happy to stand on the highest mountain and shout about it. But you'd look really silly if anyone was watching you. Also, standing on the highest mountain and shouting about it is a highly inefficient way to get your message across, because sound levels drop with the inverse square of distance, and the highest mountains are invariably sparsely populated, so nobody would hear you. You'd probably be better taking up spamming instead. -- Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband internet and FM |
Obviously 4 mbit is suboptimal for a few reasons, but the technology is in
place to start such a service. 1 artifact-ridden channel would be a good start until we can get gigabit-to-home connections :-) David "Max" wrote in message ... On Fri, 12 Mar 2004 09:26:46 -0000, David Anthony wrote: I was under the impression that 8 mbit SDSL was already available via some unbundled local-loop in London. I know that at least one company is offering 4 mbit ?DSL for £79.99 aimed at 'home users'. That should be more than enough for a single high-quality video stream. That's questionable. On DTT, BBC1 uses a video bit-rate of 15Mbps, as does Channel 4. Most of the other "mainstream" channels are in the 4-8Mbps range. You could just manage Channel 5 or BBC2, if you're satisfied with that level of artifacts. -- Max |
David Anthony wrote:
Sorry, there's no excuse for not going up at all really in 4 years. Dialup progress is completely irrelevant, and I fail to see what the issue is with grasping this. For dialup to be accelerated equipment at both sides of the connection has to be updated. The CVXes or whatever would require new modem cards at very least, probably new system controllers as well. For ADSL to be accelerated it's just a case of changing the rate cap on the DSLAM, a *trivial* configuration change - is it that complicated to grasp that to offer a PAYG or capped 8Mbit service will in no way require more money from BT in most cases, just reconfiguration, and not particularly nightmarish reconfig at that, and will in no way impact on Farmer Piles getting his 512k. The DSLAM config would be trivial, but the required upgrade upstream to the capcity of their core ATM network might be more of an issue. It most certainly would not be cost-free. David Not really David, following a PAYG service as I'm suggesting the load on core ATM would most likely not be much if at all increased. The only real upgrade work would be from DLEs with low capacity, although I would hope that when BT upgrade exchanges they at least have the forethought to provision E3 or higher to each one. Bandwidth within the BT Wholesale network is essentially free apart from the cost of the ATM switches and transmission equipment. Core network really shouldn't need upgrading from the relatively low increase in traffic that would come from these 8Mbit PAYG services, if it does BT really shouldn't be running a *core* network that close! |
Max wrote:
On Fri, 12 Mar 2004 10:58:28 +0000, Ignition wrote: I fail to see the relevance of Moore's Law to this. CPU enhancement comes from improvements in technology. With ADSL the same technology that gave 512kbit 6 years ago will give 8 now. 8Mbps DSL was technically possible then, and working equipment was available, but the fastest product actually offered was 2Mbps (downstream). The DTI capped local-loop DSL products at 4Mbps, due to concerns about RFI radiating from phone lines. I know that was under review, but I don't know what the outcome was/will be. It is a genuine concern, however. Bulldog are trialling and Easynet have been offering 8Mbps products for a while now. Although of course by the time the nationwide rollout is done 512k will be a laughable connection speed, but hey at least we'll all be shafted together, and BT make more profit either way. Eh? Why would we be limited to 512kbps when the rollout is complete? The exchange equipment will support up to 4Mbps already. Because at the moment 512k is being seen as the standard speed in UK DSL. Until prices drop on the higher bandwidth products, and there's no incentive to do that while they aren't being superceded, it will remain that way. Some ISPs offer 512k as an entry level service fgs. We're busily dropping our already pretty low end lower still due to cheap dialup and monopoly priced DSL. True, RADSL only works at up to 512kbps, but that's intended to get the greatest possible coverage in terms of distance from the exchange. It's not at all clear what the solution will be for cost-effective, high-bandwidth connectivity in more remote areas. It isn't DSL, however the current obsession with DSL means that local authorities are more than happy to throw money at BT to deliver it to exchanges at the expense of wireless companies. For most, DSL = 'broadband'. |
Ignition wrote:
David Anthony wrote: Sorry, there's no excuse for not going up at all really in 4 years. Dialup progress is completely irrelevant, and I fail to see what the issue is with grasping this. For dialup to be accelerated equipment at both sides of the connection has to be updated. The CVXes or whatever would require new modem cards at very least, probably new system controllers as well. For ADSL to be accelerated it's just a case of changing the rate cap on the DSLAM, a *trivial* configuration change - is it that complicated to grasp that to offer a PAYG or capped 8Mbit service will in no way require more money from BT in most cases, just reconfiguration, and not particularly nightmarish reconfig at that, and will in no way impact on Farmer Piles getting his 512k. The DSLAM config would be trivial, but the required upgrade upstream to the capcity of their core ATM network might be more of an issue. It most certainly would not be cost-free. David Not really David, following a PAYG service as I'm suggesting the load on core ATM would most likely not be much if at all increased. The only real upgrade work would be from DLEs with low capacity, although I would hope that when BT upgrade exchanges they at least have the forethought to provision E3 or higher to each one. Bandwidth within the BT Wholesale network is essentially free apart from the cost of the ATM switches and transmission equipment. Core network really shouldn't need upgrading from the relatively low increase in traffic that would come from these 8Mbit PAYG services, if it does BT really shouldn't be running a *core* network that close! It looks like you're a broadband guru, because BT like your scheme of flexible bandwidth: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/22/36198.html -- Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband internet and FM |
Ignition wrote:
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote: DAB stations in the UK used to be usually transmitted at 192kbps, now 98% of stereo stations use 128kbps, and a load of music stations now use mono, so DAB is going backwards, not forwards, so clearly the early-adopters have been completely screwed. How many people take DAB just out of interest? Probably significantly less than the 3 million HSI users (I am NOT calling current services 'broadband'). Interesting you get somewhat more animated at discussion about DAB - maybe you should stick to what you care about. I feel as strongly about this issue as you do about DAB. I'm happy that you're happy, I'm not, and I'm quite happy to stand on the highest mountain and shout about it. I should add that although you will one day reach your multi-megabit broadband nirvana, DAB is only likely to go one way, and that is that bit rates, and therefore audio quality, are going to be reduced in the future as more people get DAB and the broadcasters decide to put more stations on. This is not just scare tactics, this is what 2 (GWR and Emap) of the big 4 commercial radio groups have openly said they intend to do. -- Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband internet and FM |
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
I don't think it is. IC speeds go up with Moore's Law, so replacing boards with newer kit will follow the general trend followed by Moore's Law. If there were a shortage of backbone that'd be an issue, there isn't. Modern routers can switch 320Gbps and are more likely to have shortage of bandwidth or memory than shortage of routing / switching capacity. If your network's routers are strained and there's no upgrade path you resegment your network. Sorry, there's no excuse for not going up at all really in 4 years. There clearly is an excuse: rolling out to areas that don't get it. See previous comments, areas with no mains gas or sewage get DSL?! Dialup progress is completely irrelevant, and I fail to see what the issue is with grasping this. Resources are limited (i.e. the money to be invested, and the engineers to do the work), so although I'm sure they could upgrade the odd exchange for higher speed, I'd imagine they try to keep things relatively uniform because that'll help their marketing departments. Then of course there's leased line and ISDN revenues, a far more likely reason. For dialup to be accelerated equipment at both sides of the connection has to be updated. The CVXes or whatever would require new modem cards at very least, probably new system controllers as well. For ADSL to be accelerated it's just a case of changing the rate cap on the DSLAM, a *trivial* configuration change - is it that complicated to grasp that to offer a PAYG or capped 8Mbit service will in no way require more money from BT in most cases, just reconfiguration, and not particularly nightmarish reconfig at that, and will in no way impact on Farmer Piles getting his 512k. It's not me that needs to grasp this, because I don't work for BT. Farmer Piles getting his 512k is obviously having some effect on you getting your 700 Mbps connection though, otherwise you'd have seen some big changes. Hardly, the effect it may have is that BT can blag that they care about rolling out these services. We were the last of the G8 to roll them out, a full year after France and Germany. About as irrelevant as discussing dialup platform progress along with ADSL, and Moore's Law in relation to it. No, you taking a step backwards is about as irrelevant as it gets. You are 1 person in 60 million, so just because you went backwards is just you whinging, nothing more. UK population is less than 50 million at last census, 47 or so I think?! Nope not whinging, I presented a model where this could be as profitable or more than standard products to BT, they are too busy offering 512k with 1GB a month traffic limits and frantically guarding legacy revenues though. No. If contention goes UP bandwidths can go up. Think about it. At the moment BT are running some of their 'usual' 50:1 DLEs at 12:1 - 15:1. Contention being visible is an apparent swearword right now, which is part of the reason for the slow development. Oh, so you do admit that there are reasons for the slow development, then? Yep a big one is that BT have precluded contention and giving UK consumers a false impression of contended services' performance. Of course a fortunate side effect is roundly shafting Datastream services. Where services are more heavily contended elsewhere they have max speeds much higher, I would rather 2Mbps some of the time, 4Mbps most of the time and 8Mbps a bit of the time than 1Mbps all the time. The other is that BT have prevented any supplier from offering greater than 2Mbps using their wholesale network. DSLAMs are hard capped to 2Mbps per port at max. Thought development was really really fast and we should be honoured that kit capable of 8Mbit is capped to 2 though? That just means that you have no understanding of microelectronics then. Moore's Law is the exponential reduction in transistor size by the silicon chip fabricators, and it's not limited to x86 chips by any means, and ASICs will follow the same speed changes as general purpose CPUs. What you're saying is that ASICs can significantly break Moore's Law, which is about as wrong as it gets. Nope I don't have much idea about microelectronics, about as much as you do about consumer internet services to be honest. However Moore's Law does not take account of significant architecture changes. I actually couldn't give a monkeys how many transistors there are per die, I care how many packets per second they switch and route, the two are certainly not directly dependent on one another. although as I've already mentioned backbones are underutilised anyway! Although you've provided no evidence that this is the case. I work for an ISP, I have a feeling I know how heavily utilised both our own internet connectivity and interconnect points are. Good practise is to maintain 60% free capacity on networks anyway, we easily come inside that. I could provide evidence, but it's a breach of confidentiality and my contract. The popularity of the 2Mbit services also indicates some considerable interest. Maybe I'm just more patient than you are? Although I find that hard to believe because I'm a relatively impatient person! *shrug* maybe but we all live ~80 years give or take and I prefer to spend as little as possible of that waiting. snip Some rural areas don't have mains gas or sewage, maybe I should offer my sewage pipe up for the water company to recycle so someone in a village with a 3 figure population can have it? That would be a good idea. Not really, wouldn't have anywhere to put the bulls**t found on usenet. I'm not the one that needs to convince the other about something. If you want me to believe you, provide some evidence, because I've got better things to do than search for information that YOU are claiming. If you had background knowledge of this subject you wouldn't need proof. If there's high enough demand for the higher bandwidth services then we'll get them, and I suggest that until then, you calm down, make yourself a nice cup of Horlicks, put your feet up, and chill out, because you'll have a heart attack the way you're going. Nah I got a town of over 20,000 ADSL before the demand tracking scheme came out by not shutting up and I don't plan on shutting up now :) How many people take DAB just out of interest? Probably significantly less than the 3 million HSI users (I am NOT calling current services 'broadband'). Interesting you get somewhat more animated at discussion about DAB - maybe you should stick to what you care about. I feel as strongly about this issue as you do about DAB. I'm happy that you're happy, I'm not, and I'm quite happy to stand on the highest mountain and shout about it. But you'd look really silly if anyone was watching you. Also, standing on the highest mountain and shouting about it is a highly inefficient way to get your message across, because sound levels drop with the inverse square of distance, and the highest mountains are invariably sparsely populated, so nobody would hear you. You'd probably be better taking up spamming instead. I think most who took that view would have their heads way too far up their own recta to see or hear me anyway to be quite honest. |
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
Ignition wrote: David Anthony wrote: Sorry, there's no excuse for not going up at all really in 4 years. Dialup progress is completely irrelevant, and I fail to see what the issue is with grasping this. For dialup to be accelerated equipment at both sides of the connection has to be updated. The CVXes or whatever would require new modem cards at very least, probably new system controllers as well. For ADSL to be accelerated it's just a case of changing the rate cap on the DSLAM, a *trivial* configuration change - is it that complicated to grasp that to offer a PAYG or capped 8Mbit service will in no way require more money from BT in most cases, just reconfiguration, and not particularly nightmarish reconfig at that, and will in no way impact on Farmer Piles getting his 512k. The DSLAM config would be trivial, but the required upgrade upstream to the capcity of their core ATM network might be more of an issue. It most certainly would not be cost-free. David Not really David, following a PAYG service as I'm suggesting the load on core ATM would most likely not be much if at all increased. The only real upgrade work would be from DLEs with low capacity, although I would hope that when BT upgrade exchanges they at least have the forethought to provision E3 or higher to each one. Bandwidth within the BT Wholesale network is essentially free apart from the cost of the ATM switches and transmission equipment. Core network really shouldn't need upgrading from the relatively low increase in traffic that would come from these 8Mbit PAYG services, if it does BT really shouldn't be running a *core* network that close! It looks like you're a broadband guru, because BT like your scheme of flexible bandwidth: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/22/36198.html Even though they waste the idea by offering it at laughably low burst rates. It's not flexible bandwidth anyway, simply contention will take care of things if managed properly. |
"wowfabgroovy" wrote in message ... "DAB sounds worse than FM" went: http://media.guardian.co.uk/city/sto...167284,00.html Broadband bandwidth is going up at a similar rate to Moore's Law (Moore's Law states that CPU speeds double every couple of years), so if that continues over the next decade (and from what I've read it is likely to) then TV-on-demand via broadband becomes a feasible alternative to digital TV. I for one hope it succeeds so that Sky have some competition in the premium-content arena. it seems to want me to register. what does it say? usually when people go on about things like this they really mean stamp sized realplayer videos, not broadcast quality mpegs you could actually watch on a telly. freeview is about 1.5 to 2 gig per hour. Using MPEG2 compression it is. But most PC's (and now even some DVD players) can happily handle DivX, MPEG4 etc that have a higher compression for the same quality (allegedly). |
Max wrote:
On Fri, 12 Mar 2004 09:26:46 -0000, David Anthony wrote: I was under the impression that 8 mbit SDSL was already available via some unbundled local-loop in London. I know that at least one company is offering 4 mbit ?DSL for £79.99 aimed at 'home users'. That should be more than enough for a single high-quality video stream. That's questionable. On DTT, BBC1 uses a video bit-rate of 15Mbps, as does Channel 4. I've just recorded 1 minute each of BBC1 and Channel 4, and the average bit rates we BBC1 = 4.79 Mbps Channel 4 = 4.03 Mbps Simple maths shows that you're wrong anyway. The DTT mux configurations are he http://www.dtg.org.uk/retailer/dtt_channels.htm (don't include TUTV) and BBC1 is on a 16-QAM mux, and the 16-QAM muxes have a total capacity of 18 Mbps, so if BBC1 was 15 Mbps then there'd be 3 Mbps left for BBC2/3/News24 and BBCi, which is obviously not a very sensible allocation of bandwidth. Channel 4 is on a 64-QAM mux, and in the UK they have a capacity of 24Mbps, so that would leave 9Mbps for ITV1/2, price-drop.tv, ITV News, and teletext services, again, that aint gonna happen. And another thing, using MPEG-2 I think 18Mbps is what's needed for HDTV, and you don't see many people suggesting that the picture quality is that good... Most of the other "mainstream" channels are in the 4-8Mbps range. Try 3-4 Mbps, and you'd be about right. You could just manage Channel 5 or BBC2, if you're satisfied with that level of artifacts. This is the 2nd grossly incorrect post I've read of yours today. I never have really understood why people try to sound so certain about something, yet end up getting it so wrong? Oh well. -- Steve - http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - Digital Radio News & Info DAB sounds worse than Freeview, digital satellite, cable, broadband internet and FM |
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