Broadband speeds outpacing demand

bealtine

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2012/07/09/speedy_broadband_services_outpace_the_internet/

Over the past five years, Daniel Sofer has signed up for every boost in Internet speed offered by Verizon Communications Inc., his home service provider.

But when he got Verizon’s newest high-speed service, it was “the first time I’m not feeling that thrill of exhilaration when I connect,” said Sofer, a photographer and website designer in Hermosa Beach, Calif. The problem: The extra speed made no difference.

In the highly competitive cable market, broadband speed is a major selling point for Verizon and broadband rivals like Comcast Corp.’s Xfinity service. Carriers frequently boost the broadband speeds they offer in their relentless pursuit of new subscribers. But while the extra speed can pay off for households with multiple users, it can be overkill for many consumers.

FiOS Quantum, the ultra-swift broadband service that Verizon launched in June, offers Internet download speeds of up to 300 million bits per second for a price of up to $209.99 a month. The company says that’s fast enough to download a high-definition Hollywood movie in about two minutes. “That’s like driving a Porsche or a Ferrari,” said Roger Entner, an Internet analyst for Recon Analytics LLC in Dedham. “You know it can go really fast. But does it really make a difference in the real world? No.”

The problem is that most of the Internet isn’t transmitting data fast enough to take advantage of such rapid broadband speeds, Entner said. If a server computer transmits an Internet video at, say, 20 million bits per second, having a 300-million-bits-a-second connection won’t make any difference. “The website you are connecting to is the bottleneck,” he said.

The Federal Communications Commission, responding to reports that the United States lags behind other major countries in Internet speed, is also encouraging cable providers to introduce superfast broadband services, Entner said. “At least we can quote it in our studies . . . and say, ‘Hurrah, the US has the fastest Internet,’ ” he said. “It’s actually a game of bragging rights.”

Verizon officials were unavailable for comment, although a spokesman said Quantum will be available to most of the 5 million people who use FiOS Internet service in Massachusetts, 13 other states, and the District of Columbia.

Catherine Avgiris, executive vice president and general manager of communication and data services at rival Internet provider Comcast, said her company’s premium online offerings are mainly intended for homes where multiple family members engage in heavy Internet use.

“The average household has a laptop, has a gaming system, they have a tablet,” said Avgiris. “The more devices there are in the home, the better performance you get by having greater speed.”

Avgiris wouldn’t say how many customers sign up for Comcast’s Xfinity fastest broadband service, which tops out at 105 million bits per second. But she did say that about a quarter of Comcast’s 18.6 million Internet subscribers choose speeds of 25, 50, or 105 megabits. Most subscribers choose speeds of three, six, or 20 megabits. At about the same time Verizon announced FiOS Quantum, Comcast said that 30-megabit subscribers would get a free speed increase to 50 megabits, while existing 50-megabit users would be bumped up to 105 megabits, at no extra charge.

Avgiris said Comcast’s data network is quite capable of matching FiOS Quantum’s 300-megabit speed, adding that the Xfinity system delivered data at 1 billion bits per second in a demonstration in Chicago last year. But she said that for now, there’s no sign that consumers are interested in such massive bandwidth. “I’m not sure there’s a market today for one gigabit,” she said. “In five years, 10 years, who knows?”

Even skeptics like Entner predict that consumers will eventually need superfast Internet connections. For example, TV companies are beginning to develop “4K” technology, a new video standard that would make TV images far sharper than today’s high-definition sets. Streaming 4K programs over the Internet would require a big speed boost, and could lead to surging demand for snappier connections.

But for most consumers today, the fastest Internet services are solutions to a nonexistent problem. “It’s one of those nice things where technology has progressed faster than our need for it,” said Entner.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.

bealtine

This clearly shows,in my opinion, that speeds are not the be all or end all of broadband provision. What is more important is basic broadband at reasonable speeds. People don't really need 300Mbs as yet, or at least until the rest of the internet catches up to these sort of speeds.

What people really need is well provisioned broadband with decent data caps at a reasonable cost. I'd suggest up to 30Mbs speed is probably fine for general usage these days.

watty

The biggest issue for many is CAP
It makes download of different full Linux distros for comparision, use of Steam, Netflix, iPlayer, RTE player, youtube impossible.

A real 8M to 20Mbps is fine, if it's got no cap, at least 1Mbps upload and effectively uncontended (i.e. no less than 10% drop in speed at peak times), always on and Always consistent and low latency. LTE or any other Mobile or Satellite scheme can't manage ANY of those.

We are increasingly having a digital divide between the 45% to 50% that can get UPC (in theory), the 10% to 20% on faster DSL (mostly UPC areas), and the other 50%, of whom maybe 10% to 15% can't get real broadband at all at any price.

bealtine

watty wrote: »

The biggest issue for many is CAP

Indeed, this is a huge issue on satellite "broadband" and many other systems too and it's getting to be a bigger problem for most people. I see some universities delivering their courses online now and that really eats up data.
Netflix and youtube chew up data allowances rapidly.

LTE or any other Mobile or Satellite scheme can't manage ANY of those.

LTE is fine for what it was designed for...mobile use but to try and provision a whole country with LTE is ridiculous in the extreme.

We are increasingly having a digital divide between the 45% to 50% that can get UPC (in theory), the 10% to 20% on faster DSL (mostly UPC areas), and the other 50%, of whom maybe 10% to 15% can't get real broadband at all at any price.

This is part of the point I was trying to make, it doesn't really matter that people in Dublin can get 100Mbs or better from UPC, it does nothing for the vast majority of users in the country and for those still stuck on dialup. Measuring a countries performance on a few selected cities doesn't give us a true picture of the pain some people still have to endure in the 21st century.
Of course Comreg don't care and have set the limit for provisioning exchanges at approx 4000 lines, if your exchange has less lines than that you can forget about getting broadband from eircom.
The only way forward is to do like Finland and make broadband a legal right...

bk

I see there being two issues:

1) Data caps, as has been said above lots of new services quickly chewing through data caps.

2) Upload speeds. People are using upload more and more to upload high resolution pics and videos to facebook, youtube, etc.

I'd rather have a stable 20mb/20mb service with a very high cap, then a 100mb/2mb service with a small cap.

You are going to need FTTC + VDSL2 or Hybrid Fibre Coax to achieve this sort of service.

UPC are almost already there, they just need to boost their upload speeds and cap.

Eirxom have a long way to go, but seem to be on the right track with FTTC + VDSL2.

That just leaves the other 40% of rural areas. Hopefully a combination of fbire + LTE and fixed wireless can deliver the required speeds to them.

watty

LTE doesn't deliver anything to help this.

UPC can't deliver symmetrical upload. Their downlink spectrum is about 800MHz max (typically 600MHz) at maybe 256QAM (shared with TV) and their uplink is about 60MHz maximum and maybe 16QAM (16QAM is 1/2 speed of 256QAM). So if 1/2 the downlink is TV and 1/2 broadband they can manage 10:1 ratio.

More like 50% not covered by Fast Broadband (Eircom FTTC will mostly be in UPC areas).

Fixed Wireless can at best manage about 5:1 ratio Download/Upload. So though the Download speed might be 1/5th of best UPC, the upload speed can be similar.

Fixed Wireless near peak time on almost 14km link. Note better than almost 60% of Ireland!
At more expense that could be 10Mbps / 2Mbps. If it's 20Mbps down, the up is still only 2Mbps. DOCSIS 3 increases downstream by channel bonding (x5 of DOCSIS 2 peak speed is easy for UPC). But it can't do much for uplink.

LTE can't reliably do much more than 3G unless you have x10 as many masts and 6 x 20MHz channels, even then it can't compete with decent fixed wireless. There will be the same number of masts or less and at most 3 x 5MHz per operator the way Comreg plans it.