Interesting article on the state of DSL

Enygma

http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2001/12/webm/

So what do you guys think?
Will DSL really suck? Sure sounds like it.
What's the story with Cable? Good speeds? Prices?

Mountjoy Mugger

That article relates to the current state of DSL in the US. The situation here isn't so complex, yet. Cable is another matter - move to west Dublin, and you might be lucky. Check http://www.ntl.com/locales/ie/en/athome/internet_cable.html for pricing etc.

dahamsta

So what do you guys think?

It's been discussed before Enygma, subsequent to Bob "The Prophet" Cringely's articles. Do a search for 'cringely' on the IO forum and you'll turn up a few comments on this.

Will DSL really suck? Sure sounds like it.

It could, but it does have to. Ok, to go through it again...

First of all, the Americans made a right balls of broadband across the board. They jumped on the dotcom bandwagon, overinvested, and found themselves in serious trouble when the bubble burst. The best example of this is the @Home cable network, which went bankrupt this year.

One of the things that pushed them into bankruptcy was the purchase of the Excite search engine in 1999 for nearly $8 billion. This month, the company sold it's Excite assets to Infospace for about $10 million. Yes, I said million, not billion.

That type of idiocy happened almost across the board with both cable and DSL providers, and that's why they're going bust now. And *that's* why people aren't signing up to broadband services. There's tons of horror stories out there about enormous waiting times, bad service, etc.

The difference here is that we simply don't have broadband services. Current and future broadband suppliers in Ireland don't have to make the same mistakes. Of course, that doesn't mean they won't, but if they do, it will show them up for just how incompetent they are...

adam

Enygma

Thanks,
Sorry bout bringing it up again, this forum gets an awful lot of traffic and I very rarely have time to read it.
I guess the thing to come away with is that whoevers going to be selling broadband in Ireland should have learned form the mistakes of the US.

Dustaz

Originally posted by dahamsta
[BOne of the things that pushed them into bankruptcy was the purchase of the Excite search engine in 1999 for nearly $8 billion. This month, the company sold it's Excite assets to Infospace for about $10 million. Yes, I said million, not billion.

[/B]

roflmao
Puts eircoms ridiculous purchases for broadband tv to shame:)

dahamsta

Sorry bout bringing it up again, this forum gets an awful lot of traffic and I very rarely have time to read it.

Hey, don't worry about it, I was just pointing it out for your reference!

I guess the thing to come away with is that whoevers going to be selling broadband in Ireland should have learned form the mistakes of the US.

Precisely! Unfortunately though, Eircom are acting like a pendulum at the opposite end of the arc. They're making mistakes that are almost the complete opposite of those made in the US, particularly on pricing. They want to overcharge for the product, and their defense of that will be that they want to stem growth so they'll be able to handle the rollouts.

But that's BS, it's simply because they're greedy, they see broadband as the goose that laid the golden egg, the product that will pull Eircom back up by the bootstraps. Unfortunately, that's not going to work either. It'll work in the short term, because it *will* stem growth. It'll work in the long term, because it will transform Eircom into a data company.

But crucially, it won't work in the medium term, which means they'll never *get* to the long term benefits, and they'll find themselves stuck as a voice company when the rest of the world is powered by data. That's because although they'll probably bring their prices down at some stage, they won't be able to bring them down enough to get Joe/Jane Average to take up the product.

That's why although they can't see it, because they're a bunch of stubborn, stick-in-the-mud, foot-stamping children, the ODTR is actually trying to help them. She wants the prices set at reasonable levels, that will see a reasonable takeup from the off, with Eircom still able to make profits; and at a level that when DSL becomes popular, Eircom will be able to drop the prices to encourage a faster rollout.

Faster rollouts will result in the transformation of Eircom, and then they can start rolling out new services, like the Video On Demand services they wanted to implement last year, and Voice Over IP, etc. And we want the same thing. So it's a pity really that Eircom can't see that all their "enemies" are actually trying to help them. As much as it pains me to say it, we could be Eircom's friends. If they'd let us...

adam

JamworkS

So what do you guys think?
Will DSL really suck? Sure sounds like it.
What's the story with Cable? Good speeds? Prices?

DSL is not more than another Broadband Internet Service, something different from Cable, but just in technology not in idea.

The reality is that DSL is of faster implementation than cable due that no roads have to be dug up, just changing the configuration at the exchanges addingthe DSLAM's and connecting them to an ATM Network (it's actually far more complicated than this but it's just to simplify), while for cable, after the roll-out you need to be very close to the where the cable is being laid otherwise you won't benefit of it, while DSL a whole exchange benefit of it, besides that cable is more sensitive to saturation.

In my opinion, and experience with both of them is that ADSL is far better in performance than cable. Never down, always at the same speed anytime. Cable is good as well, just needs to be implemented better.

In Europe, the DSL providers are the Company owner of the Exchanges, so any problems are solved straight away unlike USA.

I'm sure somebody will not agree with me, but as for my experience that's my choice.

JamworkS