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Technology

Telephone Wire Cable Alternative 154

Posted by Hemos from the cool-new-approach dept.
dlkf writes "CNN reports that Hartwell, Georgia is the test site for a new technology developed at the Georgia Tech Research Institute used to transmit TV signals over the phone line. With the addition of a set top box, users get 60 channels along with their DSL and phone line."
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Telephone Wire Cable Alternative More

Telephone Wire Cable Alternative

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  • Lack of technical info (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    All right, 60 channels, DSL and phone. Can they give an estimate on the number of raw bits/sec they get through a phone line? Then we can figure if we can really access 60 channels simultaneously, or if channels really come one at a time on demand, etc.

  • Re:Cable and DSL and Phone services oh my! (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    RCN too. I live in the Boston area, and get my telephone, cable TV, and broadband ISP through RCN. In the town I live in, I can chose between Verizon (nee Bell Atlantic, nee Nynex) for telephone and DSL, and MediaOne and RCN for telephone/cable TV/cable modem. That's three providers of local telephone service: my "local telephone area" is the entire state of Massachusetts except for the area code in the far west end of the state. The long distance rate is so cheap it's not even worth bothering to look at those internet telephone solutions, given that I don't use long distance much anyway.

    This is the kind of choice and competition that deregulation was supposed to bring; too bad that it is taking so long for the new infrastructure to be rolled out in most parts of the country. But this new tech should help speed things up: perhaps the existing DSL providers could expand into TV service as well, and really stir things up. Can't wait: more competition means more choice and lower prices.

  • ...So I can wait even longer to get cable installed, eh? The cable guy already missed his three-hour window for installation today...
    --
  • Although quite how far into the realms of fantasy I am I'm not sure...

    You're obviously pretty deep in fantasy - you left out a lot of features that are in Verizon DSL that are sure to make they're way into the TV service:

    • We'll send you the wrong type of DSL modem and then charge you 6(!) times for it at over $100 a pop.
    • We'll refuse to take back the original modem because it is no longer supported and we'll take over half a year to refund the erroneous 5 charges.
    • When your line goes down and you call up for tech support we will keep you on hold for several hours so that you think you're at the front of the queue, but then drop the phone connection so that you don't get to talk to anybody. We will do this often.
    • We will promise to look into your line problems within 72 hours, but actually take 2 months.
    • We will waste several cummulative days of your life in hold time on the phone waiting for tech support.
    • When you do get ahold of tech support, they won't know what you are saying when you tell them that packets are being dropped on your connection.
    • We'll continue to bill you for the service until almost half a year after you cancel. Also, we'll bill you through our telephone service so that your telephone bill becomes delinquent if you refuse to pay.

    All of the above unfortunately happened to me when I had BellAtlantic/Verizon DSL (in addition to the previously mentioned tendancy for the service to not work). I wish I were being sarcastic, but I'm not. I hope this TV service isn't being run by any baby bell, because I hear they're all pretty bad.

    I have since switched to speakeasy.net for DSL service and the difference is just phenomenal. The one time I thought my service was actually out I called up their tech support to report the problem. Once the tech support guy and I had traced the problem to my Linux NAT box he offered to transfer me to a level 2 technician to help diagnose the problem in my box! This is such a massive difference from Verizon where I would have to pretend I was using Windows when I called up and where their level 2 tech support was always just as useless as their level 1 tech support. I recommend Speakeasy every chance I get so that they grow strong and prosper so that I can use their service for years to come.

  • Sadly, all you have to do here is follow the dollar.

    DSL was invented at Bell Labs in the '80s, and promptly put on the shelf because they saw no practical application for the technology. And difficult as it is to imagine, they were right.

    Why? Because when there are very few home PCs (compared to today) and those PCs don't store or push a whole lot of information, then you won't have people willing to pay for fat pipes. When most of your information is text, an 80MB hard drive is an unspeakable luxury for a desktop box, and a 14.4 modem will do just fine. If you have a lot of people who want to connect to you simultaneously, and you can afford it, ISDN was available, and didn't have the 12,000 foot line limit.

    Now, we have a need, and that need is being filled. I wish I lived in a world in which technology was available because it ought to be rather than because people would pay to satisfy a need.

    As for me, I like my DSL just fine, and had it transfering packets within two weeks of my order. (Not that SBC actually sent me the necessary software or anything, but there are ways around that for the resourceful...)

    Don Negro

  • I've heard nothing but bad comments about
    AT&T's cable modem service. I use Qwest
    DSL (the business package). Aside from
    the tremendous expense (close to $100 a
    month for 640K DSL, 5 static IPs and
    domain hosting), I've been very happy with
    the service. I wish I could get service
    for closer to $50 for 1 static IP (hello,
    NAT!) and the above.
  • Actually, with digital cable you can get upwards of 500 channels.
  • IIRC, DirecTv or The Dish Network don't allow you to hook up more than 4 TVs per dish

    DISH has a switch, I think the SW64 that can be used to hook up 6 recievers to the two dish's (two LNB's per dish, one dish per satalite, or the DISH500 which is actually two dishes, four LNBs...).

    Or you can skip four recievers, and hook up another SW64 and six recievers to the second SW64...or another SW64 and....

    That was a bit over a year and a half ago. There was talk about a bigger multi-switch. A house two doors down has this setup and a lot of recievers for it's local population (I only have one reciever).

    The real problem is each dish gets an even and odd polairity signal, and can feed out one but not both. The reciever asks for whichever one has the channel it needs. There are two LNBs on some of the recievers so it can can serve two recievers. A switch can take in both LNBs, and set on to even and one to odd forever, and give the recievers whichever they ask for.

    That is then compounded by having more then one satalite. DISH does this by having either two dish'es, and a switch, or one slightly eliptical dish that gets both signals and acts as the switch as well. I beleve that DirecTv does the same thing, but I'm not sure.

    The external multi-switches are a bit of a kludge, but they work. I don't know if DirecTv has them.

    P.S. I think the mPhase stuff doesn't send 60 video channels down the phone line, just one selected channel (or two or so). The limit of 60 is probbably in the head end, and not that hard to change. But that is a total total total guess. It would work that way if I had to design around the current constraints... :-)

  • IDSL may be "better" in terms of how far from the central office it can go, but it's typically not "better" in terms of how much bandwidth you can get - it's just running, as I understand it, a raw bit stream over an ISDN line, i.e., instead of splitting a basic rate 144K bits/second ISDN line into 2 64K bits/second B channels and 1 16K bits/second D channel, they just give you one 144K bits/second channel (or maybe you only get 128K bits/second).

    You do get the 144Kbits/sec. Around here it is even a fair bit cheeper then ISDN.

    It may be VDSL (others in this thread have spoken of VDSL in this context), which is higher speed than typical ADSL.

    Never heard of it, but that doesn't mean anything. There are more xDSLs then you can shake a stick at. I know there is an HDSL which is 1.5Mbps/sec both ways, and an SDSL that I think is symetric, but no specific speed, and quite a few others. There is also a lot of variation in supported speeds and distances depending on the equiptment at each end.

    Sometimes you can get a faster speed from one provider or the other even though they all use the same wires from the RBOC.

  • The must be using a better DSL than the standard ADSL the most providers use. Maybe the ISDN DSL (IDSL or what ever it's called).

    IDSL may be "better" in terms of how far from the central office it can go, but it's typically not "better" in terms of how much bandwidth you can get - it's just running, as I understand it, a raw bit stream over an ISDN line, i.e., instead of splitting a basic rate 144K bits/second ISDN line into 2 64K bits/second B channels and 1 16K bits/second D channel, they just give you one 144K bits/second channel (or maybe you only get 128K bits/second). ADSL often goes up to 384K bits/second to the subscriber, or better, and 128K bits/second from the subscriber (my service is "at least" 384K/128K, but my downloads are typically around 1.1Mb/sec).

    It may be VDSL (others in this thread have spoken of VDSL in this context), which is higher speed than typical ADSL.

  • ...who would prefer 58 more channels of broadcast crap (I'm acknowledging two good channels for the Simpsons and Babylon 5 reruns to be generous) to the tens (or hundreds, with anything but the best digital compression) of megabits/second of data bandwidth that those channels require? If there's enough unused capacity in a DSL connection to piggyback 60 full motion video channels, how come anyone not next door to the telco gets told they can't be guaranteed more than a couple hundred kbps?
  • Here in the U.S. (specifically metropolitan Southern California), you pay an extra $5 for the extra channels, and then (if available) an extra $5 for the digital tier (which, if you have premium channels, greatly increases the number of available channels).
    Lets see, here in SE Michigan, in wonderful TimeWarner cable land:
    Standard cable: $33.57 (plus taxes)
    Plus $9.50 for 2 premium channels, or $19.95/8
    Or $10.95-$34.95 (Plus the $33.57 for standard) for various digital cable packages...

    Standard includes 71 channels (counting 2 shopping, and 11 public access/messageboards)

    And for (coming soon for the last 2 years!) Cable modem: $39.95

    If only I was in one of the cities around here where Ameritech is a competitive cable supplier...
  • The latency sucks rocks - bandwidth is nice, but channel changes? nope.

    McAllister place is probably to far from the DSLAM or something. When higher badwidth becomes practical (like alcatel's new DSL stuff) then this won't happen.

    gg
  • If I'd expected this I would have saved one of my mod points to mark this as funny.
  • God DAMN you are FUCKING BRILLIANT. Read the article and note that this is exactly what they are ALREADY DOING. There might still be time for you to GET A PATENT, though.
  • Let's see... Use a switched network instead of a boradcast network.... that makes your equipment needs HUGE! Let alone let's look at the fact that 98% of america's phone lines are of crap quality (sub cat-2) and hellishly old. The phone company doesnt replace a trunk run unless they have to (there are trunk lines in michigan that are still in use and are almost 100 years old!) Cable is much younger therefore the infrastructure can handle changes quicker. Heck AT&T over the past 5 years tore down all calbe and replaced it with fibre here... Ameritech? they still use the infrastructure that was installed 50 years ago. they dont want to replace it, they cant replace it, and the scary part is that 30% of it is unknown-undocumented!

    Phone companies trying to get on the bandwidth wagon... it will never happen, the phone companies will die as other companies (cable, sattelite,mind transfer...whatever) come in with infrastructure that isn't based on 200 year old telegraph wires.

    (PS the phone company should have done their upgrades 20 years ago instead of sitting on their butts.)
  • That's funny. My father has a warehouse that used to be a large manufacturing plant for military parts here in michigan, I located a phone closet in the center of the wearhouse with old phone equipment and it had 5 144-pair trunk lines coming into it. one day while bored I started to look around the lines with a butt set and discovered 60 operating phone lines. when I notified my father he called the phone company and they, after research, concluded that I was wrong and that did not exist. So.. I investigated further. lines from trunk1 to trunk3 were "jumpered" and when I would sever a jumper a phone conversation I was listining to would be disconnected. After 6 months of talking to them I finally grabbed a phone guy in his truck and led him to the closet where he called back and there WAS NO DOCUMENTATION of the lines that were there, and why the trunks in that building were being used.

    I also have several friends in the telcom business. they all agree that this is very normal, and undocumented items/fixes/wires are very normal. (one is a infrastructure manager, and is suprised monthly with technicians calling on things that dont exist)

    So yeah... I "think" I know from the solid background I have and information I have access to.
  • I agree wholeheartedly with your post. One nitpick though.
      • 4) 95% (at least) of all municipalities that have cable available for residents have a long term contract in place. To switch to a telco for this would require some nifty sidestepping of issues.

      I don't know anyone who has a long-term cable contract. It's always monthly.
    Right, you don't know anyone. It's the municipalities themselves. That's why you (US residents, b/c that's who the original post seemed to be aimed at) can't choose cable providers. Their CITY (or county or whatever) contracts on a long term to lock them to a single provider.
    • The point? Don't bash the technology because the people who are initially using it arn't the nicest people in the world. If this makes it into my city before cable broadband access does, I'll sign up for it.
    Right on.
  • It seems to me that both are good! If cable companies start doing phone service, and phone companies start doing cable service, then neither one is going to be much of a monopoly.
  • hm...

    i'd have to guess that the plans to upgrade this entire plant were on the table a year and a half (at a minimum) before the merger.

    but, as things usually happen, it took a long time for them to justify that it needed done. finally, once justification was complete, the merger happened around the bend. in order to make the merger seem plausible, they most likely shelved it until after the whole thing was over with...

    i believe you're giving credit to the wrong people... at&t probably caused your cable plant's upgrade to actually be *DELAYED* :)

    just a thought...

    (that's the way things go elsewhere in the world of US telco companies :)
  • correct me if i'm wrong, but you seem bitter.

    don't listen to the drivel of all the trolls that post on slashdot.

    most are just insecure in some way or another and behave like the bullies at a gradeschool playground.

    canada & the u.s. each have very serious assets and neither diminishes the other's. there certainly isn't anything wrong with any country being "better" at something than another; it's perfectly natural and healthy. once you're the "best", you get lazy, and we all know how well that motivates the human spirit...

    cheers.

    Peter
  • "Only" 60 channels?

    What kind of crack are you smoking? Tell me, when was the last time you strayed from the 5-10 channels you generally watch? I mean, christ, 90% of the channels out there suck so bad I can hardly believe they exist. And even the good channels generally have 1 or 2 good shows at most.

    If "only" 60 channels is an issue for you, you have WAY too much free time on your hands.
  • I live in the suburbs of Chicago, a major city (ok, it's no New York much less San Francisco), and can't get a cable modem or DSL. To hear about Connie Corncrib getting DSL, voice and cable television is almost too much to bear!

    But seriously. I don't see how telephone lines can scale to the same level as coax. Why should I believe this is anything but a niche tech.

    --

  • Oops, I took so long typing that someone answered my question.

    It isn't 60 channels, it's 60 in that particular installation. Since the video is coming down the DSL on demand it could be 500 channels of choice.

    Though I guess I still wonder what happens if you have three or four TV's and everyone wants to watch different stuff.

    --

  • Myrio (www.myrio.com) has been doing something like this for a while. In Livingston, Texas, there are now paying customers who have TV over DSL. The Myrio system also provides video on demand, which is like having a virtual DVD player - you can rent movies over the DSL, and get full capability to pause, fast forward, rewind, and play it over again for the length of the rental period. The movie content is streamed off big NCube servers at the telco head end.

    Check the old press release at Myrio's web site. [myrio.com]

    A little more info: Myrio's system is based on streaming MPEG-2 through full rate DSL. That's typically about 8 Mbps, and is enough bandwidth for two set top boxes to watch two different TV channels (or movies) simultaneously. There's no real limit to the number of TV channels the system can handle. The video quality is very high - movies are very close to DVD, and TV is better than regular cable.

    Full disclosure - I work for Myrio. I don't know anything about MPhase.

    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

  • why waste bandwidth on 60 tv channels???? (Score:3)

    by jilles ( 20976 ) on Monday January 22, 2001 @12:15PM (#490163) Homepage
    I can only watch one channel at the time. Why waste all this bandwidth on stuff you cannot possibly watch anyway. Put the tuner on the other side of the cable and switch channels remotely. All the extra bandwidth can be used for regular internet usage. As a matter of fact, why not stream that remaining channel over TCP/IP anyway?

    I don't see the problem, the bandwidth exists (i.e. your phone line), there's hardware (mpeg encoding and decoding chips). What's holding things back??

    And by the way, 60 channels is not enough.

  • so this means that families will be forced to actually agree on what they watch, even though everybody has their own tv.
    i like that ;-)
    but it also means that i can't record one channel, while i watch another, drat!

    greetings, eMBee.
    --

  • Qwest (formerly USWest) offers VDSL service in Phoenix to about 60k homes, and I think they plan to expand to other states.
  • It's not 60 channels, it's UNLIMITED channels. mPhase basically uses an 1.2-1.4 DSL link to pipe ONE channel of video down your phone line into their set-top box. The number of channels is limited by how much bandwidth they have going into the ELEC's central office. Basically, their set-top "dials in" into a video stream. What I'd like to find out is how (and if) you can do time-shifts (i.e. TiVo or VCR-like services).

    At least that's my understanding of the technology --the bitrate was back-of-the-envelope bitrate of an MPEG2/4 video, I am sure others can do better.

  • Well, one thing that you might want to consider is that as per FCC regs, phone lines have strict QoS (Quality of Service) rules, mainly for 911-lifeline services. In other words if your phone line goes down, the phone company (probably your local Bell) *has* to fix it ASAP. As long as the network routing part of the deal (the DSL provider's job) is also decent (i.e. 99+% uptime) your DSL Video service *should* be way more reliable than Cable.

    Of course, usual disclaimers apply :-)...
  • Europe. Most of Southern Europe has no cable network whatsoever, and CATV penetration in the north is pretty bad (~50% I think). VoDSL needs no extra infrastructure, just 'clean' copper. mPhase could make *loads* of money.
  • We've had something like this installed here in Wisconsin Rapids, WI. It works by transmitting three MPEG video streams plus a (upto) 1Mbps data stream over an ADSL connection. Picture quality is good---it seems better to me than AT&T's digital cable. Caveat is that you have to be close to the CO, or to one of the neighbourhood "hubs" that the telco is installing.

    Visit this [wctc.net] if you're interested. Not much about the tech, just the service offering.

    Leigh

  • While it is good practice to try to make the best of the old stuff that we have. This sort of thing would take to long to implement, and would never become mainstream before new stuff came out. Eventually we are going to have to rebuild the infrastructure of the phone system anyway because it is so old and decaying.
    ----------------------
  • Yeah - I heard about this a while back, and my GF's friend's daughter ('s barber's cousin's brother...) has it. That is the only install of it I have seen in the entire valley. The picture is good (same as COX Digital), but the menuing options and other things aren't as refined.

    There is no advertisement that I have found anywhere in the valley for this service. I am not even sure why they offer it...

    Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
  • http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT= 104&STORY=/www/story/01-22-2001/0001409257&EDATE=

    This may provide more detail.

    Sorry, I am not an html whiz.
  • You'll notice that Vibe is limited to about 240k/s d/l speed from the CO. The rest of the signal is not used. This is reserved for the TV signal. Which is switched at the CO, one channel at a time is sent across the DSL line and decoded by the mpeg set-top box.
    Kind of funny how limited to 240K/s is still faster than most other places in the world's DSL....

  • Yeah, it's been around for 2-3 years, actually! (Score:5)

    by xtal ( 49134 ) on Monday January 22, 2001 @12:30PM (#490174)

    Disclaimer: I work for iMagicTV [imagictv.com], and we've been developing this stuff for some time, and have a bunch of major customers. If you're interested in how this stuff works, not just from the customer perspective but the backend stuff that the telco is running too.

    This is nothing new, and has been available in middle-of-nowhere Atlantic Canada for some time, but since we're not part of the USA (yet), it must not count.

    It WOULD be a feat if they got 60 channels simultaneously multicast over DSL, but that's just not possible. They have a bunch of seperate streams that you can tune into.

  • Re:Yeah, right. (Score:4)

    by British ( 51765 ) <british1500@gmail.com> on Monday January 22, 2001 @12:48PM (#490175) Homepage Journal
    This is just great. Now with the snip of your wires at the demarc, you will now:

    1. won't have internet access
    2. won't have telephone access
    3. won't be able to watch tv.

    Might as well just go outside at that point.
  • I've pulled 250K/sec from [menace] (side note: being unb, you likely know what menace is, and since when is it unb.edu, not unb.ca ?), over my vibe line in Moncton.

    But yes, anything over 200K/sec is very impressive. I'm sitting on crappy Bell Sympatico High Speed here, and it truly sucks the nut. 120K/sec downstream, 15K/sec upstream. Pathetic.

  • My (former) telco is doing this. (Score:4)

    by TheTomcat ( 53158 ) on Monday January 22, 2001 @12:30PM (#490177) Homepage
    My (former) telephone company [nbtel.nb.ca] was doing this before I left the province (last October).

    It doesn't translate directly to the standard coax that we're used to coming out of our walls, but a special connection that plugs into a 'tuner' box, and 'tunes' one channel at a time, much the same way small-dish sattelite 'tuners' work.

    Anyone I've asked has said that it hasn't hurt ADSL performance (same network as the VibeTV stuff) too much.

    NBTel's supposed to be worldclass in telecommunications (or something). After all, one of my hometown's main industries is hosting callcenters. That's right. You call AOL customer service, you get Moncton(Riverview), NB, Canada. Same with Equifax.

    Oops, drifting offtopic. Anyway, my point was that this is being done, and it's similar quality to small-dish sattelite TV (Bell Expressview, or Starchoice in Canada).

    Before the cable company in NB got bought by Shaw/Rogers, they were talking about providing telephone service. Stange how things get twisted around.
  • Mphase, stock ticker XDSL.BB, is a company fast running out of friends and money. Hart Telephone is owned by one of the directors of Mphase, and they've been hawking this box around the telcos for over a year, nobody is interested. Its too expensive, its completely non standard, needs the content to be fed to the CO (head-end), but has no idea how to get it there, and the company that produces it, and its affiliates, has a certain air of, well, lets say it doesnt smell right.. they've been sucking up small investors with a promise of IPO, now a promise of just a nasdaq listing, and spending the money on, if I read the accounts correctly, mainly management renumeration..
    CNNFN, I think, got suckered by this story.
    You can read all the dirty laundry on ragingbull.com, any searches with terms such as confict of interest, fraud, investigation and so on will find old posts that reveal more.. of course, this is just my humble opinion. The people that stuck their money into that stock at $20 (now at $2) are pretty anxious to get their head back above water.
  • My family has a trailer on Lake Hartwell, swear to God. The floor's half rotted out, as my fatass uncle found out one drunk afternoon. But there's a phone line coming to it, sure enough.

    OTOH, my own downtown Atlanta neighborhood of Grant Park is behind a pair of DACs, so no DSL for me and there are too many trees and highrises for me to get a Dish.

    My mind is positively blown that to get the cutting edge in consumer bandwidth, TV and telephony, I have to move out to the GODDAMNED STICKS! What the hell is the world coming to when there's a DSL line coming to within walking distance of my fatass uncle's still?

    So please, Mr. Georgia Tech graduate, wouldja put the friggin' bandwidth where the friggin' people live?

    --

  • Re:Ma Bell (Score:5)

    by lizrd ( 69275 ) <(adam) (at) (bump.us)> on Monday January 22, 2001 @12:40PM (#490180) Homepage
    I've really had a very good experience with AT&T Cable internet. The price is reasonable, the speed is quite fast (I downloaded some disk images last month at over 200KB/s, note: KB not Kb) they were quite prompt about getting the installation done. If I remember correctly, I called in on a Thursday and they came the following Wednesday, and it was a holiday weekend. Two working days later is a very good turn around time. Since getting service in July I've only had one network outage that I've noticed, and it lasted less than 2 hours. The only thing that I can complain about is that their mail and news servers are kind of slow and go down sometimes. I'd recommend not using the e-mail address you get from them for anything other than billing information.
    _____________

  • Re:Movin' on up to a monopoly? (Score:5)

    by dbarclay10 ( 70443 ) on Monday January 22, 2001 @01:09PM (#490181)
    I live in Canada, and I'll adress a few of your points from a Canadian perspective:

    1) Very few people trust their local telco. I certainly don't trust them even with DSL, let alone with cable access.

    I trust my local telephone company. In my life, I've never been without telephone service. I'm serious. There was a tornado nearby once, and the power(and cable access) was out for nearly a day - but we still had our phones.

    I've witnessed dozens of cable outages. While generally short(usually around an hour), a few have lasted upwards of a day or two.

    2) When was the last time a cable system in a big city (where the rollout would probably start, as it usually does) was economically viable with only 60 channels?

    In most parts of Canada, you need to pay an extra 10-15 dollars(Canadian) to get 60 channels. Regular service has about 30-40. I think the most you can actually get(no matter how much money you have), short of getting a satellite dish, is about 75 or a hundred.

    3) Think about the cable signal over copper lines. If you're in an area with fibre optics, great. But if not, your cable reception could be evil.

    I'll agree that I think this is a backwards step. We should be moving away from old telephone lines to something approaching TV cable, or ideally, fibre. However, most of my region(I live in a town of 10,000 people) have fibre optics. In fact, I have fibre going right up to across the street(where there's a big telephone company box of some sort). Mind you, my impression is that Canada(and especially Ontario) is rather well-connected.

    4) 95% (at least) of all municipalities that have cable available for residents have a long term contract in place. To switch to a telco for this would require some nifty sidestepping of issues.

    I don't know anyone who has a long-term cable contract. It's always monthly.

    5) Imagine cable support through your telco.

    I was recently chatting with someone about this :) They were from Texas, I think, and had problems because of the local telephone company monopoly. They moved to an area with more competition, and things got better.

    Well, I've got news :) Up until about five years ago, there was only ONE telephone carrier available in my area. And they were just fine :) No serious problems, technicians always made it out when they said they would(although, sometimes[if it wasn't a serious problem], you'd have to wait a few days). Perfectly well-behaved.

    The point? Don't bash the technology because the people who are initially using it arn't the nicest people in the world. If this makes it into my city before cable broadband access does, I'll sign up for it.

    Barclay family motto:
    Aut agere aut mori.
    (Either action or death.)

  • hmmm. (Score:1)

    by jmccay ( 70985 )
    The must be using a better DSL than the standard ADSL the most providers use. Maybe the ISDN DSL (IDSL or what ever it's called).

    I don't I would get it to start. I wonder if they are providing local stations? I also wonder if they are a middle man and they are just getting it from the local cable company. This might have a future in places where cable doesn't go currently.
  • Localities grant long-term franchises to operators who use *coax* plant. But that says nothing of those who want to offer cable TV over a *twisted-pair* plant. I say this is an excellent development: in my city (Richmond, VA), AT&T Broadband shows no signs of opening up its infrastructure to competitors, and I'm sick of paying exorbitant prices for the 5 channels I actually watch.
  • ...you're playing Quake, and your roommate turns on the TV...

    It's all well and good to say that you won't notice latency in your TV signal because it's coming in on a controlled network, but do you want your TV eating up your bandwidth?

    They're already doing this in Canada as well.
  • Finally there will be some competition among tv providers. In my area this will mean Qwest versus AT&T. This was needed to match the cable phone service that AT&T is going to be offering soon. Lets hope they stay balanced, those are the only two signal-quality wires that go to alot of peoples houses.

  • Silly me, here I thought DSL came about after the deregulation of the American cable industry as a means for telcos to deliver video to customers' homes ...

    What was I thinking, I am glad /. says it's new, even though it has been deployed for a year by Ameritech Cable in at least one market I am familiar with ...

    You can just learn something new every day around here. Gosh and golly, isn't that just ducky? :)

    This is your /., this is your /. on drugs. Any questions?

  • You are assuming that they are simulataneously broadcasting all 60 channels over the DSL. I think only the compressed stream for the channel that you have selected on your SETTOP box will be sent on the DSL.

    Siva
  • And?
    If you look here [askntl.com], you'll see that ntl in the UK have been doing this for a while now. For £19.99+/month you get 512kbps downstream, a load of TV channels, very cheap phone calls (3p/min max) and video-on-demand. And that's just on the analogue service. I don't know what they do on the digital service...
    -- Nick
  • As far as I'm aware, we already have this in the UK too, and it's on demand tv. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong anyone?
  • The difference between copper and fiber is, they're already using fiber quite efficiently.

    With the copper wires running to your house, they were only using about 8 KHz of bandwidth before, whereas the cable could carry much more. Adding stuff like DSL and TV just uses more of the bandwidth.

    With fiber, you're already using a large part of the optical spectrum in large installations, and the glass will not transmit efficiently past certain wavelength boundaries.
    -----

  • I trust my local telephone company. In my life, I've never been without telephone service. I'm serious. There was a tornado nearby once, and the power(and cable access) was out for nearly a day - but we still had our phones.

    Point conceded. Phones tend to be more reliable during disasters (though this does vary based on your location.

    I've witnessed dozens of cable outages. While generally short(usually around an hour), a few have lasted upwards of a day or two.

    Perhaps I'm lucky, but I have had no cable outages since I got cable in 1986, save for when power was out to the distribution centre, which didn't matter because it was out for me as well. Phones, however, I have seen be out for extended periods due to emergency maintenance (this was before they were buried underground).

    In most parts of Canada, you need to pay an extra 10-15 dollars(Canadian) to get 60 channels. Regular service has about 30-40. I think the most you can actually get(no matter how much money you have), short of getting a satellite dish, is about 75 or a hundred.

    Here in the U.S. (specifically metropolitan Southern California), you pay an extra $5 for the extra channels, and then (if available) an extra $5 for the digital tier (which, if you have premium channels, greatly increases the number of available channels).

    I don't know anyone who has a long-term cable contract. It's always monthly.

    Municipalities generally contract out with one cable provider to provide cable for the residents of the city. Residents pay monthly; the contract length between the municipality and the cable provider varies but averages around 3-5 years. When the contract is up, the cable provider and and of their competitors may petition for consideration for the new contract.

    Well, I've got news :) Up until about five years ago, there was only ONE telephone carrier available in my area. And they were just fine :) No serious problems, technicians always made it out when they said they would(although, sometimes[if it wasn't a serious problem], you'd have to wait a few days). Perfectly well-behaved.

    The point? Don't bash the technology because the people who are initially using it arn't the nicest people in the world. If this makes it into my city before cable broadband access does, I'll sign up for it.

    You've been very lucky, then, and it seems like Ontario would be a good place to be if you wanted good phone service. Here, unfortunately, you have your choice between the unwilling ("I hate my job"), the incapable ("Um. I can't fix this right now even though you waited six hours for me. My supervisor can come out a week from Tuesday"), or the simply missing ("WHERE IS MY PHONE TECH?"). Mostly it's simple cluelessness and an amazing lack of initiative that would make any geek blanch with horror.

    As for bashing the technology, it seems like the bandwidth used to provide this should be put toward the improvement of the signals already carried on the line, i.e., DSL and voice. I agree that any development which results in a choice improves the market, but support is an integral part of that choice, and Joe Shmo who isn't a geek needs to have at least reasonable support.

    Thanks for your examples and the courteous reply.

  • Movin' on up to a monopoly? (Score:4)

    by Zaphod B ( 94313 ) on Monday January 22, 2001 @12:13PM (#490192) Journal
    Well, surprise, surprise. After the cable companies found out that they could carry Net access over their lines, I'm not surprised at this retaliation. But let's look at it: 1) Very few people trust their local telco. I certainly don't trust them even with DSL, let alone with cable access. 2) When was the last time a cable system in a big city (where the rollout would probably start, as it usually does) was economically viable with only 60 channels? 3) Think about the cable signal over copper lines. If you're in an area with fibre optics, great. But if not, your cable reception could be evil. 4) 95% (at least) of all municipalities that have cable available for residents have a long term contract in place. To switch to a telco for this would require some nifty sidestepping of issues. 5) Imagine cable support through your telco. Not to pick on my unnamed local telco which starts with V and ends in N and has a giant gaping intelligence gap between, but they can't even support DSL, and they're just barely able to offer what might be considered reasonable service for their phone lines. I don't see a great amount of competition for $CABLE_PROVIDER in the near future.
  • Qwest also offers something similar in Denver called Choice TV and Online. It has been around for at least 1.5 years, if not more.

  • Great. Now we can have interactive Hee-Haw. I feel the rush of the 21st century.
  • Maybe since its just locks onto one stream at a time, and does time shifting, I could pick out only the shows I wanna watch this week and have it only show me those shows and only have to pay for those shows, could be a time and money saver, only what I want, none of the crap.
    • Probably too good of an idea for it to ever happen.

  • #define RANT

    I suppose what I want to know is: Why weren't these barriers knocked down before?

    Negroponte makes it clear in BEING DIGITAL that he thought a long time ago that this sort of thing was possible and practical. I've been largely of the belief that if this was somehow thwarted by the pre-1996 competitive marketplace, that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 should have solved it. Still, we wait for the market in these services to change, and it doesn't.

    Finally, someone takes an interest in doing this (and only on a small scale). This is a test reaching some 60 customers. 1) Why wasn't it done before? 2) Even if it is made to work, how many decades will it take to reach me because nobody wants to really compete and shake things up out there? I can't believe that this is such a fundamental technical breakthrough, and the real barrier has been "business" decision makers who can't confront changed business models.

    #undef RANT

  • Bah, try Covad's DSL. I got mine is less than 3 weeks, only problem is they use pppoe instead of DHCP, but it's a small price to pay for fast service and reliable connection.
  • it costs #20/month...

    Well, if it only costs 20 tic-tac-doh a month then it is worth it, by golly!
  • I can only watch one channel at the time. Why waste all this bandwidth on stuff you cannot possibly watch anyway.

    I understand your point, but the only way that cable has competed against satallite is that the cable companies allow you to hook up as many TVs as you like for the same amount of money (and no extra equipment, except for speciality channels)

    It's really important to some people that they can watch whatever program they want, while their spouse watches another, and each of their 1+ kids watches seperate programs in their own rooms. (IIRC, DirecTv [directv.com] or The Dish Network [thedishnetwork.com] don't allow you to hook up more than 4 TVs per dish)
  • I live in a small town [delhiny.com] in upstate NY that is deploying TV and highspeed data over VDSL using equipment from Next Level Communications [nlc.com]. I've been involved with this project from the beginning, and I must say, this technology is very cool. Currently, to my apartment, I've got the capability of 3 separate, simultaneous channels of video, and up to a 2.5 Mbps symetrical data connection. The article on CNN made it sound like there would be 60 seperate channels of video simultaneously, but I think that they meant that that is how many are available on the system total. The equipment that we use maxes out around 150 channels, but when the smoke clears on our project, I think that we'll have around 120. Each channel is MPEG-2 encoded at around 8 megs of bandwidth, but the picture quality is still quite impressive. The actual VDSL signal that arrives at the home is between 25 and 32 megs, if I recall correctly.

    Some things that we've run into:

    • Regulatory Issues - NY Public Service Commission is a sloth about approving franchises
    • Cable plant quality - bridge taps and load coils wreak havoc on VDSL signal (surprise)
    • Multi-vendor projects can make it very difficult to point fingers during configuration troubles
    • Limited reach of VDSL signal - necessitates building out fiber plant for the "Fiber To The Neighborhood" concept. Not too big a deal in a metro area, but can be problematic in the rurals.

    This project has had its headaches, but it has been great experience to work with so many high-end network devices. It rocks to work for a small company in a small town and have access to such cutting-edge technology!

  • I should clarify my intial sentence. It's not the "small town" that's deploying VDSL, it's the company I work for, Delhi Telephone Company.
  • I trust my local telephone company. In my life, I've never been without telephone service. I'm serious. There was a tornado nearby once, and the power(and cable access) was out for nearly a day - but we still had our phones.
    Heh, where were you during the Great BBQ of '99? When one of Bell's COs caught fire in downtown Toronto, knocking out phone and internet service for a good-sized chunk of Canada? That lasted a few days until they could get everything back up again, IIRC. =)

    --

  • All that, and the government pays for your health care. And I think pound for pound (gram for gram?!) you guys have more colleges that offer courses in game development than the US does. Now you're telling me you can trust your friendly Canadian telco? Someone tell me please why I'm still in Jersey...

    The poster you were responding to was talking about American telcos, no doubt. They all suck. I've yet to hear of one that's reliable and trustworthy.
    --
    Peace,
    Lord Omlette
    ICQ# 77863057
  • Before being taken over by AT&T, TCI Cable rebuilt the cable system in the Des Moines, Iowa area. They put in a fiber backbone, but there seems to be no battery backups for their equipment, nor does there seem to be any real redudancy. Power outages in certain areas have left entire cities without their cable or cable internet service, simply because the single fiber route had a power interruption. Also, despite the fiber backbone, some areas still have crappy reception of analog channels. A friend of mine lives less then a mile from the head end, and has this problem.

    --

  • ...that I can use my Answering Machine as a VCR?
  • Another technology that excludes the other 95% of us who live more than 15,000 from the nearest CO.
  • stop. If the big telcos have anything to do with it, they will stall, fiddle and fritter away any technology that might introduce competition. Especially if you're depending on them for *any* part of the infrastructure. Just look at the DSL market. The number of companies in that "competitive" market is plummeting and prices are going up. My friendly local DSL provider just hit me with a contract renewal that is twice the rate I'm paying now. So for $100 a month I'll get 384/128....that sucks.
  • When was the last time you where in a blackout that cut phone service?
    Unless it was a disaster that destroyed equipment, i would say never. OTOH you may have known that and where just trying to be funny.
  • If you are lucky, you can get ~ 6 Mbps downstream on ADSL, so I guess you could watch 3 different channels. Better watch out if you have 4 TVs, though.
  • Think it depends greatly on what region/market you are talking about. Here, AT&T took over from MediaOne and the service has been superb. I've heard that if you are in a former TCI area, it isn't always as great.

    Remember, it hasn't been AT&T doing cable for 50 years suddenly doing broadband internet. AT&T bought their way into this market in the last few years and they bought different companies with varying degrees of competence. It takes a _long_ time for a company to get its acquired workers assimilated into the 'borg'. Hell, I should know... my company was bought out 14 years ago and we _still_ refer to them as the 'evil empire'.
  • Yeah, I had TCI in the last place I lived before I moved into my house where MediaOne served. They certainly were the worst I've ever seen. They would cut out 2-3 times a week and forget about talking to anyone in customer service. I know AT&T has spent big-bucks to lay a lot of hybrid fiber/coax in the areas it acquired in buying out TCI.

  • hmmm (Score:2)

    by Brolly ( 151540 )
    While this may be possible, the question one has to really ask is...why do it? The people in the article seem to be happier about the fast internet service than the tv stations, and I would be too. Seems like a useless technology to me, for the most part.

  • Why weren't these barriers knocked down before?

    Simple. Your telcos have been relying on old technology, in which they have a substantial investment in time, knowledge, and, above all, money.

    No one, even modern telcos, likes to put money toward something that may or may not be the Next Big Thing, but will certainly require a deviation from the established manner of doing things. This requires a leap of faith that few are comfortable with, especially those conservative souls who serve as Directors for a large corporation.

    Being Slashdotters, we easily recognize the benefits of quick advancements in technology, and find it unfathomable that such incredible improvements should sit idle while the moneychangers haggle and worry. We just don't see the fear in the eyes of those same moneychangers, nor do we feel it in our hearts.

    Luckily, the clamor for faster, wider pipes is becoming loud enough to be heard in the top-floor boardrooms. As the din increases, you'll see more and more improvement, starting in the areas that show the most benefit for the costs: metropolitan areas. It may take awhile before it gets to the rural areas, because it's all about money, man.

  • What I want to know is what compression they are using?
    MPEG-2
    To sqeeze 60 channels into a DSL line is quite a feat (since you can STILL use DSL at the same time),
    It's switched at the head end. Only the channels you're watching go down your phone line.
  • I can only watch one channel at the time. Why waste all this bandwidth on stuff you cannot possibly watch anyway. Put the tuner on the other side of the cable and switch channels remotely. All the extra bandwidth can be used for regular internet usage.
    Right. That's exactly how they do it.
    As a matter of fact, why not stream that remaining channel over TCP/IP anyway?
    Because TCP isn't an efficient protocol for video. If you miss frames of video, you don't want them resent. You just drop 'em.
  • To sqeeze 60 channels into a DSL line is quite a feat (since you can STILL use DSL at the same time)

    A Google search for 'mPhase Traverser' [google.com] gives a lot of sources for info on this technology, but I don't see anything that says that it's actually streaming 60 channels simultaneously over DSL. You're only watching one channel at a time, maybe it's only receiving one at a time?
    Sean

  • No it's not..
    in fact it's pretty much the best thing *they* can have.
    The trick is they don't broadcast you. they give ou what you want to see. I tried something similar with a disguised internet-tv set top box.
    But I was still using broadcast tv and the set top box was tunning the channels to provide the famous 'context-sensitive' tv interaction, thus bringing the user real interactive tv, with a real broadcast, running a site with time/channel aware contents. (something lik that, well you get the picture)
    Anyway, the real good thing about it, and that's why this last one is better, is that the service provider will tune for you, thus will know exactly what you are watching, when, knowing who you are giving precise statistics and even real time ratings, which is very very good business.
    Giving much more acurat ratings, than the statistic inquiries methods, providing an invalueable information to advertising companies.
    Oh well..
  • Wouldn't 24 phone lines over 1 copper pair be otherwise known as a T1? all you have to do is multiplex the signals and send them down the same pipe... the problem is keeping the signals in good shape when they get to the other end...

  • i cannot believe this... (Score:4)

    by Rackemup ( 160230 ) on Monday January 22, 2001 @12:01PM (#490219) Homepage
    "Georgia is the test site for a new technology developed at the Georgia Tech Research Institute... "

    I laughed when I read this little piece of "breaking news"... This kinda technology has been in use for over a year in Moncton, New Brunswick CANADA... yeah that's right... Canada...

    I lived there while they were rolling it out last year, never got to test it myself since it wasnt available on my street, but I hear it was comparable with cable. Check it out if you want http://www.nbtel.nb.ca , click on Vibevision for more info.

  • How much is cable a month in the UK?
  • Re: Point #2
    Here we go. Pulled out the monthly spam from Bell ExpressVu.

    City - Channels, Cost/month $CDN (1.5CDN = 1US)

    Thunder Bay - 54, 36.46
    Ajax - 64, 39.39
    Oakville - 64, 41.99
    London (North) - 65, 38.84
    Toronto - 65, 39.88
    Ottawa(East) - 67, 35.92
    Richmond Hill - 69, 43.26

    One of expressvu's packages claims to have 106 channels, for 36.95 a month, by comparision.
    9 movie channels is another 16 bucks a month.

    Or you can pay nothing, and get them all ;)
  • Yup I'm looking at going cable just to get away from Qworst. How does AT&Ts broadband thing comapre?
  • That would depend on your ISP and location. I'm on the 29.99 plan. I get over 600K almost without exception and have 1 static IP throught my ISP all for just about $50 a month. My only problem with Qworst has been that twice in the past year I have been with no phone for more than 2 days at a time. I've been hearing good things about AT&T in my area (SLC) but it is no go so far.
  • This "new technology" as it's being touted was actually created in the late 80's as a "pay per view" product. A set top box would connect to a fone line and provide payperview as well as regular stations. Then some people got together and said "what if we could run computer data on this" (Payper view was digital)
    Thus the advent of DSL.

    Not new, and yes... I think verizon has the experience needed to give this a bad rep. Oh well...

  • They've had this technology for YEARS in Hong Kong. It's called iTV (interactive TV) and is essentially VoD (Video on Demand) with timeshifting and all (but I think all that is done server-side). High-speed internet access with that goes without saying (DSL).
  • They were talking about this a while back here in Saskatchewan here about a year or so ago, but last I heard there was a big hold up because one of the cable companines (Rogers?) was complaining to the CRTC. Does anyone have any more info on this (especially pertaining to Sask)? Thanks
  • Hmmm, cable TV, DSL and my phone service all on one set of lines? No thanks, I'll keep my phone service separate(cellphone), so that when the rolling blackouts hit my area, I won't be completely cutoff from civilization!

  • The guys at scn-inc [scn-inc.com] claim to be able to deliver 200 channels over DSL, and have been doing so for some months now.
  • If they can find ways to make the copper phone lines this efficient, imagine what they could do with the fiber optic lines they are putting all over the place.

    I think financial limitations, and limits on the resources available help creativity. DSL and this are a good sign of that in my opinion. I think it's a great idea and if they can do all this with simple telephone lines I look forward to what they can do with tv cable and fiber optic connections.

  • You would think after all of these years that folks would figure this out. Since you know on which wire you are sending the video stream, simply have the set-top box communicate with the central office and select the channel for that particular wire, and do the switching at the central office.

    You would think that phone guys would have thought of this...

  • Actually, the article that was linked didn't have any reference to switching. Other backgrounds made references to servers, but still didn't give a good shot at what was being delivered down the final wire.

    Even so, one wonders what the rediculously low number of channels is about.

  • Impressive, but (Score:4)

    by Auckerman ( 223266 ) on Monday January 22, 2001 @12:12PM (#490246)
    "With the addition of a set top box, users get 60 channels along with their DSL and phone line."

    While it is ALWAYS nice to have alternative ways of getting subscriber based TV (read: Cable), this really doesn't impress me as a comsumer. In my area, we have digital cable. I have 180 channels including 10 HBO channels and 10 Showtime channels. Also, built right into the cable box is a cable modem. Granted DSL has guarantted speed while cable is shared speed, it's as fast (if not faster)as normal home DSL connections most of the time.

    What I want to know is what compression they are using? To sqeeze 60 channels into a DSL line is quite a feat (since you can STILL use DSL at the same time), but feasible (you should watch Quicktime streams on a 100BaseT connection sitting on Internet2, which lets you cheat your way through parts of the internet).

  • Re:Information Age Barriers (Score:4)

    by Auckerman ( 223266 ) on Monday January 22, 2001 @12:18PM (#490247)
    "I suppose what I want to know is: Why weren't these barriers knocked down before?"

    Where there is already a govt sanctioned monolopy that offeres a comparable service that is proven to work and is affordable, why would any competitor come to YOUR town and set up shop. No guaranteed customers. Which is probabally why it's first appearing in a "small town" where in the article it mentions that the cable company wouldn't hookup a line to his business for just one subscriber....

  • > users get 60 channels along with their DSL and phone line.

    Until they tell you that you are too far away from the CO.

    Pffft!

  • Wow... (Score:5)

    by TDScott ( 260197 ) on Monday January 22, 2001 @12:02PM (#490276)

    Introducing...

    The Verizon TV Service!

    • Guaranteed 41% uptime!
    • It'll always cut out at the important bits of the story!
    • Why not upgrade to our plus service - we'll automatically download programme schedules for you, to make sure the VerizonBox(TM) always cuts out at the right moment!

    Sorry. Sarcasm overload here. Although quite how far into the realms of fantasy I am I'm not sure...

  • Ma Bell (Score:5)

    by Isosceles Triangle ( 264859 ) on Monday January 22, 2001 @11:58AM (#490279)
    If it takes 3 months to install like my DSL did, I don't want it.

  • Cable and DSL and Phone services oh my! (Score:3)

    by CoBoLwArRiOr ( 301814 ) on Monday January 22, 2001 @12:00PM (#490283)
    I wonder what kind of competition will open up in the cable TV market, especially if the phone companies decide to provide their own channels rather than teaming with a local cable company. Or, what if the local cable companies embrace this technology and begin to offer up phone services? The possibilities are mind boggling. (and yes, I know Time Warner is already in the telecom and cable business).

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-
    The COBOL Warrior

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