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The Internet Upgrades Technology

200mbps DSL On Its Way? 307

Posted by timothy from the on-speed-is-the-new-on-steroids dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I came upon a news story about Texas Instruments developing a new DSL technology which will allow ISP's to boost their bandwidth to 200mbps (Yes, mega bits per second). The UDSL service, as it is dubbed, is backwards compatible with current DSL technologies such as VDSL and ADSL. This should get many cable internet users, like myself, a second look at DSL." Update: 06/15 01:26 GMT by T : "mps" and "mbs" both de-mangled.
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200mbps DSL On Its Way? More

200mbps DSL On Its Way?

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  • I wish I had it now (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Then maybe I would have a First Post... I had to try

  • Problems with this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DarkHelmet ( 120004 ) * <.mark. .at. .seventhcycle.net.> on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:14PM (#9425760) Homepage
    I can imagine hordes of "geek apartment buildings" sprouting up next to central offices.

    They never mention what kind of distance you have to be from a node in order for this to work. I imagine all these "geek apartment buildings" are next to the C/O ;)

    Also, will the telecos even have the bandwidth from the node, onward to really sustain that kind of bandwidth? I mean, we're looking at OC-3 speeds, right? I can imagine their pip getting saturated.

    Finally, what good is this if ISP's shut down anyone who use "too much bandwidth" anyway? We're already at that scenario with 1.5 meg/sec constantly. What about 200? Egh.

    • Re:Problems with this (Score:5, Informative)

      by ikkonoishi ( 674762 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:22PM (#9425827) Journal
      They never mention what kind of distance you have to be from a node in order for this to work.
      Yes they do.

      Article Quote.

      VDSL, a newer kind of DSL, provides much higher speeds, of up to 52mbps. But it can only transmit signals up to 800 meters, making it useful only in very densely populated areas, such as high-rise apartment buildings. VDSL services are popular in large cities in Asia but are not viable for most markets in the United States.

      UDSL provides a middle ground, according to Chow. Because the technology is compatible with both ADSL and VDSL standards, it adheres to requirements of both technologies. For example, at distances greater than 1 kilometer, it provides an ADSL-like service with ADSL data rates. But at shorter distances, it can provide VDSL-like service with data rates that match or exceed VDSL. In some instances, Chow claims, a UDSL service could provide up to 200mbps of bandwidth. This is four times as much bandwidth as is currently available through VDSL services.
      • In some instances

        Care to quote where it explains in what instances 200MB is possible?

        • Re:No they don't (Score:4, Informative)

          by hdparm ( 575302 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @09:41PM (#9426344) Homepage
          RTFA is not always enough, as it seems. You also need to digest the information and apply thinking process to it.<p>After I did, I figured < 1km will provide ~50Mbps (like VDSL). 200 looks more like an extreme - << 1km or even <<< 1km. Come to think of it, it provides that much bandwidth only in case you plug ISP's DSL straight into your PCI port :o).

    • Re:Problems with this (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Oculus Habent ( 562837 ) * <oculus.habent@g m a il.com> on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:23PM (#9425836) Journal
      will the telecos even have the bandwidth

      This was my immediate thought. Sure, it's a great concept, but there's no practical application for home use. You might see this in very large business or site-to-site communication - both in place of OC-3 lines.

      Don't expect 200Mbps for general home use any time soon. The costs to provide that much bandwidth, even ridiculously oversold, are too high.

      • Re:Problems with this (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You guys arent thinking at all....

        The Telcos will use the b/w to provide streaming movies, holographic video conferencing, or whatever the next gen services are from their own networks. As you say, providing 200Mbps to the Net for every customer is likely to be costly.

      • agreed .. my ISP is having a hard enough time meeting their advertised 3mbit downstream 40k upstream ... anything that requires peering to some other network is slower than a monkeys uncle.

      • Re:Problems with this (Score:5, Funny)

        by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:40PM (#9425968)
        Sure, it's a great concept, but there's no practical application for home use.

        And 386's are for servers, those new 33.6 modems are blazingly fast, and no one will ever need more than 640k of ram.

        Just today, we had an article about streaming movies. Current cable and DSL speds are jut barely fast enough. Until you get a large email, and it chokes. With speeds like this, that becomes a lot more viable.

        Imagine a HD TiVo, recording and watching 3 different shows/movies at the same time, pumped through your DSL line.

        • Re:Problems with this (Score:5, Interesting)

          by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:56PM (#9426059)
          Imagine a HD TiVo, recording and watching 3 different shows/movies at the same time, pumped through your DSL line.
          Exactly. And, imagine the Telco hosting that data. That's the whole point of technologies like this; minimize the peering requirement, but maximize the data that the end-user wants to get.
        • I didn't mean to say there will never be a practical application, just not one for a while yet. What a while proves to be is questionable. For now, I'd wager ( a very small amount) on four years before you see >10Mbps in half as many households as have broadband right now.

          I do imagine an HD TiVO doing just what you suggest... just not yet. The bandwidth may be there for one user. It may be there for ten users. But either your local ISP has to maintain a cache to keep it's bandwidth bills down, or someon


          • I do imagine an HD TiVO doing just what you suggest... just not yet. The bandwidth may be there for one user. It may be there for ten users. But either your local ISP has to maintain a cache to keep it's bandwidth bills down, or someone gets to pay for it all. Bandwidth isn't dirt cheap yet.

            We shouldn't assume that all of that data has to traverse the traditional internet. Most of this video data is beginning its life as IP in the Telco's CO. The Telco is getting video from satellite or other sources

        • Re:Problems with this (Score:4, Insightful)

          by JamieF ( 16832 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @11:00PM (#9426770) Homepage
          >Imagine a HD TiVo, recording and watching 3 different shows/movies at the same time, pumped through your DSL line.

          Or imagine broadcast TV or cable, doing the exact same thing but with DRM'd content just the way that the owners of the content like it. You want ShareReactor + eMule over a T3 and they want DirecTV. They have lawyers and lobbyists and you have...?

          Imagine all the cease and desist orders you could get over that much bandwidth.

          Let's face it, folks, the last mile is NOT the problem. What exactly would you use it for? There are some very rich, powerful people damming a river, and dredging the river downstream isn't going to make the water flow much faster. For everyone to have ultra broadband would be the ??AA's worst fucking nightmare.
      • Sure, it's a great concept, but there's no practical application for home use. You might see this in very large business or site-to-site communication

        I remember hearing almost the exact same thing said when rumors of 56k modems started to filter down to newsgroups.

      • My guess (Score:5, Interesting)

        by einhverfr ( 238914 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [srevart.sirhc]> on Monday June 14, 2004 @09:10PM (#9426138) Homepage Journal
        is that the telcos will allow people to use the bandwidth but charge for the throughput. I mean-- if the pipe is saturated, then people will still get a reasonable speed. However, we are still dealing with USDL in short distances, then VSDL, the ADSL on the same equipment, just varying the distances.

        Personally, I think that twisted pair might be endangered in the long run. Where I am (rural central Washington), the new trend is to run fiber to peoples' houses at least in the small towns (a few small towns are going wifi, but that is another matter). My telephone and 2mb/s internet shares the same fiber at a rate if $51/month.... (Geeks should move here), and I recently upgraded to their $100 offering and bought 2mb/s *symetric* so I can host customers' web sites here.

        Note that this is their *residential* offerings. Business offerings can start out at 5mb/s down at least for $9.95 plus telephone lines!

        How do the ISP's and telcos make money at this rate? Easy. I am allowed to transfer up to 10GB of data per month. Each additional 10GB incures additional (reasonable) charges.

        There are ways of limiting bandwidth without shutting down "abusers." Just find out what it is costing you and pass that cost plus a markup on. This turns a hostile situation into a very good oportunity.

      • Re:Problems with this (Score:5, Informative)

        by Jack Porter ( 310054 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @09:17PM (#9426189)
        Don't expect 200Mbps for general home use any time soon. The costs to provide that much bandwidth, even ridiculously oversold, are too high.

        My home internet connection is over 50Mbps (I can get up to 5MB/second using BitTorrent). My apartment building has fiber from the provider, and they run 100BaseT ethernet to every apartment. I pay about $US35 a month for unlimited service.

        I do live in South Korea, but it goes to show with enough demand, this kind of bandwidth DOES scale economically.

        • Re:Problems with this (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Erwos ( 553607 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:13PM (#9426526)
          Is the government subsidizing it at all? I was under the impression that some Asian governments were putting a bit of their tax dollars into the whole broadband thing. Unsure about South Korea's case, but that's why I'm asking :).

          Not a bad idea, I think. Infrastructure upgrades are a key to any economy's long term growth.

          -Erwos

    • Re:Problems with this (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gnuman99 ( 746007 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:26PM (#9425861)
      Also, will the telecos even have the bandwidth from the node, onward to really sustain that kind of bandwidth? I mean, we're looking at OC-3 speeds, right? I can imagine their pip getting saturated.

      With what? There is only so much you can download and only so much you can upload. Unless someone is going to put slashdot or even better, fileplanet on one of these, then the phone company will not get saturated.

      Furthermore, the ISP can monitor bandwidth usage. They don't have to shut anyone down, just follow a nice formula. Full speed up to X bandwidth used in a month. 10% speed for next X bandwidth used in a month. 10% of that speed for X more bandwidth used in a month... etc. etc.. Speed gets reset for next billing cycle. If they stagger billing cycles (not all on the same day), then their pipes will be free :)

      • Re:Problems with this (Score:4, Funny)

        by Paleomacus ( 666999 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @09:05PM (#9426106)
        They don't have to shut anyone down, just follow a nice formula. Full speed up to X bandwidth used in a month. 10% speed for next X bandwidth used in a month. 10% of that speed for X more bandwidth used in a month... etc. etc.. Speed gets reset for next billing cycle. If they stagger billing cycles (not all on the same day), then their pipes will be free Roflmao, I had a flashback to my OS Design course when I read that. Visions of scheduling and page replacement algorithms flashing through my head.

        It's scary when you realize that you're actually learning something in school.
    • Right now a 802.11b wireless connection from my laptop to my wireless router is faster than my DSL connection. hence there was no drawback in using wireless throughout the house and my lifestyle has adapted to it.

      In fact I suspect this has been one of the major drivers in Laptops becomeing popular. For interet use they were as fast as desktops, but were wireless, and the convenience was great. With Apple products this used to be even more true because the laptops had the same speed processors as the de

    • Re:Problems with this (Score:3, Interesting)

      by j1m+5n0w ( 749199 )

      I could see an ISP maybe offering 200mbps speeds between customers of the same ISP in the same city, as an incentive for customers to convince all their friends to join. It doesn't cost them anything if their customers are just using spare capacity on the local loop. Of course, the upload is probably a lot less than 200mbps, and if multiple ISPs offered the same service, it wouldn't take long before some enterprising customer would sign up for both and run a gateway between the two (not that that would

    • Re:Problems with this (Score:5, Informative)

      by dissy ( 172727 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @10:56PM (#9426748)
      Actually,
      an OC-3 is 155mbit/sec
      an OC-12 is 622 mbit/sec

  • That’s assuming... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DaHat ( 247651 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:14PM (#9425769)
    Such a breakthrough lab technology makes it to the market and drives down prices to the point it's affordable to the average geek net user... I wont be holding my breath for either part myself.

    • Re:That’s assuming... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bizitch ( 546406 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:23PM (#9425838) Homepage
      You forget what the "killer app" for this is...

      HDTV

      The telcos are sick of getting there asses kicked by Cable in the broadband/tv/telco arena.

      Right now they are trying to have a go at it with bundleing DSL with DirectTV - but that aint flying so well.

      If they can pump out bits this fast it would make them quite a formidible player in the "Convergence" field.

      They've already cranked their infrastucture everywhere with DSL repeaters to get around the CO distance issue - Rolling this out shouldn't be a big deal.

      Amazing to contemplate it though - 200mps Internet, Telco, HDTV - all on a single pair of CAT3 - wow!

    • It's also assuming that they actually deliver on the 200Mbps to any mere mortal. Because as noted in the article:

      According to the DSL Forum, there are roughly 73.4 million DSL subscribers worldwide. Most of them use ADSL services, which typically offer 8mbps of downstream bandwidth at distances of up to 5 or 6 kilometers.

      ADSL at 8Mbps? I wish!

  • Umm yeah right.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:15PM (#9425770)
    There isnt the infrastructure to support that much data .. I'm talking about the core.

    Once more people start getting it .. the bandwidth will drop.
    • Current bandwidths are not sufficient for much in the way of value-added services. If the telcos roll this out correctly, they could acquire the capital for the needed infrastructure improvements as they go along.

      Besides, technology continues to develop to make bandwidth thicker and cheaper at every layer. If Joe Schmoe is speeding along at 200 mbps on a cat3 wire, you think the folks upstream will be standing still?

  • ...and the cost... (Score:4, Funny)

    by bcs_metacon.ca ( 656767 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:15PM (#9425771)
    Yay! Another service my ISP can charge through the nose for! Pure profit, baby!

  • Let's hope... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:15PM (#9425772)
    ...it's faster than the TI-99

  • Go Little Bells! (Score:5, Funny)

    by coupland ( 160334 ) * <<moc.liamtoh> <ta> <esahcd>> on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:15PM (#9425773) Journal

    Personally I love this idea. It will let my local DSL provider advertise "20x the speed of cable!". Then they can increase the number of subscribers per segment by 20x and I can continue to enjoy these 40k/s downloads while my ISP charges more than they ever have. I think this is a huge step forward, but if I pay a little extra can I also request a boot to the head???

    • Re:Go Little Bells! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:19PM (#9425804)
      ... and they'll still complain bitterly if you actually act as if you have some right to use that capacity.

    • Re:Go Little Bells! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Fooby ( 10436 )
      Huh? You are seriously getting screwed over if your phone company is oversubscribing their DSL service. DSL is point-to-point, straight from your house to the CO, there is no "segment" like you have with cable service. I've always gotten the advertised 1.5 Mbps or better from Verizon, cheap too by American standards. Unfortunately the 128Kbps uplink still blows, and they block port 80 so no running webservers on standard ports--though of course any servers are technically against the contract.

  • technology never ceases to amaze (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:15PM (#9425774)
    'which will allow ISP's to boost their bandwidth to 200mbs'

    awesome, now it will only take 5 seconds to get a bit.

  • can't wait (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:15PM (#9425775)
    think how fast sites could get slashdotted then.

  • I think.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Digitus1337 ( 671442 ) <(moc.liamtoh) (ta) (sutigid_kl)> on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:16PM (#9425780) Homepage
    That we've all learned the disappointing lesson that lab results don't tend to display the same capacity in the real world.

  • Ultimate Powa (Score:5, Funny)

    by ParticleMan911 ( 688473 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:16PM (#9425781) Homepage
    When your phone lines start burning through the walls, don't say you weren't warned.

  • Perhaps now (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tokerat ( 150341 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:16PM (#9425786) Journal

    They'll actually let us use the bandwidth they provide to us without restricting/overcharging us?

    Nah.
  • The only question now is how much of this theoreticial bandwidth will actually be passed along to subscribers. There is only so much bandwidth on a fiber line that most isp's are using to feed current cable and dsl lines, and current cable and dsl are able to transfer at higher speeds than most are being used at. Seems to me more like a formality.

  • Units (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jsweval ( 693114 )
    I wasn't aware that Mps or Mbs were units of transfer speed.

  • isp's (Score:5, Insightful)

    by flacco ( 324089 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:17PM (#9425798)
    and your isp will still cap your drooling consumer connection at 256k upstream.

    • Re:isp's (Score:5, Informative)

      by PlusFiveTroll ( 754249 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:59PM (#9426075) Homepage
      Actually that wont work, there is about a 10:1 download to upload ratio(very rough estimate from experance). If you download too fast you wont be able to [ACK] acknowledge all of your tcp packets and the connection will start ratelimiting itself. On a 200Mbps you absolutely have to have at least 10Mbps up with very large receive windows to see the anywhere near the max.

  • Where I'm at, we barely have regular DSL (Score:5, Funny)

    by RLiegh ( 247921 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:18PM (#9425802) Homepage Journal
    So, I will expect 200mps DSL ...oh, let's see... on the fifth of never.

    I guess it's cable for the foreseeable future.

  • RTFA (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:18PM (#9425803)
    This is not going to be consistently faster than ADSL or VDSL... They said most of the time the speed will be like ADSL or VDSL depending how far you are.

  • Don't get too excited (Score:5, Informative)

    by venicebeach ( 702856 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:19PM (#9425805) Homepage Journal
    Doesn't look like this is going to be a reality any time soon:

    Texas Instruments expects to have samples of these new chips available in the second half of next year.
    The first generation of products using Texas Instruments' chips will likely be introduced sometime in 2006.

  • Mega/milli (Score:5, Informative)

    by gspr ( 602968 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:21PM (#9425816)
    200mbs (Yes, mega bits per second)

    No, millibits per second. Get your prefixes straight. Oh and by the way, the headline says "200mps" - 200 metres per second?

  • Spam spam SPAM! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:21PM (#9425817) Journal
    I remember reading not too long ago that 80% of SPAM is relayed through virus-laden open relays.

    Can you imagine the amount of SPAM a 24x7 200 Mb connection can generate? /Shudders

  • New tech years away (Score:3, Interesting)

    by thebes ( 663586 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:21PM (#9425818)
    So much hype, yet so little reality. I guess it's just the cynic in me...but all these technologies are great, but they are worth nothing if they don't show themselves in a meaningful time frame.

    Take CD burners for example. When they first came out (as WORM drives) it was all, "ooh, you have a drive that can WRITE cds! wow!! It took a decent bit of time as it progressed from the SCSI writers to the 1x then 2x then 4x IDE writers. When DVD writers came out, they were quite unique as well. Now only a short while later, grandma and grandpa have one on their pc they bought to send email to their grandkids.

    Unless these new techs make a debut soon, it'll become old hat, and all energy that went into development will be useless. They'd be better off keeping these "proof of concept" techs in the confines of the test lab, till they are actually able to get this thing into production. (A la, Duke Nukem Forever, which if they just kept their mouth shut, wouldn't make them the laughing stock of the gaming industry).

    My 2 bits.

  • They should concentrate..... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dcigary ( 221160 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:22PM (#9425826) Homepage
    ...on their current technology first.

    I still can't get DSL at my house, one that was built 7 years ago in a new neighborhood. The cable company had no problem getting it out here though.

    Sorry, but availability rules over bandwidth. The bandwidth of a non-existant connection is 0mps.

    • Re:They should concentrate..... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      But do you know why you can't get service?

      One typical situation with the new neighbourhoods was that they build fiber out to the new construction. It was all high tech and going to be great for providing phone service to an entire neighbourhood over a single wire. But, of course, DSL requires copper from the home to the local teleco office. This is probably why you can't get DSL - your copper terminates in a small box somewhere in your neighbourhood that has no room for additional DSL equipment, then you'r

  • THIS should get you looking? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by asdfasdfasdfasdf ( 211581 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:22PM (#9425829)
    This is vaporware.

    Right NOW, I've got a 7megabit/1megabit DSL connection right now with full throughput, static IP for $25/month (as part of a $50 telco/dsl package) I could never get service like this with such low latency from my cable provider. Plus I had to deal with the cable provider. yech.

    Obviously, it helps that I'm 1/2 mile from a CO, but there are deals to be found!

  • Speed only at short distances (Score:4, Informative)

    by spludge ( 99050 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:23PM (#9425832)
    As it says in the article it allows for ADSL speeds at distances > 1km and only reaches the fast speeds at 1km. Doesn't seem all that great to me. You still need your network provider to have a very fat pipe coming to within 1km (probably less) of your home. Which is not the case for most people.

    "UDSL provides a middle ground, according to Chow. Because the technology is compatible with both ADSL and VDSL standards, it adheres to requirements of both technologies. For example, at distances greater than 1 kilometer, it provides an ADSL-like service with ADSL data rates. But at shorter distances, it can provide VDSL-like service with data rates that match or exceed VDSL. In some instances, Chow claims, a UDSL service could provide up to 200mbps of bandwidth. This is four times as much bandwidth as is currently available through VDSL services. "
  • Maybe with this new DSL I'll actually be able to download movies from Starz [slashdot.org]

    But seriously, bring on the bandwidth. Hopefully it wont be something stupid like 199mbps down, 1mbps up.
  • When was this? 52Mb/s? They don't have the backbone for that consumer connection.

    Are they using these technologies as sort of a small telco -> big telco link? Otherwise, what's the point? Even existing consumer technology isn't the bottleneck.

  • Second look at DSL (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:27PM (#9425869)
    >This should get many cable internet users, like myself, a second look at DSL."

    Ever try using a packet sniffer on your cable modem? Seeing all my neighbors Pr0n browsing was enough to make me switch to DSL.
  • 200mbs (Yes, mega bits per second)
    That looks like milli-bits to me.

    Are you sure you don't mean 200Mbps with a capital 'M'?

  • Something irking me about the units (Score:4, Informative)

    by Quattro Vezina ( 714892 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:27PM (#9425871) Journal
    200mbs (Yes, mega bits per second)

    First, the `m' should be capitalised. `M' is for mega- (1000000 times), `m' is for milli- (1/1000).

    Second, Mbs means megabits times seconds, not per second. It should either be Mbps or Mb/s. The former is used much more commonly, so let's go with that.

    Yeah, I know it's a minor nitpick, but it's irking me, and I had to get it off my chest.
  • There is no way the telcos have the backbone to support tens of thousands of people all pulling 200MB in highly poplulated areas going into a single CO.

    Pardon me if I don't hold my breath.

  • Misleading Headline and Caption (Score:5, Informative)

    by Little Grey ( 571460 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:28PM (#9425873)
    If you actually read the ZDNET article, they state:

    "UDSL provides a middle ground (between ADSL and VDSL), according to Chow. Because the technology is compatible with both ADSL and VDSL standards, it adheres to requirements of both technologies. For example, at distances greater than 1 kilometer, it provides an ADSL-like service with ADSL data rates. But at shorter distances, it can provide VDSL-like service with data rates that match or exceed VDSL. In some instances, Chow claims, a UDSL service could provide up to 200mbps of bandwidth. This is four times as much bandwidth as is currently available through VDSL services."

    So basically 200mbps is probably only attainable under an incredibly small percentage of installations where the variables are all basically perfect.

  • Our Home and Native Land, True..... (Score:5, Informative)

    by J2000_ca ( 677619 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:28PM (#9425877) Homepage
    I have to say I'm glad I live in Canada after hearing you all bitch. My dsl seems pretty decents. No download or upload limits. Uploads and downloads cap at a reasonable level. Bell doubled the speed for free. I do have one arguement against cable right now though. When the cable and phone line got cut down the street. Bell was there pretty much right away and it was fixed in 2 hours while it took rogers (cable) all night. Cable doesn't seem to consider itself critical yet.

  • Yes, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by callipygian-showsyst ( 631222 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:29PM (#9425885) Homepage
    ...if you download more than 1G/month, the ISP will pull the plug on you for excessive bandwith use!

  • Two questions... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by John Seminal ( 698722 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:30PM (#9425892) Journal
    On Monday, the chipmaker announced Uni-DSL, or UDSL, which raises the bandwidth of digital subscriber line technology to the level necessary to deliver high-definition television (HDTV) signals and other advanced video services

    This raises the question of how much bandwith is required for HDTV? I thought cable already was delivering this content. Does that mean a cable line can deliver more than the 200-300kbs I am getting now (on a good day).

    The second question I would have is how fair will this be? When cable modems came out, they were available in the richest communities first. Then it spread to the middle class communities. I have a freind who lives south of chicago who wanted a cable modem 2 years ago (for his mom, who refuses to move out of her childhood home which is in a deprived neighborhood), and AT&T at the time was not offering broadband in his neighborhood. Yet I got mine a year before he asked for his. And what is worse is when the cable modem came out, a friend of mine who lives less than a mile away from me got his 18 months before I got mine, and he got a better deal. The cable company has raised the price twice since then. So for those who would say the first people pay for making the technology available to all, I would question that assumption.

    • HDTV (Score:3, Informative)

      by Detritus ( 11846 )
      ATSC HDTV is broadcast at 19 Mbps. Network feeds (less compression) are about 45 Mbps. Uncompressed HDTV is 1.5 Gbps.

    • Re:Two questions... (Score:4, Informative)

      by n8_f ( 85799 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @04:15AM (#9427811) Homepage
      You are confusing your cable modem with the cable system. Current HFC systems (Hybrid Fiber Coax, the cable infrastructure) get about 6.8Gbps of bandwidth and they are expected to max out around 10Gbps. However, that is broadcast, one-way bandwidth. Everybody gets the same thing. For interactive services, like cable modems, the cable companies install equipment further down the line. In the case of cable modems, this equipment usually has its own fiber feed and will serve hundreds or thousands of homes. I don't know what the data rates will max out at for cable modems, but probably not very high. The systems are designed for bursty traffic and the current 3Mbps connections being advertised won't hold up to downloading a few ISOs.

  • Not what you're thinking... (Score:3, Informative)

    by wumarkus420 ( 548138 ) <wumarkus@NOSpAm.hotmail.com> on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:31PM (#9425904) Homepage
    I know I'm stupid for actually reading the article, but this isn't much more than a combination of ADSL and VDSL technologies that will allow ISP's to only buy one set of equipment on their end. You will still expect the same ADSL speeds you get now unless you live next door to the phone company. Most CO's aren't even equipped with VDSL hardware in the first place, so don't expect much unless you live in Hong Kong. This will not magically make your 1.5Mbps ADSL line any faster. The only ones benefitting here are the ISP's and possibly the VDSL users closest to the CO's.

  • No solace for those outside urban zones (Score:4, Informative)

    by Fooby ( 10436 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:33PM (#9425923)
    According to the article, at distances greater than 1km UDSL only provides ADSL-level service. It does not mention maximum range, but I suspect that at the sort of distance from the CO one finds in rural areas it is most likely just as unusable as standard ADSL.

    Nor does the article seem to address whether this is a symmetric connection or not. Of course having that kind of a fat pipe in the house would be revolutionary anywhere in America, but it would be nice to see more symmetrics options available. Even cable providers are putting arbitrary uplink caps on their service these days. Time to move to Japan?

  • Doesn't sound like a very useful one (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mike_lynn ( 463952 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:37PM (#9425949)
    It mentions "at distances greater than 1 kilometer" it's comparable to current ADSL offerings. Whoopty doo. ADSL has a range of about 3 miles from the central office or nearest remote station. For the metric impaired, 1 kilometer is about 0.62 miles.

    A circle with a radius of 0.62 miles centered on a C/O (thanks to handy Google calculator) covers an area of about 1.2 square miles. Similar math has standard ADSL covering an area just over *28 square miles*.

    So we're looking at a technology that meets current VDSL speeds in a coverage area less than 5% of the size offered by standard ADSL. How much freaking smaller do you have to go to offer UDSL?

    If we have to go 5% again (and that's being generous), we're looking at having to be closer than 0.14 miles to the C/O (225 meters).

    Right now I live close enough to my C/O to get a 7Mb connection. I only have a 1.5. With this technology I'd probably be one of the few to benefit and maybe see that top range peak out at 10 or 20Mb. But seriously, this tech means jack to the average DSL customer who's usually using it because a.) they can't get cable or b.) has a grudge against cable or is c.) stealing cable.

  • Hello, standard units of measure? (Score:5, Funny)

    by g0at ( 135364 ) <ben@@@zygoat...ca> on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:38PM (#9425960) Homepage Journal
    200mbps (Yes, mega bits per second).

    then

    Update: 06/15 01:26 GMT by T: "mps" and "mbs" both de-mangled.

    Well if you're going to take any effort to de-mangle, how about de-mangling into something that doesn't mean "milibits per second" if what you really mean is "megabits per second" (Mbps)?

    -b
    (argh)

  • But it's from the phone company so forget it (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:39PM (#9425962) Homepage Journal
    Seriously - you will never get it since it's from the phone company. All that will happen is that the phone companies will offer large businesses the same bandwidth they've had before for the same rate except that it will cost the phone company much less to deliver.

  • What a coincidence.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Moocowsia ( 589092 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:41PM (#9425977)
    An article on 400gb hard drives and an article on 200Mbps DSL on the same day! Its a conspiracy I tell you!

  • Yeah, and what's that going to cost in the U.S.? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cel Shady ( 747345 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:43PM (#9425985) Homepage
    I moved to the US from Europe a couple of years ago and was absolutely shocked when I saw the monthly costs for broadband over here. I pay ~$50 a month for Comcast internet (3Mbps/256Kbps) today. I have friends in Europe that pay less for 8Mbps/8Mbps, including static IPs. Sure, speakeasy.net offer 6Mbps/768Kbps--for $100 a month! One can only imagine what the price for, say, 100Mbit would be here in the U.S...

    P.S. Does anyone know if there's a technical reason for the exceedingly high costs here in the U.S?

    • Re:Yeah, and what's that going to cost in the U.S. (Score:4, Informative)

      by JamieF ( 16832 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @11:40PM (#9426972) Homepage
      The phenomenon you are experiencing is called "deregulation". It's what happens when monopoly telco lobbyists write the legislation that creates a fair competitive environment for other companies to compete with said telcos. Of course, the actual legislation is anything but fair. See also: Covad vs. the "baby bells".

      This is sort of like the power "deregulation" that took place in California and led to rolling blackouts and ultra high electricity and gas prices, and required a statewide bailout of the monopoly power company, Pacific Gas and Electric.

      When anybody in a suit starts to wax romantic about free markets, competition, and deregulation, look for the crossed fingers behind their back and wads of dollar bills sticking out of their pockets. What they really want is to replace a regulated monopoly with an unregulated monopoly, and an inefficient government bureacracy with an unaccountable corporate pyramid scheme that leads to offshore accounts, unprecedented executive payouts, and bankruptcy (followed by an emergency government bailout). See also: Enron, Worldcom.

      Real competition would be great, but that's not what we've got. What we have is legislated, goverment-subsidized monopolies paying protection money to Congress with one hand and waving a "Free markets now!" sign with the other.

      Of course, the bold new twist on this scheme is to first announce that you're going to replace a government bureaucracy with an efficient outsourcing contract, and then just award the contract to your friends with no bidding process (or a secret bidding process), claiming that national security (or the interest of fair competition) forced the bidding process to be secret or to be skipped altogether. Then you can sidestep all sorts of rules and laws and replace huge sections of the government with unaccountable private corporations, and you get deniability even if you own stock in said corporation. See also: Halliburton, Bechtel.

      P.S. Welcome to the USA!
    • There's a couple of reasons. One, we don't have anywhere near the population density of Europe. Two, the politicians and FCC bureaucrats who "deregulated" the telecom market didn't know WTF they were doing. Instead of saying "Anyone who wants to can build a network", they forced the telcos to lease their networks to other companies at regulated rates who then merely market DSL service. Yes, sometimes that works well (see Speakeasy), but for the most part it just doesn't encourage the telcos to spend $bi

  • It would be nice if they just gave us ADSL (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RhettLivingston ( 544140 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:44PM (#9425990) Journal

    We would have had 7Mbaud almost a decade ago if the phone companies hadn't sabotaged ADSL. They reduced the power so that they wouldn't have to do home visits, then found out after deployment that there was still too much interference and filters were necessary anyway. Thus, they knocked us from the original specification to 1.5Mbaud for no real reason.

    At least that's the party line. My feeling is that they aren't ready for true competition and are doing everything they can to keep the rate low enough to delay the onset of VOIP.

    I see no incentive for them to give us a generation that skips several though that is certainly the right thing to do. Putting the infrastructure in their hands has reduced it to a new tech every 6 years or so. At that rate, they should be shooting for at least a 16 times increase with every rollout. And the ADSL generation was rolled out years later and 4 times slower than what it should have been. So, at this point, we're so far off the curve it seems hopeless.

  • Draconian Contracts (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Helmholtz ( 2715 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @08:47PM (#9426009) Homepage
    Seems to me the problem with high speed internet isn't so much the speeds available but rather the draconian contracts that you must deal with. If my service can be shut off when I've exceeded my undisclosed bandwidth by an undisclosed amount, then faster speeds just means that I can reach my unpredictable shut off time faster than before.
    • That's only a problem with Cablemodems, because you don't have any choice but going with them...

      With DSL, you can tell your telco where to shove their contract, and buy service from a third party (eg. Earthlink) that doesn't limit your bandwidth, and don't impose draconian terms upon you.

  • *UNI* DSL (Score:2, Interesting)

    by femto ( 459605 )
    So what's the data rate in the uplink direction, to the exchange? Does 'Uni' stand for unidirectional or universal? Is the downlink speed at the expense of uplink speed?
  • Its not for the average user...its so the bells can provide hdtv over dsl lines.

  • Coverage (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Wild Bill TX ( 787533 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @09:11PM (#9426150) Homepage
    I wish more time was spent making broadband more widely available. I am stuck on dialup (2KB/s at that!) due to my geographical location. I'm sure that many people, myself included, would be happy just to have typical DSL speeds where they live.

  • wait a minute... (Score:4, Funny)

    by glwtta ( 532858 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @09:23PM (#9426234) Homepage
    you mean, that some aspects of computer and/or network technologies will be faster in the future? well, now I am just confused...

  • Telco's and cable should be worried about Kerry. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zymano ( 581466 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @09:52PM (#9426405)
    He wants a fiber to the home solution.

    100 megabits or more at an affordable price.

    If it happens then cable broadband and telco broadband are kaput.

  • This needs "fibre to the curb/pole" technology (Score:3, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @11:09PM (#9426836) Homepage
    This isn't a breakthrough. It's a deployment plan.

    This isn't about getting huge bandwidth from the CO to the end user via installed copper. It's about installing boxes on poles, pedestals, in apartment houses. These boxes have fibre coming in from the CO and provide LAN-range connections to the end user.

    The basic idea is to have a compatible set of equipment that works with existing DSL standards, but can be upgraded, section by section, without changing out the other parts. It's a somewhat lower cost alternative to fibre-to-the-home.

    This is roughly comparable to what cable companies do, running a neighborhood LAN with a box that provides an upstream connection, usually over fibre. The topology is about the same.

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