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Communications Media Television Entertainment

TV Over Phone Lines To Arrive In 2005 400

Posted by timothy from the to-speak-with-a-representative dept.
prostoalex writes "Associated Press says that telecoms have always considered expanding into digital television since the broadband infrastructure is already in place. But now they are putting billions of dollars into actually building such systems. "If everything goes as planned, the telephone industry will be all about television in 2005. TV over your home phone line. TV on your cell phone. Few topics have been as popular this past year among phone companies and their technology partners.""
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TV Over Phone Lines To Arrive In 2005 More

TV Over Phone Lines To Arrive In 2005

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  • Big deal (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ThisNukes4u ( 752508 ) <tcoppi AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @08:21PM (#11154789) Homepage
    Big deal. I'm still waiting for fiber to the home. I could care less about television.

    • Re:Big deal (Score:2, Informative)

      by Scurra UK ( 143378 )
      I think you'll find the phrase is "couldn't care less". Saying you could care less [bartleby.com] implies that you do care about it.

    • Re:Big deal (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SIGALRM ( 784769 ) *
      I'm still waiting for fiber to the home. I could care less about television
      Fiber-to-the curb promises to deliver bandwidth-thirsty services like television and video on demand, high-speed Internet, and voice to consumers and small businesses.

      Someday TV may be regarded as the "killer app" of broadband.
    • Why do Americans say they could care less? It implies that they do, in fact, care.

      Every person from every other country that uses that phrase says "I couldn't care less".

      Sorry but what is with that?
    • "Big deal. I'm still waiting for fiber to the home. I could care less about television."

      What would you do with fiber that'd beat lower cable/satellite bills (competition) and more choice about what content you get? Maybe I'm just unimaginitive, but the differenc between the 3 megabits I'm getting now and the 10-30 I could get isn't very interesting.

    • Re:Big deal (Score:5, Informative)

      by isdnip ( 49656 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @11:22PM (#11155863)
      But here's the $64 question. Why do you want fiber to the home?

      Oh, I know what you expect: Lightning-fast Internet access, right? But you forget that you're dealing with the Bell companies, under the Powell regime at the FCC.

      The Bells have a bad case of cable envy. They want to sell you TV channels, sure, because they see TV as the next big thing. (Not TV over fiber, but TV in general. The Bells are still stuck in a 1950 mindset.) And while it is possible to do TV over ADSL, it's not as good as cable. Fiber optics can be as good as cable -- cable companies, after all, bring it to the neighborhood already, converting to coax for the final run (Hybrid Fiber-Coax). FIOS does the optical conversion on a per-house basis. SBC might do that too, but I'm not sure. BellSouth plans to run fiber "to the curb", and tie in to the old twisted-pair drop wire, up to 500 feet of it, which should be able to deliver 20+ Mbps, enough for switched (tell them what channel you want and they'll connect you to it, keeping track of your viewing like a phone call) TV.

      But what about Internet? First off, if you have fiber to the home, an alternative DSL provider like Covad is usually cut off, period. (They might be allowed to salvage the old wire. "Green field" developments are closed to competitors tighter than a drum though.)

      Second, BellSouth has petitioned the FCC to "forbear" from enforcing the well-established rules of Common Carriage, as well as Computer II obligations, which require a telco-owned competitive service (ISP) to buy the underlying communications service on the same basis as a competitive provider (independent ISP). In other words, BellSouth wants to be allowed to deny access to its network to any other ISP. It's BellSouth Internet or nothing. If you don't like their backbone speed, their mail blocks, their pr0n filters, their no-server-at-home policies, whatever, tough noogies. And with no competitors save cable (and maybe wireless, in a few places, but that'll usually be slower), how do you think their service quality will evolve? (Remember Lily Tomlin as Geraldine the Operator?)

      And while it's BellSouth's petition at the FCC now, if it's granted, it'll be precedent for all of the other telcos. Verizon, SBC, Qwest and even that godwaful CenturyTel will get the same treatment. So your choice of ISP will be the telco-owned ISP or the cable-owned ISP.

      The FCC just closed out its Comment period on this abomination, but Reply Comments are being taken until Jan. 28 or so. Go to the FCC web site -> e-filing -> ECFS -> search for filed comments -> enter "04-405" as the docket number.

      Be afraid. Be very afraid. You may end up missing your creaky old copper DSL.

  • 500... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by slapout ( 93640 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @08:22PM (#11154794)
    500 ways to get TV and still nothing to watch.

  • first comment swoot (Score:5, Funny)

    by CloudDrakken ( 582681 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @08:22PM (#11154795) Journal
    hey maybe my TV can lag now too :D

  • I smell FIOS... (Score:5, Informative)

    by sH4RD ( 749216 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @08:22PM (#11154798) Homepage
    My friend has FIOS, and they have indeed told him it will be avalible in his area next year. Although, that is television over fiber, but it's provided by the Telco (Verizon).

    • Re:I smell FIOS... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This has been in the making for a long time. I am a headend technician at a large Canadian Cable company. Telcos have been interested in video over twisted pair for a long time. Fortunately (unfortunately) the physical limitations are going to be too restrictive for most home consumers. Many homes will require a complete rewire, and each outlet has to be trapped. Traditional analog telephone lines have a maximum bandwidth of 3000hz, so that doesn't offer much in the way of channel space. Compare that to tel
      • Actually, those with FIOS have already had it wired as far as it needs to go (to the box on the side of the house). Inside the home they just wire it to coax to provide television (at least that is what Verizon says they will do last time I checked). That or it uses Cat-6 wired to a cable (or whatever you would call it in this case) box.

      • Re:I smell FIOS... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by aldoman ( 670791 )
        WTF are you on about? Seriously, if you are a 'headend technician' you need to learn about something called DSL.

        Yes, that's right, this magic thing called DSL uses the frequencies _ABOVE_ 4KHz (normal telephones use up to 4000Hz, not 3000Hz) to provide high speed internet access.

        ADSL2 can provide upto 50MBit/sec and ADSL3 (or VDSL2, they don't know what to call it) can provide 100MBit+. Whether people will bother with these is still unknown, especially with Verizon deploying FTTH massively and driving dow

  • History of DSL (Score:4, Informative)

    by lousyd ( 459028 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @08:24PM (#11154809)
    This is what Digital Subscriber Line technology was orignally developed for. TV and such, deliveredd over phone lines.

    See here [azalea.net].

    • Re:History of DSL (Score:2, Informative)

      by Scurra UK ( 143378 )
      That's certainly what it's used for in parts of London - check out HomeChoice [homechoice.co.uk].
    • Yeah I work for these guys, but I'm also a user SCRTC [scrtc.com]

      34.95/month for 2 streams of digital cable + 44.95/month for 768/384 DSL

      Much better than that craptacular dish we had before, which went out every time the wind got above 20MPH or it rained.

    • MTS TV (Score:2, Informative)

      by Jiilik Oiolosse ( 717106 )
      I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada where we have a governtment endorsed monopoly for our local telephone service. This provider (MTS) is among the cheapest costing telephone service in North America, and yet they still had time to develop MTS TV, which is pushing (based on inside information from their techs) 14Mbps video signal down the twisted pair for their TV service which has been around for several years now. It can feed three TV's signal concurrently (more if the different TV's are tuned to the s

  • A little out of place? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @08:24PM (#11154812)
    I thought it was common knowledge that most phone systems (especially in rural communities) are unable to support broadband data communication. Cable was supposed to solve this problem. Fiber-to-the-home is now replacing cable... how can the telecom industry expect that their old, for the most part outdated copper wiring is capable of distributing this type of media?

    Until my grandmother is able to get DSL on her phone line (in the middle of no where), I just can't believe such a thing.
    • I thought it was common knowledge that most phone systems (especially in rural communities) are unable to support broadband data communication. Cable was supposed to solve this problem.

      I live in a very rural area.

      Telephone? Check.
      Cable? Nada.

      DSL is more available than cable in my area. It is still spotty, but anywhere with more than just a few houses and a barn can get DSL.

    • Re:A little out of place? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Mycroft_VIII ( 572950 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @08:48PM (#11154992) Journal
      No kidding, I'm less than 45 minutes from the city limits of a fairly large city (St. Louis), and approx 5 miles (8km) from a state highway that runs nearly straight into the city and I cannot get over 28.8 dialup (oh about once a month or so I get a 33.6 connect, usually last about 5 min before I lose the connection all together) and that is the BEST I can get without satalite, and that may not work (river valley, the hill cut me from full cell signall to nothing in less than a mile).
      How about finding a way to incourage the "baby bells" to upgrade EXISTING infrastructure outside of cities before spending even more money on downtown.
      I realize that being able to upgrade a few miles of systems for 100k people is more lucrative than upgradeing a dozen miles per 100 people, but this is getting rediculous when as little as 10 miles makes the difference between 2005 and 1965 in terms of capability (but not necessarily quality within that capability).

      Mycroft

      • Re:A little out of place? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Osty ( 16825 )

        No kidding, I'm less than 45 minutes from the city limits of a fairly large city (St. Louis), and approx 5 miles (8km) from a state highway that runs nearly straight into the city.

        45 minutes away from the city limits (as opposed to city center) is quite a distance. For comparison, that would put you almost halfway between St. Louis, MO, and Springfield, IL, on I-55. That's at slightly above-legal highway speeds, of course, and since you said "city limits" I'm not factoring much in the way of traffic,

      • "I realize that being able to upgrade a few miles of systems for 100k people is more lucrative than upgradeing a dozen miles per 100 people,"
        So those 100,000 people should wait for those 100 people to catch up... Seems odd. I mean why? You choose to live out in a rual area. It is one of the trade offs. You also have to go a longer distance to do any sort of shopping, see a profesional play, see a movie, or go to a concert. On the other hand you do not have to deal with congestion and traffic. All things i
    • The existing copper is totally inadequate for video distribution. I wouldn't expect any of it to be used. To compete with digital cable, they will need far more bandwidth than can be supported by DSL technology. They already have fiber to the neighborhood in many areas. They will need to install new equipment and cabling to get the bits from the neighborhood fiber nodes to the subscribers.
    • Actually, it depends on what you view as "rural". The majority of the rural telephone companies I know of all offer video over DSL. To do this, many of them own and operate a video head end then take it to the subscribers via multiservice access platforms (so-called IP DSLAM's) from Allied Telesyn, Calix, Ciena, Occam, etc... vs. HFC solutions that most urban areas are used to having the cable guy come out and monkey around with coax....

      So, you have the head end, the telephone (appearance) transport, a D
  • If the phone companies' approach to TV is anything like their approach to DSL, we're in for some exciting tales of boundless incompetence.

    Let the hilarity begin!

    • These telcos are highly efficient capitalist machines free trade, right? And capitalism is EVER so much more efficient than that nasty old government, which just all waste and inefficiency!

      Right?

      I mean, look at Verizon, and how competent and swift and efficient they are.

      Now compare that with the IRS and the Social Security administration and the post office. Why, we all know that half of all mail never arrives, and that most retirees eventually starve to death because they never get their checks.

      But, Ve
      • Yes, let's compare it to social security, which is so ill concieved that its about to go broke within my generation.

        Or how about FDA, taken your Vioxx yet? Or your Celebrex?

        The wonderful thing about capitalism is that if the companies aren't competent they won't stand the test of time, unless they are considerably cheaper than alternatives. The same is not true for bureaucracy.
        • THe social Security administration uses less than 1% of its costs for administrative purposes. HMOs, however, take 14% or more.

          As for the FDA, they are VERY capitalist oriented.
          You wrote:

          The wonderful thing about capitalism is that if the companies aren't competent they won't stand the test of time, unless they are considerably cheaper than alternatives.

          Yeah, right. Like Verizon and SBC are so competent. All they do is pay off the govt and keep running, as incompetent as ever.

          Our ideas and the truth
          • I love how you think I'm right winged and republican.

            I'm a libertarian, thank you very much.

            And how much technological innovation has come from 'socialist' France in the past 50 years? What two countries can you thank for 90% of the technology you are using just to post here? America and Japan: the two most capitalistic countries in the world.

            There are incompetent companies, just as there are incompetent governemnt agencies. FedEx, UPS, and DHL are several times better and more reliable than the USPO. Ju
            • you wrote:

              I love how you think I'm right winged and republican.

              I'm a libertarian, thank you very much.

              Oh, trust me, I KNEW you were a Lib. I was one, too. And that IS rightwing. Economically, that is. And economics is what feeds the bulldog.



              And how much technological innovation has come from 'socialist' France in the past 50 years? What two countries can you thank for 90% of the technology you are using just to post here? America and Japan: the two most capitalistic countries in the world.

              Act
        • Yes, let's compare it to social security, which is so ill concieved that its about to go broke within my generation.

          *Any* retirement system whatsoever would be going broke within a generation. The basic problem is that people are living longer. If you keep a fixed retirement age, over time you get more people sitting on their asses in this economy supported by fewer people working. That fundamental truth is invariant regardless of what kinds of paper certificates you try to shuffle around, be they stocks

          • Wanna bet? I can devise a retirement system that doesn't ever go broke.

            Each paycheck X% of your paycheck gets taken out by the government and put into something that is safe in terms of financial gain (bonds, etc). When you retire, you get all of that money back in a monthly check.

            You could gradually switch between people paying for others to people paying for themselves very slowly. The first year you could have 99% of social security go towards currently retired people, and 1% towards your future retire
            • You don't understand. You can't eat a bond. Every hamburger that you eat this year was produced this year.

              Supply and demand works in real time. If you have a bunch of bonds you saved up, but there aren't enough burger flippers left to run the economy, the value of your bonds will plummet. Ultimately, the viability of any retirement system is determined by the proportion of active workers to retirees during each passing year.

              Sadly, just about everyone I've talked to about this just doesn't get it. They'

            • Sigh, someone else who doesn't understand economics. In short, your plan almost works, but it causes inflation and deflation when there is a situation like we have now: Baby Boomers who didn't have enough kids to keep the population up. As they retire money has to be introduced to give to them, and that causes inflation, while they are contributing there is more money than needed going in, causing deflation.

              Economics is far more complex than the above, but in this case that is enough to poke holes in mo

              • There would no doubt be issues, but it would be no different then everyone just saving up money on their own for their own retirement, except this would be forced, and more equalized (money is distributed equally at retirement)

                While it's not perfect it's much better than what we have now...which doesn't work...at all.
    • f the phone companies' approach to TV is anything like their approach to DSL, we're in for some exciting tales of boundless incompetence.
      Fuck that. If the phone companies' approach to TV is anything like their approach to T1 data services, we're in for some exciting tales of boundless incompetence. Not that you can get a T1 anymore. You get HDSL with T1 emulation on your end....
  • In the small island of Cyprus, in the Eastern Mediterranean sea, the local telecommunications company was offering TV services over the phone for more than a year.

    Here is their website http://www.mivision.cyta.com.cy/english/what_mivis ion.php [cyta.com.cy]

  • Already have it in France (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nekosej ( 302666 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @08:27PM (#11154834)
    In France, TV over DSL (or ADSL as it is known it France, where it was invented) has existed for almost a year now, and there are several competing offers. My DSL provider also provides a second VOIP telephone along with TV and very fast DSL service.

  • Too little, Too late. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jgaynor ( 205453 ) <jon@gaAUDENynor.org minus poet> on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @08:28PM (#11154836) Homepage
    Is it just me or is this a case of too little, too late?

    My cable provider offers video/data/voice already and at 'decent' prices (barring additional 6% yearly increases). They already specialize in television, their data is currently faster than DSL and the voice is (so far) reliable and indistinguishable from traditional telco.

    Still, offering all three can't hurt and hopefully the competition will drive down the costs of both providers . . .
    • Is it just me or is this a case of too little, too late?

      No, considering that just as cable providers pick up VoIP the telephone companies start offering TV. Basically, this is two competing distribution networks competing against eachother.

      If that IP over powerlines stuff takes off, then we'll have the phone companies competing with the power utilities competing with the cable companies. What a set of unlikely enemies.
  • We have satalite and cable, this brings us TV nicely and has it's own brands and structure. Why do we need any more crap on our phonelines?

  • France has TV over phone lines since *long* (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have TV over adsl2+
    15mbit down while I live country side, really.
    Phone too.
    All for $30.
    I've TV since 1.5 years and phone since 2 this way.

    Oh yeah, but I live in FRANCE not USA.
    Our technologies. ^.^

  • We have that in HK already (Score:5, Informative)

    by yehim1 ( 462046 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @08:29PM (#11154854) Journal
    In HK, BroadbandTV services has been launched for over a year already. For a fee above your existing ADSL subscription, you get an extra decoder which connects to your phone line and decodes programmes to your TV.

    You can also subscribe to broadbandtv as a separate package.

    In my opinion, way to take advantage of the existing telephone infrastructure (just like ADSL).

    Link -> Here! [nowbroadbandtv.com] . Remember to click on the "English" !
    • Yes, here in Hong Kong, the DSL is provided by the incumbent fixed line operator, PCCW. It is very stable and high quality, compared to the flaky and low performing cable modem system. (Yes I know, this comes as a shock to US folks). If you subscribe to the 6 megabit/sec DSL service, it costs about US $25 a month, and they give you a TV decoder for free. You get about a half dozen TV channels for free (weather, traffic, basic Chinese news) and you can buy "a la carte" channels for about US $2 a month, like
  • ...even more channels with nothing (worthwhile) on.

    99.9% of TV blows. Blows big hairy chunks. So now we get yet another delivery system to bring this crap into our homes.

    Wonderful.

    • 99.9% of TV blows. Blows big hairy chunks.

      That is an interesting point (no, seriously). Suppose you polled people to find out how much TV they watched (yeah, that part's been done) and then divided that by the amount of programming they have available....

      I bet that most people don't watch even one percent of what cable brings to their homes, and satellite would be even lower. Now, do you suppose they don't watch it because they don't have time (i.e. need to get Tivo and/or to quit job) or because, as y

  • Verizon FIOS (Score:4, Informative)

    by $exyNerdie ( 683214 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @08:33PM (#11154875) Homepage Journal

    Verizon is working frantically to lay the optic fiber door-to-door. They already offer superfast internet speeds 15Mbps/2Mbps for $49.95 in some markets. The service is called FIOS (http://www.verizon.net/fios [verizon.net]) and I strongly believe that Verizon is working hard to get into Cable TV business. They already offer DIRECTV® deals [verizon.com]with their unlimited Freedom long distance package.

  • ...that they're going to have the Internet over phone lines next year.
  • Cable TV over the Phone Line.. not impressive.

    Wake me up when they have Phone Lines over Cable T...errm..oh..
  • The crappy autocratic do nothing customer service and utterly confusing billing system of the phone company combined with the shitty content of reality TV and their 10 million intellectual property lawyers.

    What exactly does this bring to the table? Anything? Nothing?
  • just when a research report has come out explaining that kids of today spend more time on the internet than in front of TV, these companies want to spend billions on brainwashing by phone. ... do they know something we don't?? like maybe that they are buying up laws^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H lobbyin congress to pass laws making the internet a broadcast-only medium?
  • ya.. we already have this here too.. its called MAX TV.. comes through with your DSL, it also allows you to browse internet on your TV.. im not really that impressed with it..
  • ... I guess there's a sucker born every minute.

    Seriously - why not "TV" over IP (cable, DSL)

    I don't see anything worth watching as it is - I wouldn't pay for cable if it weren't for the kids, and the fact that my Cable ISP is -$10 that way.

    Who would pay for another mode of crappy content delivery?

  • You mean "all about pervasive advertising.."
    We'll see a lot more advertising pushed along with the content as well.
  • It seems like the merging of technologies is bringing about the possibility of competition, which is a good thing. With cable and phone companies both offering phone, tv, and broadband, plus the cell phone companies offering phonelines as well as wifi in many areas, it seems like consumers are now getting more choices for service providers, which will hopefully lead to lower prices or better service.
  • so when the power goes out, now so does the phone.

  • I used to work on that (Score:4)

    by MSBob ( 307239 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @08:52PM (#11155020)
    I used to work for the - now defunct - iMagicTV. The truth is that the bandwidth over phone lines is still very limited. At the time we used 4MB/sec Mpeg2 which gives good quality but an average DSL link can support 6MB/sec at best meaning you can only have one TV receiver without a noticable drop in quality. MPEG 4 offers compression rates that make 2 TVs more realistic but realtime MPEG4 encoders are still not quite there.

    Also breaking into the entertainment industry is unbelieveably hard without having a solid DRM solution... as much as most slashdot crowd may despise DRM the truth is that it's necessary if you want to convince Warner Bros execs to let you broadcast their crap.

    • ... breaking into the entertainment industry is unbelieveably hard without having a solid DRM solution...

      Which is why I think the 'TV will save the telcos' idea is bogus. These people are hyping the idea to each other, to help convince themselves it is a good idea, but its rather like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

      Internet usage is up, TV viewership is down, and the interactive nature of the internet makes that a trend in one direction only - doom for broadcasting.

      A quote in the FA says:

    • Hey, I used to work @ iMagicTV on the motorola dev team - small world.

      Good concept, telephone lines don't have the bandwidth to make mpeg2 viable alongside the inexpensive DSS market. FTTH or other options might change that, though. Nevermind the DRM and encryption issues, equally as big a problem - it's no good having a TV distribution solution if you don't have any content to distribute.
    • The new file formats (specifically the one Quicktime 7 will be using, h.264) gives significantly better quality video over the same bandwidth, and it scales from small res cell phones to high-definition TVs. Should solve a lot of problems, if it lives up to the hype.
    • I'm sure you mean Mb (megabits) not MB (megabytes) :)
  • Aw, Shit.

    Is it That time of year again? Already?! Damn damn damn... Pundits poppin' off about the future, looking back through a filter that'd make Nostradamus look blunt? Oh, ick ick ick. Flying cars, cancer/hiv cures, unlimited free energy, world peace, global war (ok, that's not so far-fetched this time), wearable computers, micromachine-based medicine, self-destructing dvd's being popular, disney releasing a hit...

    I SO hate this aspect of each New Year. Unless it's Robin Williams saying, "In

  • From then they did the trial right before SBC bought them. Too bad they discontinued it. It was way better than AT&T (now Comcast)


  • Not here. I had to bail from Verizon DSL about 6 months ago when I started to get frequent disconects. My neighborhood was built in the mid to late 70s and the copper is degrading. It will be a LONG TIMEtm before I could see anything like this. They can't even keep 768/128 up to my location. This would require digging up 100s of backyards and re-laying the cable. I just don't see it. Not before 2010.

    /-McK
  • No, really. I've read several studies (including a few posted here on venerable /. that also say that there are more and more people (starting with us Gen X'ers) who simply do not watch TV. At all. Have no interest at all, and could care less. Hell, the only TV I ever see is whatever's on at my local bar, and even then, thankfully, there's no sound. I think that the telephone companies are getting desperate. They're losing out to cell phones in a big way (again, no land line for me for about the past
  • Why try to squish a TV size signal over the existing crappy copper? Why not spend that same money putting the phone over the other existing pipe, the existing cable line?

    Oh....I know. Because the telephone companies are scared spitless. They have but one product, which is rapidly becoming obsolete. The cable/cell/internet companies are taking over the phone service, so the phone company has to try to take over the tv business.

    Fools.

  • In Saskatchewan.. of all places (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Vaystrem ( 761 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @09:14PM (#11155141)
    Sasktel Max Interactive Services [saskte.com] I have had 'Sasktel Max' for well over a year. My roomate, whose Dad worked for Sasktel, has had it for about 3 years.

    It runs over DSL and you get internet and digital TV on one modem. If you elect to move up to the 5mbps down 768kpbs up Internet service (as I did) you have 2 DSL modems, 1 dedicated for Digital TV and one for Internet. Its interesting that it only requires about 3500kbps to deliver the digital cable.

    The price? For 1.5mps down and 384 up with basic cable over DSL= 34.99 above basic monthly telephone fees. God Bless Canada's cheap Internet.

    The sad/funny thing is that this service is available to every town larger than 10,000 people in this province of 1,000,000 people. This province is very rural and they are rolling it out to all the smaller communities as well. I find it interesting that Sasktel finds this profitable when so many Americans, in much denser population centres, have such a problem getting similar access.

    • http://www.sasktel.com/ [sasktel.com] Is the proper link.

      As well Sasktel offers movies on demand via this service. I can pause, stop, rewind, and watch the show over and over again in a 24 hour period with every rental. Its actually pretty incredible I hope that other providers pickup similar functionality soon.
  • I'm sure they're going to charge me 20 for a local phone and then 50 to install it. If they could give me local channels and, say, 5 of the channels normal analog cable gets me for 20 total, I'd do it, but I'm not paying for a phone. (If I get one it'll be VoIP because all my calls are long distance.) And i'm not paying theh 40/month the cable company wants for analog which gets me over-the-air and 5 channels I want plus 30 I'll never watch.
  • I work for an independent telcom in southern Ohio, Horizon Telcom [horizontel.com] and we already offer cable TV services to our customers.
  • This has been available from Kingston Communication for at least the last three years. More info here [kcom.com]. Prices start at £6.80 per month.

    However, I believe that this is only available to customers in Hull, UK because KC own all of the infrastructure there.

  • I really hate television.

    I hate sitting in front of a video screen like a drooling idiot hoping The Powers That Be can entertain me. It's almost as lame as sitting here reading messages posted to Slashdot.

    Most people would say that TV is one of the least fun things they can think of doing.

    Instead of opting for TV over DSL, I'm about ready to cancel cable TV. But I can never seem to make the phone call. : /

    *sigh*

  • Multicast is the SOLUTION to delivering content efficiently over the Internet. The problem is, no one seems to know how to implement it properly (outside educational networks, it seems), and no one seems to WANT to implement it properly.

    Just think, if multicast were available all across the net, ANYONE would broadcast a stream to millions of listeners without requiring ridiculous amounts of bandwidth. Each link carrying the stream would only have to carry it ONCE. Routers along the way send the stream out

  • Been doing it for years! (Score:5, Funny)

    by glwtta ( 532858 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @09:52PM (#11155368) Homepage
    I've been getting TV over my DSL connection for a long time now... well, until suprnova went down at least.
  • I've had TV over the phone line for a few years now. Homechoice [slashdot.org] offers TV on demand over ADSL, along with streaming broadcast channels. It's a brilliant system. Far in advance of anything else.

  • Come visit the Great White North (Score:4, Informative)

    by freeweed ( 309734 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2004 @10:29PM (#11155576)
    Here in Manitoba, Canada, we've had this for many many months now. The local (formerly government) telco monopoly rolled out their digital television over phone line service with great fanfare.

    I must say I'm less than impressed. It's basically the identical channels/packages as cable and satellite, for the same cost - however, the quality is VERY poor. Posts in this thread talk about bandwidth issues over POTS, and that has to be it.

    Know when you're watching digital satellite and the screen suddenly pixelates like mad, like a really nasty MPEG artifact? Especially noticable during storms? TV over the phone lines looks like this pretty much all the time. Now just imagine an action sequence, with lots of frame changes. It's downright unwatchable.
  • Bell Canada is already offering this in MDUs (Multiple Dwelling Units), and has been for the better part of this year. So what's so new about this? Saskatel already has over 25,000 customers on a similar service. Telus is about ready to launch. I also believe it's already available in Aliant-serving regions. This isn't really news, at least not to us Canadians.
  • ..."no static" on the regular phone line. Some kind of high definitioin TV? Ha! Double Ha! If the best you can get is a scosh over 28.8, I doubt that 90% of the people or so in the US would be able to get clear reasonable definition TV, even if they have some sort of xDSL on the telcos marginal wire. Not on the copper that's out there now, it's cheap crap. The telcos are cheap except for a few limited markets. I've been using POTS since they didn't come with a freaking dial on the machine, and they have alw
  • Even though it never seems to pan out, the only wire that currently goes to 99.99999 of all houses and can carry more bandwidth (theoretically) than two thin little copper telephone wires are electrical power cables.

    Fiber will never be pulled to rural America. Cable companies already refuse to pull cable to rural areas. Wireless is a problem in the mountains, and Satelight is high latency and bandwidth limited. Power is mandated by law to be pulled to your house no matter how far off into the sticks you l
  • If there was something worth watching this might be good.
    I have 180 Dish channels and some Canadian.
    I have a feeling that my phone company will provide more of the same.

  • Same old junk... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @08:42AM (#11157655) Journal
    The telcos are still stuck in the old ways of thinking.

    They could be providing all sorts of digital services right now, if they just restructured their systems so you'd have unlimited bandwidth to their local network, and bandwidth limitations only to the rest of the internet... That would make everyone happy. DSL providers could have caching proxies, and customers would love to use them, which makes things faster for users, and saves the ISP lots of money on internet bandwidth.

    In addition, this would give the DSL providers an advantage in providing digital services, like TV. Imagine if you could watch 2 simultaneous video streams from your DSL provider, and not even slow down your internet connection.

    If they want to provide fibre over the last-mile, that's fine, but even then, I'm sure the TV service they will provide will be no better than cable or satellite. You see, they don't realize that the multicast abilities of computer networks provide an effectively unlimited ammount of bandwidth, and hence, unlimited channels. Ala carte TV service would be trivial, and could offer billions of channels to select from. In fact, anyone could setup a server, and provide a new TV station for $1/month directly to the users.

    Instead, competition has stagnated, corporations have grown, and the only competition is to be nominally better than the other 2 companies providing competiting services. So, they clone the other services as best they can, and make a profit, only because corporate policies have made it's impossible for smaller companies to compete at all.

  • Kingston Interactive Television on ADSL (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Martin Spamer ( 244245 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @10:09AM (#11158409) Homepage Journal
    I used to work for Kingston Interactive Television [kitv.co.uk] which delivers real Interactive Digital Television and true Video on Demand within a wall garden of managed content and high speed Internet Access via IP on ADSL.

    The technology works and has done for years, KIT was the first to commercially launch in 1999 and like others it had been running technology trials of Video over POTS for about 6 years previously.

    There is little doubt that the platform blows the competing options out the water. DSL based DTV services cost about one tenth that of pure cable system since they doesn't require a fresh dig. They are also truly interactive instead of the faked-out client side interactions of satellite systems. It also offer a realatively pain-free experience of the internet for most ordinary consumers.

    The problem is the incumbents who tend to have the content deals stitched up with the studios/distubutors.

    Read more here : Kingston Case Study [broadcastpapers.com]

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