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General discussion

AT&T: 15mbps Internet "irrelevant"

by archaeo1 Mar 31, 2006 9:55AM PST

Discussion is locked

3 Posts
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Agree On Some Points
by adkinsjm Mar 31, 2006 10:01AM PST

With AT&T and Verizon offering IPTV in limited areas, the bandwidth for that service is separate from internet bandwidth. Plus, with the IPTV server being on the isp's network, it is easier to provide the bandwidth necessary for tv.

I have 10mb fiber and it is good for a couple of subscription services I have for sporting events such as MLB and rugby. My tv service is also through the fiber, but the set top box has its own ip and MAC address on the network and speeds can be regulated using the MAC address .

Until a full-featured iptv provider offers pay channels such as ESPN and the like, 15 mb/sec is irrelevant.

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True, but..
by archaeo1 Mar 31, 2006 10:38AM PST

I agree, it's not needed now, but it's not ever going to be needed?

And also, how long before streaming videos and TV shows like ESPN, and other websites becoming not only mainstream, but also popular, and the demand for faster internet is needed?

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Network IPTV isn't everything... and what about 45mbps?
by blacktie_productions Apr 1, 2006 9:01AM PST

First off - the idea that the backbone doesn't operate at 15mbps is just silly. Go talk to any kid in college about how fast the backbone works when you don't have bottlenecks locally. Even at work, I can get DL.TV at a steady 10mbps - the limit of the physical connection at my computer.

EVEN IF putting higher speeds to people's houses moved the bottleneck to the backbone (which I think is what he might be trying to say - that the backbone *wouldn't* support those speeds to their max), isn't that what all the dark fiber is for?

As far as content is concerned - What about streaming movies? Particularly HD movies? Yeah, it's not here yet - but that's at least partly because we don't have the bandwidth to support it. (Any decent looking movies, for that matter, not just HD stuff.)

Google video, iTunes, AOL's in2TV, whoever gets the NFL's contract for online distribution this time around... They (and a lot of others) are limited in what they can deliver because consumers don't have the bandwidth to get high resolution content in a decent amount of time. That's the main reason I haven't bothered getting TV shows off iTunes - I can't stand the quality.

I think the fact that you have 10mb fiber is affecting your view of this. Yeah, for you, 15mbps is (at best) 50% faster. For me, it'd be 750% faster! Huge swathes of the country don't have the option of getting anything close to 10mbps.


This entire discussion should be irrelevent anyway, since we're supposed to have not 15 but 45 mbps... http://muniwireless.com/community/1023. So the telcos get $200 billion and then not only can they not deliver 45mbps, they say we shouldn't even *want* 15mbps?

"By 2006, 86 million households should have had a service capable of 45 Mbps in both directions, (to and from the customer) could handle over 500 channels of high quality video and be deployed in rural, urban and suburban areas equally."

There are a small number of people with fiber to teh curb, but 86 million households? Not so much.

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