dsl prime item

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
Date: June 8, 2006 1:57:12 PM EDT
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>, David Farber  
<dave () farber net>

From Dave Burstein's DSL Prime newsletter of June 8, 2006:
http://www.dslprime.com

ADSL is so last century.  Today, it's fiber home or fiber + VDSL at  
50 meg or more. Japan is the first country to see a major drop in DSL  
as 5 million switch to fiber home, and  Germany, France, Holland,  
Verizon and (new) the city of Seattle all are moving to upload speeds  
of 10 meg or more and downloads of 50 meg or more.  Cable knows this,  
which is why Brian Roberts of Comcast tells me they’ll be rolling  
out  50 meg down, 15 meg up “pre-DOCSIS 3.0” in 2007 in selected  
markets.

    Meanwhile,  Australia, Canada, and more than half of the U.S.  
are likely to spend the next decade with a second-rate Internet, 60%  
to 90% slower than leading countries. Anywhere people have a choice  
at a plausible price, they are buying faster speeds than the 6 meg  
down, 600K meg up of  ADSL available since 1999, or even the 20 meg  
down, 1 meg up of the new generation. Wall Street is asking whether  
laggards like AT&T will be clobbered. (Answer: the only thing that  
might prevent a disaster is if cable also moves slowly. Two  
competitors often collude.) On the other hand, Japan is replacing  
ADSL with fiber, over 4 million already connected. So is Germany,  
France, Holland, Verizon and (news) the city of Seattle.

    The fix is set in D.C. for the House to pass a national video  
franchise for the telcos, probably on Friday. The main impact of the  
bill will be to reduce, not expand, the telco TV rollouts, but expect  
some uninformed reporters not to catch that. The telcos think they  
are dead if they don't have TV to challenge cables, and Verizon CEO  
Ivan Seidenberg has been consistently clear he will build whatever  
the regs. SBC's CTO told reporters the same thing. That makes any  
claim of "increased competition" simply stupidity, especially for the  
10-20 million Americans the bill allows denying service to. The  
biggest payoff for the Bells is getting out of local requirements for  
near-universal service and consumer protection. Real Net Neutrality  
rules won't be included, although Verizon's Tom Tauke is looking for  
a "feel good" compromise that won't mean anything.


––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC.
Voice: 408-882-4755 eFax: +1-408-490-2868
http://www.ibd.com




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