bandwidth

Bright House strikes up BigBand

Dan O'Shea — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:02:06 -0400

Cable TV operator Bright House Networks is in the midst of deploying switched digital video technology from SDV pioneer BigBand Networks. The operator has completed the first phase of a deployment in Orlando, and has initiated deployments in Tampa, Fla., and Indianapolis, according to Multichannel News. SDV improves the ability for operators to offer more content in limited bandwidth, which of course helps them to counter the offerings of IPTV providers.

For more:
- see this story at Multichannel News

HomePNA claims top N.A. telcos

Dan O'Shea — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:26:05 -0400

Canadian telco Telus recently became the latest North American telco to adopt HPNA 3.1 technology for home networking, and with that commitment, four of the five largest telcos in North America have chosen the 3.1 standard, according to the HomePNA Alliance.

Steve Rago, principal analyst at iSuppli Corporation, said that more service providers in North America now use HPNA, capable of 320 Mbps bandwidth, for home networking than other coaxial cable home networking solutions. Still, industry observers have noted in the past that carriers are likely to continue to use a variety of home network technologies, depending on what different deployment cases require.

For more:
- see this story at IPTV News

Spotlight: Two rural telcos tap Comtrend

Dan O'Shea — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 04:43:27 -0400

Two rural telcos have separately chosen Comtrend to deliver ADSL2+ bonded residential gateways to support the rollout of IPTV services. The bonded aspect allows the gateways to support up to 48 Mbps downstream bandwidth. The vendor's Nexuslink gateways also will help the telcos--Bayland Telephone of Wisconsin and Rural Telephone of Kansas--support HDTV services.

For more:
- check out this coverage at IPTV News

Ericsson rolls with 10 Gigabit GPON system

Dan O'Shea — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 04:19:26 -0400

Ericsson is looking to provide new muscle to IPTV deployments with the announcement at NXTcomm in Las Vegas from the vendor of a 10 Gigabit passive optical networking system. There has been some speculation recently that GPON systems could migrate directly to WDM-PON, but 10 Gigabit PON could likely keep carriers on GPON a bit longer, as they gain more bandwidth for more IPTV-related offerings.

For more:
- see this press release from Ericsson

Related articles:
Tellabs withdrew from further GPON development efforts at Verizon GPON report
Verizon said in April that high-tech households were driving GPON deployment GPON report

Networks ready for HD programming pile-up?

Tue, 13 May 2008 06:59:50 -0400

High-definition television always has been viewed as a nice benefit of new TV delivery technologies, but 2008 may prove to be the year HDTV becomes a significant battlefield in the competitive war between telco IPTV players and their cable TV foes. The race to supply consumers with the most HDTV channels and hours of on-demand HD programming may have been sparked by Verizon Communications, which announced late last year it would deliver 150 linear HDTV channels by the end of this year. However, Verizon may have been responding to more subtle HTDV upticks from cable TV and satellite TV firms.

While providers continue to pile on the HD channels and programming hours, it is worth wondering how an abundance of HDTV could affect network bandwidth and provider set-top box offerings. With its FiOS network, Verizon claims to be built for high volumes of HD programming, though it also primarily has MPEG-2 set-top boxes in circulation, much less efficient than MPEG-4 boxes at handling that programming. Cable TV companies are in the midst of rolling out network upgrades to better support growing HD traffic, and the analog-to-digital transition will help.

For more:
- read this report at Multichannel News

Related articles:
- Verizon Communications announced its 2008 HDTV plans late last year. Verizon report
- Fewer Channels better quality. HDTV quality report

Verizon: High-tech households driving GPON

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 06:59:10 -0400

Michael Daigle, vice president of network planning at Verizon Communications, sees the multi-user, multi-device home as the major driver for the telco's ongoing deployment of gigabit passive optical networking technology. Verizon now has GPON in about 40 of its 600 central offices, and while the 2.4 Gbps bandwidth is not needed everywhere, the pattern for demand has a lot to do with those larger, high-tech-heavy households, Daigle told Light Reading.

Verizon likely will be increasing its GPON footprint throughout this year as central offices currently supported by broadband PON get converted to GPON. It is not clear how many actual FiOS customers are now served by GPON. Beyond GPON, Verizon is eyeing the possible evolution to WDM-PON, though that could be at least two years away, and Verizon official say the technology and its advantages need to mature further before a commitment is made.

For more:
- see this report at Light Reading

Related articles:
- GPON drove Ericsson's acquisition of Entrisphere late last year. GPON report
- Tellabs GPON move leads to more questions Tellabs report

Mossberg Blesses Web Video, Bashes Broadband Before iPhone Tease

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 06:59:10 -0400

Wall Street Journal technology columnist Walt Mossberg, or "Uncle Walt" to his fans, last week declared that the web is becoming a video medium. However, he went on to bash existing U.S. broadband networks as compared to the rest of the world, deeming it a problem for delivering video over the Internet. The comments, made during an executive summit held by Beet.tv last week, were overshadowed by the noted curmudgeon stating that the Apple iPhone will be "3G in 60 days."

For more:
- Read the News.com blog post here.
- "The Web is Becoming a Video Medium," Declares Walt Mossberg here.
- Watch Uncle Walt's DSL comments on beet.tv

Related articles:
A disruptive change of face for IPTV
Analyst: Infineon-powered 3G iPhone by June?

Comcast and BitTorrent make nice

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:59:50 -0400

Comcast and BitTorrent Inc. last week agreed to bury the hatchet and work together to try and make BitTorrent software run more smoothly on Comcast's network. The deal ends a contentious battle between the two companies that saw users and the FCC lambaste the company after it admitted delaying the transmission of data among BitTorrent users at peak times.

When legislators and some advocacy groups began to play hardball and suggest Comcast was intentionally blocking BitTorrent's P2P file sharing for its own gain, the issue earned some serious cred and the two foes began to play nice. Comcast has agreed to reconfigure its network management systems, creating a traffic management technique "more appropriate for today's emerging Internet trends." For its part, BitTorrent tacitly acknowledged Comcast's need to allocate bandwidth, with the understanding it no longer would be targeted by the company.

Comcast said it's deploying wideband Internet services using the DOCSIS 3.0 standard in about 20 percent of its households by the end of this year. It also plans to more than double the upstream capacity of its residential Internet service in several key markets by year end 2008. "We plan to take advantage of multi-carrier technology to further increase upstream capacity for all of our broadband customers in advance of the full DOCSIS 3.0 roll out," Comcast said.

For more:
- Read the Philadelphia Business Journal story
- And Comcast's release

Related articles:
Comcast defends P2P management to FCC
Vuse complains about Comcast throttling

Stage6 video portal shuts down

Tom Burton — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:59:30 -0500

DivX is shuttering its Stage6 video sharing portal, admitting it was chewing resources it does not have. DivX launched the service to showcase its media player technology. It attracted nearly a million users but without revenue to pay for the high cost of quality video delivery it was doomed.

In the end, DivX could not even find a buyer for the portal. According to DivX: "So why are we shutting the service down? Well, the short answer is that the continued operation of Stage6 is a very expensive enterprise that requires an enormous amount of attention and resources that we are not in a position to continue to provide."

It is another case where the superior technology does not necessarily win. Market titan YouTube may have inferior quality to almost all the would-be portals, but is the accepted go-to site for user-generated content. And the imminent arrival of Adobe's next-generation-player software is likely to narrow the quality gap significantly. This will further challenge the various proprietary providers, all of whom are paying a high price to serve bandwidth chewing video with little to show for it other than invoices from their CDN provider.

For more;
- DivX closes its Stage6 portal Feb. 28 Statement and Blog
- DivX finally shuts Stage6 video portal Article

Related articles:
Roo jumps out of P2P services Article
Joost struggle in video portal battle Article

ALSO NOTED: YouTube take down by Pakistan; Tellabs simple bandwidth fix; and much more...

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:58:20 -0500

> YouTube taken down by Pakistan Article

> Tellabs introduces a simpler way to boost bandwidth Article

Samsung announces 82 " 3D ultra-high definition TV

Tom Burton — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 06:59:30 -0500

Samsung has released its vision for next generation TV, a bandwidth-hogging, 3D-immersive digital cinema. Eighty-two inches big and using four times the pixels of HDTV, the ultra-high definition set will need compression and computer power not yet invented in order to work. Samsung believes the demand for photo realistic 3 D television will drive the uptake of the big screens. The screen will refresh at least 60 times a second and will require new display electronics to handle the required picture realism.

Samsung released the tech specs for the TV at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco last week. Chief executive of Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, Hyung Kyu Lim, said digital content with such a display at 24 frames a second "requires around 300Mb/s for transmission when compressed using JPEG2000 adopted by DCI. Assuming an effective bandwidth allocated per-household at around 100Mb/s using 1Gb/s Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH), it is apparent that a new innovative compression technology with three times more efficiency will be required." Mr Lim said it is not expected the processor power for such a device would be available around 2015, or 2012 for a multi-core processor.

A recent paper on bandwidth demands by the Discovery Center predicted U.S. demand for bandwidth would increase 50 fold to one zettabyte by 2015, fueled by increased demand for video and video telephony. If 3D ultra high definition television become popular, this prediction will be seen as conservative. Samsung also assumed this beast would only work with fiber to the home.

For more:
- Samsung's vision for next-gen TV Article
- Samsung showed the TV off at CES2008 but did not release its tech specs Pictures

Related articles:
Zettabyte flood predicted for 2015 Report
Who has the most high definition? Report