Re: "Can't get any TV" related question


phil-news-nospam@xxxxxxxx wrote:

On Fri, 18 Apr 2008 22:09:34 -0500 Pete C. <aux3.DOH.4@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
|
| phil-news-nospam@xxxxxxxx wrote:
|>
|> On Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:48:32 GMT Pete C. <aux3.DOH.4@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
|>
|> | Huh? The "incumbent system" you're referring to is called a city or
|> | town. The telcos wouldn't have built there unless there was a city or
|> | town, nor would the electric utility, gas utility, water, sewer, roads,
|> | etc. To claim that a city or town is somehow an "incumbent system" is
|> | absurd.
|>
|> Take an city or town with NO existing cable service, and see if you can
|> get 5 cable companies to build there. I bet you can't.
|
| No, but you can certainly get one company to build there unless it's a
| really ultra rural area where it isn't economical and they are better
| served by satellite.

|
|>
|> "incumbent system" refers NOT to the actual city, but to the installed
|> base of people already connected.
|
| No, "system" refers to physical plant.

My definition is that it is the same system, even if all the hardware
parts of that physical plant are replaced.

Backing my definition is the business and financial decision made in
deciding to put all that hardware in. There are two cases. One is
where they did not have any hardware there to begin with. The other
is that they already have old hardware there ... and a customer base
connected to it. The factors in the decision to put in new hardware
varies, depending on which case is involved. In the second case, they
will be confident no other company will overbuild while doing that.
But in the first case, they might not build if there is the risk some
other company would parallel build; they will seek to arrange to have
a monopoly first ... to get started. This is why the cable companies
are providing lousy service (in general ... one of my brothers lives
in a town where the cable company is apparently doing a great job).

I'm still not buying it. Cable companies build plant to be able to offer
services to potential customers.


| It gets a bit complicated when you try to break down to delivery
| provider and content provider in the com world. For a straightforward
| thing like electricity it's pretty simple to have a generation charge
| and a transmission charge from separate companies as in the electric
| choice areas. There are alternate service providers using the cable
| companies for transport presently, namely the various VOIP service
| providers such as Vonage. The cable company may offer their own voice
| service, but they also allow you to use other providers voice services
| over their cable modems.

For cable TV, yes, it is complicated to separate them. That's why I see
regulation as the only practical path.

I don't see any reason for it. If you don't like cables services or
pricing, just don't subscribe. Subscribe to satellite / DSL / watch OTA
/ stream movies / whatever. Plenty of options.


What I propose is that an infrastructure be built with "full mile fiber"
that runs all the way from each home to the central infrastructure support
building (e.g. in telco terms, a central office or branch office). Four
such fibers should be run to each home. The homeowner can then subscribe
to one, two, three, or four different services that would be delivered by
fiber. These service providers would colocate at the centralinfrastructure
support building and be "patched in" to the appropriate fiber. They would
pay the fee to the infrastructure company to pay for the fiber leasing and
pass the cost on to their residential customer. Over this "dark fiber"
they can run whatever they want (what they offered to the customer, in
whatever coding they support, etc). They place a decoder box at the
customer's home and connect it to the appropriate fiber (out of the four).
It might be TV service. It might be phone service. It might be internet
service. It might be a provider of multiple services over one fiber.
In addition to that, the home owners can also directly lease a fiber for
the same price into the central facility, and lease another one out to
somewhere else (like a friend's house where they want to set up a multi
gigabit data connection).

In the above proposal, the infrastructure owner would be the regulated one.
Any number of companies can be colocated at the central facility and be able
to offer their services. The homeowner can pick as many as four of them
concurrently. I decided four was appropriate to allow companies with split
services, as well as allowing homeowners to make comparisons and transition
to another provider over time. But that's not a limit on competition.
This would open up the possibility for many providers.

Too complex. Just need a single high speed data like bringing gigabit
Ethernet to the home from a central POP. Just like power you pay the
company operating those links a transmission charge. What traffic you
bring in over those links you pay the content generators for.


| Yes, you can get full two way satellite Internet service and satellite
| TV in a single bundle, it's popular in the RV world. You can even get it
| with an active tracking antenna system that will work in motion (of
| course you get momentary blips when you go under overpasses.

That's certainly the kind of things an RV owner needs. But it is not
that good of an internet service. It suffers from long packet round
trip times, and low bandwidth.

The bandwidth is decent these days. It isn't cable modem speed, but it's
a lot better than dialup. At least one of the sat options can support
VPN connections adequately.


| The cable company I worked for did a massive fiber to feeder and
| bandwidth upgrade long before the little dish satellite providers came
| on the scene, and long before telcos did any video services.

I'm not impressed. I would have been if it were fiber all the way to
each and every home. Of course, we had no need for that many years
ago before satellite providers. What people want has changed, now.
They want their video, and they want it from whoever they pick at any
given moment from anywhere on the net. I suggest the next upgrade to
your system be 100 mbit bidirectional symmetrical data capacity to each
home. Oh wait, you don't work there anymore.

That F2F upgrade was over a decade ago. Fiber terminal equipment in
every subscriber home as well as enough glass to link all those
subscribers back to the head end wasn't practical or cost effective. No
individual subscriber needs direct glass anyway, coax handles more than
enough bandwidth for the final link. The structure the telcos use with
fiber out to remote terminal peds and then copper the last mile to the
subscriber is far more practical even today.


| Satellite is a great technology for one way broadcast like TV. It is
| mediocre at present for two way services, though it is most certainly
| useable.

Which is why I say it doesn't scare the cable companies as much as they
need to be scared.

I haven't had any issues with service from CableOne, nor did I see any
service issues when I worked for Cox.


| You have to change technology for FiOS. When it will be a fully open
| technology change free market is when all video, voice and data is sent
| via IP so that you can plug your phone, computer, HDTV, etc. into the
| gigabit Ethernet port and not care what that port connects to. The home
| terminal units from the different providers will all provide the same
| Ethernet port regardless of the technology used to connect that terminal
| unit to the provider. That day doesn't seem to be very far off either.

See Intel's KIXRP435 evaluation board. I built a Linux distro for it.

|> One of my neighbors cannot get any
|> satellite at all because he is blocked solid by a thick grove of trees.
|
| Then he hasn't dealt with a competent dish installer, or is unwilling to
| have the dish installed as needed to overcome the obstacle. The dish can
| be mounted higher, or can be remoted to the other side of the obstacle
| as examples.

He has. He would have to put the disk at the top of a 75 foot tower, or
hang it on a boom over the end of the road, or cut down the grove of trees
which is probably not his option. We discussed the possibility of him
tying into a dish on my house (at my angle I have clearance above the trees).
But I've declined to do so on coax. I'd do it on fiber, but I have not
seen any way to modulate the two RF feeds onto a pair of fibers.

You modulate it the same way the cable companies do, with a laser RF
transmitter and matching receiver. Remarkably simple gadgets, RF in and
photons out on the transmitter and photons in RF out on the receiver.
This isn't single channel RF either, it's the whole dang cable spectrum.
We used the same type of setup for return feeds as well, with laser
transmitters out in the field feeding back to the head end for live
remotes. I expect it isn't cost effective for your application though. A
more cost effective solution would probably to use a base band video
fiber link and an IR remote link and position the receiver with the
dish. Or just trench some coax and be done with it.


| From where I sit I have a number of different ways to access whatever
| content I want, be it video, voice or data. I have free choice as to
| which routes I use for which service. I have at least 6 voice options, 3
| data options and 3 video options.

Which of those options, for each, are doing everything technically right?
I have 2 data options at high speed from two companies well known to screw
things up. One of them (Comcast) just today made headlines again in yet
another thing they are screwing up (although with Linux, I know what to do
to get around it, and have already done so). The other (Verizon) is just
as likely to screw up something else.

I'm not familiar with what they may be screwing up.


How many competitors does it take to get one that realizes that providing
actual good service is the way to get more customers?

Depends on your expectations for service. If you're looking for a
personal dedicated OC3 to your house for $50/month you're expectations
are out in left field. If you're looking for $50/month 3m/300kbit cable
modem service with consistent performance and less than 5 min outage per
month average, then not many since that's what I get.


|> |> Ultimately it will all be digital, anyway. But
|> |> if we don't have this competition, then these "captive market" monopolies will
|> |> get to AVOID innovations in technology (other than what lets them gouge their
|> |> customers even more),
|> |
|> | Nearly all innovations in technology that cable companies have embraced
|> | have been to increase system reliability and offer more service.
|>
|> Some of that is because the satellite service competed.
|
| Most far predated the arrival of the tiny dish satellite services.

Oh, the old archaic-today innovations like going beyond 12 TV channels?

No, like the GHz F2F rebuild they did long before tiny dishes. Like
offering digital commercial free music channels even before that. Like
offering interactive pay per view boxes still earlier.


|> Now with internet
|> a necessary part, satellite is not a viable competition.
|
| Yes, satellite is viable competition. It's not ideal yet, but it
| certainly is viable.

It's helping to some degree. It's like half a cable company. There
being two of them makes it about the same as one cable company competing.

I may well switch to satellite if I find their converter box works better
than the crap Comcast hands out.

The Motorola boxes I get from the cable company here work fine, and the
optical digital audio out is nice for the digital jazz channel I use for
background music. Oddly enough however, pretty much all the channels I
watch with any regularity are on the analog tier and I don't use a box
on the TV I watch most. I get a digital basic tier, but there isn't much
on it that I watch anyway.


An important feature in a tuner box for me is the ability to select a set
of channels to be my "favorites" and allow me to "channel surf" just those
without having to spend 10 minutes stepping through a zillion junk channels
I have no interest in just to "see what's on" (and the program guide is not
any better). It's not a hard concept. It would be done in a preference
menu.

The Motorola box does exactly that.

There needs to be several preferences available for a family. In
each set, you can enter up to 24 channels you want to have as favorites.
Then when you select a set, channel up/down selections go around that set
in the order programmed.

No multi use favorites on the Motorola box, but these days every family
member has their own box and TV anyway so it doesn't much matter.


NO BOX OFFERED HAS THAT FEATURE, YET. The first company to do that MAY
get my business (but not if they are a royal screwup in other things).

As I noted, the Motorola box has favorite channel selections and channel
surf rotation through them.


|> FiOS can be, but
|> that's just 2 choices. We need at least 5 to make it reasonably free.
|
| DSL is plenty viable. I use both DSL and cable modem personally.

I'm planning to do that, too. I need to do some rewiring of the house.

I have them at separate sites far apart, the point was both work fine. I
can bring whatever I need online at either site transparently after the
modem and router.

To Comcast's credit, they have offered to replant the "drop" from their
pedestal to my service entrance for free to move it from where it comes
in now, to come in where the electric does (at present it does not and
that increases the lightning surge hazard). But I need to do this at the
same time for the phone lines (they come in where the cable does) and
Verizon is wanting to charge over $500 to move the wires.

Anything past the ped / demarc I do myself. As for lightning hazard, it
doesn't make any difference where it comes in, only that it is connected
to a proper ground block and ground rod and preferable has some
additional suppression close to that ground block.


| The only arrangement that will ever satisfy people is full ala cart, and
| that has been a logistical nightmare. Now that everything is shifting to
| digital it's becoming more viable.

Right. Back when tiers were controlled by filters, you could not do that.
But even with analog scrambling, it was _potentially_ viable. With what
the cable boxes have in them (FYI, most are running an OS like Linux or
VxWorks), there is a huge potential.

Just wait for IP everything. Just another authenticated login on a
remote server somewhere whether you're placing a phone call, watching a
video channel, listening to a music channel, etc. No need for any
special cable box or anything, just your normal home network plugging
into a single gigE at the demarc.


|> |> Most innovations in most markets comes from the smaller businesses coming in
|> |> to compete.
|> |
|> | Not true in any of the examples cited above.
|>
|> Every innovation cable has done would have been done sooner, bigger, and
|> in more cities, had the competition been there all along. They waited as
|> long as they have because they knew they had a captive market base. When
|> satellite came along, then later offered HD channels, cable companies were
|> forced to upgrade more than they would have. But satellite is not a very
|> effective form of competition. Verizon FiOS is forcing cable companies to
|> upgrade even _more_ then they would have, in areas FiOS is building in.
|
| I've yet to hear anything but complaints about FiOS. Perhaps it's
| because it's from a telco and telcos have historically had customer
| service that makes everyone including cable companies look stellar.

Telcos have done some things better and some things worse. It seems to me
to be about even.

The only things telcos have done better is in physical plant robustness
and all of that dates back to Bell Labs. Telcos have done pretty much
everything else worse, starting with customer service.


|> Banks are still regulated, so they have to do certain things alike. Maybe
|> its a good thing they stay regulated.
|
| They are regulated to a very minor extent these days. Most regulations
| revolve around privacy, money laundering detection and reliability. If
| there was real regulation the sub prime mortgage scams would never have
| existed.

And we do indeed need at least a little more regulation in the credit
and privacy side of things.

Ya think?


|> Even with the same owners in many restaurants, there is diversity that way.
|> But I've found that's not really the case. And it isn't limited to just a
|> shopping center. Even in the small town I live in, I have a choice of 5
|> different Chinese restaurants, all locally owned.
|
| I was referring to the mega chain companies with brands like Chili's,
| Olive Garden, etc.

I was referring to the combined set of them (including fast food and fat
food chains) and local ones.

|> |> It's an even bigger issue with internet providers. Cable and telcos are both
|> |> into it, but so far, both are still doing a terrible job at things like the
|> |> network privisioning, network management, etc. With enough competition we can
|> |> have a truly free market, and all the providers will have to provide a good
|> |> service or die.
|> |
|> | I have both cable Internet and DSL Internet service and have had them
|> | for a number of years. In that time I have had virtually no service
|> | issues aside from the sub hour outages a few times a year when some line
|> | gear fails. Every time I have done any speed testing I have found my
|> | speeds consistent with what is provisioned. I don't currently use
|> | satellite Internet but I have associates who do and they report no
|> | issues either. Someone else I know has Internet via a MDS system and
|> | report it works fine as well.
|>
|> And do you have internet speeds anywhere near what today's techology can
|> bring you and does exist in many contries now: 100 megabits ??
|
| I have Internet speeds that are more than adequate for anything I need
| or want to do. Higher speeds are simply not needed until we start
| streaming HDTV to 5 different HDTVs in a home.

Right now, what Comcast and Verizon offer here cannot stream HDTV. What
Verizon is testing in at least one city could do HDTV, but I'm not sure
how many streams, and how much gateway/peering capacity they have for it.
But eventually, the idea is to stream video from anyone that wants to offer
it.

Not much of a priority for me. Most of my TV viewing is on an SD 17"
LCD. I got my OTA boxes, mostly for my camper, at home the two stations
I can get without putting an antenna on a 400' tower have nothing of
interest except for live weather radar on one sub channel. My TV viewing
is mostly CNN, the various Discovery Networks channels, the local
weather radar when a big storm is approaching, and the Food Network.
.

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