High Speed Residential Access

Seems like you can't pick up a newspaper or magazine without seeing something about the impending availability of low cost, high speed Internet access. If you pay attention, you'll even see ads on TV and radio. Previous issues of Techonline Review have covered some of the background topics and presented in-depth discussions of the different modulation approaches that are making their way into the market. This issue of has two update articles, one on the progress of the DSL standards committees and another on the technology behind a DSL modem stack that is now available for licensing.

Here's my five-point take on the situation:

1. High speed residential access will change the way you live and work.
   There are two attributes here. One is raw speed. When you get to 300 kbps and higher, downloading software updates, large image files, multimedia clips etc is relatively painless. If you've ever looked at 28.8 kbps streaming files, like the Clinton or Gates testimony, or the Glenn liftoff, or any other newsclip, they are remarkably unsatisfying. Multiply the bandwidth by 10x and things start to look pretty good. Expect to see video and audio compression schemes optimized for the "middle" bandwidth... Much better than telephone modems, but not anywhere Ethernet speeds where MPEG-1 (1.5 Mbps) makes sense.
   
   The second attribute is that these services are "always-on." You don't have to dial in. If you haven't realized by now, the need to dial up and log on is a big deterrent. Once people are always connected, accessing the web is little more than a simple mouse click. Check the weather, the local sports score, double check that data sheet key specification, access some on-line newsletter, whatever. The response is near instantaneous, limited more by the Internet and the servers themselves, less by our local loop.
   
   Take it from someone who has had DSL service in his home office for a month... High-speed, always-on is the best thing since sliced bread. When the service goes down, and you're reduced to dialing in over a telephone modem, you feel like you've been severely punished.
   
   
2. The effects are already unfolding in the business world.
   The deals are too numerous to mention. @Home buys Excite, AT&T buys TCI (which owns a big chunk of @Home, Broadcast.com goes public, Real Networks inks deal with @Home, AOL inks agreement with Bell Atlantic, etc. What you see happening is that companies are aligning to be able to offer content and services to broadband-enabled consumers. For example, MTV recently struck a deal with the @Home Network to develop a broadband version of the MTV Online web site (with special multimedia-rich areas) for @Home's cable modem subscribers. CNN Interactive, the NBA, NBC, American Movie Classics, and several other content providers are on the brink of doing the same thing, leading to a whole new genre of web sites for broadband-enabled Internet viewers. Revenues to support all this are supposed to come from selling multimedia-rich advertising and from hawking merchandise, music in this case.
   
   On anther front, broadband access opens new doors. If you have a high speed IP pipeline coming to your home via the cable company connection, why not do voice-over-IP (VoIP). This might be cheaper than your traditional telephone service, and a totally new revenue source for the cable company. High speed IP over DSL also represents a chance for the phone company to bring you video. And of course both companies want to be your ISP.
   
   
3. The impact on DSP, embedded systems, communications, and television technology will be huge.
   There is a lot at stake here. The whole issue of modems will go through a shakeout. On the cable side of the fence, the industry has coalesced around CableLabs and their effort to standardize. On the telephone side of the fence, there are too many DSLs to mention, but the international standards bodies have formed standards around ADSL and ADSL.lite (see accompanying article by Ken Krechmer). The stuff that is shipping today and working, however, is all proprietary.
   
   Broadband modems are already being promised in OEM computer platforms by Dell and Compaq. Expect to see more vendors bundle these in their computer systems. But the technology will also work its way into television set-top boxes, communications PODs on the sides of homes and office buildings, and other places I haven't even thought of.
   
   The challenge to many of today's designers is to make the stuff work in a fashion totally transparent to the end user. This will be the key to driving the Internet, broadband access, and VoIP from tools of the digerati to toys of the mass market.
   
   Better engineering, combined with broadband pipelines, will enable Internet delivery of thousands of channels of entertainment video, not quite TV, but not that different either. The convergence of media will lead to the convergence of design communities—with computers, television, and communications increasingly overlapped.
   
   
4. The battle will be between the phone companies and the cable companies.
   According to a recent report by Insight Research, Internet consumers may be willing to spend $1.2 billion on high-speed access this year, but they will only pay once for the modem needed to establish a broadband connection. This seems rather obvious to me—if you've just bought a DSL modem, you're not likely to be a customer for a cable modem as well. Insight Research says that the broadband modem that reaches the mass market first will capture an initial base of customers who will be reluctant to pay again to switch technologies. While this is true, I think the major point is that it isn't the modem that reaches the market first, it is the SERVICE that reaches the market first.
   
   DSL has an advantage in that it can be marketed and sold by the local telcos to the consumer market in the same way that they market other services such as call waiting. However, cable already covers 70 percent of all households and cable operators appear to be rolling out their high-speed service faster than the incumbent telephone companies.
   
   
5. The roll-out will take much longer than you think.
   It isn't the modem problem, it's the services problem, and the infrastructure problem. For the cable company, offering two way communications means that the entire infrastructure has to be upgraded. I think about 1/4^th of the North American plant is two-way capable today, and while the upgrade is a continuous process, it isn't fast. Give the cable companies credit for making this long journey one step at a time. The phone companies, of course, have never been known to move quickly, except when they are gobbling each other up. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, which changed the competitive landscape, has opened the doors to lots of competitive wrangling. But now the DSL team is starting to move, afraid that the cable modem opposition might actually beat them to the market.
   
   Because the problem is so tied up in services issues, you have highly localized effects. For example, all the towns around Boston and Brookline, Massachusetts offer cable modem Internet access. (MediaOne charges $40/month) But not in Boston or Brookline itself. So, no matter how good the technology is, no matter that the local computer stores are selling cable modem hardware, if you live in Boston or Brookline, where the only cable company is Cablevision Systems, you have no choice. Someday soon they say, we will see cable competition. Have you heard that one before? DSL services are just as spotty, only more rare. Bell Atlantic is promising DSL in the greater Boston area for $60-$100 per month, depending on speed. But this service will not be available to everyone, and it seems priced more for the small business than for the consumer. On the other hand, I read that AOL is teaming up with Bell Atlantic (who seems to have lots of trouble and take forever to find out why my DSL line suddenly went down) to provide DSL access to America's favorite ISP.
   
   One other note, for you technically minded readers. The word "broadband" is certainly mis-used. But you're going to see it and hear it so often in the next two years that the definition is likely to change with the times. An analog broadband network carries multiple signals by dividing the total capacity of the medium into multiple, independent bandwidth channels, where each channel operates only on a specific range of frequencies. Cable TV delivery of analog video channels is a prime example. A digital broadband network is differentiated simply on the grounds of speed, with 1.5 or 2.0 Mbps commonly taken as the threshold. Ethernet or ATM or T1/E1 lines are examples. Technically then, these DSL and cable modem services are often not broadband, instead they are high speed. My own CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier) offers a very nice DSL service providing 640 kbps downstream and 384 kbps upstream. This is high speed Internet access and the experience blows away your standard 28.8 modem. But it isn't really broadband in the traditional sense. The cable modem services in the towns around me offer 1.5 Mbps downstream and 300 kbps upstream. You decide if that is "broadband."