[LINK] IIA "National Broadband Targets 2010" report

steve jenkin sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au
Thu Aug 3 10:21:56 AEST 2006


stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote on 2/8/06 10:20 PM:

> This week the Internet Industry Association released their, 'National
> Broadband Targets for 2010' report ..
>
> <http://www.iia.net.au/files/IIA_Broadband_Targets_2010_%20
> (for_release).pdf>
>

The arguments presented are Just Plain Wrong.
Yes - more bandwidth *is* needed to distribute video over IP, but not
nearly as much as posited in the report...

These calculations will lead to a massive over-build and concominant
losses, higher-prices and self-flagellation by those senior management
fools that brought us such classics as the dual Optus/Telstra roll-out,
Telstras' Pacific Century CyberWorks purchase, and insert your fav...

Using the same rationale, cable TV needs one or two full TV channels per
watching customer... Nope... Just send out one set of feeds and let the
customer pick what they want.

Most TV is *broadcast* - and priced that way. And customer understand it.
Delivering a single video feed to a house over ADSL (esp the 24Mbps of
2+) seems more than feasible - *if* you have the equivalent of
"head-end" amplifiers (i.e. translate the RIM concept to ADSL nodes
close to user).

These super-RIMs only need modest (~1Gbps) downstream feed for 100+
channels.  Upstream?  No idea - but for N*0.5Mbps, not much.
[And that feed would be the same to all Nodes in an area - the head-end
would only supply that.]

Video-on-Demand is very expensive to provide - and should be priced as
such...  But why provide it (in the classic model)??

There have been a truckload of Video-on-demand experiments (even
Transact?).  And they all have *one* common trait - they failed.

What succeeded, massively, was TiVIO.

TiVIO proved many things: People will pay the capital costs *themselves*
for "time shifters" - that also do the hard work of pause, rewind, FF,
... And they can be intelligent enough to pick off the air the programs
you've requested whenever they appear...  And in fact do much, much
better - with $150 disks now able to record ~100hrs of video, a single
feed can be buffered for a few days.

I'd shudder to suggest that a group of recorders hung off a single DSLAM
share content - with the major technical hitch being the speed asymmetry...

And what of those few (v. profitable) people who want to pay premium
prices to look at their personal video stream "Right Now!". It's only a
small fraction of the market, and then only a small fraction of the time
(but unfortunately, probably at the same times).  My guess is 1% would
be way high at peak.  And for something like a Grand Final - where many
people want the same thing, at the same time - it's just another
broadcast stream.

Summary:
Right now I think providing 20+Mbps into houses will enable a cable-TV
replacement.  Aggregate head-end capacity to low - a few Gbps.
People will purchase a their own PVR's to handle time shifting and
non-sequential viewing.
And maybe 1 in 1000 household will want to pay for premium content not
normally streamed - or 10-20kbps/connection extra for the head-end(s)
and the network.  Not a high load - and very profitable.

sj

> Broadband Usage in 2010   
> (July 31 2006. Snipped)
> 
> It is difficult to predict with any degree of certainty the exact nature 
> and extent of activities that Australians will be requiring by 2010.
> 
> Historically, we have seen new developments emerge quickly to assume 
> almost mainstream status in short periods of time. We expect the next 
> four years to be no different.

> <snip>

> 
> Some commentators consider that once HDTV services are available, the 
> appetite from users will soon soak up what we would consider today to be 
> massive amounts of bandwidth. Clearly, if the following assertion proves 
> correct, then 2010 will see demand for ultra high capacities (in today’s 
> terms) becoming the norm:
> 
> "Consumers are demanding six channels, two of which must be of HDTV 
> quality, in IPTV (Internet Protocol-television) applications. That demand 
> translates to a minimum of 50-Mbps broadband services."
> 

<snip>

> 
> Cheers all,
> Stephen Loosley
> _______________________________________________
> Link mailing list
> Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
> 
> 

-- 
Steve Jenkin, Info Tech, Systems and Design Specialist.
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 48, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA

sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://www.canb.auug.org.au/~sjenkin




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