Battle of the Bandwidth

[sifting]

But its not going to homes. The problem any exec will tell is the "last mile" getting the fibre from a node, which may serve a few hundred to few thousand homes, to the home itself.

I've been hearing this for 15 years. The question is whether we can trust the exec when he makes this kind of statement. Or whether the exec even knows.

[sifting]

I find it interesting how government is like an on/off switch for people... People decry their presence in telecom via the CRTC, but then turn around and demand that they start doing something so we can all get 100 Mbps to our houses for 50 cents a month. Unfortunately government usually does the opposite of what we want.

It's not an on/off switch for me. I like the CBC. I don't believe the CRTC should disappear. I just feel it should do a better job -- especially on issues such as Canadian content requirements. And in a democratic state, I'll choose government over most corporations any day of the week. At least, we get to vote for our elected officials.

[nicohockey9]

Fiber is probally not to far away. But it won't be offered by Verizon, and AT&T U-Verse I don't think wil come here either. I think we might see a new service come out all together if the cable co's don't move on it soon.

[sifting]

There is more driving the further extension of fiber than HDTV. There have been several articles recently about how the Internet may reach the breaking point because of growing access and larger downloads -- especially of video (and no doubt increasingly in HD format). The Internet has also established itself as important to electronic commerce and increasingly as an alternate mean of delivering TV.

In these circumstances, it becomes more likely that all the industry players and government will become involved in increasing the capacity of backbones and trunks, as well as expanding the network so that it passes many more residences.

[travisc]

Source Cable has built one of their new neighborhoods with fibre to the home... I don't think it's comparable to FiOS because they're just replacing the traditional distribution system with fibre. Essentially you get the same services at the endpoints, but you're certainly more future-proofed.