Analysts warn of US broadband meltdown

And how is this is a surprise ?

Hearing about the shenanigans going on over there (Comcast ?), it's clear that the US ISPs have been painting themselves into the "how cheap can we sell it" corner just like the UK ISPs.

I think the report (as reported here) is overly optimistic - that sort of investment isn't going to happen without some major shift in market dynamics. Whatever happens, I suspect it isn't going to be good news for users faced with ever decreasing service quality unless they switch to a premium priced ISP. Since many ISPs probably won't be able to see what's coming, or a way out of it, we can look forward to some of them "exiting the market" in one way or another - leaving a load of stranded customers as they do so.

And that applies both sides of the pond.

Start small

Before we start going off the deep end, start dealing with the problem before it arises. Fibre optic to the door on all new housing, in the situation where no infrastructure currently exsists put in the best there is. That way in 10 20 or 30 years time we will still have a viable system.

Unfortunatly the typical british method it do it fast do it cheap, anyone got aluminium phone lines? BTs answer to the rising price of copper quick cheap and hopeless for broadband at any distance from the exchange. That could explain the hysteria from the press officer, they know the truth and it ain't going to get better anytime soon.

AI Word to Weizmann and Wise Men and Fatimas Friends ... The Beta Half of Man?

Have you considered that BT 21st Century InterNetworking is AI ProVision of Quality as Opposed to just Random Quantity.

A SMARTer InterNetworking Engine. ..... Tailor Made to Measure and Fit for Any Purpose.

IT is certainly available to them.

And that is Golde and not Spam.

@Nicolas Fanget

Yes, it's possible to do two way broadband by satellite. HughesNet and, um, some other company whose name escapes me just now, offer it in the USA. My boss has it in his holiday home out in the boonies.

He hates it, and only keeps it because he hates dialup even more. Lag time is obviously bad (we had to hack around at Windows XP DNS timeouts and caching just so he could resolve domain names most of the time), transfer rate is decent sometimes, forget it if a typical Southern thunderstorm gets in the way of the satellite, and their Ts&Cs/customer service is of the usual sort large companies provide when they know they're the only game in town.

There's some local outfit near me providing line-of-sight wireless, but with all the hills and valleys here coverage is spotty at best, albeit improving as they expand. If I'm going to have any sort of usable broadband within the next decade, that's likely to be where I get it.

Which brings me to my other point: a large chunk of the US populace, myself included, is outside coverage of any reasonably priced broadband service. I find it ludicrous that anyone is talking about "running out of broadband capacity" when half of us are still stuck with bloody dialup anyway, and probably still will be long after this supposed meltdown has been and gone.

@ Nick: Re WTF

FYI as an Openreach (BT) engineer I'm lucky to get more than 5000kps INSIDE a telephone exchange, sitting next to the DSLAM! I have been temped to plug my Ethernet directly into a DSLAM & find if there is a difference in speed but I'm worried about all the hidden CCTV's & getting caught 'tampering' with the Other Service Providers equipment, so I felt keeping my job was better than idle curiosity! :-(

In the US...

... Our broadband providers are doing little to improve capacity because it feeds into their excuses to push for anti-net neutrality legislation.

BT need a kick up the arse - II

Its amazing how such a monpolistic situation can exist in a first world country.

This example clearly shows the uncaring attitude of the organisation.

Every time someone in UK wants a BB account they need to pay for BT FAT CATS. And hence the service quality depends on the ability of BT folks whose jobs are secured for life.

If someone is kicking them - do one on my behalf too mate.

Maybe this is something we as a country can learn from yankees....

it is all about numbers

Sadly we forget that all telco's march to the drums from the ever corrupt bent and mostly shallow me , myself and I Wall Street type financial analysts which infests all financial markets from A to Z , making basically unrealistic demands called annual increases in profits first and then all customers last period ! This is so as to feed their back pockets and wallets with bucket loads of cash by any crooked means possible , that is unfortunately a major problem called greed !

Further with the onset of rapid decline in the post war baby boomers numbers who are virtually driving the current market and are about to be replaced by less then half the number in the replacement sicker generation coming thus demand will peak then rapidly decline after 2020 in the west !

So it is all about numbers and in the end the customer is always the last digit in any Wall Street equation thus far !

Mind you the French did implement a post revolution creative entertaining solution in the late eighteenth century on what to do with one bunch of corrupt and unwanted newly created class of the former greedy and avaricious aristos who for some reason had the same traits as a modern Wall Street analyst of today , being suddenly reduced to penury for their crimes against the people and empty the prisons at the same time !

What price a choice indeed ?

Reality check...

Some good points, but who's going to pay for Billions of pounds of the proposals above. Is BT not owned by shareholders, and therefore a business just like any other? It has an obligation to supply a service - which it does - but not to support the pipedream fantasies of some, of inifinite bandwidth.

This is the real world remember...

P.S. What about the media/content providers choking the networks to death by using ISPs to deliver their content via Peer-Peer rather than investing in faster Internet Connections...

Contention

I get a sync rate of 8Mb/sec to the exchange but with the contention ratios in use by the ISPs I get no where near that transfer rate.

Basically the UK hit this problem a while ago and aren't showing any signs of fixing it.

Huh, wot?

How on earth do the projected BW limitations of many broadband users in the US (a huge set of leaf nodes) adversely affect BT users (another huge set of leaf nodes)??

Are you talking about transit via PTTs/telcos between them? Direct-peering with US ISPs? Utterly apples and sofas. These aren't "local loop" connections by any stretch. BT (AS5400) is using Level3/.../direct-peering to N.A. NAPs+ISPs, and C&W/FLAG/.../direct-peering to Asia ones. BT's also using several local peering points throughout the EU for "local" ISPs. (All of which are verified via any looking glass server _du jour_.) So, what's the problem again with BT users re: projected N.A. broadband meltdown?

@Paul: *sigh* Internet via satellite (a looooooong fat pipe) drives TCP nutso with the RTT. It's no wonder your boss dislikes it. I like to gawk at it (mostly) working: it's like a miracle freak of nature. I do feel the pain though.

don't forget that.....

It does not matter how close you are to the exchange... whether you are on fibre..... or what bandwidth you thought you bought.

For most Broadband customers, the contention is set by the ISP... could be as low as 50 to 1.... just divide everything you thought you would get by 50 (at least...and remeber they can reduce it further by having smaller hub end pipes from the Broadband network (COST) and also smaller pipes onto the Internet (COST)) so unless you pay alot more for uncontented service, that will be the average of what you get.

Cheap BB......leads to less investment.....couple this with high customer expectations...leads to failure of the service to satisfy.

Pay more?

Ha!

<scandinavian>

LMAO

</scandinavian>

Speeds have dropped

I used to sync at 8000kbps and hit download speeds of 750kb/s. Now I sync at 5500 and only download at about 290kb/s. Thats only just faster than a 2Mb line!!

Nothing has changed except the amount of ADSL users my small village has!

Does anyone know what the average small exchange uplink/backhaul speeds are?

21CN is OLD news

Was in a briefing once with a Telstra (Australia's BT) executive once, going on and on about how good the network is, this was about 3-4 years ago, and he just happen to let slip, that this amazing almost-future-proof network they rolled out decades ago, is being pretty much copied for BT's 21CN.

So, 21CN isnt realy 21C at all, its 20CN!

How to solve it

Well its looks a no brainer to me.

Actually get your head out of the sand (isps) and do something REAL about spam. Since about 95% of email is spam think how much bandwidth would be saved if you actually DID something.

You could then actually do something about DOS attacks and continual probes by compromised kit and save even more bandwidth.

Not only that it would be green too, think of all the power you will save by not having to add more kit to cope with demand to transmit all that spam and all that DOS/probe traffic.

but then back in the real world.....

I guess just adding more bandwidth and moaning about it is simpler.

Voipex can help ease the pressure on the net

My company has some clever software that reduces the overall impact of Voice traffic on the internet, so whilst this will not sole the problem people who use our VIBE (Voice over IP Broadband Enhancement software) will recue the overall payloads clogging up the net freeing more space for other traffic.

A quick fix that improves the quality all of your voice conversations.

www.voip-x.co.uk

Duh

When you change a nationalised department (BT) into a for-profit organisation that thanks to regulatory interference (Ofcom) that sees said company making a loss on every line that gets sold (Openreach/LLU) to THEIR BUSINESS RIVALS who have no interest whatsoever in setting up their own infrastructure, do you really expect BT to give a flying fig?

"bt dont care and never will..."

With such amazing incentive courtesy of Piss-Off Com, is it really any wonder?