Is Comcast Heading the Way of the Dinosaur? 340
CasualRepartee writes "Comcast has been one of the most successful cable companies in the world; in many parts of the U.S., Comcast sits pretty on huge user bases that don't have many viable high-speed internet alternatives. However, poor customer service, slow speeds and generally poor business practices could make the once-great internet giant another extinct dinosaur, no ice age required.
The fact of the matter is this: Comcast is no longer the biggest and the best. Cable is taking a distant back seat to Verizon's FiOS (fiber optic service), which delivers speeds up to 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload speeds. Unlike Comcast, FiOS delivers the full range of bandwidth to each user, whereas Comcast users are forced to share bandwidth with other users on the same coaxial cable, causing speeds to fluctuate dramatically with usage."
What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ? (Score:1, Interesting)
This sounds like Verizon press puffery to me. What is Verizon's provisioning on the FIOS back end ? How much do they underprovision ? It is a very safe bet that there is not 10 Mbps of Internet transit reserved for every FIOS customer, so there is still sharing of bandwidth, and still a likelihood of bandwidth reductions during heavy use periods. This could be better or worse than Comcast, but you don't know and can't tell just from the bandwidth of the edge circuit.
Re:Stuck with the dinosaur? (Score:3, Interesting)
Note to Comcast: I am sorely tempted to switch back to Comcast, but there is no way I will until you quit screwing with traffic; believe it or not, I use torrents to get legit software (linux distros and some commercial software that *gasp* I have paid for), and I can't afford to have this kind of traffic disrupted. So for me, slow dsl is the only viable alternative.
I wouldn't bet on it (Score:3, Interesting)
Comcast is my cable provider. I don't like the way they operate, but I'm not switching and losing OnDemand TV and my local NBA team games as a result.
Re:Where is FIOS? (Score:1, Interesting)
If only we had a map with current FIOS coverage we might be able to put a little fire under their asses. (I will resist ranting about what their CEO got paid last year...)
Anybody up for building an online FIOS coverage registry? I'll handle the backend and page design if someone can workout a nice map app for the whole of the USofA. Perhaps using Google Maps API? (I do have a slashdot account password somewhere...)
Re:I hate Comcast (Score:5, Interesting)
They seemed to promote the idiots to management and let go those that were valuable to the company. In other words I saw lots of people getting screwed, so I jumped ship. Because the screwing was so bad I could map out and see it was heading for me and my department.
The last straw for me was instead of hiring one of the guys in the department that knew the job and systems or a new manager position they hired a friend of one of the executives for it that did not know squat about the department, what we did, or even the business process. And this is a very common thing at comcast, hiring of managers based on the buddy system not capabilities and knowledge.
Posting anon as peole at Comcast that know me know my Slashdot ID.
Too bad so many of us live in AT&T land (Score:5, Interesting)
The sad thing is that the measly 6M/1M "Elite" tier Internet service AT&T U-verse [uverseusers.com] offers is usually superior to Comcast and cheaper too. If they'd have been a little smarter they'd have skipped TV entirely (and those expensive settop boxes, TV channel fees, etc) and used all the bandwidth for Internet... assuming that they absolutely, positively won't run fiber like Verizon.
I have to disagree with the notion that we have to wait for the existing monopolies to correct their rectal-cranial inversion. It is possible for a new company to build FTTH. Having a separate company run fiber that various competing companies can plug into, as CANARIE [canarie.ca] describes, makes a lot of sense. Such a dark fiber net could be municipally run, or maybe the electric companies would like another revenue stream.
Re:Mistakes in reasoning (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd love to be able to add FIOS to the list, because all of those suck except for DSL and conceivably wimax when it gets here.
As for number 2, I think the majority of people ought to be interested in this. I wouldn't have cared until they were allowed to buy out the local cable provider and turn the service from pretty good into completely unusable crap. The facts that they feel entitled to charge high prices for garbage service and have a propensity to buy out smaller companies is a good reason to be concerned. Just not necessarily people outside the US, but if we're going that route, there's a lot of news that shouldn't be posted here because it only applies to other countries.
Advertising an always on connection and being wholly unable to make it through a day without interruptions, let alone a week is pretty pathetic. The expectation that we would have to call them daily for a credit was completely absurd. I've never been treated that way by either Earthlink or Qwest.
A technical question (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere (Score:1, Interesting)
You are right... EVERYONE should know EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING. I mean if they dont know how networking works and how to perform delicate reconstructive surgery at the same time they are STUPID!
"FIOS connections are shared between a max of 32 home or nodes. They are rolling out GPON which will allow gigabit to the home (though no home will likely have it any time soon)"
Regardless the post you responded to is still a valid comment.
"currently most FIOS users are BPON and could get nearly 100MB bidirectional. As it is Verizon has maxed out currently at 50/20 plans for the home user, and yes you can get full speed 24/7. They have built out the back end to support high speed bidirectional traffic and this can be seen by the lack of complaints by users on sites such as dslreports.com and others. Also they are demonstrating they can migrate from 40 to 100Gbps links with relative ease."
Yes, you are right... I mean having only a few people on the pipes with a high end, very expensive back end will yield no complaints. Where do I insert "DUH"?
"Cable on the other hand will roll out DOCSIS 3.0 later next year....but
So... whats your point?
"So sure do you share a node at some point but for FIOS users its at the CO and not 20 feet from your front door and not likely to be congested."
You always share nodes, thats how the internet works. Thanks! www.howstuffworks.com
'I know...i can dl from an internet service that cannot be spoken of...at 30mbps any time of day and i get 30mbps every time...."
Odd, why cant you name it? Do you perhaps work for them?
A little bit of disinformation here.... (Score:3, Interesting)
FIOS is one of any number of schemes, and it requires, as does cable, surrendering the consumer possibility of third party provisioning over time. In other words, you're tied to the carrier and its scheme-- Verizon in the case of FIOS.
Although the same thing can be said about cable in most markets, the upstream switch is all important. Those beige cans now sitting in various neighborhoods don't have the concurrent peak throughput you speak of. Open up one of those cans if you like and look inside, then put what you see into a spreadsheet. This is the eventual downfall of FIOS; it's a short term solution, and it's not bi-directionally symmetrical.
Gigabit to the den isn't going to be very practical in FIOS. Worse, Verizon promises a lot of communities FIOS deployments, but then takes years to get started as the capital costs are huge, and Verizon has a weak market cap and can't do everything they promise right away. This has the effect of causing communities to take the bait, then wait years. Look at Ft Wayne IN for a peak of how slow it can go.
Congestion hasn't started because their approach isn't taxed very much yet.
Will Comcast be able to compete? Yes. It's the last mile + the inherent long term viability of the design that makes a difference. Comcast already has great position in easements, rights of way, and a distributed network where 'triple play' is paying the bills. They have the same upstream viability in terms of aggregate/peak throughput that Verizon or (AT&T) DSL has. They don't, however, have the cost of deployment-- which is going down quickly.
Instead of FIOS, we need intermediate/neighborhood distribution infrastructure that allows pure symmetry through the network, if the asset life of the deployment is going to be viable in 20 years.
The added services over time are what will be the ticket; triple/quadruple/quintuple or whatever marketing words that you'd like to describe services with. The anti-cable marketing FUD is just that. Comcast and cable in general has a great chance to win based not only on historical reasons, but because they're not mindless telcos, whose mentality hasn't shifted much since the 1960s. FIOS, in a way, is like ATM: bad technology that looks really good on the surface, but isn't market sensitive. Telcos never are: they're monopolized revenue sensitive.
very poor installations (Score:2, Interesting)
The wire near my house was installed by a guy driving a Comcast van in Nov 9 2007. I dug ouo tmy camera and took the first pic of this the next day, Nov 10. I just went out and took more pics today, Dec 2.
http://mysite.verizon.net/amigabill/comcast/comcast.html [verizon.net]
IMNSHO, Comcast sucks ass and deserves to die.
Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ? (Score:3, Interesting)
While I agree with most of your comment, I have to correct you on this point. FiOS is a completely passive system between the CO and the customer. The only interruptions in the fiber you'll find are splices and splitters. There's nothing at all that would/could handle the routing of data between customers, or anything else for that matter, except at the CO. And no, I'm not talking out of my ass here. I happen to be a FiOS I&M technician (who actually paid attention while in training...).
Beware of Verizon (Score:2, Interesting)
They are a very aggressive company (in their business practices), so I can't imagine that they are suddenly going to become warm fuzzy kittens to their FIOS customers. Though I have not read them, I would imagine that their TOS (terms of service) probably contain some gotchas that will only surface later, benefiting them over their customers.
I hope their FIOS service is great, stays great, and has happy customers. I just wouldn't be naive enough to take it as a given.
BTW - not all phone companies are dinosaurs or out to screw everyone. Our company offers excellent customer service (a live person when you call!), but, then, we are neither the cheapest nor do we play in the residential space.
Re:Would somebody tell me why... (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, mom's in the kitchen downloading a stream at HD RATES of her favorite show, Oprah 2.0.
Dad's upstairs doing an online improvement of his golf swing.
Junior's in his bed room watching porn, with four MURPGs going, a live video of the away game that the b-ball team is playing, and carrying on audio conversations with 11 people in the game in realtime.
Sis is in the living room, having a virtual pajama party with ten of her friends. Now that the price of gasoline is $91.099/gal, everything's virtual.
Bowser's getting an online MRI scan to see if the surgery went ok. The darn robot's been chasing him around the house, but the house downstairs computer located him by GIS and now his him in the clutches of the MRI machine. Darn dog, anyway.
While some of this is science fiction, so were cell phones, HDTV, MRI units, and multi-user role playing games just 20 years ago.
Your statement reminds me of Bill Gate's declaration that everyone will be fine in just 640K of DRAM. This same madness infects passive optical distribution systems, and one day, there'll be a digital backhoe that'll rip lots of this stuff out to be replaced by non-proprietary, head-in-the-sand, cheapskate infrastructure.
Hell, Corning wins either way.
Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere (Score:5, Interesting)
So HFC is separating people on the same physical fiber/copper with frequencies and time slots, and FiOS is doing basically the same thing with light spectrum. With cable the drop from the pole to your house is not shared, with FiOS the fiber goes from your home to where? Probably a drop/splitter on a pole outside. If this is the case they are both "shared" even at the last mile.
Cable has exponential room to grow also. Currently there is about 1GHz available on your copper you are using about 8MHz (0.8%) of it for your cable modem. Even with the technology in place now it could offer much much more bandwidth per subscriber. DOCSIS 3.0 will add more bandwidth and channel bonding. Removing the analog channels will free up spectrum. There is a technology called "switched digital" that basically means broadcasting the channels people are watching instead of all the channels all the time. The technology in place today is not even being used to the full potential (it is cheaper not to especially where the bandwidth in place is not being used) and in theory instead of 8MHz there is nothing stopping DOCIS 5.0 or DOCSIS 6.0 from using 300 or 400 MHz. If end-user bandwidth requirements ever get that high the internet itself would be in jeopardy as the backbone fiber would not be able to sustain that much traffic.
Re:censorship? (Score:3, Interesting)
I connected to a server on a different isp and I was able to ssh into the servers on the subnet that was unreachable to me. The traceroute between my server and my Comcastic IP reached my ip, and even my traceroute from my ip to the server succeeded. After fifteen minutes or so I was able to connect again.
Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere (Score:1, Interesting)
Cable put Internet on a dedicated channel and FiOS shares it with TV.!
As stated before DOCSIS is using just ~0.8% of the available bandwidth. You used DOCIS 2.0 for your 42.88 figure, but DOCSIS 3.0 is 171.52 meg and right around the corner.
Next, while even FiOS is in very few areas and most rural areas will /never/ see it, the deployments today are not using GPON, they are BPON which will only do 100 meg (less than DOCSIS 3.0).
FiOS is more expensive to deploy which means low ROI will prevent it from reaching rural areas like cable does. And for the majority of people DOCSIS 3.0 will be out long before FiOS (BPON) is even available. Both technologies will support as much bandwidth as the back-end links/servers will allow, and one of them does it for less money. I don't like Comcast (or Verizon) either, but DOCSIS is still a flexible technology. Without DOCSIS I'd be getting 56kb (that's 7kB).
Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere (Score:1, Interesting)
So in 99.99% of cases not being able to share a multi gig connection with more than 32 customer is a waste, especially when the users are capped at 5 Mbps/2 Mbps. This extra cost is only going to be passed on to the consumer and as stated before, will prevent FiOS from seeing the light of day in rural areas.
People are saying Comcast is doomed, and at the same time telephone subscribers are moving to VoIP by the millions. Even businesses are putting in VoIP PBX's instead of paying Verizon for a bunch of individual 64k circuits. Verizon is moving to expensive last mile fiber because their circuit switched cash cow is being pulled out from under them and they have no other choice in the matter.
Either way, more competition is good for the consumer. VoIP meant an aggressive push to last mile fiber from Verizon, FTTH (fiber to the home) will pressure cable companies to free up more spectrum for DOCSIS.