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| 100 Meg Bonded, Vectored: Great in Lab, Still Tough in Field |
| Wednesday, 22 December 2010 05:48 |
"We have working chips now," a VP tells me. He's optimistic they'll be able to support actual customers by the second half of 2011. With bonded lines and a fully vectored binder group, they are delivering 100 megabits 1500+ feet. I'll be skeptical of his claim, and all others, until things are truly working. "100 megabits is the sweet spot our clients want to achieve. There are many situations a local box that uses copper for the last 1500-2000 feet is a good decision."
"I mapped my own neighborhood, a typical suburb, and counted about 300 homes within a 2,000 foot radius. That could be a very cost-effective deployment. We're selling a lot of fiber as well," he added. "Many of the carriers, especially those with a strong community base, are choosing to spend more and bring fiber all the way to homes. Almost every carrier believes they have to upgrade one way or the other."
"Using vectoring to preserve the value of the copper is very attractive but operationally is hard on some carriers. Essentially all of the lines in the binder need to be vectored. The mixed connections in the typical existing plant make that difficult. The chips are very early and surely will prove to have bugs. We have to do the work to build the boards and systems as well. We're optimistic about late 2011 and pretty sure none of our competitors are ahead."
Headlines around the world picked up company pr about hundreds of megabits but rarely pointed out these demo systems, not yet fit for production. No one is even close to interoperability. You can't mix DSLAMs with one chip with modems built around a chip from a different maker without inviting trouble. What I'm hearing from carriers in the earliest testing is encouraging, however, similar to what the equipment vendor tells me above.
90% of homes will not be affected by vectoring for years, if ever. Few if any carriers have committed to refit existing DSL builds with new vectored systems. It's not just the direct cost of the new DSLAMs and possibly modems as well. Telco plant is typically decades ago with different kludges and organization over the years. The magic of vectoring typically requires extensive cleanup.
New builds starting in 6-24 months probably should use the new vectored equipment. The vendors tell me the DSLAMs won't be that much more expensive, so I'd protect the future by buying the faster gear.
The strategy for the 95% of the developed world with DSL already in place still isn't clear.
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| Last Updated on Saturday, 25 December 2010 13:51 |