Verizon To Use New Tech With Old Cables

Ant wrote to mention a ZDNet article about a new initive to get modern high-speed net access into homes utilizing old coaxial cable lines. Right now Verizon digs up streets and lays out expensive fiber to get homes online, but new tech may let them accomplish that task for much less hassle and expense. From the article: "Later this year, it plans to use new technology from the Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) , an industry group that promotes using coaxial cable installed for cable TV to transmit broadband around the home. The organization says that its technology supports speeds up to 270 megabits per second. Because most homes already have coaxial cable installed in several rooms, Verizon can significantly reduce its Fios installation costs by using existing cabling to connect home computers to its broadband service."

Am I missing something?

[LBt1st]

Uh, isn't this.. cable?

Aargh - I was just getting used to twisted pair!

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to run my school computer lab on co-ax. What a pain. The connectors were always breaking. They didn't have to completely break either, they just had to go slightly bad and they'd take down the whole network. Anyway I suppose they will come up with a solution that has 'more conventional' connectors because most NICs don't have co-ax connectors.

What makes this so different from cable internet?

[John Hansen]

The question on my mind is, what makes this so "new" and different from existing cable internet? The only thing he mentions is that download speed is 270Mbps.

I suppose they're probably using a higher frequency to transmit the data as opposed to existing cable internet.

The other concern is, won't the cable companies charge Verizon an arm and a leg to use *their* cable networks? I would imagine this would drive the price of this new solution up through the roof, to the point where its cost makes it prohibitive for the end-user (that is, you and me).

"old" cables?

[keilinw]

I think its a great idea to use "existing" infrastructure to reduce costs and speed up implementation. IMHO a "new" technology using copper is suitable as long as it meets certain criteria (which I'm sure it does). My only beef with the article is in the title -- existing copper cables are not "OLD" technology -- copper has many advantages over fiber in terms of practicality, cost, etc. I'm going to consider that they were referring to "copper" as old... but I don't foresee and sudden disappearance of wires in the near future.

Matt Wong
http://www.themindofmatthew.com [themindofmatthew.com]

Is this really a good idea?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

...Verizon digs up streets and lays out expensive fiber to get homes online, but new tech may let them accomplish that task for much less hassle and expense...

What are the chances they will actually pass the savings on to the consumer? Exactly nill. Anyway, since everything and the kitchen sink will soon be relient on an IP address and broadband connection, is this really a good idea? Just lay the fiber and get it over with.

Re:Misleading summary (surprise)

[Tx]

Here's the Wikipedia entry for MoCA [wikipedia.org], for more info.

I thought they had learned....

[saleenS281]

I thought they learned the last time not to band-aid these issues. We have fiber that would be upgradeable to ??????? speeds, or we can bottleneck ourselves yet again at 270mbit (and that's probably theoretical only) so in reality maybe 200mbit? So that in another 5-10 years they'll have to do the fiber thing anyways. Why not just do it right the first time so there's a nice long-term upgrade path?

Re:RT..., oh, never mind

[jZnat]

So I'm guessing this is why Comcast is upgrading some areas to 16M/1M connections? I thought cable already used shared fibre lines. Guess I was wrong...

Competition is good; too bad they aren't competing with ISPs from Japan or Korea, else we'd get getting 100M/100M connections for $10-15 a month.

Re:Only delaying the inevetible....

[SeaFox]

Eventually we're going to bump into limits yet again with the coax cabling, so why not still go forth with the fiberoptic plans?

Because by then the current board members will have retired and the current CEO/CFO will not have to find a way to keep the stockholders happy while all the company's revenues go into network upgrades. The next boss can deal with that.

How are they making money?

[Jamori]

Verizon hopes to reduce these costs significantly in 2006. Specifically, it plans to cut the cost of laying new fiber in neighborhoods to $890 per home and reduce the cost of home installation to $715 per home

TFA cites those costs for 2005 as $1,200 and $1,400 respectively.
How exactly is this a profitable business venture when their optimisitc goal is to spend over $1,600 per household for installation of a service that they sell for $40/month, with relatively little commitment to stay with the service?

Old Coax Cable?

[TBone]

a new initive to get modern high-speed net access into homes utilizing old coaxial cable lines.

Isn't this really just a rebirth of 10-Base-5 [wikipedia.org] Ethernet? What's old is new again....

Re:pushing cable asside...

[Kadin2048]

Bingo.

I think this is the real headline here -- basically what Verizon wants to do is run fiber to your house, to the outside service entrance or basement or whatever, and then unplug the Cable Company's wires from where they attach to the wires inside your house, and plug themselves in there. Then their signal -- instead of the Cable Co.'s -- goes to everyplace you have a cable jack. Which is quite a few places, in many modern homes.

For you, the customer, they can say "hey, you don't need to run Cat 5 all over your house this way" ... while at the same time, cutting the cable company totally out of the picture.

I think it's their way of responding to the Cable Companies who are bundling TV+Highspeed Internet+VOIP packages, where they install a VOIP box and plug your analog phone into it, effectively cutting out the phone company.

Frankly I think it would be better if both companies agreed on a common wiring standard (hey, how about Cat 6 UTP?) and then plugged THAT into whatever network line the customer wanted to use -- whether it was the Cable Co.'s or the Telco's.

Re:pushing cable asside...

[uncreativ]

Verizon serves a lot of metropolitan areas and rerunning cable (speaking from someone who works in real estate with multiple tenant properties) can be prohibitively expensive for each order. It has to be done all at once--usually at the apartment building owner's expense. Maybe the telecom company will pay to do that--but what company is willing to do that now if their competitor can use the wire as well? And condos/coops? Yeah, just try and get them to agree on a wiring plan--kind of like herding cats.

The whole point of my one line post--this is more to push cable out. If verizon uses coax to deliver its service, then a customer is unlikely to be able to choose cable TV from the cable company and phone and/or internet from Verizon. The net effect of this will be--forced bundling.

Ever since the FCC ruled that all household coax cable belongs to the home owner, cable companies have been more vulnerable than phone companies to the competitor using wiring they often paid to install in the first place. Cable companies are younger than the telcos. Many have not yet recouped all their initial build costs (especially since they had to rebuild only 10-20 years depending on community for internet/phone). If you are going to pay money--any money--to wire a building, you don't want your competitor to use that for free. Verizon's move will definitely tick off the cable companies

I don't really care who wins or loses--both big cable and big telephone companies are evil in my mind. This could get nasty before all is said and done. Expect the government--blech--to have to step in to mediate.

Re:Oh, you mean THAT Verizon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do companies insist on using PPPoE? I have only seen problems and yet to find any advantage.