How long has cable TV been around? 50 years? And most people today seem to be getting there TV with 500 channels, and internet all from this very old coaxial cable. How is it that Cable is still competing with modern (better) technologies we might have invented more recently?
-Like satellites in outer space - IPTV - fiber optic cable…ect. I have heard that there are cables invented recently that can send data in the Gigabytes per second range… The best coaxial cable internet can send data at what- 8mbs/sec? Most ppls high speed internet has somewhere between 3mb/second range…
Then I heard that in other countries, like Australia, they have internet speeds that are much much faster than we have in America. How are they doing this?
You always see on TV commercials proclaiming that Cable TV is superior to satellite, claiming that satellite TV has bad reception in certain weather conditions. Seems to me cable puts a whole lot of money and energy into defending itself against other newer technologies. Why is that???
This all leads me to believe that there is a sort of conspiracy surrounding cable TV.
What if: The rich cable TV company heads know that cable is not the best thing around but they are rich enough to pay for ads that keep consumers in the dark. I think we should all agree basic consumers are idiots as far as technology goes.
Inferior technology is sold all the time -why- because you can trick someone into buying it that hasn’t done the research. Thus, Advertising is more important than the product you sell - in order to become successful.
My thinking is that cable TV knows cable is outdated, but is able to keep everyone buying it because everyone already has it. They know these new technologies have been invented but they have the money and the power to out advertise these new technologies to the point that they can never compete or even startup in the first place. They are able to halt the startup of any other form of communication that could topple there already established market stranglehold.
This conspiracy is the something as what we have with the big oil companies in America. Oil companies are making record profits off of the old technology of gas powered cars when it is perfectly possible for us today to have cars powered by other means. For instance, in Brazil, I was shocked to hear that they no longer need oil for there vehicles. Everything runs off of sugar. We live in America. So why can’t we have cars running off sugar or hydrogen or other means? Is it because the oil companies are making such a profit along with the government that they are able to halt the startup of any other form that could topple there already established market stranglehold.
Ok, I realize this is a complicated topic of itself, the gasoline companies… And I realize I have a very feeble understanding how oil companies operate. But my question is more about cable TV vs. satellite and other forms of communication techno that is better than cable. Also, there are many things in this writing that I open anyone to correct. I realzie I am just a basic consumer left in the dark only theorize – “What if.”
No we don’t actually. Most people using broadband in Australia have no more than 512k/second, many of us 256. And many, many people are still using dial-up. Here is an article listing broadband penetration in different parts of the world:
As far as cable goes, cable only became available in Australia in the early 90’s. Most people, including myself still do not have cable - it isn’t cheap at about $90 per month.
You are making some big mistakes in thinking here. It is true that we could sit down and design a cutting edge multimedia network that is hundreds of times faster than what is available in most homes if we closed the old ones down, ripped them out, and replaced them with state of the art hardware. That is not how it works however. Cable TV is a whole business model that includes lots of things and upgrading everyone every two years (technology will continue to advance) isn’t a viable way to go. They upgrade in pieces as the demand rises and the existing hardware needs to be replaced. This spreads the cost over time and is covered by existing revenue but it takes a while.
Cable companies sometimes pick small towns to use as their test sites so there is one small town in Texas that does have 30 mb/s internet service. That will take a while to get to everything else because just the project management task is massive let alone the implementation expenses. The money simply isn’t there.
The other alternatives are to have a brand new company lay cutting edge cable down (with big financial risk) and hope that someone wants it enough to pay a huge premium. Satellite technology has serious issues.
Cutting edge technology always has something available that you could use if you had infinite money and an instantaneous roll out time but the real-world does not work that way.
Let me ask you this, then: if this was true, that the cable companies are all colluding in order to, err…forever doom us to watching TV over cable, then what’s to stop one of these ultra-rich, greedy cable companies from saying “Holy shit! Instead of crushing this newfangled technology, let’s start selling it! It’s so much better than everything else that’s out there, we’ll make a killing!”
Answer: no technology has come out that is significantly better than what currently exists for residential TV and internet.
Satellite? Unreliable internet service, with high latency, and very slow upload speeds. Okay for TV, which is why DirectTV has had reasonable success (how does DirectTV fit into this little conspiracy of yours, anyway?)
Fiber? Expensive, though it is being tested now in some urban areas.
IPTV? IPTV and cable are not mutually exclusive.
Also, keep in mind that there is very little similarity between the cable of 50 years ago, and 500-channel digital cable TV today. Pretty much the only thing they have in common is the coaxial cable itself: the hardware on either side of is completely different, as is the data that moves across it.
There is no conspiracy, and frankly I think you’re a little bit off your rocker.
There are two competing Pay TV services- Austar (Satellite TV), and Foxtel (cable).
Austar and Foxtel are both ludicrously expensive at around $70/month for the basic package, $90-$120/month for the decent packages with anything anyone might actually want to see. Oh, and they have ads as well. And the programming is largely crap.
Now, if they went A La Carte, more people might get it, but everything Imasquare said is true- Pay TV in Australia is expensive, not very good, and only a minority of people have it.
My parents have Austar (which is good, because there’s no way I’m paying for it), and whilst it does occaisonally go out during severe storms- and these are the sort of storms so severe you shouldn’t really be watching TV anyway- otherwise it’s no different from any other way of getting TV, and doesn’t involve hoping there’s a fibre-optic cable in your area (necessary for Foxtel).
As for broadband- Broadband used to be very expensive until about a year ago, when the price dropped like a ton of bricks and now it’s about $30/month for a 512kb connection with a generous download limit (5Gb or so), or even no download limit, depending who you’re with. Most people who are in an area with an upgraded exchange are switching over to broadband, but it’s still by no means universal. I still meet a lot of people in the 18-35 age bracket who don’t have “The Internet”, dial-up, broadband, or otherwise…
Widespread cable access isn’t nearly 50 years old. 25-30, for the most part in North America.
But cable DOES compete with satellite.
Why? Can you provide real evidence?
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems to me cable is a great technology. Huge bandwidth piped right into my house. It works great. Why would I want to change? Practically speaking more Internet bandwidth would do me no good, because the signal just bottlenecks somewhere else; SDMB is going to run like shit whether I have 10MBps or 1,000,000.
Technology that is old is not necessarily outdated. The pipes that bring me water and gas work great and are decades-old technology.
A modern cable system can put about 40 Mb/s of data on each 6 MHz channel. Multiple channels can be bonded together to support higher rates. The problem isn’t with the coaxial cable.
The fact that any business doesn’t jump immediately onto the latest technology is not evidence of a “conspiracy” to keep the new technology down.
Fact is, we could all have Cray supercomputers on our desks (or at least in our basements) if we chose to pay for them.
Fact is, we could all have cars that run on electricity, natural gas or alcohol made from renewable crops if a) we wanted to pay more/get less performance and b) support the cost of building a huge infrastructure to replace the gas stations and oil refineries that have been around for 80 years.
And the fact is, plain old twisted copper (POTC to the telecom industry) is a proven technology with all the bugs worked out, all the specs reliably known and cost-effective.
Probably the main reason that ties all the others together is that the cable network is already there. Internet users might also be a different demographic more likely to try new technology. Cable TV users might be more likely to be couch potatoes who have an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ attitude.
The internet is similar in a way though, despite what I said above. I’m an exception that proves the rule, in a way: I have wireless internet. I’m paying significantly more per month for my broadband than I would be on ADSL. I have no laptop, so the ‘send emails from a sunny spot in the park’ reason doesn’t fit me. I got the wireless because I had just left my wife, and have already moved twice in the six months since then, and I don’t know where I’ll be in six months’ time, and the system is portable and contract -free. But if my domestic situation was more stable (long-term lease or home ownership) there’s no way in hell I’d pay extra for the new technology when ADSL or cable would do me fine. I’m paying more for the whizzbang modem and the fact that my ISP is going to the expense of istalling transmitters all over the city. Why would I do that without a good reason, if I could just plug the think into the existing phone jack for the same speeds, and at two thirds the price?
As for the speeds here, yes Australia and New Zealand are truly woeful. Our countries’ citizens have had a reputation for eager uptake of new technologies, but we can’t use it if it’s not there, and our small marketplace often means it’s not.
Why we don’t have better communications facilities is a complex questions. I mean, gigabit ethernet routers are less than $100! Why can’t everyone get this speed to their homes?
That’s a fair question, and consumers should never stop asking questions like this. If you let the industry tell consumers what they have a right to demand, high-speed internet access would be 128kb ISDN (64k when you’re on the phone).
However, it’s also important to understand what technologies are possible and what technologies are scalable. If everybody had a gigabit ethernet line going into their homes, you can see it would take only a couple miles of wiring and a couple levels of aggregation before you’re talking about pipes that are extremely large and extremely expensive… perhaps requiring technology that hasn’t even been invented yet. And speaking of expense, the existing technology is more expensive than it really needs to be, due in significant part to government regulation, which is a whole 'nother can of worms. I know in Japan they enjoy 24MB DSL way out in the countryside, and some lucky city dwellers get 100MB fiber service. The reason is that the government had enough sense not to tamper too much with the telecom monopoly over there. Service is more expensive than you’d expect here, but you also get much better service.
Anyway… look for new innovations and service improvements on the horizon… the telecom industry is shaking up, and with it will come some benefits for consumers.
I must have meant Japan then and not Austraila. Both of those contries are relatively close (on a globe at least).
So, there is no conspiracy. Good to know. Now I can sleep better.
The origin of all of this thinking is derived from A) Not knowing anything about it. B) the fact that there is so much technology out there today and how am I suposed to know what is best for me? C) Comcast cable seems to be an evil monopoly to me and so I was just wondering…
I’m betting your statement about Brazil is garbage too. That’s a pretty large country for every car to be running on sugar. Do you have a cite for that?
Actually, most of the high-speed fiber service providers are smaller companies that are making in-roads because the government has taken steps to lift the roadblocks that NTT (equivalent of AT&T) was placing in the way of potential competitors. Although it’s true that since business and government both tend to be very centrally managed, there’s much more standardization here than in the US.
One way that the 100Mbps fiber networks are spreading here is through new condos. The service provider makes a deal with the construction company to wire every flat for fiber and then offer it as a standard feature to prospective buyers. If you look through the real estate magazines, pretty much every new condo features high-speed internet.
Houses, on the other hand, are at the other end of the spectrum (which relates to the OP’s complaint); it’s currently next to impossible to get a fiber connection to a house (even in the middle of Tokyo) because the providers only want to go through the trouble of running a line out to a given location if they know there’s a large number of users already there (i.e., a condo or apartment building), and individual houses just aren’t a good return on the installation and upkeep costs. When enough people demand fiber service that providers can be assured of turning a profit, then individual homeowners will be able to get connections. Currently, they’re limited to ADSL lines through the phone system.
At my old apartment, the fiber service provider needed signatures from a certain number of people in our building saying that they wanted to sign up before they’d run a line out to us. Even then, it was about six months before everything was connected. Last year we bought a new condo with a 100Mbps fiber connection pre-installed and outlets in every room. Plus, it’s included in the building management, so there’s no monthly fee. Yes, I’m gloating ;).
Australia isn’t as bad as what people are making out here.
I am connected through iinet (3rd largest ISP in Oz), who admittedly are an exception to the rule, but their speeds greatly exceed anything that 99% of other ISPs over here can offer. I just think the big guys like Telstra and Optus have saturated the market and most people don’t realise what is actually available to them.
This is an internet speed test I ran in the last 5 minutes, and sometimes it’s even faster.
**Test type: ADSL
Your connection speed:
kbps: 4562.8
KB/s: 570.35
Mbps: 4.455859375**
This is a link to iinet for anyone interested, and before anybody asks, no I don’t work for them. My reason for ‘spruiking’ them has more to do with the fact that I believe that until people start subscribing to technology such as this in greater numbers, the incentive for the bigger players to change their ways and upgrade technology simply isn’t there.
Fiber to the Home is not just in urban areas. In fact, it’s far more likely to be deployed right now in smaller communities due to the high cost. A FTTH triple-play (voice, video, data) capable network, discluding the headend, today, typically costs between $1000 and $1500 per home passed to build.
The most recent “official” FTTH community listing (May 2005) may be found in this pdf. http://www.ftthcouncil.org/documents/213284.pdf Of the seven listed in Ohio, I’ve been involved with the engineering and design of four. And there’s at least two others that I was involved in that aren’t even on that list. One of them is too recent and the other stalled after design was completed. I’ve got two others pending for funding right now, too.
Not even that. Coaxial cable has a life expectancy of around 20 years. And as the upper operating frequencies approach 1 GHz, the cables installed even 10 years ago are becoming obsolete. As frequency increases, the losses mount, which means that the distance a clean signal can be carried over the same size cable keeps decreasing. The new coax being installed on trunk runs is between .750" & 1.00" diameter. Coax on the feeder network is often .625". Older cables were about .540 to .715" on trunk runs and .412 to .500 in the feeder network. Some of these old cable are still being used, but that requires installation of additional amplifiers in the existing network. A costly proposition.
The major difference, however, is the “new” network architecture - called HFC (Hybrid Fiber-Coax). In the old systems of 25+ years ago, a cable operator would simply string out as many amplifiers as it would take to get to the edge of the franchise. This resulted in amp cascades of 30 or more. You can imagine the noise generated at the end of the line by stringing together 30+ analog amps. Today, in HFC, fiber is run to small pockets of ~1000 subscribers. There, a node (an opto-electronic convertor) is placed and the usual coax network is built. Amplifier cascades are now down to less than ten. And in some systems, there is no cascade. Frequently called “Node + one.”
The infrastructure for cable is very expensive. That’s why most places only have 1, maybe 2 choices for a cable provider. Expense. Upgrading the whole darned world would be crazy expensive.
But TV is required to go digital by 2009 (in US). If you’re going to invest in a new TV before then, get one that supports digital/HDTV. So that will change things a bit, right?
