docsis

Economics of fiber favors rural cable upgrades

28 July 2017 by Steve Blum
, , ,

If your local cable system is in bad shape, you might be in luck. According to an analysis done by Daniel Frankel at FierceCable, the economics of upgrading cable systems that were last upgraded (or not) in the 1990s to the next generation of service favors replacing coaxial cable with a full fiber to the home build. That explains some or all of the reasoning behind Altice’s decision to convert some of the Suddenlink and Cablevision systems it acquired to FTTH.… More

Telco broadband slows at the edge, cable bottlenecks in the core

23 July 2013 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

Speeds can drop suddenly at the edge.

Slow residential connections keep DSL speeds down, while cable’s problems are further back in the network. Researchers for the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology dug deep into data collected in 2011 by the FCC as part of its Measuring Broadband America program.

The NIST researchers asked the question: Where in the Internet is congestion? The results suggested that…

…a significant amount of congestion, especially for cable connections, occurs deeper in the network, perhaps, in the “middle mile”…or even farther, where the ISP connects to the “public Internet”.

… More

Cable for broadband speed, telcos for consistency in service and advertising

22 July 2013 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

More likely so.

DSL is better at delivering advertised download speeds than cable, but cable modem service is still faster. That’s one of the conclusions reached by researchers for the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology after sifting through broadband test data collected by the FCC in 2011.

DSL broadband provided connections on average delivering download speeds above 80% of the assigned speed tier more than 80% of the time. By contrast, a significant fraction of cable connections received less than 80% of their assigned speed tier more than 20% of the time.

… More